4eak

I think I need a small server-like PC for my house. Redundant storage, ease of use/setup, an actual video card (doesn't need to be great), and some real processor power will be necessary (lots of hosting, multi-tasking, with some processor and memory intensive stuff to do).

I found something which looks pretty good for my needs, but I'm not sure how much it is worth. Could I have a price check on a computer with the specs below? How much would you pay for this used computer?

Any other suggestions?


Pictures:
http://d.imagehost.org/0394/IMG_0692.jpg
http://d.imagehost.org/0370/IMG_0693.jpg
http://d.imagehost.org/0648/IMG_0694.jpg
http://d.imagehost.org/0964/IMG_0695.jpg

Specs:
Case: Lian-Li Classic Series PC-A70B / Black / Full Tower Case
-Side panels lined with sound-dampening insulation
Newegg.com - LIAN LI PC-A70B Black Aluminum ATX Full Tower Computer Case

Motherboard: ASUS Z7S WS Dual LGA 771 Intel 5400 SSI CEB Dual Intel Xeon Server Motherboard
ASUSTeK Computer Inc.

CPUs: 2 x Intel Xeon E5410 Harpertown 2.33GHz LGA 771 80W Quad-Core Processor BX80574E5410A

Memory: 16GB Kingston DDR2 FB-DIMM DDR2 667 (PC2 5300) ECC (4x4GB)

PSU: ZALMAN ZM1000-HP 1000W

Video Card: XFX nVidia GeForce 8600 GTS

Sound Card: Turtle Beach RIVIERA 5.1 Channels PCI Interface

DVD Drive: Pioneer 20X DVD±R DVD Burner Black IDE Model DVR-115DBK

RAID Controller: (Dedicated) 3ware 9650SE-8LPML KIT PCI Express x4 SATA II (3.0Gb/s) Controller Card
-3ware BBU-MODULE-03 Battery Backup Unit for 3ware 9650SE
-8 500GB Seagate hard drives configured in a raid5 array for a total of 3TB usable space
-This array is being used for dedicated storage

3 x Seagate Barracuda ES.2 ST3250310NS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5"
-These drives are configured as in a 750GB raid0 array using the raid controller on the motherboard
-Currently being used for the OS to boot and run off of

Cooling: As seen in the pictures, the following heatsinks/fans are installed to provide adequate ventilation for this monster.
-4x 120mm intake fans in the front of the case; 2 that are pushing air into the case and over the hard drives, and 2 on the other side of the hard drives that are pulling air
-2x 120mm exhaust fans
-2x Noctua NH-U12DX heatsinks for the CPUs
-3x Noctua NF-P12 120mm fans for the CPU heatsinks
-1x Noctua NF-R8 80mm Fan (Blowing air onto memory sticks)
-1x heatsink and 80mm fan added to cool north bridge chip

Liqourice

Honestly..

If you're only going to use it as a home server it's quite a bit of an overkill. Even if you're running a lot of hosting on it, for a home network it doesn't need that much cpu power really.

If you're gonna run a public web server I could agree with your choises but not for a home server.

How many computers are gonna use it? What kind of hosting are you gonna have on it?

I ran a webserver at home before, it only had an old Athlon 3200+ (single core) and I used it for skype and as a home network file server as well and it never choked.

And, as a server you won't need much graphics. The simplest onboard graphics will do the job.

4eak

I hear ya. For the sake of argument, assume it isn't overkill -- What is the price range I should be looking to pay for a used and well-maintained workstation with the above specs?

blibbax

I'm not sure on price, but check out some supermicro barebones.

Also, buying an LGA771 system doesn't really make much sense right now. A single 6 core CPU or even 4 core + HT CPU of the current generation would probably suit you better, and be faster, and be cheaper.

__________________

Tipstaff

Hard to judge what the resell value would be. New, however, overall that thing would probably cost about $4700-5000, if not more.

The CPUs alone would hit you $300-350 each easy, motherboard around $600, RAM about $600, if all the 500GB hard drives are ES.2 drives (which are Enterprise drives) then each of those would cost $110 with the 3 250GB drives costing about $80 each, the 3Ware RAID controller card runs about $525, PSU about $150-175, $200 for the case, and maybe $250-300 for the rest (fans, burner, sound card, and video card). This is based on current prices, so depending on how old the system is things like the hard drives, RAM, and CPUs would have cost him a lot more if, say, the unit is about 2 years old.

Again, it's hard to judge what it's worth used, but I think going lower than $3000 would be an insult. Maybe make that your bottom and $3500 as the top end?

__________________

Takaharu

We have a few servers in our company that takes tonnes of multi-tasking. The most powerful of those has two quad-core Xeon processors with 8GB RAM (DDR2 I think, ECC anyway). Your one would trounce that one, providing power for around 500 systems if the network could handle it.
I'd recommend something like newest server, which multi-tasks to the dog's bananas for 100 users if you want to go overkill.

CPU: Core 2 Quad Q9650 (3GHz)
RAM: 4GB DDR2 800MHz
HDD: 2x 500GB SATA drives in RAID, 2x 150GB SATA drives in RAID. Couldn't tell you the speed or RAID as I didn't set that up. Dedicated RAID controller.
GFX: Onboard. It's a server; anything more than onboard would be overkill.

That system is an industrial PC. What does it do? It's a dialler (no, not cold-calling) that reads and writes thousands of times to SQL on another server, processes agent logins, IVR, calculates call distributions based on the status of every agent... you get the idea; it's under a high workload.

What's the server going to be doing on a day-to-day basis?

__________________

4eak

The above computer will cost me $1,500.

Things I want it to do or have (pretty much simultaneously):

• Media center/Digitial Library for my family
• 3TB of very reliable and redundant storage
• Host (and be a client to other) secured web services, VPNs and proxies
• Good Virtualization
• Solve problems with multi-threaded algorithms (can scale with a surprising amount of processor power and memory)
• Host game servers
• Play mid-range games.

I've looked at several PCs and barebone systems, as perhaps the above is much more than I could ever use. The above looks like it could easily scale up, which I appreciate. Would a cheaper PC actually be faster and would the storage be just as reliable? I'm okay with buy a bit more than I need, but I prefer to get the most bang for my buck.

blibbax

You can build in storage redundancy with a regular PC, yes.

A modern i7 based PC, while not quite as powerful in throughput, might well perform better in the tasks you suggest than that PC, or at least comparably.

An 8600GTS won't cut it for "mid range games" anymore.

__________________

IvanV

It all depends on how many clients do you expect to have connected at any time. For most enterprise intents and purposes, the main contributor to a machine's performance is the sheer number of threads that it can keep "alive" at the same time.

Looking at what can be built with readily available components, a Core i7-970 would give you 12 active threads. I'm not an expert on the matter, but it's a very respectable number and most likely an overkill. Although, if you intend to host a busy web and media server and play contemporary games on it at the same time, you might need it.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to have two separate machines; the server can be a SFF Core i5 thingey (4 active threads - still decent) with the storage and memory you need for it and it doesn't necessarily need its own keyboard and monitor (remote desktop connection) so it wouldn't require a lot of additional physical space and it shouldn't be too expensive; the gaming rig would be whatever you want it to be.

If the server is not going to be too busy, you can still probably keep it as one machine and an i7 860 with its 8 threads should be fine. And if you feel like doing this "on the cheap", a Phenom II X6 with six physical cores would probably also be fine.

If you're building a busy server, you may want to invest in a quality discrete NIC. I don't know what to recommend, but when a large number of requests start arriving, an ordinary integrated network card will become the bottleneck way before its bandwidth limit is reached.

For 3TB of reliable storage, I'd recommend 4 1TB drives in RAID 5. RAID 5 can have a problem with performance when doing random writes, especially concurrent ones. For higher performance, RAID 10 is better, but you'd need more storage (6TB total for 3TB available).

__________________
If anyone has Portal 2 and hasn't played the co-op and wants to do me a favour, let me know (PM me or whatever).

jaydeee

Its more to our office server with 30 concurrent user.
guess your server can take another 3 more office to host.

__________________
Windows XP Drivers | HP Drivers

Tipstaff

$1,500? Wha? Is is stolen? JK.

$1,500 is way under what I expected, and to build your own rig, from scratch with current NEW parts, would far exceed that amount. As I mentioned before the motherboard (which you can't buy new anymore), 3Ware RAID controller, and ECC RAM eats that money up right off the bat.. and then some. As long as it IS in good condition then seriously consider it. Like I said, you won't be able to buy a new machine with those same parts for anywhere near that amount.

__________________

blibbax

But, on the other hand, a machine built now with high end desktop parts would surely come very close for the purposes stated.

__________________

Takaharu

Dual Xeon processors, ECC-registered memory (even if it is DDR2) you wouldn't come close to the price/performance for the concurrent users.
Taking into account the $1,500 price bracket and the amount of things you want to do with it, it's a good value. Just trade in/sell the graphics card.

I'd strongly recommend a server operating system. It will handle the hardware and concurrent users much better. Not to mention that two or more people can be logged on at the same time via Remote Desktop.

__________________

4eak

Thank you all for your advice and comments (I took none lightly). If anyone reading this wants to TL;DR, please skip to the bottom, I have another question.

I spent a considerable amount of time looking at and comparing the various alternatives. My conclusions: alternatives of similar (and consequently also lower) cost required making sacrifices in some area (e.g. storage, scalability, computing power); the computer is more than I currently need (except for multi-threaded problem solving I do in my spare time), but I have breathing/growing room.

The price (verified by roughly a dozen people, including other sources) is certainly quite low for hardware that is in good shape (and it is, from what I can tell).

I've bought the computer. A few thoughts after setting it up and putting it through its paces:

• For the price, benchmarking processors/memory turned out to be acceptable (though not amazing); they excel in areas that (they are designed for--NSSherlock) matter most to me.
• I'm not even sure I'll be replacing the vid card immediately. It'll do fine for now.
• The Raid setup in this box blows away other NAS/RAID tower solutions I've used before. It is much faster than I anticipated.
• As silly as it sounds, the case/cooling/PSU are really quite nice. These aren't normally things I go out of my way for, but I appreciate it.
• I'm glad I didn't have to put this thing together. From what I understand, certain aspects of building this machine were frustrating for the person who originally built it. It is much more complicated than anything I've ever put together, and with the limited time I have (school, family, work, etc.), it is extremely convenient to buy a custom machine already in working order.

Future improvements, small projects I'm considering:

• SSDs in some RAID config for the OS. Perhaps not multiple though (see here). I feel this is still an unsettled area (both in price and innovation) in general computing, so it may be best to wait (I'm not much of an early or even 2nd or 3rd generation adopter).
• Given the specs of the system, it seems possible that if I did want to upgrade my vid card, I could go for even better GPU-computing (CUDA). I enjoy building some odd computer programs, and CUDA is excellent for some of my purproses. I'm not sure if this is reasonable (e.g. is it important to have and do I even have "gen2" PCI-E x16?). Any advice would be appreciated.
• If (for various possible reasons) I buy new, larger hard drives, then move to RAID10 (from what I understand, even better performance).
• Any improvements you think I should consider in the future (birthday present, etc.)?

Another question:

I realize the focus of this forum is on hardware. I have an odd 'is this possible?' software-oriented network question (albeit there is hardware for similar things). I'm trying to find a way to improve my VPN (something which I'm pretty much a noob about, but greatly value).

I want to bind together at least 2 entirely different connections (same ISP; two ISP accounts; two modems) and load balance. From what I understand, there are many ways of doing this. Rather than pay money for another router, I'm thinking about using a software solution, e.g. Multi WAN Load Balancing under Windows with PfSense | Bora's Place. I've also read that Windows (which I prefer for various reasons) itself might be capable of load balancing, but I'm not positive.

I want to know first: is it possible to load balance a single session of OpenVPN over two different connections? I think it would go something like this:

OpenVPN Client (on the box I've just bought)<--> Load-balanced Routing (via Router/Virtualized/2nd Box)<--> Connection 1 & 2 <--> VPN Server

Would it be different if the Router itself (e.g. PfSense) was equipped with OpenVPN?

If possible, are there any particular methods I need to use? What are they?

Takaharu

If I was looking for something that butch, I'd have probably done the same; there's no way I could've come close to matching £2,000 for a server performance, not alone $1,500.

May I ask why you've chosen to go with a VPN?
As for load balancing, I've never tried it but I do know that hardware-based is the best way to go.

__________________

blibbax

Just to answer this one of your many queries...

You do indeed have gen2 PCI-E, according to the link that you gave for that motherboard. I think you said you had an 8600... this being the case, that's likely to be fine for any CUDA experimentation you fancy. You only need something hench if you want to get super-complicated :P

__________________

4eak

While your question didn't ask about load balancing directly, I'm going to address it.

The VPN is for my privacy in general (bust out the tin-foil hats). The load balancing allows me to avoid bandwidth caps and can make use high throughput for various web services and programs. An example of where I would need to combine them: uTorrent. I also maintain a secure network with my extended family; I proxy for my parents in Thailand (serious political censorship in that country); we all share files and game (might as well avoid the issues that 'private game servers' often face). Most people wouldn't dream of using the sort of bandwidth that I use each month, much less securing it. (I recognize that anonymity never truly exists, but you can avoid being the lowest hanging fruit.)

Is this a 'yes' to the possibility of multi-wan load balancing a single session/tunnel of OpenVPN?

From what I understand, hardware solutions are often quite expensive. Exceptions would be something like DD-WRT (which is really more of a firmware solution). There are strengths and weaknesses to both hardware and software solutions in my circumstance. For now, I'm pretty convinced that software solutions are the best way to go for me (I would not argue that for most people).

Good to know! Thank you.