New servers! Looking for hardware recommendations

[pvanulden]

Well, we had a fire in the building our office was located in. Luckily, the server room survived (mostly) and we managed to retrieve most of our data. With that said, we are in the market for a couple of new servers. We use FreeBSD to host several of our services (mail, subversion, ftp, jira/confluence, etc) most of which used our Windows ADS domain for authentication (I think we will try Samba PDC with LDAP this time). We are a fairly small company so we don't need anything terribly beefy in the way of hardware.

Can anyone recommend a hardware platform that runs FreeBSD out of the box? Looking at something in the $1000-$2500 range. We typically use Dell stuff but I am open to other brands too. I was considering the PowerEdge R515 but I am curious what other recommendations I might garner.

Thanks!
Philip

 

[Terri_Kennedy]

Can anyone recommend a hardware platform that runs FreeBSD out of the box? Looking at something in the $1000-$2500 range. We typically use Dell stuff but I am open to other brands too. I was considering the PowerEdge R515 but I am curious what other recommendations I might garner.

Dell's server offerings are good, but some components are only minimally supported under FreeBSD (Dell's officially supported platforms are Windows / Linux only). For example, the SAS 5/iR controller works fine under the mpt driver, but error messages aren't decoded into useful text, and most of the management utilities don't work under FreeBSD. Moving into the more esoteric, the Dell version of sysutils/ipmitool lets you change what the front panel displays, monitor the power supply, and so on. Those changes were not accepted back into the main ipmitool code, so these additional features aren't available under FreeBSD.

One dumb thing that Dell has done is to put non-jumbo-capable GigE ports on some of the system boards. If jumbo frames matter to you, plan on adding an expansion card if you have one of those systems. I have a bunch of PowerEdge R300's running FreeBSD that have this issue, for example.

I'm also running a number of Supermicro packaged systems, so that might be something to consider as well. Though the UIO cards that attach the disks are also mpt devices, so you have the same opaque controller you get on the Dell.

 

[danbi]

I would second the Supermicro systems -- so far these have been very FreeBSD compatible for me - it seems Supermicro is trying to have as generic hardware spec as possible.

While not as polished (looks, etc) as others (HP comes to mind) I also found comparable spec hardware to be cheaper and not less reliable.

 

[mix_room]

While not as polished (looks, etc) as others

How is this supermicro server

not as 'pretty' as this HP box

I have been happy with my supermicro boxes. They work well, an are reasonably priced. Added benefits include being able to use any brand of HDD, this can be a big cost saver if you need lots of storage.

 

[xibo]

I'm happy with SuperMicro so far, too. HP is fine too, but a tad expensive.
In terms of entry level servers, I'd be eager to know how Lenovo is performing...

 

[pvanulden]

Thanks for the input folks, much appreciated.