Server Hardware

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Cromulent

I'm in the process of writing a business plan that requires the purchase of one or two servers that will run FreeBSD. I've never bought a server directly; I have always used VPS instances. I've been looking at major server providers (Dell, Supermicro, etc.) and have to admit that I am confused. I think a 1U server with, say, 16 cores and 64GB of ECC RAM and 2x 1TB SSDs would be acceptable to start with, but I'm nervous about buying something without the knowledge of it working.

Can someone with experience in this area give me some hints, please?
 
Phishfry said:
Without knowing the load I don't know how anybody could help you spec a machine.
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Sorry. I should have been more specific.

I'm looking to run virtual machines on the system (Bhyve). I thought I could use a 250GB SSD for the boot disc and two 1TB SSDs in RAIDZ mirroring as storage. If I got 32GB of ECC RAM and 16 CPU cores, I could run ~30 virtual machines. I'd have backups in something like Amazon S3. Having the most reliable SSDs available would be good.
 
Cromulent said:
I thought I could use a 250GB SSD for the boot disc and two 1TB SSDs in RAIDZ mirroring as storage.
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That sounds reasonable for home but for a business plan I would want more robustness.
4 Enterprise Drives for example for VM hosting. OS on 64GB SATADOM is fine as seen on many server offerings.
Heck many ZFS people would put the whole shebang on the array with Boot Environments.

The problem with specing something is that you might find differing solutions that are hard to quantify.

What about expansion. Do you want it or are you just buying for todays vision?


Cromulent said:
If I got 32GB of ECC RAM and 16 CPU cores, I could run ~30 virtual machines.
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That to me is too minimal. Possible but minimal. I say 128GB is reasonable for ZFS + 30 VM users .
16 Cores for 30 users? What 1/2 core to each?
 
Lots of scenarios are possible but would your ride a business plan on it? That is my point.
Shoestring budget or 4reals..
 
I see it at work all the time.
Beancounters reduce a request for the machine you want to a machine that 'will do the job' but just barely.

I tell my boss loosen up, Its not your money. It is a business. Plan for growth.
 
And probably not memory bound.. Even at 1G each...
So it's down to a storage system decisions.
Bhyve really chews up throughput. I have found NVMe pass thru is the best option for any storage intensive VM's...
So maybe go enterprise NVMe...
 
Phishfry said:
That sounds reasonable for home but for a business plan I would want more robustness.
4 Enterprise Drives for example for VM hosting. OS on 64GB SATADOM is fine as seen on many server offerings.
Heck many ZFS people would put the whole shebang on the array with Boot Environments.

The problem with specing something is that you might find differing solutions that are hard to quantify.

What about expansion. Do you want it or are you just buying for todays vision?
Click to expand...
Thank you.

I think you are correct. Four drives would be better, and the extra safety would help. Backups would probably be taken every 12 or 24 hours and stored in Amazon S3. Customers would be responsible for any extra backups they might need outside those requirements.
Phishfry said:
Yes and what these ~30VM's will be doing is unknown. I am assuming full utilization.
Do you overprovision or underprovision on a server you are building for business VM's.
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The people using the virtual machines will probably have lots of different uses. I am planning on having a test phase (for free) where customers host their standard workload, and then I can get real-world information on requirements.
robroy said:
Cromulent, 'not sure if this is an option for you, but iXsystems can help you figure out what to buy (and sell it to you).

I had my employer hire them for something once and had a good experience.
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Thank you. I'll be sure to check them out.
 
I have alot invested in SuperMicro. That is where I put my money.

I think a very first consideration is: Are you an Intel Shop or AMD Shop?
Both sides have compelling offerings.

SuperMicro offers AMD as a stepchild (Aplus) but I trust their machines.
My barebones AMD choice. CPU cost is high on these along with memory.
 
Phishfry said:
I have alot invested in SuperMicro. That is where I put my money.

I think a very first consideration is: Are you an Intel Shop or AMD Shop?
Both sides have compelling offerings.

SuperMicro offers AMD as a stepchild (Aplus) but I trust their machines.
My barebones AMD choice. CPU cost is high on these along with memory.
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Thank you. I was already looking at SuperMicro, so this helps.
 
Here is the dilemma there. I think AMD Zen3 is best bang for buck but I worry that their virt extensions are different than Intels. Intel is the 600lb gorilla that gets alot of the attention.

If I were safe bet guy I would recommend Intel.
 
I am very partial to SuperMicro boards for small business purposes.
I have six of them with Xeon processors, and they are entirely stable.
I place SM boards in client offices when I have the luxury of doing so.
Otherwise, they get Dell.

In the last century, I was an AMD guy... but not today.
Too irritating to support, too many driver problems.
 
I’ve got FreeBSD 13.2 running happily on a variety of Dell and Supermicro servers and only issues been RAM. Oh and the dodgy-dying Intel Atom issue.

Newer Dell machines have Linux/Windows-only PERC utilities but if you are using ZFS then I don’t think a problem.
 
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