Hello, I only joined the old site about a year ago and just joined the new site today. I have some general questions on brand specific gear and some questions that pertain to my situation. I have read all the guides on hardware so I hope this doesn’t get removed, it may be rather long.
I inherited 2 UCS C240 M4 a few months back. Originally my plan was to use one for TN and the other for compute. Until they arrived and they are both SFFx16. So no real storage options. I plan to sell one that’s loaded with memory, chips and drives to facilitate the cost of a better truenas box. One thing is that these servers are pretty damn power hungry and loud with dual CPU so I am hoping to make the TN box more efficient, I don’t need redundant 750w psus like I have in the ciscos. I want to try to stay with a rackable box rather than a tower if possible.
I am looking for 2-3U with 8-12 bays, preferably single socket for efficiency and noise. I currently have 10x4TB SAS3 drives that are enterprise used. I plan to start with these for a few years until I work up to purchasing new, higher capacity drives. I only have about 10TB of data to move to this box so using 6-8 of these drives in Rz2 should get me enough storage for a few years while also having 2-4 spares in case of failure. I wont get into vdevs and all that as that is a topic for after my hardware is sorted.
So Supermicro…I am having difficulty understanding their naming convention and more specifically compatibility. I found the motherboard doc that explains the product name BUT I’m not sure what will fit in what chassis. Id like to put a single socket board into a rack mounted chassis with SAS3 backplane. I’ll admit I haven’t looked at the chassis naming yet to understand the models, but I wanted to know if this is even possible. I’m not sure if rack chassis have specific mounting points or standoffs for only certain boards…most of which I assume would be dual CPU. Also the generations…we don’t really need compute here so what is the sweet spot for memory and PCIE? I have been looking at 12th gen but I haven’t really priced anything out on ebay. I would want something with the possibility of expansion, possible M.2 slots or the PCIE to add one or two M.2 drives. I don’t want you guys to pick my parts, I want to do the work and I do want to learn and post a build sheet here before ordering. Just need a little knowledge and nudge. I’m not completely inept with enterprise hardware, but I don’t have years of experience either.
So I HAVE to build a new TN box seeing as how the Cisco servers are 2.5. I’d like to try and get something more efficient and less noisy. I see many of these SM chassis with 900w psu but I assume that is based on the assumption you would slap a dual socket board in there. I have of course also been looking at Dell and just jumping on a R730xd but I don’t know how it compares in efficiency or decibels to a supermicro counterpart. Part of me also wants to build it myself if it can be done for close to the same price.
Lasty for now, I was planning on keeping one of the C240 M4 for compute/proxmox BUT if i can build a rival machine that is more efficient (cisco’s are hungry man about 225w idle last time I checked) I will sell that one on facebook as well. I stand to get $700-1k out of both of them with 192GB/16x1.2TB/Dual E5 2687W-V4 in one of them and lesser dual xeons in the other. Anyways you get it and all that would be profit. Or build ONE super capable box and virtualize TN but I think Id like to keep storage and compute separate.
So yea alot to think about, Id love to hear your suggestions on all of this and some help with the supermicro journey. If there is a prebuilt that fits my needs I’d be open to it but I’d rather build it out if cost is close.
Thank you guys so much, if I need to go back to the stickie guides because all this is there then publicly shame me.