Server build advice

[oDii]

I'd value some input on the following server I am in the process of buying/building. It is destined to replace my aging Athlon 2500+ VMWare box and thoroughly bring it into the present. I hope to virtualise a large proportion of my network as well as provide a place for me to use for testing/study.

This is the hardware I've tentatively picked:

Intel Xeon Harpertown E5410 x2
Kingston ValueRAM 2GB 667MHz DDR2 ECC FB x2
Intel S5000VSASATA or the 4 DIMM model
WD Single 7200rpm 500GB 16MB Int SATA 2 Carviar SE x2

My main concern is the motherboard - while going for a SAS solution integrated for the possibility of running ESX on it would be great, I can't justify the extra money down on a "maybe" especially given the price of an ESX license. It is also an Intel board over one of the cheaper ASUS entry level server boards or one of the awesome looking Supermicros simply because I can't source them here in New Zealand for anything approaching a reasonable price.

Is the 5000V a decent chipset for the money? Would it be worth the money to move to something else, despite my low availability/RASUM requirements? Is it likely to be superseded anytime soon? I am also mindful of Nehalem being on the horizon however feel buying now gives enough time to "enjoy the new car smell" before the next model comes out.

Many thanks for reading and any suggestions made.

 

[Growly]

That gear is making me hot... but if there's one thing I've learned, it's that if you really want to play with server gear you really need thick wallet full of cash. Doing anything half-arse is like shooting yourself in the foot - like two desktop drives in a server platform.

Buying a SAS controller would allow you use SATA drives for quick, cheap gigabytes, but depending on the cost it's totally not worth it. The problem with having 8 cores is that you really need to use them all... and what better way than with VMWare ESX - but if you can't even run it because the hardware support is sub-par, then you may as well cut costs and go for a nix box running a cheaper version of VMWare altogether. I totally agree that it's no fun, though.

Essentially it comes down to how much money you have. I always found that trying to get a decent home-built server ended up costing far too much, because the likes of an external RAID controller cost far more than they should.

If I were to build another server right now, it'd be a simple desktop board with a Q6600 and a buttload of cheap DDR2. It's not as cool... but then again, if it's not in a rack, it's not really that cool anyway.

 

[oDii]

Thanks for the reply.

I see where you're coming from - and part of me agrees, yes, the server part premium is a lot to pay. That said, a desktop board isn't going to support 8 cores. I think that's the main featire I'm looking for - the number of cores, as I can dedicate one to a VM. It'd be great if Skulltrail supported desktop processors with desktop RAM as I think that'd be the ultimate in price/performace, but sadly as the HardOCP review states, it's a server with a different colored PCB. I'd also love to get some experience with server class hardware of my own - none of the change process rubbish that one has to go through in a production or even test environment.