Dirt cheap decomissioned servers?

[mapleLC]

Looking for a server, but the landscape out there is pretty vast and there are a lot of acronyms I don't know anymore 

What is the best used I can get for eBay scale money?  I can modify the server for most any need, so the most solid basic platform is primary, so what should we grab before Dave reviews one?

I plan to install Linux, which shouldn't matter but is germane. 

[SiliconWizard]

Looking for a server, but the landscape out there is pretty vast and there are a lot of acronyms I don't know anymore 

What is the best used I can get for eBay scale money?  I can modify the server for most any need, so the most solid basic platform is primary, so what should we grab before Dave reviews one?

I plan to install Linux, which shouldn't matter but is germane.

These days, it looks like one of your best bets is to go for a X99 platform with one (or several if you can find a multi-CPU one) Xeon E5 v4 (Broadwell EP). DDR4 ECC is surprisingly "cheap" at the moment, so you can get comfy amounts of RAM for not too much.

Just a suggestion, there are probably alternatives.

[brucehoult]

What are your actual requirements?

These days especially, purchase price savings on old grunty machines can often be quickly eaten up by electricity usage compared to newer hardware.

[Halcyon]

As already has been suggested, what are you looking to do with it?

What concerns me is you state "there are a lot of acronyms I don't know anymore". I'm not exactly sure what terminology you're referring to, but don't think for a moment that enterprise servers (particularly brands like HP, Dell or IBM/Lenovo) are just "big computers". Whilst, fundamentally, yes they are, they often come with quirks and caveats that you won't know about unless you are either familiar with the brand, or have done enough homework to satisfy yourself that a particular make/model will work for your use-case.

One example might be that some older servers don't support booting from PCIe cards, you must use a SATA/SAS drive, USB or SD card.

Another might be that you are locked to using specific OEM hardware in some cases, or that it doesn't have the number of IO ports (like SAS) that you expect inside.

[shapirus]

Yeah, these days servers don't necessarily need to be big and noisy.

As an example, here's a true server which is used as a data acquisition system to monitor mains voltage and waveform quality 24/7. The actual computer is smaller than the ADC board it's receiving data from:

[mapleLC]

Looking for a server, but the landscape out there is pretty vast and there are a lot of acronyms I don't know anymore 

What is the best used I can get for eBay scale money?  I can modify the server for most any need, so the most solid basic platform is primary, so what should we grab before Dave reviews one?

I plan to install Linux, which shouldn't matter but is germane.

These days, it looks like one of your best bets is to go for a X99 platform with one (or several if you can find a multi-CPU one) Xeon E5 v4 (Broadwell EP). DDR4 ECC is surprisingly "cheap" at the moment, so you can get comfy amounts of RAM for not too much.

Just a suggestion, there are probably alternatives.

Thats a bit too basic, thats just a regular PC motherboard.  I want the full capabilities of a server.

[BradC]

I want the full capabilities of a server.

You might want to enlighten us as to what you consider "full capabilities of a server" then, because it's a pretty broad term and none of us are mind readers.

[mapleLC]

What are your actual requirements?

These days especially, purchase price savings on old grunty machines can often be quickly eaten up by electricity usage compared to newer hardware.

Would year build be a better reference?  Maybe 2016 onwards?  That would have the latest connectivity, and be in that decommission window, even past it actually.  As noted, I can modify, but a solid basic platform is primary, so I suppose a solid pair of processors is a must have, I can find disks and memory.  RAID management, so a RAID card, but I can buy that too.

Generally when one of these comes with everything in it already, its the best deal.

I want the full capabilities of a server.

You might want to enlighten us as to what you consider "full capabilities of a server" then, because it's a pretty broad term and none of us are mind readers.

A server provides services to other computers in the network.  So this sets it apart from the needs of a typical desktop mostly by throughput.  A desktop typically handles the input of a single user, while the server tends to handle many users at once.

So, because I'm not special, I want a server to do the same thing as it does in a data center, but just in my house.

This established, the entire world of IT has put together the basics... disk arrays, multi cores, multiple networking inputs, SAN inputs as in a broad sense the capabilities of a server.  Perhaps the word "full" caused consternation, but it doesn't have to be full, just good value for typical server capabilities.

[JohanH]

You still haven't stated your intended use. Is this for company or home use? For home use any desktop PC is better than a full blown rack server. A rack server needs a dedicated space, they are very noisy and draws a lot more power than a small PC. You can run a rack server at home, but I recommend cheap electricity and a separate room or building (e.g. a garage).

[mapleLC]

As already has been suggested, what are you looking to do with it?

Buy a kind of flexibility I find useful.

What concerns me is you state "there are a lot of acronyms I don't know anymore". I'm not exactly sure what terminology you're referring to, but don't think for a moment that enterprise servers (particularly brands like HP, Dell or IBM/Lenovo) are just "big computers". Whilst, fundamentally, yes they are, they often come with quirks and caveats that you won't know about unless you are either familiar with the brand, or have done enough homework to satisfy yourself that a particular make/model will work for your use-case.

I am mostly referring to changes that require wholesale hardware updates.  A basic example would be moving off of 32 bit back when, remember when you had to consider what would work?

In terms of quirks, all of them will have them to a degree, but with a lack of deep knowledge, I am looking to the community for some guidance on what to look for.

One example might be that some older servers don't support booting from PCIe cards, you must use a SATA/SAS drive, USB or SD card.

Another might be that you are locked to using specific OEM hardware in some cases, or that it doesn't have the number of IO ports (like SAS) that you expect inside.
[/quote]

[JohanH]

A server provides services to other computers in the network.  So this sets it apart from the needs of a typical desktop mostly by throughput.  A desktop typically handles the input of a single user, while the server tends to handle many users at once.

So, because I'm not special, I want a server to do the same thing as it does in a data center, but just in my house.

I would definitely not put a rack server in my home, unless it's in a garage where I don't have to listen to the horrible noise.

Any desktop PC with a good CPU will provide the same functionality of a server. SAN input? The only thing you need is 1 GBit Ethernet, which exists in every PC. RAID is not needed nowadays with today's extremely fast NVMe SSD disks and cheap SATA SSD storage.

[mapleLC]

You still haven't stated your intended use. Is this for company or home use? For home use any desktop PC is better than a full blown rack server. A rack server needs a dedicated space, they are very noisy and draws a lot more power than a small PC. You can run a rack server at home, but I recommend cheap electricity and a separate room or building (e.g. a garage).

My house has a sealed off concrete zombie safe house which is now houses my server room.  I have all the space and noise insulation necessary, and power here is not a problem either.

[mapleLC]

A server provides services to other computers in the network.  So this sets it apart from the needs of a typical desktop mostly by throughput.  A desktop typically handles the input of a single user, while the server tends to handle many users at once.

So, because I'm not special, I want a server to do the same thing as it does in a data center, but just in my house.

I would definitely not put a rack server in my home, unless it's in a garage where I don't have to listen to the horrible noise.

Any desktop PC with a good CPU will provide the same functionality of a server. SAN input? The only thing you need is 1 GBit Ethernet, which exists in every PC. RAID is not needed nowadays with today's extremely fast NVMe SSD disks and cheap SATA SSD storage.

A SAN is going to use a cable like this, typically.  A network cable is how a NAS usually gets to the network, but a SAN needs a controller.

[JohanH]

My house has a sealed off concrete zombie safe house which is now houses my server room.  I have all the space and noise insulation necessary, and power here is not a problem either.

Well then you can go ahead and buy anything you need. I'm not sure this forum will give the best recommendations. In the server end of things, they are so specific to your needs. Is it for file storage or virtual servers etc.

Keep in mind servers are made and built for company budgets. For instance, in our company disks are popping all the time and usually warranty takes care of it. Servers are in the range of $10,000 to $30,000 and they are renewed every few years. So, there are definitely used gear out there, but I would never care for dragging these beasts into my house myself, without having dedicated personnel taking care of them. It's just a completely different scale than what I need at home (and my house has many PCs and fiber Internet etc.).

[JohanH]

A SAN is going to use a cable like this, typically.  A network cable is how a NAS usually gets to the network, but a SAN needs a controller.

Yes, I know. But completely overkill for home use, unless we are talking racks of disks.

[mapleLC]

Yes, I know. But completely overkill for home use, unless we are talking racks of disks.

Half the stuff we do is overkill.  Servers are actually not a bad way to go, long term.  If you have ever owned one they're more temperamental to setup, but they hardly break. If you work in a data center you see the scale, and so failures are more common.  But in home use, a good server should hardly ever fail because the parts inside are better.

The exception is the thrown together stuff from ebay with mass warehouses of parts... thats more a lottery.

[shapirus]

You're looking for nobody knows what to perform nobody knows which tasks.

Until you define what you are trying to achieve, at least approximately, you will not be able to find anything, not to mention that nobody will be able to help you.

From the information that we have so far, a computer with a storage interface is what you are looking for. It can be purchased with money both offline and online, including eBay.

[M0HZH]

Nowadays, "server" is a veeery broad term. Almost everything is virtualized: small services run in containers, medium sized services run in virtual machines, massive services run on clusters. Hardware is not very relevant and can be added if necessary.

For home needs, the focus is on storage: backups, sharing, streaming media locally. None of these are too demanding and low-power NAS units are more than enough. I've been very happy with Synology units, but I'd recommend the Plus range for anything that's not absolutely basic. Good enough for even small & medium business needs.

If you're more technical, you might want to look up "home lab": people setting up a small datacenter-like configurations at home, to learn / experiment or even use for productivity. This sounds more like what you're looking for. The ideal starting point nowadays for a home lab is one of the Tiny Mini Micro (also known as "1 liter PCs") units from HP / Dell  / Lenovo (more details here). They pack massive performance / watt, they are really cheap and plenty on eBay, upgradeable, take very small space and they are really quiet (especially compared to a typical datacenter rackable "server"). Installing a free software like Proxmox will allow you to create virtual machines or merge multiple physical units under a single virtual server. For example, a typical unit I use in my home lab is Core i7 (4C8T), 16GB RAM, dual SSDs, costs about £100 and uses 11W of power at idle and about 40W at peak load; for processing needs, this is more than most people need at home.

If you're doing something exotic (like 4k video editing over the network, etc) let us know, there are solutions for that as well. But cheap decomissioned servers rarely make sense at home, they're too big, noisy and power-hungry for that.

[mapleLC]

You're looking for nobody knows what to perform nobody knows which tasks.

Until you define what you are trying to achieve, at least approximately, you will not be able to find anything, not to mention that nobody will be able to help you.

From the information that we have so far, a computer with a storage interface is what you are looking for. It can be purchased with money both offline and online, including eBay.

Then don't respond if its too amorphous for you.  You seem to have an ax to grind, find another stone. 

Nowadays, "server" is a veeery broad term. Almost everything is virtualized: small services run in containers, medium sized services run in virtual machines, massive services run on clusters. Hardware is not very relevant and can be added if necessary.

For home needs, the focus is on storage: backups, sharing, streaming media locally. None of these are too demanding and low-power NAS units are more than enough. I've been very happy with Synology units, but I'd recommend the Plus range for anything that's not absolutely basic. Good enough for even small & medium business needs.

If you're more technical, you might want to look up "home lab": people setting up a small datacenter-like configurations at home, to learn / experiment or even use for productivity. This sounds more like what you're looking for. The ideal starting point nowadays for a home lab is one of the Tiny Mini Micro (also known as "1 liter PCs") units from HP / Dell  / Lenovo (more details here). They pack massive performance / watt, they are really cheap and plenty on eBay, upgradeable, take very small space and they are really quiet (especially compared to a typical datacenter rackable "server"). Installing a free software like Proxmox will allow you to create virtual machines or merge multiple physical units under a single virtual server. For example, a typical unit I use in my home lab is Core i7 (4C8T), 16GB RAM, dual SSDs, costs about £100 and uses 11W of power at idle and about 40W at peak load; for processing needs, this is more than most people need at home.

If you're doing something exotic (like 4k video editing over the network, etc) let us know, there are solutions for that as well. But cheap decomissioned servers rarely make sense at home, they're too big, noisy and power-hungry for that.

Precisely, so you defined my need.  A modern definition of a "server" includes virtualization, SAN management, etc, and needs hardware to run on.  Its not "very relevant" until you need to boot a virtual machine, then I would like you to consider what not very relevant hardware you might need to acquire to manage such tasks as you describe.

I dont want Synology for the reasons already described.

What you are describing is not what I am looking for.

What I am looking for is what I described:

A decommissioned server built 2016 or after that can run linux.

What I keep getting:

Dude you just need an X47 modulator with a rasberry and a lenovo disk flipperdo

What I reiterate:

No fellas, I want the one with the really loud ass fans that is heavy as fuck and doesn't belong in a house

[BrokenYugo]

I've more or less set DDR4 as my cutoff for anything, if it isn't at least that fresh it's too old to bother with.

That said, you seem to know what you want, so go buy it, anything rack mounted oughta do.

[magic]

Then don't respond if its too amorphous for you.  You seem to have an ax to grind, find another stone.

If you have already irreversibly wasted two minutes of my life, I might as well spend the extra 10 seconds to respond that you are completely nuts

If you need a server for the sake of a server, just buy whatever you see that tickles your fancy.

[mapleLC]

I've more or less set DDR4 as my cutoff for anything, if it isn't at least that fresh it's too old to bother with.

That said, you seem to know what you want, so go buy it, anything rack mounted oughta do.

That's the problem, I know what I want, but I don't know what to buy.  Its a broad landscape, and the youtube surprised face guy pitching why this old xyz doesn't spark a lot of confidence. 

I've pieced together that most of the gen 9 and above HP stuff is well regarded.  Dell seems to be more well regarded than HP.  And then there are a plethora of other options I don't understand fully yet.

Perhaps the forum doesn't have a lot of network folks.

[mapleLC]

Case in point.  Who is suggesting to these content creators to make these silly faces? 

[coromonadalix]

just grab a std  pc mainboard with many sata connector as you can find  or buy an multi sata port card

and for the os   you can snatch an windows server os   ...

even an win10 can serve you fine with good configs,  drive shares  etc ...   

if you want to pay for nothing  suit your self  lolll    i cant bear the fans noise in theses servers, want to smash them

had Hp and dell servers, they found out  how fast i could throw them out ....


Found a mini atx board, added a cheap china 16 ports hot swappable sata card   and voila  .... right now i have 11 drives in it  loll

Sure i don't raid them, i simply use the "smart" status of the drives, and swap them / clone them if they get to 60-70% ...

[james_s]

As already has been suggested, what are you looking to do with it?

Buy a kind of flexibility I find useful.

What concerns me is you state "there are a lot of acronyms I don't know anymore". I'm not exactly sure what terminology you're referring to, but don't think for a moment that enterprise servers (particularly brands like HP, Dell or IBM/Lenovo) are just "big computers". Whilst, fundamentally, yes they are, they often come with quirks and caveats that you won't know about unless you are either familiar with the brand, or have done enough homework to satisfy yourself that a particular make/model will work for your use-case.

I am mostly referring to changes that require wholesale hardware updates.  A basic example would be moving off of 32 bit back when, remember when you had to consider what would work?

In terms of quirks, all of them will have them to a degree, but with a lack of deep knowledge, I am looking to the community for some guidance on what to look for.

One example might be that some older servers don't support booting from PCIe cards, you must use a SATA/SAS drive, USB or SD card.

Another might be that you are locked to using specific OEM hardware in some cases, or that it doesn't have the number of IO ports (like SAS) that you expect inside.

This is gibberish. It does not answer the question of what you are wanting to do with it and what capabilities you need. A server is a computer, nothing more. Most of the special features offered by "real" servers are based on form factor, redundancy and serviceability. They have things like hot swappable redundant power supplies, ECC RAM, redundant fans, etc.

If you just want to have a cool rackmount machine then pick up anything you think looks cool. Hopefully you have cheap electricity and somewhere to put it where you won't have to listen to the screaming fans.