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What would one say is the sweet spot for second hand servers?

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Ampera:
I've decided to start looking for a new server, something I can use as a proper Xen hypervisor, with the potential for cores, computing power, memory, and reasonably fast networking. Now whenever I look for more than what I can afford, I start to look second hand, and then sorta get in an awful loop of never being sure if what I'm looking at is /truly/ the biggest kerbang for my buck.

What I've been looking at primarily are quad socket Intel based systems, particularly Ivy Bridge. They are cheap on ebay (which means easy to find in my book), have reasonable performance, and 12 core E5's are not hard to come by for semi-reasonable prices. That being said, I need to know if I'm missing something, so I'm asking people here if they have any particular suggestions.

I had the idea to look for Haswell gear, but it's particularly expensive at the moment, likely since it's still in considerable use, but my hope being that since there's so much of it, it will eventually crash in price as it all gets decommissioned. At the end of the day, it needs a lot of cores, and the potential to be easily upgraded, meaning I want to spend relatively small investments to get equal increases in performance, instead of having to put massive dollars on a new machine to replace it a few years later.

The last comment I'll make is that someone (hi halcyon) will say "Server Auction Houses", but I don't know of any around where I live, or even ones that'd be willing to ship stuff. I live near Albany, NY, which isn't exactly a hotspot for datacenters. If someone would be kind enough to give me some examples, I'd be most grateful.

OwO:
If this is going to be on 24/7 electricity costs will be significant compared to the cost of the server, so be sure not to overlook this. Power management on servers are typically bad last time I checked, so I think you will save money in the long run by using a desktop PC. I don't see any point in buying old computer hardware because performance per watt is still improving, and hardware becomes obsolete fast. I upgrade as infrequently as possible (~5 years), but when I do I generally go for the latest top of the line stuff.

Ampera:

--- Quote from: OwO on February 15, 2020, 02:35:05 pm ---If this is going to be on 24/7 electricity costs will be significant compared to the cost of the server, so be sure not to overlook this. Power management on servers are typically bad last time I checked, so I think you will save money in the long run by using a desktop PC. I don't see any point in buying old computer hardware because performance per watt is still improving, and hardware becomes obsolete fast. I upgrade as infrequently as possible (~5 years), but when I do I generally go for the latest top of the line stuff.

--- End quote ---

The issue is that desktop hardware scales like crap. Think, if I can spend ~1200 USD and get a 4 CPU 48 core Ivy Bridge server, to get that same core count (remember, VMs, individual core performance is not as important if I can't divide them up as well) I'd need to have multiple systems, which means multiple PSUs, multiple motherboards, multiple NICs, and a lot of complicated networking gear to get them to work together. That also means multiple Xen hypervisors, and a /lot/ of overhead, diminishing the power/performance even harder.

I'd definitely love to purchase all brand new hardware, but it is expensive, beyond what I'd be willing to pay. Believe me when I say energy is /not/ a concern, and a difference seen on the order of a few years would have to be a lot to make me reconsider.

When I buy second hand servers, keep in mind I'm buying an entire system too, whereas if I buy new hardware, I'm pretty much stuck buying individual parts, which rack up quickly.

RoGeorge:
Do you have any idea how noisy a server is?  It's unbearable unless you dedicate a room for it, or a small closet, but then you'll need climatisation and so on.  Also,why do you think you need Xen?  Unless this is for a medium company, it doesn't make sense for home use.

Went myself to the same path, Xen, then KVM, then realized that an Ubuntu LTS with ZFS for daily use is more than enough, requires zero maintenance, and can still do virtualization.  Another separate disk, which normally stays unpowered, is for gaming only (dual boot by physically switching the main and the gaming disks, so they are never powered at the same time).

Virtualization is very cumbersome to setup, both in hardware and in software, video passthrough is almost impossible to set and maintain, and the whole mess is NOT hack-proof, anyway, if that is what you want to achieve.  Nothing is hack proof.

SiliconWizard:

--- Quote from: RoGeorge on February 15, 2020, 03:11:11 pm ---Do you have any idea how noisy a server is?  It's unbearable unless you dedicate a room for it, or a small closet, but then you'll need climatisation and so on.

--- End quote ---

Yes yes yes. They are noisy as hell and are electricity whores.

Unless you really need to serve a large number of connections/users 24/7, I'd go for good desktop systems instead. I realize that oldish servers can be had for relatively cheap, but you'd probably regret it.

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