HP, Dell - 1-2U half depth servers?

Hi,

As I am setting up rack for my ccna lab, I figured why not look into getting a used 1-2U server that can support 8+ gigs of ram and connect it to my switch/lab and RDP to it for VM usage.

The problem is most of these are full depth, and I have no idea what Model Numbers to look for on CL/Ebay for half-depth stuff that will support virtualization and 64bit of course.

Any specific suggestions on models that fit the bill here? I am looking to spend $300 tops, as otherwise I might as well just upgrade my mini-tower to quad-core with 16gigs of ram and use that instead. I just figured why not look at this option right?

thanks!

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JeanM

So far I've found Dell R210s are an option, but way over the budget. So I may just look at building something out of rack mount cases from newegg.com instead - Newegg.com - NORCO RPC-230 2U Rackmount Server Case 1 External 5.25" Drive Bays - Server Chassis for example.

SUBnet192

JeanM wrote: »

So far I've found Dell R210s are an option, but way over the budget. So I may just look at building something out of rack mount cases from newegg.com instead - Newegg.com - NORCO RPC-230 2U Rackmount Server Case 1 External 5.25" Drive Bays - Server Chassis for example.

Late answer but that's what I did.. I have 2 of those cases for my 2 ESX hosts and 2 QNAP boxes for storage

jibbajabba

Supermicro 5015/5016 series are half depth. The latter supports Nehalam and 32GB of RAM I believe

JeanM

SUBnet192 - Very nice! There is one bad review on either 230 or 231 on amazon.com about the rack mounts not fitting the rack etc but I don't know if the guy used some non-standard size rack. What's your experience with these, did you go with 230 or 231?

I found out they even have mini-atx boards for sandy bridge xeon cpu's as well, most likely that's the route I'll go next week

I'll start with 16gb for starters, should be okay I think. I just need to also confirm if the intel dual 1000 nic's will work with these mini-atx boards as I want to add two.

SUBnet192

JeanM wrote: »

SUBnet192 - Very nice! There is one bad review on either 230 or 231 on amazon.com about the rack mounts not fitting the rack etc but I don't know if the guy used some non-standard size rack. What's your experience with these, did you go with 230 or 231?

I found out they even have mini-atx boards for sandy bridge xeon cpu's as well, most likely that's the route I'll go next week I'll start with 16gb for starters, should be okay I think. I just need to also confirm if the intel dual 1000 nic's will work with these mini-atx boards as I want to add two.

I use a standard telecom h frame with tapped holes (instead of cage nuts). Only thing I don't like about that setup is when (rarely) I need to open up the server, I have to unrack it completely. I miss having rails

I bought a Skeletek 2 post rack for my Cisco lab, and I'll be keeping that one when I'm done instead of the telecom h frame. The vendor for the Skeletek racks (dantrak I think) has some kind of support rails (L shaped) so I can slide the servers in and out easier.

I went with 2 AMD boards 6 cores and 16GB ram per server. This allows me to run anything I want, from the most simple to more complex setups (a 4 server Exchange 2010 setup, with 2 DCs, vCenter server and a web server for example), with room for more

I went with the QNAPs for their iSCSI support, redundancy, ease of setup and great features. I can use the iSCSI LUNs to cluster Windows servers, for shared VMFS storage between my ESXi hosts, etc. Versatile lab.

A gigabit switch is required (HP 24 ports managed switches are fairly cheap) of course, and I aggregate the 2 ports on the QNAP for higher throughput.

I used that lab for my VCP recertification over the years (since 2.5) and for proof of concepts for clients, for Microsoft training, Vmware View experimentation, etc...

I tend to think ahead a lot and make sure I can make the most of my gear.

JeanM

jibbajabba wrote: »

Supermicro 5015/5016 series are half depth. The latter supports Nehalam and 32GB of RAM I believe

Not bad, the 5015 looks like only supprot 8gb from what I can see on ebay but the 5016 support more like you said but cost on 5016 is high enough that I can build 2x quad-core servers in the norco boxes

JeanM

SUBnet192 wrote: »

I went with 2 AMD boards 6 cores and 16GB ram per server. This allows me to run anything I want, from the most simple to more complex setups (a 4 server Exchange 2010 setup, with 2 DCs, vCenter server and a web server for example), with room for more

I went with the QNAPs for their iSCSI support, redundancy, ease of setup and great features. I can use the iSCSI LUNs to cluster Windows servers, for shared VMFS storage between my ESXi hosts, etc. Versatile lab.

A gigabit switch is required (HP 24 ports managed switches are fairly cheap) of course, and I aggregate the 2 ports on the QNAP for higher throughput.

I used that lab for my VCP recertification over the years (since 2.5) and for proof of concepts for clients, for Microsoft training, Vmware View experimentation, etc...

I tend to think ahead a lot and make sure I can make the most of my gear.

Nice! Yep, I figure with even quad core xeon and 16-32gigs I should be able to lab most of the things I want hands on..I don't have room for 2 of these so no QNAP or anything like that for now, will just have to rely on a couple local internal sata drives for now. Maybe if I later upgrade to a bigger rack I'll add another box.

SUBnet192

JeanM wrote: »

Not bad, the 5015 looks like only supprot 8gb from what I can see on ebay but the 5016 support more like you said but cost on 5016 is high enough that I can build 2x quad-core servers in the norco boxes

Going with custom built boxes is the cheapest way to do it. A coworker just bought 2 of the smallest DELL boxes on the vmware HCL and paid 1500$ a piece for them, plus extra NICs, IOmega storage and disks (like my QNAPs), Cisco SMB gibabit switch. Overall cost of his lab: over 5000$

Mine: 1000$ for the 2 servers, 1000$ for the QNAP and disks... Here's an old photo... (CCNA lab)

jibbajabba

JeanM wrote: »

Not bad, the 5015 looks like only supprot 8gb from what I can see on ebay but the 5016 support more like you said but cost on 5016 is high enough that I can build 2x quad-core servers in the norco boxes

Yea guessed as much that the 5016 are too expensive - do come with onboard SAS and embedded IPMI though ... nice little boxes .. as for 8GB of RAM - that is indeed a little bit low but as a lab normally just fine ... 8GB here run a CentOS, Windows 2008 and Windows 8 Server VM "just" fine .... it depends what you want to do in your lab obviously ..

JeanM

Yeah, I looked into the R210s too and they aren't cheap even used on ebay. I figured it's time to upgrade my pc anyway, so might as well build a rack mount and stick it into my ccna lab. Funny, your config is the first I've seen with those cases but didn't know what they were

Can't beat them for the price, thats for sure it seems!

Older picture of my humble rack, I got rid of the 3x 2950-12 port switches and added one more 2950-24 port so I basically have room for just one 2U box in there for now.