Server build

J

jak123abc

New Member
So I've been wanting to make a dedicated server for the longest time. I've been using an old touchscreen computer and it's been fine, but I got the money to start building an actual server that will be running ESXI as the OS. Probably maximum of 8 virtual machines I'd be running. Domain controller, proxy, dns, file server, possibly some game servers such as minecraft. Nothing too cpu heavy. I did select a rack instead of a tower because eventually I'm gonna be getting a server cabinet to house all of my networking devices

http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=26737345

That is the part list I did create. I'm looking for any constructive criticism on it. If there's a reason I should go with something else, why?

Thanks so much for taking the time to look at it. I look forward to ALL the feedback!

Edit: I also noticed that the motherboard is now out of stock so if there are any other motherboard that would perform well let me know!
 
Have you thought about using 2+ SSDs in RAID1/5/10 as the primary, with the mechanical drives as storage?
 
Thanks for the response, Geoff.

I did think about SSDs, but kind of didn't know how I would set it up. Like I would load ESXI on it and put like the Domain controller and maybe another server that doesnt require much space on the SSDs? Then the file server(s) would take the regular hard drives space?
 
jak123abc said:
Thanks for the response, Geoff.

I did think about SSDs, but kind of didn't know how I would set it up. Like I would load ESXI on it and put like the Domain controller and maybe another server that doesnt require much space on the SSDs? Then the file server(s) would take the regular hard drives space?
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I don't have a ton of experience with VMs, but I would think you'd load all the VMs on the SSDs, but any data storage would be set to use the second RAID array, just like if it was a standalone server.
 
Depending on how many VM's you'd be running and what they'll be doing, it would be best to get some fairly large capacity SSD's (Maybe 3 or 4 128GB-256GB drives) and run them in RAID5. Create a small partition for the install of ESX and then allocate the rest of the space as plain storage space. When you create the VM, use the SSD space to create the main OS drive of the VM and add or map the secondary drive to the HDD's.
 
Depending on the VMs requirement you could store them in either. My ESXi box has an SSD and HDD but things like a domain controller which are idle 99.99% of the time perform fine on shared HDD storage. You'd just want to balance IO intensive servers on the SSD and watch how many active ones you have on a single drive or array for mechanical storage.

The build doesn't seem too bad and should allow you to run what you had in mind though.
 
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