Hi! I've never had a server, except for a raspberry that I use as a DNS (pi-hole), but I've been wanting it for a long time. The other day I found something that is kinda old, but very cheap, and I've been thinking about buying it since then.
It's an IBM System x3500 M4. It has an E5-2620, 32 GB of DDR3, and 7 wonderful 900 GB SAS hard drives (don't know if actual hard disk or solid state), which would fulfill all of my linux ISOs needs for at least the next year (probably a bit more), and a RAID controller ServeRAID M5110. All for 210 euros, which I think is very cheap.
From what I know, the E5 is power hungry for modern standards, and the SAS drives are not exactly friendly for replacement parts. How much would that (mostly the SAS part) be a problem?
Also, what can I expect concerning RAID? That is definitely the most concerning thing for me, as I've never worked with it.
Another huge part is, I do not care about accessing it from the outside, but I'd be sharing this system with my brother, in another city, so we would have to figure out a way of doing it. Normally I'd use port forwarding, but we're both behind CG-NAT. Is there any way of not using a third party server as a proxy/VPN/whatever? If not, what service would you recommend for this purpose?
Another thing, my brother just happens to have a probably working, 16 GB ECC DDR3 stick laying around, except that it's 1600MHz, and the CPU only supports up to 1333MHz. I'm pretty sure that if I'd put two sticks with different frequencies, the CPU would use the lower one, but is that the case even if the CPU does not support the frequency of one of the stick? (in short, would putting the other stick work?)
If you have any other pointers or anything, let me know. Thank you :)
Used/refurb SAS drives aren't that expensive. Can someone with better memory than I please link to that site for second hand server components?
The reason why SAS drives are usually more expensive isn't because the tech itself is more expensive (It's largelt just a different kind of interface), but rather that "enterprise grade" hardware have a few additional Q&A steps, such as running a break-in cycle at the factory to weed out defective units.
While a server such as the one you described is slightly power hungry, it's not that bad. Plus, if you wanna get into servers long term, it could serve as a useful way to get used to the hardware involved.
Server hardware is at its core not that different from consumer hardware, but it does often come with some nice and useful additions, such as:
RAID is entirely optional. I seem to be the only one in here who actually like hardware RAID, as software RAID is more popular in the self hosting community. Using it is entirely optional and depends on your use case, though. If you wanna live without, use JBOD mode, and access each drive normally. Alternatively, pool as many disks as you want into RAID6 and you have one large storage device with built-in redundancy. RAIDs can either be managed from the BIOS, or from the OS using tools such as storcli.
I got 3 Seagate Exos X16 14 TB drives for only $140 each (refurbished) at the end of 2022. I've got them in TrueNAS as a zfs array and they work great.
Mine were the SATA version, which isn't currently in stock. The SAS version of my drives go for $299 now. The SATA X14 version is $350.
So prices for the same refurbished drives are more than double what they were like 3.5 years ago, so they really are expensive! I paid like $10 per TB, but they're all $15-25 per TB now! I was looking for drives for a friend who wants to get started self hosting, and I was shocked by how much refurb drives had gone up.
This is all from https://serverpartdeals.com/ by the way, I'm assuming that's the site you mean too.