Ask HN: What's your favorite small server?

2 points by IbJacked 11 years ago | 6 comments

I'm replacing an old system that resembles Frankenstein's monster, one that I have been using as a FreeNAS server off and on for a few years.

I want to modernize the system, and so far my top pick is a Lenovo ThinkServer TS140 70A4001LUX which nets me a system using ECC memory and 4 drive bays (OS would boot off an internal usb connector). The drive bays are not hot-swappable, and a bit awkward, but I can live with that. All for only about $350.

I'm looking for a home FreeNAS box, something with ECC memory, minimum of 4 drive bays (more and hot swappable would be nice-to-haves), quiet operation, enough power to transcode video on demand when using Plex media server.

What are your favorites?

Aheinemann 11 years ago |

HP N54L.

4x 3.5" internal drive-bays with trays (no hot-swap), 1 External 5.25" bay, 1 internal 3.5" bay, 2 PCI-E, 8 GByte ECC, takes 4 TB drives, 6 external USB2, 1 external E-Sata, 1 GB/s NIC. There is an HP-ILO Card for out-of-band servive - access to bios, power down. 1 internal usb (could boot OS from USB...)

excellent VPN / and storage server (VPN ~ 340 MBit/s AES 256 throughput) (put VPN Server in virtual machine)

mini-server ist suff. powerful to run data server at high speed. 5x4 TB raw ~ 16 TByte Raid 5 storage size, 1 additional external hot spare possible.

IbJacked 11 years ago | |

There seems to be a lot of love for these things. It's hard to give up the 4-core xeon and the lower price of the TS140, definitely food for thought. Thanks!

Edit: Based on the reviews, it looks like it has previously been on sale for as little as $229 after rebates, which would make it a much easier choice than the current $399.

svennek 11 years ago |

In short... Proliant Micro Servers (the black "g7" not the silvery g8's)...

Cheap, 4 bays, ECC mem and an (optional) mangement card... but I don't know if it is fast enough for you (probably not....)

IbJacked 11 years ago | |

Thanks! I've seen a few comments that also mention the Proliants, people seem pretty satisfied with them. And it might not be too slow, my current Plex server is my 2010 MacBook Pro.

ahazred8ta 11 years ago |

For reference: the google results -- http://google.com/search?q=%22small+server%22+%22hot-swappab...

IbJacked 11 years ago | |

Thanks, but I was hoping to get a feel for what HN crowd might be using, to see if there are some systems that keep coming up.