Home server hardware for Ubuntu 14.04?

[Henry Gessau]

Joshua Judson Rosen <rozzin at geekspace.com> wrote:
> Henry Gessau <henry.gessau at acm.org> writes:
>>
>> I want to set up a server at home for a bunch of projects and experiments.
>>
>> I need to use Ubuntu 14.04 server for the OS, and an Intel (not AMD) CPU.
>>
>> Canonical's certified list[1] is not very helpful. I assume 14.04 will install
>> just fine on many systems, but I would prefer to have confirmation from
>> someone/somewhere before buying something.
>>
>> Requirements:
>> - Reasonably quiet. It's going to reside near me in my home office.
>> - Intel VT-x support.
>> - Four cores. More would be nice.
>> - Must support at least 32GB RAM.
>> - Preferably under $800 for chassis + PS + CPU.
>>
>> I assume it would need to be some Core i3/i5 variant. I don't need raw speed,
>> so i7 is probably overkill, and I would prefer to keep the power low. I admit
>> I don't understand the Xeon family at all.
>>
>> I was thinking something along the lines of an HP ProLiant MicroServer, or a
>> Lenovo ThinkServer TS140? But I would be happy to assemble from parts.
> 
> If you need more than 32 GB RAM, it doesn't look like you want
> either of those machines: the Levno TS140 appears to max out at 32 GB RAM,
> and the HP Proliant MicroServers appear to max out at 16 GB.
> 
> Have you looked at ZaReason <http://www.zareason.com/>,
> or maybe System76 <http://www.system76.com/>?
> 
> I have experience with one of these:
> 
>     http://zareason.com/shop/Breeze-Server-5880s.html
> 
> It's very quiet and seems to meet _almost_ all of your requirements...
> except for the ">= 32 GB RAM" req, which actually seems to be a little
> exotic for this class of machines.

Yeah, after much browsing I have come to the conclusion that most small home
servers seem to max out at 16GB. The price class seems to be the factor.

I have upgraded both my work laptop and my home desktop to 32GB, and I ain't
going back. :) I work and play with OpenStack, where I spin up a bunch of VMs
and then deploy them as a "cloud", which means further VMs get spun up inside
those VMs. It's turtles all the way down and it eats RAM for lunch.

> 
> (I've also had positive experience with a number of other
> models from ZaReason, though not anything that meets your
> requirements)
>