I thought I had mentioned this before on this site but regardless here it is again.
I noticed a lot of folks here are buying new consumer type equip for their servers. That's what I did for years until I discovered UnixSurplus and bought this:
This is retired commercial equip with lots of years left in it. This is two separate units, the top is a 1U server which has a S5000PSL Intel motherboard with dual Xeons. I got mine fitted with 16GB of ram. The unit below is a 16 bay drive unit that can handle SATA or SAS drives. Both these units are half depth and very light, not a all like the HP DL360's I have. I have had mine running for about 3 years now non-stop with no problems. I liked it so much that I purchased a 2nd set as a backup.
You can't beat the price.
I bought mine without a card because I was going with the HighPoint 2722 Non-RAID controller. I can confirm this card works like a charm with WHS 2011 or Win 10 and it passes the S.M.A.R.T. data. If you do get a server here without the card ensure you get the 1U riser card for it. It may or may not have it. Make sure you ask for it.
I no longer have to worry about how I'm going to squeeze one more drive in my PC case. BTW, these drive bays can be daisy chained.
Here is an old picture of my setup. I hadn't gotten my 2nd server/drive bay yet. It was a cheap build for me, the rack was about $70 and it does the job. I hope this post gives people an alternative to consumer class equipment.
TripleR got a reaction from Christopher (Drashna) in Equipment Source