Looking for advice on a low-cost, low-power home Proxmox box

[Bruco]

Hello, all. After learning about Proxmox all of about a week ago, playing with it on a test machine here at work for a while (just a Dell Optiplex) I have to say that I am very impressed! It's very polished and easy to use!

I'd like to build a home Proxmox setup to learn more, and use as my primary server(s) at home. My main goals are to keep it cheap, and to keep power consumption low if possible. My testing could lead to production implementation on enterprise hardware at work, but for now this is strictly for home setup.

Right now my home 24/7 server is a whitebox running Debian, with two 1TB SATA drives in a software RAID 1. The Debian install functions as my file server, and I also have a virtual WinXP and one or two virtual FreeBSD installs running in VirtualBox at any given time, running various apps (Bittorrent client, apache, squid proxy, whatever Python garbage I'm currently trying to write, etc.) VirtualBox is nice for desktop use, but it's not ideal for server use.

I like running RAID 1 for uptime, as I do connect to this box from work sometimes for some testing and that sort of thing. (I also know RAID is not a backup solution; I rsync important files to a fireproof external USB drive nightly). I know that software RAID is a no-no with Proxmox, and in fact I don't believe the bare-metal installer allows for configuration of it at all. But being that this will be a home setup running at most three or four virtual machines, I have no need for high performance. So the options I'm considering are:

Building a quad-core machine with the lowest power consumption processor I can find (suggestions?). Add 4 - 8GB of RAM. Use my existing 1TB drives (they are WD Green drives). Buy the lowest-end recommended hardware RAID card - which I believe is the Adaptec 2405? Put my drives in a RAID 1. The downside of this is that even that low-end card will probably be $200.

Or:

Building a low-power quad-core machine with 4 - 8GB of RAM and some small local storage - maybe SSD? Build a low-power FreeNAS with my existing 1TB drives in a software RAID1 (or maybe even purchase an inexpensive NAS - suggestions?). Keep my virtual machines on the NAS, connect with NFS or iSCSI. Downside here is that the cost may end up being more even though I've eliminated the RAID card, and the power consumption of two devices will almost certainly be more than one. Also, I do know that CTs would have to be on the local storage.

So I'm looking for advice, specifically the following questions:

1. Is the Adaptec 2405 truly the cheapest RAID card I can get, knowing I have such low performance requirements? Or is there some $50 card out there that is supported and will work for my purposes? I really would like RAID 1 support of some kind.

2. Any suggestions on low-power consumption quad core processors, or other components like the motherboard? Has anyone here set out to build a low-power consumption Proxmox solution?

3. Of my two options I'm considering, is one preferable to the other for reasons I'm not considering?

And any other advice is welcome. I apologize if these questions could all be answered with searches on the forum here, I did do some looking before I posted this. Thanks!

 

[udo]

...
Also, I do know that CTs would have to be on the local storage.

Now CTs also can live on NFS-storage.

So I'm looking for advice, specifically the following questions:

1. Is the Adaptec 2405 truly the cheapest RAID card I can get, knowing I have such low performance requirements? Or is there some $50 card out there that is supported and will work for my purposes? I really would like RAID 1 support of some kind.

Hmm, I don't know if its an good idea to take such an device... i prefer in this case for homeuse the (unsupported) softwareraid.

2. Any suggestions on low-power consumption quad core processors, or other components like the motherboard? Has anyone here set out to build a low-power consumption Proxmox solution?

not really cheap but i think not bad: AMD Phenom II X4 910e - one benefit of amd-cpus: they support ecc-ram (If your mainbord/bios also support ecc (some asus-boards))

Udo

 

[e100]

I use some AMD Phenom II CPUs and ASUS boards in production for a couple years, rock solid stable with ECC!

A large number of ASUS boards support ECC, I believe ASUS is the only one doing this too.
It might not always be listed in the specs either, I found that Kingston's site is pretty accurate for ECC capability, just lookup the model there, once confirmed download the manual from asus and double confirm.

ECC is not much more than non-ECC and has saved me from numerous crashes.
Really nice to see an EDAC error instead of some unexplained random crash.

I also agree with Udo, Software RAID(unsupported by proxmox team) is good for those on a tight budget.
I use it in production (mirroring) on a few Proxmox servers that have smaller io needs.

 

[Bruco]

Thank you for the advice! I assume if I want to use the unsupported software RAID, I'll need to do a Debian install and then install Proxmox, since the bare metal installer doesn't offer it as an option, correct?

Also, I hadn't considered ECC RAM, thank you.

 

[dietmar]

Thank you for the advice! I assume if I want to use the unsupported software RAID, I'll need to do a Debian install and then install Proxmox, since the bare metal installer doesn't offer it as an option, correct?

Yes. See http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Install_Proxmox_VE_on_Debian_Squeeze

 

[Bruco]

Great!

Thanks again for everyone's advice.

 

[sgtfoo]

There are some 6-core and now 8-core AMD CPUs with 95w consumption. 95w is amazing for a 8-core CPU imho.
I would also suggest a mobo capable of 32GB of RAM just because it's future-proofing for growth.... you can also never have enough RAM

Keeping to a single host box is my plan as well, and it can easily be done with an SSD for OS, and a SATA card capable of JBOD, to allow for as many drives as your tower can hold, allowing for many drives, and optional soft/hard RAID.

I've yet to find out though, if such a system would run 6 or so VMs (half-half Windows/Linux VMs) safely and easily.

Anyone? ANyone? Bueller?

 

[e100]

Depends on the VMs, if they are really CPU hungry you might have some issues.
Most of our 6 core AMD cpu machines run between 4 and 8 KVM machines and they are usually a mix of win + linux.