Request for Hardware Recommendations

[thomas-hn]

Hello,

currently I am struggling with the planning of my Proxmox system.
My plan is to run the following services on Proxmox VE:

• Virtual Machines
  • Ubuntu with Docker (maybe some LXCs instead)
    • Portainer
    • UniFi Controller
    • GitLab
    • Webserver (private use)
    • Possibly a NVR in the future (maybe Zoneminder, Shinobi,...; could benefit from a GPU)
    • Syncthing
    • Nextcloud
    • CUPS
  • Plex (shall use the GPU for transcoding)
  • 2x Win10 (usually only a low load)
  • Proxmox Mail Gateway (maybe)
  • FreePBX
  • Linux VM (only as playground)
  • TrueNAS SCALE

The system shall contain the following components:

• Mainboard with IPMI (Supermicro preferred)
• CPU (Intel Xeon preferred)
  • My current system uses an Intel Core i5-4690S and runs Windows 10 + Hyper-V with the following instances (just for comparison regarding the CPU power):
    
    • 1x Win 10 VM (low load)
    • Linux VM with Docker
      
      • Portainer
      • UniFi Controller
    • GitLab VM
    • Webserver VM
    • FreePBX VM
    • Plex (natively on the host)
• 128 GB RAM (ECC) (because of ZFS usage and multiple VMs)
• NIC 10 GBit/s SFP+ (downwards compatible to 1 GBit/s)
• GPU (used for Plex (and maybe NVR) transcoding; a separate GPU or a CPU internal iGPU
  • Does someone have details about possible problems with Supermicro boards and their IPMI/BMC in combination with GPUs that shall be passed through to a VM?
  • Are there any GPU cards available which do only have the GPU chip without any monitor connectors on the card? (I only need the GPU for transcoding, but not for video output...maybe, this could save some energy)
• HBA (>=8 SAS)
• 2x SSD (Mirrored; for the Proxmox system + TrueNAS SCALE VM)
• 6x HDD
• I want to use an existing "Hauppauge WinTV Quad HD" PCIe TV card (for Plex)
• A chassis with Hotswap for >= 8 harddrives. However, I have not decided yet, if I will go with a rack mount chassis or a desktop chassis.

My current server system consumes on idle / low load around 130 watts (all drives spinning). So I would highly prefer to stay <= 130W with the new system as it will run 24/7.

What CPU and mainboard do you recommend (for the VMs a CPU with a lot of cores makes much sense, but TrueNAS benefits from higher core clocks)?

Thanks a lot in advance for your hints/comments/recommendations,

Thomas

 

[Dunuin]

• Are there any GPU cards available which do only have the GPU chip without any monitor connectors on the card? (I only need the GPU for transcoding, but not for video output...maybe, this could save some energy)

I've seen a video on Youtube where they got some of such GPUs and wanted to use them for video encoding but these GPUs without the display outputs also got NVENC disabled so they were really totally useless except for mining and maybe CUDA. So better check that first.

• for the VMs a CPU with a lot of cores makes much sense, but TrueNAS benefits from higher core clocks?

Jep. The higher the clock the snappier the guests will feel. The more cores you got the more VMs (or the more vCores per VM so the more applications per VM) you can run in parallel without the server getting less snappy. So in an ideal world you want alot of high clocked cores.

 

[thomas-hn]

Could someone here recommend a Supermicro board and a CPU to fit my needs?

 

[mokaz]

Hi Thomas,

It really depends your physical location I would say. Those SuperMicro systems are pretty noisy beasts to say the least.
On a personal level I've stepped down to "consumer" grade fanless i7 Nodes with nVME/SSDs and 64GB RAM per SILENT nodes.

And I'm not going back there =)

Cheers,
m.

 

[Dunuin]

You can get Supermicro tower servers with quite silent 120+92+80mm case/cpu/psu fans, so the server is more quiet than my gaming PC.

And many of the Supermicro mainboards will use normal ATX/E-ATX or MicroATX formfactors without any propietary connectors so you can buy a normal silent consumer ATX PSU and case.