HomeLab Part 2: Design Process – Medium Designs
In Part 1 of the Homelab series I went through the low power designs. In Part 2 I will concentrate on the medium designs, which means that these designs will consume more power but also have more CPU power and memory you can use in your homelab. My first medium design consists of a pre-build HP server, the ML310e Gen8.
Medium Design 1
| Component | Type | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Server | HP ProLiant ML310e G8 v2, Xeon E3-1220 v3, 4GB, 1TB HDD | 571 EUR |
| Mainboard | incl. | |
| CPU | incl. | |
| CPU Cooler | incl. | |
| Memory | Kingston ValueRAM KVR1333D3E9SK2/16G (2x 178 EUR) | 356 EUR |
| SSD | Samsung SSD 840 EVO 250GB, 2.5", SATA 6Gb/s | 111 EUR |
| HDD | 1TB incl. | |
| Power Supply | incl. | |
| Case | incl. | |
| Misc. | - | |
| Price per Server | 1038 EUR |
Advantage
- Haswell Xeon Processor
- 4 Core CPU
- 32GB memory
- Clock speed
- two Gbit NICs
- IPMI (iLO4)
- expandable (HDD)
- VT-x/VT-d
- two NC332i Gbit NICs (HCL supported)
- whole Server is on the HCL
Disadvantage
- Price
- Power consumption
- no Remote KVM, only with iLO4 Advanced pack (additional cost)
- no Hyper Threading
The second build is based on the Dell PowerEdge T110 II.
Medium Design 2
| Component | Type | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Server | Dell PowerEdge T110 II, Xeon E3-1230 v2, 3.3GHz, 4GB, 1TB HDD | 393 EUR |
| Mainboard | incl. | |
| CPU | incl. | |
| CPU Cooler | incl. | |
| Memory | Kingston ValueRAM KVR1333D3E9SK2/16G (2x 178 EUR) | 356 EUR |
| SSD | Samsung SSD 840 EVO 250GB, 2.5", SATA 6Gb/s | 111 EUR |
| HDD | 1TB incl. | |
| Power Supply | incl. | |
| Case | incl. | |
| Misc. | HP 360T Dual-port NIC (eBay incl. shipping) | 30 EUR |
| Price per Server | 890 EUR |
Advantage
- 4 Core CPU
- Hyper-Threading (8 threads)
- 32GB memory
- Clock speed
- IPMI (iDRAC6 Express)
- expandable (HDD)
- VT-x/VT-d
- whole Server is on the HCL
Disadvantage
- Price
- Power consumption
- no Remote KVM, only with iDRAC6 Enterprise (additional cost)
- Only 1 Broadcom BCM5722
For the last build I decided to use an IBM x3100 M4.
Medium Design 3
| Component | Type | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Server | IBM x3100 M4, Xeon E3-1220 v2, 3.1GHz, 4GB, 1TB HDD | 560 EUR |
| Mainboard | incl. | |
| CPU | incl. | |
| CPU Cooler | incl. | |
| Memory | Kingston ValueRAM KVR1333D3E9SK2/16G (2x 178 EUR) | 356 EUR |
| SSD | Samsung SSD 840 EVO 250GB, 2.5", SATA 6Gb/s | 111 EUR |
| HDD | 1TB incl. | |
| Power Supply | incl. | |
| Case | incl. | |
| Misc. | - | |
| Price per Server | 1027 EUR |
Advantage
- 4 Core CPU
- 32GB memory
- Clock speed
- IPMI (Integrated Managment Modul II, IMM 2)
- expandable (HDD)
- VT-x/VT-d
- two Intel 82574L Gbit NICs (HCL supported)
- whole Server is on the HCL
Disadvantage
- Price
- Power consumption
- no Hyper-Threading
- no Remote KVM, only with IMM2 Advanced upgrade (additional cost)
- one NIC port is shared with IMM2
All designs are quite similar. HP has the benefit that it’s using the Haswell Xeon and has 2 onboard NICs on the other hand Dell uses a Xeon with Hyper-Threading and a higher clock speed. The IBM Server is between both. I configured the Dell Server through the Dell homepage and got some discount. I don’t know how long this discount is available, so for the medium build I would go with the HP Server.
I haven’t done any whitebox servers in the medium design, because it would have create more decisions to chose from. But I also see the low power design 4 & low power design 5 in this topic because of the clock speed, memory, core number and price.