Hello all, looking at learning ProxMox. I seen the learning ProxMox video on this page and I was just wondering if anyone else have use Supermicro to build a server? I looking to have 128GE Ram, and 1 card with the 10GE land ports. I just wondering for ProxMox is it better run intel base CPU or AMD ?
Thanks,
Welcome to the forum!
Proxmox is just Debian in the backend. I have ran it on countless Intel servers (Dell EMC, HPE and Intel server boards) and it was fine. I saw people run it on Ryzen 5000 series CPUs and Threadrippers 2000 and 3000 series. Also worked well. But like most things Linux, you have to pick your motherboard well.
All mobos should work, but some will have better IOMMU grouping if you care about that and some AM4 boards have unofficial support for ECC memory.
Now, let me ask you this, before you jump into buying a server. What do you intend to use the server for? How many people are you expecting to hit your server? How many services do you intend to run and what services? Is it going to be an all-in-one, like a virtualization box + NAS + / - other things?
If it’s going to be for home use and you don’t know what you plan on using it for yet (which is not a good idea in general), I’d say you try going smaller at first, like a NUC or an Asrock DeskMini x300.
Thank you so much for answering my questions! It will be a Virtualization box and Nas to start out for now. For now I am the only nerd in the house that will be doing stuff on the server. Other than my wife and kids sending to the nas from time to time. It will also be for home use and I don’t mind going big to start I have around 3.2k to spend.
If it’s for home, there really isn’t any reason to “go big” and spend a lot. Even for homelabbing, people way over-spec from what I’ve seen. Even a modest CPU (a Ryzen 5600X will still be luxurious) will be way more than fine. A regular case with 3x 5.25" bays and you can put IcyDock bays into those to hold 3.5" drives in nice drive trays. Level1Techs has a video on the different IcyDock options:
You almost certainly don’t need 128MB of RAM, especially for running Linux VMs and/or containers for services.
10GB ethernet is almost certainly not needed either; it just runs up your costs (remember you’ll need a 10GB switch too) and power usage.
I think saving money for later needs would serve you better, too.
And, if building NAS functionality, don’t forget you should really also plan a 3-2-1 backup strategy.
Don’t underestimate the power usage of a server. If it’s going to be idle most of the time, it’s literally burning money.
Start small. Get 32 to 64 GB of RAM, ECC or not, and a Ryzen 5000 series CPU and a desktop case with 5 or 6x 3.5" bays. My favorite is the Antec P101 Silent, it has crazy expansion.
Get a SAS PCI-E card (not a RAID controller, but a HBA, i.e. Host Bus Adapter) and a few HDDs. If you have the m.2 expansion, do 1 m.2 for your OS and maybe another 2 m.2s in RAID1 for the virtualization disks. If you need, add a GPU to your system for a Windows VM, maybe another one for GPU encoding workloads (like, idk, plex or jellyfin or something) and call it a day.
My homelab will literally run on ARM SBCs. I already have an Odroid N2+ for LXC, an Odroid HC4 as a NAS and a RockPro64 as a router. I haven’t had the time to set them up, but I’m hoping I will soon.
Seriously, most people can get away with just a single Odroid HC4 or an Intel NUC if you want something beefier. Even ECC is overrated TBH. It does have its uses, but it’s not that big of a silver bullet as people expect it to be.
On my ARM SBC homelab, I burnt like $800 on the devices + about $500 on 2x 10TB HDDs alone. With 4 or 6 HDDs, you will jump to almost half your budget if you need that space, not to mention 2x 1TB or 2TB m.2 SSDs for the virtualization side. I can pick some stuff on pcpartpicker for you, but with the current information I have, I can’t really give a good approximation on what performance level you need.