Server hardware discussion. Any server Owner Must Read !

[Arrxzon]

Thanks for all the useful info
i am looking towards something like a xeon e3-1270v3 now with 32gb ram. Would go for the 1280v3
but for the sake of saving a bit of money the 1270 looks good,
this would be replacing a Intel Xeon E5-1620v2 and a E3 1245v2
what do yee think ?

 

[systemv]

Seems like a wash.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel+Xeon+E5-1620+v2+@+3.70GHz

 

[RSNET-Radic]

Thanks for all the useful info
i am looking towards something like a xeon e3-1270v3 now with 32gb ram. Would go for the 1280v3
but for the sake of saving a bit of money the 1270 looks good,
this would be replacing a Intel Xeon E5-1620v2 and a E3 1245v2
what do yee think ?

Go for the Intel Xeon E3 1271 V3 instead of the 1280 V3. It's the same exact clock speed/performance at a much lower price point. The 1271 was just released as part of the Haswell refresh this month.[DOUBLEPOST=1402421676][/DOUBLEPOST]

Seems like a wash.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=Intel Xeon E5-1620 v2 @ 3.70GHz

The haswell based CPUs offer faster per-core performance. The increased amount of cores don't really matter unless you're running multiple instances.

 

[Arxroth]

Hey I have an interesting question

This motherboard http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Z87K does it need a GPU if I am only going to run server on that or should those intergrated connectors suffice ?

I am new to area and I am currently running server on older computer with Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU 750 @ 2.67GHz and 16GB ram with no problems.

 

[RSNET-Radic]

It won't need a GPU. Most of the Intel desktop CPUs since the Sandy Bridge line have GPUs right on the CPU and will be more than enough to run a server.

 

[DZCreeper]

Hey I have an interesting question

This motherboard http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/Z87K does it need a GPU if I am only going to run server on that or should those intergrated connectors suffice ?

I am new to area and I am currently running server on older computer with Intel(R) Core(TM) i5 CPU 750 @ 2.67GHz and 16GB ram with no problems.

Provided the processor you select has integrated graphics, that board will work fine. I would advise getting a Z97 chipset board however, as it supports Haswell Refresh series Intel processors without a BIOS update, unlike Z87 boards.

 

[Jakeyboy10132]

wow my server specs are not very good yet my server can handle about 5-10 people. Bearing in mind its an old pc from 2006 with an intel celeron 420 at 1.6GHz and DDR2!!!!! RAM. It's the HDD's and the network. i have 2 HDD's one with the os and the other with the server files.I don't know transferate but on the windows 8 pro 32 bit windows benchmark thing both scored 6.3 which is quite good but the lowest score out of all the hardware was 3.8 which was onboard graphics! Network is unlimited virgin media fibre optic 120mb/s down 15.2mb/s up even though they said it was only about 10mb/s up.
This just shows you don't need high end equipment i have two of these computers and they are really cheap nowadays these were brought in the end of 2006.

 

[DZCreeper]

wow my server specs are not very good yet my server can handle about 5-10 people. Bearing in mind its an old pc from 2006 with an intel celeron 420 at 1.6GHz and DDR2!!!!! RAM. It's the HDD's and the network. i have 2 HDD's one with the os and the other with the server files.I don't know transferate but on the windows 8 pro 32 bit windows benchmark thing both scored 6.3 which is quite good but the lowest score out of all the hardware was 3.8 which was onboard graphics! Network is unlimited virgin media fibre optic 120mb/s down 15.2mb/s up even though they said it was only about 10mb/s up.
This just shows you don't need high end equipment i have two of these computers and they are really cheap nowadays these were brought in the end of 2006.

Okay, you can get rid of the exclamation points. Also, your claim is complete bullshit. That server doesn't have a snowballs chance in hell of running 5-10 people on a heavily modded pack like Monster or TPPI.

 

[Jakeyboy10132]

Okay, you can get rid of the exclamation points. Also, your claim is complete bullshit. That server doesn't have a snowballs chance in hell of running 5-10 people on a heavily modded pack like Monster or TPPI.

it aint the heavy modded pack. It wouldn't run that with one person on i am using FTB LITE 2 which is alright for a computer with this spec to run

 

[Starlight]

This stuff about the HDD is not true.. A HDD can be as fast as needed for Minecraft as a SSD would.. First of all.. When you start a Minecraft server, everything is read from the disk and is loaded into the RAM, the server does not use the HDD unless it loads the server or saves changes... And with a old HDD it will be a very fast action of saving stuff.. Use the Save-all command and see how fast it is.. It will tell you it is done even before a second of time has passed.. And even if this took like 3 seconds it would not matter.. However the server will load faster if you have a SSD and fast memory!

 

[ledzilla]

Maybe you'll all think I'm strange for this, but I have a small scavenged HP server running Tech World 2 24/7 on some interesting old specs that actually seems to work pretty smoothly:

3.60GHz Intel Pentium D
4GB DDR2 800
4 x 180GB SATA II HDD striped at the hardware level
MS Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit

I have HTTP, FTP, SMB, and Ventrilo all running off of this same machine at the same time, as well. Every once in a while it will get a little lag, but it clears up. I only have a small handful of close friends on it, but considering how smoothly it runs most of the time, you don't need anything too crazy unless you're hosting to a lot of players. I've found while running this machine that having the striped drives has made a marked improvement in read/write speed with HDDs. I'm trying to remember the RAID hardware this thing uses but it only supports JBOD and combinations of 1 and 0. At least the bays are hot-swap, but kind of useless without mirroring. I'm not overly concerned with bandwidth as I'm running a gigabit internal network on a cable connection that last tested at 60Mbs down and 12Mbs up.

I am looking at moving the MC server to another machine, though. I have a spare board with the LGA1366 socket and support dual channel DDR3 (at least I think it was only dual channel... might have been triple, can't remember untiI look at the board again). I'm still deciding on a CPU, and was originally thinking the best bang for my available buck was using an i7 930 (2.8GHz), but I was also thinking, since this would be running 24/7, that I ought to see if it will support a Xeon. Just not sure which Xeon, if any can be used with this board (I'll have to check it later). I do plan to stripe a pair of 2TB drives with it and run the OS off of a spare 80GB (that's what I have available, and no intention of buying more drives).

So... Basically, does anyone know much about these 1366 chips? Most of my experience has been with LGA775/AM2+ and older. I don't have the resources to go shopping for new stuff, so I'm trying to find pieces that will work with the spare parts already on hand.

Also, has anyone noticed a significant difference in running Java 1.6 vs 1.7? My server is currently running 1.7 update 67, and I was wondering if there's anything I can do with the Java install or batch command to improve system performance.

 

[DZCreeper]

Snip

1. Socket 1366 is triple channel memory.
2. You won't notice the different between a Xeon and the i7. There are only minor differences like support for dual or quad processor motherboards.
3. Use Java 7 or 8. There is no reason to use Java 6, its terribly out of date and slower.

That should answer your questions, on to my suggestions:

1. The 80GB drive is probably old and quite slow, I would suggest buying a small SSD or just putting the OS on the larger drives. Assuming the 2TB drives are modern, striping shouldn't be needed.
2. Selling the spare hard drives, the motherboard, and don't buy the processor if you haven't already. The motherboard alone is $150 minimum. More depending on which one.
3. Use the money to build a new system. For example:

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Pentium G3258 3.2GHz Dual-Core Processor ($69.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: ASRock Z97 Anniversary ATX LGA1150 Motherboard ($75.66 @ Newegg)
Memory: PNY Optima 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1333 Memory ($71.00 @ Amazon)
Storage: Samsung 840 Pro Series 128GB 2.5" Solid State Drive ($91.99 @ Amazon)
Case: Corsair 200R ATX Mid Tower Case ($39.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 430W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply ($19.99 @ Newegg)
Total: $368.62
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2014-11-04 18:24 EST-0500


That SSD will run circles around every hard drive you own combined. You could also make the build a little cheaper by picking a different motherboard but in some cases you would lose the overclocking ability.

 

[ledzilla]

I finally looked it up, and this is the board I have on hand...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188046

But yes, you did answer my questions. I really only have it in my budget to buy a CPU, memory, and a power supply, and I can do that for about $150 if I stick with the parts I have. But you did answer my questions to my satisfaction. I just wasn't sure about the CPU, really, and I might update Java to 8 on my current server in the meantime. I still need to check what CPUs this board supports (if it supports Xeon, I might go that route since they're more affordable than the i7 for some reason). If I'm feeling brave, I might do some swaps between machines, and put this board in my gaming rig (it's running a Core 2 Quad and SLi, so could be better for modern games but still does decently). I don't need anything all that powerful for MC since there will never be more than 5 people on the server. I just need something less restrictive than that old Pentium D server to handle it more smoothly than is current.

If I can get up the funding, I'd build a new full server with multiple CPUs (or maybe just one really good multi-core CPU), 16GB+ memory, and TBs of RAID 5 storage. It would probably be SATAIII for the storage, since SCSI drives are rather expensive. Considering the stuff I have going, I'd be virtualizing things (keep the FTP and HTTP servers separate for security), but probably keep MC on the host so it doesn't have to run through the layers.

I do know about using SSDs, though. My work laptop has a double-sided SSD (110GB/side) setup in RAID 0. Fast as hell, it is. Too bad it uses some weird interface that Sony concocted. Besides, I wasn't going to put MC on the 80GB, just the OS.

 

[DZCreeper]

I finally looked it up, and this is the board I have on hand...
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813188046

But yes, you did answer my questions. I really only have it in my budget to buy a CPU, memory, and a power supply, and I can do that for about $150 if I stick with the parts I have. But you did answer my questions to my satisfaction. I just wasn't sure about the CPU, really, and I might update Java to 8 on my current server in the meantime. I still need to check what CPUs this board supports (if it supports Xeon, I might go that route since they're more affordable than the i7 for some reason). If I'm feeling brave, I might do some swaps between machines, and put this board in my gaming rig (it's running a Core 2 Quad and SLi, so could be better for modern games but still does decently). I don't need anything all that powerful for MC since there will never be more than 5 people on the server. I just need something less restrictive than that old Pentium D server to handle it more smoothly than is current.

If I can get up the funding, I'd build a new full server with multiple CPUs (or maybe just one really good multi-core CPU), 16GB+ memory, and TBs of RAID 5 storage. It would probably be SATAIII for the storage, since SCSI drives are rather expensive. Considering the stuff I have going, I'd be virtualizing things (keep the FTP and HTTP servers separate for security), but probably keep MC on the host so it doesn't have to run through the layers.

I do know about using SSDs, though. My work laptop has a double-sided SSD (110GB/side) setup in RAID 0. Fast as hell, it is. Too bad it uses some weird interface that Sony concocted. Besides, I wasn't going to put MC on the 80GB, just the OS.

That board is worth $150 minimum FYI. Socket 1366 was very popular for enthusiasts and its hard to find motherboards for it these days, hence the price. The board will support all socket 1366 chips, including Xeon's.

 

[ledzilla]

Yes, I remember seeing something back around when I first acquired the board (got it for free, actually), and I think it originally sold for something like $200. I did do a look up on supported CPUs, and there are a lot of decent chips available, and for what I have available to spend, I'm looking at a Xeon X5570. I can get one for less than $50. The way I figure, even if this isn't the most powerful build around, it'll still be more powerful than any of my other machines at home (next closest are my gaming rig with the Core 2 Quad, which is a power hog and I don't want running all day, and another machine using a Phenom X4, 9850 maybe, but the board is fried -- both have 8GB of DDR2 800), and will still be better than building a budget machine (I hate building budget machines).

 

[DZCreeper]

Yes, I remember seeing something back around when I first acquired the board (got it for free, actually), and I think it originally sold for something like $200. I did do a look up on supported CPUs, and there are a lot of decent chips available, and for what I have available to spend, I'm looking at a Xeon X5570. I can get one for less than $50. The way I figure, even if this isn't the most powerful build around, it'll still be more powerful than any of my other machines at home (next closest are my gaming rig with the Core 2 Quad, which is a power hog and I don't want running all day, and another machine using a Phenom X4, 9850 maybe, but the board is fried -- both have 8GB of DDR2 800), and will still be better than building a budget machine (I hate building budget machines).

Just bear in mind that that the Xeon also uses a lot of power. Also, if you have 16GB of DDR2 just laying around, you could sell that as well. It has decent resale value right now because its not longer in production and a lot of legacy equipment needs it.

 

[ScottyEdmonds]

Has there been a lot of benchmark testing on performance out of a ESXi VM environment? I've migrated my DW20 server to my small vSphere machine that has a lousy i3-550(dual-core 3.2 w/HT) in it. However I'm able to crate the vCPU to be 4+ ghz w/ two threads, allowing me to utilize all the threads - impossible if it was running on the host.

I'm very new to vSphere so I'm not sure if the setup I have is the most optimized but I have experienced a noticeable increase in performance in ways of loading chunks, logging in and boot time.

I'm looking at picking up an older dual Xeon machine and to some further testing with other stuff, but what would be the best way to get a figure to benchmark performance on the server?

 

[RSNET-Radic]

Has there been a lot of benchmark testing on performance out of a ESXi VM environment? I've migrated my DW20 server to my small vSphere machine that has a lousy i3-550(dual-core 3.2 w/HT) in it. However I'm able to crate the vCPU to be 4+ ghz w/ two threads, allowing me to utilize all the threads - impossible if it was running on the host.

I'm very new to vSphere so I'm not sure if the setup I have is the most optimized but I have experienced a noticeable increase in performance in ways of loading chunks, logging in and boot time.

I'm looking at picking up an older dual Xeon machine and to some further testing with other stuff, but what would be the best way to get a figure to benchmark performance on the server?

It's physically impossible for a virtualized environment to outperform a physical environment due to the additional overhead, but you may just be seeing better drivers and better compatibility.

 

[DZCreeper]

I'm looking at picking up an older dual Xeon machine and to some further testing with other stuff, but what would be the best way to get a figure to benchmark performance on the server?

Personally I use the PassMark CPU single thread benchmark for approximating the performance of a processor for Minecraft. The i3-550 has a score of 1,301. Any Xeon chip that has a score above that will perform better. Your primary issue is going to be that dual Xeon chips from that era will consume a lot of power even compared to the 550 which wasn't an efficiency powerhouse to begin with. Depending on your budget and cost per kw/h it might be better to build a server centered around the Pentium G3258. It has a score of 2181 at stock speeds, uses 65 watts, and can easily be overclocking to 4.2Ghz minimum, with most people reporting 4.4 to 4.7. A Xeon chip that comes even with the 550 uses 95 watts and you would be running 2 of them.

 

[RSNET-Radic]

Personally I use the PassMark CPU single thread benchmark for approximating the performance of a processor for Minecraft. The i3-550 has a score of 1,301. Any Xeon chip that has a score above that will perform better. Your primary issue is going to be that dual Xeon chips from that era will consume a lot of power even compared to the 550 which wasn't an efficiency powerhouse to begin with. Depending on your budget and cost per kw/h it might be better to build a server centered around the Pentium G3258. It has a score of 2181 at stock speeds, uses 65 watts, and can easily be overclocking to 4.2Ghz minimum, with most people reporting 4.4 to 4.7. A Xeon chip that comes even with the 550 uses 95 watts and you would be running 2 of them.

100% agreed, stick to an Intel Xeon E3 series (v1, v2, or v3). You should be able to find the V1s for around the same price as those older Dual Xeons, but will be worlds better for Minecraft.