My current system is running on an old 2U HP rackmount server with dual 16-core AMD Opteron-6262HE CPU's and two RAID-5 arrays (fast SSD array and slow 2.5" HDD array). There are generally 5-6 VMs running under a Linux master at a given time but none of them are using a whole lot of CPU cycles.
In general, it's noisy but fairly effective for my needs.
I'm looking at the future and what might be good replacement that offers a blend of power-efficiency, flexibility, and storage cost.
In particular, I'd like to:
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Ditch the 2.5" HDD array in favor of an efficient separate storage system, preferably an attached NAS with 3.5" disks on RAID5 but probably actually networked and not USB based (both for reliability and also so I can potentially provide storage directly to stuff running on separate SBC's etc). A storage system I could drop in now and still use after I upgrade the compute system would be great
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I'd like to keep the SATA-SSD array for stuff that needs faster disk, or possibly move up to a RAID'ed M2/NVMe.
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Move up to a more modern CPU that has a good Power-per-watt balance. 8-16 cores totally is probably good if that can be reasonably power efficient for idle cores etc, but dropping some VM's to run stuff on the aforementioned SBC's is also an option
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Still be rack-mounted for the main system, but not so freaking loud, and actually fit in a standard 24" deep rack
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Potentially be able to add a decent GPU or add-on board for processing AI models etc
Generally what it will be running is a bunch of VM's for stuff like NextCloud, remote-admin software, Media servers (Plex/Jellyfin), a Fileserver, some virtual desktops and various other fairly low-power VMs, BUT it'd be nice if I could add the dGPU or something with the horsepower for AI processing and periodic rendering/ripping/etc
I'm sorry debating on whether might make more sense to move all storage to BAD, then just replace the always-running stuff (NextCloud, Plex,Fileserver) with SBC's so that they're fairly easily swappable if something fails.
Any modern CPU will improve energy efficiency. AMD AM4 platform and Intel N100 are very cheap. AMD SP3 platform is also very cheap and has a ton of PCIe lanes and memory expandability for gpus, NVMe, and running lots of VMs.
For storage cost, used hdds are currently $8/TB, generic NVMe is currently $45, and used enterprise SSDs are $50/TB, decide which you want to invest in depending on your needs. Used enterprise drives will be the fastest and most durable for databases and RAID.
https://diskprices.com/
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=pm983+m.2&_trksid=p4432023.m4084.l1313
SSD prices are expected to decrease faster than HDD prices, and will probably overtake HDDs for value in ~5 years.
About dGPUs, Intel A310 is the best transcoding Gpu out there. Used Nvidia datacenter gpus probably have the best vram/$ and pytorch compatibility for AI