Building a 1U Server (Bad A$$ 1U Server)

[@bshagopian]

Even though this is four years old, it's great for me because I have a gaming machine with almost the exact same specs that I was looking to turn into a server blade. Really enjoyed watching this.

[@TheGeekPub]

The audio anomalies are due to the AGC circuit on my camera failing. I shot the whole video before I knew this was happening. Panasonic has already replaced the camera and future videos will not suffer the same fate.

[@toysareforboys1]

Why not use speech leveling in Adobe Audition?

[@TheGeekPub]

I don't own it for one.

[@swskitso]

the video I just watched from someone else was doing the same thing. I was starting to think it was on my side

[@sanveergill9770]

TheGeekPub just wonder why you have your own server and what the benefits are?

[@gorillaau]

sanveer gill Speaking for myself, I have a server with esxi installed which allows me to install multiple operating systems. Try finding 32 motherboard and associated RAM in a home, if I was to use dedicated hardware.

[@TheMincraftpemaster]

Toss in a GTX 1080 and you have an LTT video...

[@TheGeekPub]

Finally a decent joke on this thread!

[@TheMincraftpemaster]

TheGeekPub I'm proud of myself

[@MrAnschmidt]

Is that possible? If so, i'd love to do that.

[@harshvardhanrathi5499]

@@MrAnschmidt ofcourse no its sarcasm

[@Vaati]

don't forget to drop it a few times.....

[@dangoldbach6570]

I built a gaming PC with that very chip, Mobo and SSD, I have a GTX 1080 in mine, and it still rips 4 years later! Never thought of using gaming parts in a personal server before, I'd like to see a vid on how you set up the lead/backup server and the storage topology, might have to do this build when I eventually do upgrade

[@JohnFekoloid]

Quite interesting. And you're confident. Helping me over come my fear of servers. I thought servers were that Giant dark thing that Sam Flynn connected his Nokia N8 to in the Tron movie. Didn't know it was just a flat case with standard PC components

[@sbrengard]

Love to see an updated build ...

[@ChrisTopher-wl6pd]

I let out a loud "WOOOOOOOO!" When you bent that PCI ribbon cable lol!

[@johndododoe1411]

I wonder if they still sell rigid PCIe riser cards so bending is not needed (but matching exact height might be tricky).

[@FabioAlves7]

pretty cool. A nice follow up video showing how and why you have all those virtual machines and what benefits you get from them would be nice :)

[@TheGeekPub]

Actually on my list, but thanks for the suggestion!!!!

[@mingjiani7094]

TheGeekPub I think it would be great if you could talk about the os and software you are using. Nice video!

[@PoeLemic]

I agree with both these guys. Why do you need all those Virtual Servers? What do you do with them? Maybe, walk us through the different VMs and tell us what software you use on them. I'm trying to justify to myself some of this technology, but I've got to see what is possible to do with it. I've already got a FileServer and PlexServer and PrintServer. What else do you need?

[@stevebez2767]

just get some idea hih?

[@simonpetertherock]

Such a clean video even for beginners. Plus i never tough about mounting my Proliant dl360p vertically until i saw NAS rack station ! im definitely subscribing to your channel.

[@TheGeekPub]

Thanks for the kind words!

[@stevebez2767]

bad use of computer text comment for any beg a ride,get famous troll spam ed?

[@thomaslindell5448]

I'm seasick. the swaying made me feel like I was on deadliest catch

[@TheGeekPub]

What are you talking about?

[@ttss5726]

I'm pretty sure he is referring to when you are in the frame and constantly stepping back and to the right and then forward to the left

[@thatjokerperson7062]

@@ttss5726 i think he means this was actually filmed on a ship Ok time to put the shovel up

[@sirjoot]

Why, out of interest, are you using consumer grade hardware over server grade in a "server" build? You can build an equally powerful server, for less, using server hardware such as the Xeon E3-1245V5 for almost $100 less or even the E3-1270V5 for the same price and you'll gain a couple extra neat bits that Intel unlock in their Xeon series, such as ECC memory.

[@TheGeekPub]

Except I don't need any of that, since this box primarily runs Plex I get a huge advantage of the Core i7 for video encoding/decoding that is missing on the Xeon.

[@sirjoot]

All you're gaining from the i7 6700k vs the 1245v5 is extra availability for video memory and overclocking potential. The Xeon's P530 actually even has a slightly higher graphics clock speed.

[@TheGeekPub]

I'm planning a follow up article on my site. Maybe a video, but my performance testing with this unit overclocked to 5Ghz is showing otherwise. I'm pretty sure I have an E3-1270V5 in one of my boxes, so I should be able to get an apples to apples test if you will. Should be interesting. I'm happy to see any performance data you have to compare though.

[@jibreeeeel94]

TheGeekPub Intel i7 works better for encoding videos on Plex? What about Ryzen? I'm trying to build a Plex server but I am overwhelmed with the amount of options out there! Any recommendations?

[@demitriusdemarcus123]

A couple things... one fuck plex emby all the way. two you could of saved boatloads by getting a used 1u server off ebay... and those would of had dual cpus...

[@jackjohnson5426]

Absolutely incredible! I love what you do!!!! And don't worry about the audio, I didn't even notice till someone else pointed it out! Keep up the great work!

[@thegeekoftheworld]

@TheGeekPub replace that power supply at work we used them and all of them failed or died.... 2of them causes Motherboard failure

[@TheGeekPub]

Funny you mention that, it died just yesterday and I replaced it with a different brand unit.

[@mark22732]

What was the replacement unit you used? Looking for new suggestions before I go out buying anything

[@thegeekoftheworld]

At work we replaced them all with pico power supplies that run off 12volt. you can find them on amazon

[@cezmoe3877]

Great build. I plan to build a ESXI server for home development testing and your video gave me a lot of great ideas. Only thing I would have liked to hear is the noise level of the fans at 100% and idle. Thanks for posting.

[@TheGeekPub]

Thanks! At 100% this machine is very noisy. Mostly do to the CPU blower; its loud! Anywhere below 50% is almost silent though. I run these in an A/V closet so I never hear them. When Plex is running and 5-6 TVs transcoding its not something you want on your desk. :-)

[@wpyoga]

The nickel washers are a bad idea, because they may dislodge before you screw them down, and without you knowing it, they may short the motherboard. Use plastic washers, preferably glued or taped on.

[@TheGeekPub]

That's I glued them down with super 77. They aren't going anywhere. Secondly, those are ground points and if you don't use metal you lose the benefit of grounding.

[@wpyoga]

Ah, I thought the spray was gluing the two washers together, not the washers to the standoff. The grounding part is still functional even if we use non conductive washers, because the metal screws connect the ground from the motherboard to the standoffs.

[@stevebez2767]

haha,Trolls aint even equipped these pig ya?

[@NoorquackerInd]

Wait, won't the board still be grounded through the power connector anyways? And also, the washers probably wouldn't dislodge when someone sticks a screw in them, so metal or plastic washers sound like they make no difference...

[@Darknamja]

Big props to you sir. You are an IT wizard. I am not familiar with the software you used but my joy comes from your hardware implementation. New subscriber here. Thanks for posting. :D

[@keiko909]

PCi-e riser card. thats exactly what i'm looking for. you sir, are a lifesaver.

[@BB-he9qo]

It may be a bit simple to you, but I would have loved to see the software side setup, for setting all that up. I'm kinda wrapping my head around putting plex in a virtual machine (encoding performence inside vm?), as well as the shared storage setup, etc. Thank for the cool video.

[@binaryaction5]

this would be great. i'm running plex of my synology but i'd be keen to see if there is a performance benefit of running it off a vm rather than the synology.

[@TheGeekPub]

There is a big performance boost if you have multiple users streaming at once. But if its just one stream at a time I would probably keep it on the Synology.

[@brianbegun1146]

I'm currently building a 1U server based on this tutorial (with updated components). One thing I noticed that was odd was that you mentioned that you used an Apevia power supply but at 10:05 in the video I can see you are using an FSP Group power supply. I also decided to ditch using the Apevia and went with a Silverstone. Just wondering what happened with the disconnect on what power supply you ended up using?

[@TravisMeeks6]

loved it man.. i re-purposed some old servers that we had at work for something really similar. i have three iscsi storage units with dual controllers on each. they are connected to two dual proc ibm servers on which i put citrix xenserver. it was free and works really well!

[@hortonj63]

This makes me want to build one as a plex server, and a second one for a true NAS for backups and camera footage

[@ckingitsolutions8257]

HOW HAVE I NEVER SEEN YOUR CHANNEL BEFORE! IT'S AWESOME!

[@jhollisphoto]

I'm building something almost exactly the same. I noticed, however that when you put the brackets on the bottom of the motherboard, you're actually compressing solder points and capacitors. You actually put them on wrong entirely. The metal rails should border the metal CPU bracket, and the hole edges should be facing out, toward the RAM slots. Also, in many shots, the cpu blower is facing different directions. Should be facing the rear of the chassis. Finally, you can also use a x4 pci-e riser, which will allow for slightly better airflow. Good point with the fans, to keep one on all the time and one be dictated by the temperature.

[@TheTrulyInsane]

a Glock guy huh? Always great to see that people aren't stupid and are willing to protect their families. Great video, keep up the good work!

[@TheGeekPub]

I do like my Glocks. Very much indeed. ;-)

[@sulrich70]

Really well planned and presented. You obviously know your stuff backwards. Great work thank you.

[@patrickmosley4935]

I liked your video. Good camera work, good speech. What I would have like to see is more info on the build like your total cost to build it to make it easier to evaluate if its worth it vs a used server on ebay. Also yes it is a server as its "serving" data/features but personally especially with all the other expensive parts I would have gone for a server motherboard and ECC RAM.

[@lastnightsdinner]

Nice ingenuity with the washer risers

[@VAX1970]

A great way to short out components on the underside of the board, use with care.

[@shroob731]

Nice build! Definitely beats my cluster of two dell optiplex 790s.

Nicely done. I wished there were also 2u and 3u available at 250mm deep. This gives more room for extra storage, cooling and makes installing a lot easier without cutting the io shield. 😋

[@lockpickingmen]

I love this type of videos. Thanks

[@Steve_Streza]

Love this, thanks for the video! I really want to build my own closet server rack with a 1U home server soon.

[@balazsrako9528]

I would buy a 1700 because vm's can run better with more cores/ threads

[@CattoRayTube]

Balázs Rakó I was thinking the same thing, though I understand the goal here was to be like an exciting server.

[@anthonym10]

It's a great idea. I'm not gonna take the time to look up the case he used to find out what size motherboards it accepts but I'm gonna assume anything bigger then mini ITX won't fit. So one problem as of now though, there is no miniITX AM4 motherboard available. Basically forcing him to build Intel at this time. Another problem would be possible compatibility issues with ESXi. He also stated that he wanted to keep it the same as the other server in the rack to ease troubleshooting.

[@Nagashadow9669]

I dont know for sure but my guess is that he needs some sort of graphics for windows 10, because I doubt it can operate as headless server

[@rbrk161]

ESXi has terrible support for Ryzen. You're gonna have to wait till naples/EPYC drops or use something different like xen/proxmox/hyperv

[@mozmanolakis4894]

what are the differences

[@natedavis2559]

Dude, you are awesome. I needed another server and you just gave me the idea on how to build it.

[@guspaz]

I just built a machine with the exact same ASUS Z170I motherboard. I put mine in a Shuttle XPC SZ77R5 chassis after the Shuttle's proprietary motherboard died in a power outage. Shuttle claimed that the SZ77R5 is mini-ITX compatible for future upgradability... and that's technically true, though not without caveats. The main issue I faced was, like you, motherboard standoffs. In my case, though, it was the opposite problem. The case had ~5mm 6-23 standoffs, with two of the four mini ITX standoffs welded to the case. The backplate was lined up for the short standoffs, so I didn't need to pad the existing standoffs, I needed to find two standalone extra-small standoffs. Turns out it's almost impossible, since ATX standard requires 6.4mm or greater. All the 6-23 standoffs I had on hand were 7mm, and I couldn't find any brass 5mm standoffs online (only aluminum ones with shipping costs 20x the price of the standoffs). Solution? I took some 7mm brass standoffs and spent around three hours filing them down to size. Another concern was the 500W power supply in the Shuttle is 20-pin, while the motherboard is 24-pin. Turns out that wasn't a problem: the extra 4 pins on the ATX connector are redundant (ganged to the same wires as the other pins), and you're not going to need them with that size of a power supply. In my case, I've got a graphics card in the motherboard (a GTX 970), so I'm using the onboard Intel gigabit LAN port. The cooling solution also had to change radically: the case originally used a rigid heatpipe system where a cold plate on the CPU was connected to a heatsink mounted to the rear of the case, through which a 92mm fan served as both the CPU fan and the case exhaust fan. That got thrown out: the heatpipes are designed only for the proprietary motherboard's CPU placement. I ended up using the CPU (7500K) stock heatsink/fan along with a Noctua 92mm case fan. Good results: CPU runs cooler than the old setup (which was a 3770K), a bit louder at idle, but much quieter under load. I've got my eye out for an after market CPU cooler to reduce noise there, but clearance is limited since the CPU is under the power supply, and I'm thinking of swapping the 7500K for a 7700K. Most coolers that will fit in the clearance available are rated to handle a 7500K, but not a 7700K. Finally, this leads me to some comments on your build based on my experience with the board: - The motherboard has an NVMe slot on the underside of the motherboard. Not as convenient as the Z270 mini-ITX board ASUS makes (that one has two NVMe, both top and bottom), but it would free up a SATA port and remove the need for the SATA data and SATA power cables. That either helps your airflow, or it just gives you more SATA ports to use on other hard drives in the future. NVMe is much faster than SATA, but it sounds like that wouldn't matter for your setup, so it would really just be to save space and reduce clutter. - The motherboard actually has three fan connectors: one CPU, and two chassis. Since the UEFI BIOS makes all three headers completely configurable (tie them to CPU or chassis temp, build your own custom fan speed curves, or even just force them to run at a fixed RPM all the time), you should connect the second chassis fan to the motherboard instead of the power supply. Even if you just set the motherboard to run one of the fans at max speed all the time, it will be able to measure the RPM, which means you can have an alarm if the fan stops spinning (if the RPM drops below some configurable amount), which ought to be a bit safer. - It looks like you put a quad GigE NIC into the server, but only connected one port. The motherboard already has an onboard Intel GigE controller, so that standalone NIC isn't doing you any good unless you're planning to connect multiple ports (and then maybe do some teaming?) For a server, a 10 gigabit NIC might be a better option if you've got a switch with at least one 10 gig port. Otherwise the standalone NIC is redundant since it won't really outperform the onboard NIC. - The motherboard comes with a plastic CPU spacer that can be used to make CPU installation a bit easier and safer. The CPU snaps into it and you place the assembly right into the socket and clamp it down. It makes alignment a bit easier and provides some protection during the installation process. Also, the plastic cap that came installed on the motherboard socket should be left in-place during installation: it will literally pop off on its own (and I do mean pop) when you close the clamp down on the CPU. Per Intel's installation instructions, this is actually the recommended approach, as odd as it might seem. - It looks like you forgot to remove the clear plastic from the motherboard heatsink (the one seen on the PRO GAMING logo at 2:30). You'll want to peel that off to improve the effectiveness of that heatsink. - You've got some clearance issues on the SATA cable coming off that SSD against the PCIe slot. The NVMe approach would fix that, but another approach would be to use 90 degree angled SATA cables. The ones included with the motherboard are bent the wrong way, but you can buy SATA cables that are bent the other direction, which would solve your clearance issues.

[@bluesfella]

Great video - I built a very similar server using a 2U case from the same manufacturer. Had to modify it a little, but seems like a decent (and inexpensive) product. One tiny little thing I would like to suggest to make your videos a bit better - don't rock back and forth so much while you are talking. I spend a fair amount of time each week on a stage in front of a large audience, and that's one habit I had to un-learn after a lot of feedback. The rocking back and forth just makes you look nervous and unsure of yourself. It's OK to move around a bit, but too much can be distracting. Thanks for putting out a nice variety of content - been subscribed for a while now. Keep up the good work!

[@TheGeekPub]

This was the first video where I read from a teleprompter. I won't be doing that again. The reading is what caused me to sway. In the future I'll just being talking off the cuff. I much prefer that anyway. I just wanted to try something different.

[@bluesfella]

No worries, it's all a learning experience. You learn as we learn from you!

[@circuitdotlt]

Nice work. I am DIYing one as well. But a fanless one in my case. No idea why these are not available commercially, huge missed opportunity.

[@gorillaau]

The market doesn't doesn't care for fanless. Just provide as much CPU grunt for the given dollar. Hence more cores is better, dual or quad processors shoukd be an uograde. Oh and how much RAM can I have? With virtualisation, CPU and stacks of RAM is very important. Storage is moved off board to a NAS or SAN.

[@circuitdotlt]

@@gorillaau just bought myself a fanless asrock mITX with N100 CPU and 32GB RAM. Perfect for home server. Not a lab, but server (files, smarts, media player, DVR). Bought an old 3Com 10base 12 port switch for $5, which is a perfect case. Cut out a larger opening in place of LAN ports for the motherboard. It's a tight, but perfect fit. Installed a fanless 65W laptop brick inside, multiple SSDs, 4 laptop disks. Installed a large, slow radial blower just in case, barely audible. Whole thing takes like 15W when idling, and is powerful anough to do simple object recognition for DVR with held of google's coral. Was furious I could not find anything similar to buy. This took too many of my precious hours to build.

[@SamAndrew27]

VMware ESXi.....respect, my dude, RESPECT!!

[@jdgregson]

I'd rather pick up a used Dell server off Amazon for $600-$1000. You can often find one with 2 6-core Xeon CPUs, 12TB of storage, an enterorise RAID card, and 192GB of RAM. Their CPUs are slightly dated and RAM speeds aren't as fast as modern systems, yes, but they're more than adequate for anything I'd need them for and could run 10 times as many VMs as your build without breaking a sweat.

[@zate251]

Im glad I woke up this morning and this was the first video I watched. Really cool!

[@mar5253]

What is the power comsuption at idle and at load?

[@ArmChairPlum]

I chose the 6700 non k @ 65watts for my "server" in a DS380 case and threw in a IBM ServeRAID M1215 in IT mode for the 8 drive spaces - I plan to add in 4x 120GB SSDs for the windows storage space write journal as I have the drives in parity. Add an old laptop CPU fan cooler and that keeps the raid card cool!

[@hammar324]

Great build. Thank you.

[@QSFPTEK_official]

Although it has been five years, your explanation has still helped me a lot. As a practitioner in this industry, I have learned a lot of knowledge from you. I am currently working in an optical module company. Would you consider working together?

[@andygonzalez7012]

Great build. Thanks for this. I hate putting anything metal in contact with the mobo. For the spacers you created you could have used nylon spacers available in the specialty trays of the supply stores such as Home Depot or Lowes. Using oversized spacers you can put them over the chassis mounts and they would lift the board as well. The spacers come in various sizes.

[@TheGeekPub]

Huh? The motherboard stand-offs are DESIGNED to be grounded.

[@bawitdaba1337]

My pfSense router died because of that old intel c2000 flaw, so I’m going to try this same build but with an AMD Ryzen APU. Dynatron makes a similar CPU cooler, really cool video and interesting solution with those washers. Only thing that sucks with flipping the rack ears is the AC power is also on the front

[@TheGeekPub]

That's no worry. I simply reversed fans on the case and PSU. Problem solved.

[@Guikri]

guy, your sound is like a wave. Start using your sound-compressor in post right. Keep up your work!

[@TheGeekPub]

See the first comment and the description. :-) My AGC circuit on my camera failed while recording this video, and I didn't realize it until I exported the video for editing. It's a known problem with my camera. I've sent it in for repair. You'll notice none of my other videos suffer this problem...

[@buzmey9]

Geek fights, that's funny. Hey Mike for a novice like me, I found this very helpful and it seems like something I'm capable of building.

[@chrisspencer6502]

Again why nit just build your server in an old pc case?

[@alphabanks]

Great build I am in the process of redoing my home vmware/esx lab

[@RegisPessolano]

Nice machine! When motherboards for Ryzen chips comes in mini-itx format. I think this may can be better. More clocks and Threads is amazing for virtualization! In my personal rig i will change the VMWare to QEMU/KVM. I love this idea! I can run a Virtual Machine with FreeNAS and more VMs to automate my home! Thanks for ideas! :D

[@TheGeekPub]

I might do another build just like you mentioned when they are ready. I am not sure ESXi supports Ryzen yet though. I tell, you having a virtual environment to spin servers up and down at home is awesome!

[@RegisPessolano]

Yeah! That's amazing! I not use ESXi and i don't know if Ryzen support it. But in Level1Tech channel, i can see Ryzen on KVM Virtualization and works very well. (Has a little problem when you use PCI pass through for GPU but in this case i will note use).

[@scalamasterelectros3204]

This is perfect to put under a tv

[@DesignBuildExecute]

Great video, Mike! I have been looking to upgrade my old server. This might be just the ticket. Also, I need to send you a sticker for your cabinet.

[@rc55uk]

Another fantastic video, hoping you get trending soon to get an uptick in subscribers, the quality of content here is great! :)

[@EnricAragorn]

Friend! how many 2.5 disks can fit in there??

[@christopherrenwick2820]

How loud is this server build? I’m looking to put something in my home office but afraid of the noise. Have you measured the noise levels from it?

[@SmokingCrop]

6:00 you don't need to do this because of the plastic they provide with the case. It won't short.

[@360alaska6]

Good Build! The only thing I will say is that for my plex/media server I consider a ECC a must, makes me feel better. Of course, I know that only i3/i5/xeons can use ecc unfortunately. Also, adding a video card (even a 1030 gt) will help with 4k transcoding in plex substantially.

[@mikemitchell9202]

I thought it was a interesting video. I knew like 10 words you used. but you made it interesting even if I didn't know what you were talking about.

[@lastone032085]

Nice! only thing i would change is the sata cable. My OCD would bother me until I get a 90 degree cable. Thanks for the video.

[@MaxiMus91426]

Hi nice build. Wich case you used? Fo you have a part number or and a description of the case? How much did it cost? Greetings 🖖

[@Tyracor]

You should have a look into VMware EVC. If enabled you can use the Kaby Lake just fine.

[@homegamerengineer3747]

great build! What are your feelings on old server hardware? I keep wanting to build a new server like this, but then I end up buying crazy powerful stuff from eBay. I am a sucker for cheap hardware. I keep finding $200 multi processor multi core machines.

[@TheGeekPub]

It really just depends on what you need. You could build this machine for $200 if you used older generation hardware.

[@EricsTechSpot]

HomeGamer Engineer check out the "homelab" reddit

[@homegamerengineer3747]

EricsTechSpot Awesome!!! I don't get on Reddit as much h as I should. I just built two servers and installed Freenas Corral. lead store on that Reddit: Corral is now considered experimental! I guess it's good that I dragged my feet migrating my data over. Thanks for the info! :-)

[@EricsTechSpot]

HomeGamer Engineer No problem! There is also a "homeserver" reddit as well; however, homelab tends to be more helpful. If you ever want to have some fun, make sure to go through the "talesfromtechsupport " reddit as well. And yeah, IX is rolling many of the Corral features into Freenas 9. Most things are so up in the air right now I don't even know where to start looking at upgrading myself... everything is too in flux or being worked on

[@namtech425]

OK I just go to this today, just a suggestion when running esxi, boot from a USB stick and run your swap on the SSD, this way you can run swap at near memory speeds and you will see a huge increase in performance. I also run a bunch of i5's as home sandbox servers in a cluster for HA, so don't let anyone knock your designs, use what works for you.

[@christian571]

Great stuff. Do you plan to do any ESXi Videos to followup? I'd be interested in how you setup the cluster.

[@baosli]

You could buy a used server for cheap on eBay. Plenty of Dell R610's with dual quad core Xeons and 96gb ram for $500. I used to build home servers too but going used was a lot cheaper for me. Replacement parts are plenty and the equipment is a lot more durable. It's all designed to be on 24/7 for years on end.

[@TheGeekPub]

And it won't be anywhere as fast, won't have QSV cores for encoding video, and will sound like a jet engine.

[@baosli]

@@TheGeekPub It's actually quieter than my 24 port switch and encodes video just fine. I have Plex installed as a VM along with 21 other VMs and is able to transcode 4 streams without issue. I only assigned 4 cores to the Plex machine. If it's not enough, you can get one with a different config... more processing power with less ram, toss in a video card, etc... Adding in another couple hundred dollars will also open up a lot more options like moving up to hardware 1 gen newer or another brand. I only went with Dell because the PowerEdge servers are quiet.

[@TheGeekPub]

@@baosli I run data centers for a living, all Dell servers. The R610 is nice and quiet (46db) at idle. At full bore they are almost unbearable high pitched screamers. I can't have that in my media room.

[@baosli]

@@TheGeekPub that's my living as well but I run Cisco's. Used to run Dell's... Yeah, a bunch of them are loud but a single is tolerable. It's rarely running at max load.

[@TurdFurguson420]

kinda older video but its reminded me of a question ive had for awhile. why run VMs when everything could simply run off one win10 server? its not like plex needs linux so im trying to figure out the benefits of this setup

[@RockitMan-ey8tx]

Nice build and video. Thanks for sharing!

[@notcooken5830]

You look like me when im giving a presentation. But anyways great video! 👍

[@dr.mcdougall1010]

Cool story kid.

[@yiorgosp]

Amazing Video! would love some more info on your VMware ESX setup :)

[@TheGeekPub]

I hope to make a new video about that soon!

[@yiorgosp]

will be waiting for that one :)

[@David-wh8zs]

I'm pretty shure it is called ESXi not ESX.

[@SamAndrew27]

Correct, it is now called ESXi and has been for years now. However, prior to v4 (I think?) it was called ESX, so some old school guys still call it that. Interesting note, ESX means "Elastic Sky X" and the "i" means "integrated: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware_ESXi

[@mraljewari9381]

Its called Esxi...

[@yuchong1704]

This video is more than 2 years old, but the geek in me just has to say that the SATA connector on the SSD drive is knocking against the motherboard and looks a tad tight. Shouldn't you have reversed the mounting on the SSD and have a clean cable connection instead? And the network connectors: how about aggregating those up into a 4x1Gb connection to the rest of your network. Overkill, I know.

[@topfuelr473]

I like it. I would do it just because it's not the same old stuff. Dare to be different!!

[@DigisDen]

Nice build, my only quibble if any is where you say regular people not using SAN/NAS could put two drives in in a redundant fashion. I highly doubt VMWare would recognize the raid on that board. I myself use XEONs in standard 1U rackmount but being as I run my VMs of a DELL PS6000E iscsi SAN, you've really got me thinking here about using this much smaller hardware, mine are also clustered too.

[@TheGeekPub]

Actually, that's why I picked this specific board. Because other than IPMI everything else works on ESX, even if unofficially. You can grab third party or community VIBs for almost anything on it, except sensor data as mentioned. Is it perfect? Nope. :-)

[@DanielJBarnett]

Can you please make more videos like this! This is great!!!

[@HandToolRescue]

It's the retro incabulator.

[@TheGeekPub]

I think you mean the turbo encabulator. :-) Very funny sir. Very funny indeed.

[@HandToolRescue]

I seem to recall that Rockwell made a retro incabulator...

[@stevegraunke8539]

it stops modal side fumbling

[@TheGeekPub]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turboencabulator

[@satamototo]

For such systems Supermicro have very nice Xeon D motherboards with decent amount of 10 GbE, 1 Gbe, Sata 3 and SAS integrated ports.

[@Wordsnwood]

ps: Umm you do know that you have "Bass" rather than "Bad" in the video title?

[@TheGeekPub]

Ugh! Thank you! Fixed.

[@pauilsandy6293]

Thanks man, how much it cost for this build?? And can you make one for cheap build server compatible with esx. Or Guide to buy used server for real cheap and what to look for while buying it. Awesome man I watched your home network video, you really did put lot of work and security, for first time I felt we can build secure network at home with also managing security cams. Are those those cams just home network or you can access then anywhere?? If any where can you teach us how you did it and how secure it is??? Thanks a lot keep rocking.

[@PhG1961]

Interesting video ! Nice products. Worth watching !

[@retepignus2626]

not related but perhaps you can help me. I have a 21u rack server cabinet but unfortunately it has depth of 23.6" only. I can put the switch, pdu on top area and i have an ample space at the bottom. I have an existing EATX tower case pc. I would like to take out all the components from that desktop chassis and put it inside the rack cabinet at the bottom directly - i am thinking of putting a pc open frame to attach the mobo but i don't know where to put all my 4 bay HDDs. In short, i would like to use the server cabinet itself as my computer case without putting my computer to rackmount chassis but use the server cabinet as its chassis. Please produce a video if you can :)

[@mh6790]

very good video. the parts list is extremely helpful too!!!

[@alphawolfshard]

First video ive seen from you... not sure why but just my kind of thing! - keep up the good work! #subbed

[@chrismoore1981]

Have you heard of the Juniper NFX250? Only 1RU but has a 6 Core Xeon with 32GB DDR4 RAM and 400GB SSD. Has built in 20Gbps ASIC for switching between the Xeon and switchports. Its a dedicated device to run multiple VM's for WAN sites.

[@TheGeekPub]

Yes, but it costs almost six times what this cost me.

[@timhansen46]

Was the lack of IPMI ever an issue for you? I've been trying to find a decent mini itx motherboard with ipmi on board and support for the core i3/5/7/etc processors and the combination of those requirements seems to make things difficult. Mostly looking at supermicro and asrock rack boards. I'm thinking about just saying forget it to finding something with ipmi. For context I'm hoping to build something thats the same physical size with good single thread speeds.

[@cjchico]

Nice Glock sticker haha!

[@eliinthewolverinestate6729]

Now thats an under desktop computer. Mount it to the bottom of any table top or desk.

[@danymajdalani]

very nice setup, Thank you.

[@smkaur]

Any chance you are ready to do a refreshed 1U server spec update and build?

[@craigsmestad6952]

Nice build!

[@EmmanuelYawZazaOduro]

Great work done.

[@Andi-dp9hy]

The video is good, but why do you use desktop Hardware? Server Hardware would be much more efficent and cheaper.

[@TheGeekPub]

This was covered in the video and at least 100 times in the comments. ;-)

[@PoeLemic]

Very awesome video. New to your channel but love it. Can answer a question? I see you put in a 4-port gigabit card (at 9:23). But what is that for? How would you hook up to your network? In the latter picture, you only put one network cable in it. So, is that to segment your ESXi VMs to maybe each of them separately having their own virtual network port? Like in my home server, I just have one network port that goes to a switch. If you have time, be nice if you have a video or maybe point me to one that would explain it. Thanks, I will be long-term subscriber now.

[@L0e0e0L]

2 drive can either provide better performance or redundancy. Not both

[@ace_of_spadesgaming9674]

With the IOMMU updates on Ryzen, would you still recommend going with Intel on a build? For a tad more than a 6700 or 7700, you can get an 8 core 16thread Ryzen chip. In essence, build cost would be similar as the boards are a little cheaper coming from the AMD lineup. It has a TDP of 65w vice 91. May be better suited in a 2U form factor though.

[@mrj4264]

Won't the RAM block the airflow from getting to the CPU?

[@VELVET462]

Hey i got most of the parts lying around from old specs of mine and just need to know a realy REALY SILENT CPU cooler for a 1 U scenario like in this build. Will a Dynatron K199 do the job silently? i realy dontt want to hear anything in the end, because i need to build a silent Desk rack cpu build. but want to record with a high end microphone overhead which captures everything i can hear. (sennheiser mkh 50)

[@marcosvazquez227]

excellent video! congratulations!

[@ErugoPurakushiOne]

Interesting video. Looks completely serious! What purpose of using ESXI in home network? Multimedia things or NAS or video coding? Just curious :D

[@TheGeekPub]

It just allows me to run numerous servers of different operating systems on a single (or dual) boxes.

[@JaredWoodruff]

Great video, i'm looking at building an AMD Ryzen 1800X with 64GB DDR4 build but ESXi is not AMD friendly yet so going to wait for Naples.

[@wildbill23c]

Excellent video...You got a new subscriber.

[@ipullstuffapart]

The side-to-front airflow seems a bit annoying in that case. Would screw up any sort of front-to-back airflow planning in a rack. Though considering you tombstone your synology, I'm guessing that you don't have space for a proper rack anyway.

[@TheGeekPub]

I'm not sure what you're referring to by calling it side to front? It pulls air from the front and exhausts it out the back (or vice-versa if you reverse the fans).

[@ipullstuffapart]

Ah sorry, I saw the power supply facing outwards, and expect it to exhaust that way.

[@mikegravgaard340]

10Gb ethernet would have been more bad ass. Also you considered grouping the network interfaces to get higher throughput?

[@TheGeekPub]

All of those links are LACP.