Server Wars: Tower vs. Rack vs. Blade - What’s Best for You?

[@scorpio_1312]

Thank you Naj!

[@NajQazi]

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[@magdanalhamdan6528]

ProgrammingAdvices

[@sourcemind]

What type of server would classify as being the largest and get the most dedicated resources packed into it and have the most cooling attention towards it? I have a tower server at home that I utilize for self hosting, and it works well. With 64GB memory, and 20TB disk space, Since basically it's a repurposed Alienware Area51 R7. It's not new, and it's not incapable of still running decent speeds connected to a 2TB NVME and a couple of hard drives on a Fiber 1GBPS port, via IPV4 and IPV6. I like that I can get 4 network connections in it, two ethernet, one Wifi and one USB network for redundancy. Linux loves it for that. I don't really want to buy a rack mount or blade server. The fans on those devices can get quite loud, and that's without attaching a GPU. The design is neat, but to me it appears like it's squished together and I can see why those would end up in a server closet as opposed to something you can show off in your living room. Data centers do well with large server arrays, and I could see how for custom cloud implementations, a server rack would work well for that. But I don't see a lot of even rentable servers that could be used pretty much like a normal PC apart from a cloud instance. Ideally you should be able to throw a custom Linux distribution on a server array capable of GPU and CPU performance, and throw up a desktop shell on top of a server and sign into that at home for custom storage needs. Then just map the drive you're working with as apart of your remote network profile. I'm huge into self hosted as it keeps data private, and you can run whatever services you like be it a game server or security monitoring and have a custom input and output point for processing. That goes without saying when you pair all of your IP pools with custom DNS and a domain, making the stuff you host a lot easier and more accessible to you as well. Doing this at home via port forwarding your own router is a budget way to achieve the same thing as a server rack could. Since I don't really see any difference physically in terms of hardware you're losing out on or gaining for that matter, if you go with a tower for your operating system shell as opposed to an enterprise chassis. That is apart from a custom network switch, and a larger array. And towers potentially may offer more USB ports than a rack mount or blade server. And it is also likely that the only trade off you get with those, is the capability to add in a custom mother board with support for multiple stacked expansion slots particularly with newer models for network cards, memory slots and storage drive bays. That being said, having fiber at home is both a blessing and a curse. Because some services due to port blocking and traffic shaping at the ISP level are blocked on residential connections in which they're not as a business line. But it's cheaper on your wallet, so for resource management itself, having your own LAN based in house solution is key. You can also see it as a long term investment that if you upgrade it over time, can be worth a pretty penny for awhile than a typical laptop would through a tower investment. Since you're not always dealing with soldered on components that way. Hence the port selection opportunities.

[@SARBWE]

You consistently produce exceptional, insightful, and easily comprehensible content.

[@NajQazi]

Thank you so much!

[@SARBWE]

I reposted this on LinkedIn too, amazing content.