Welcome to Thunderdome

Looking to get a legit server for the home office. The PC server has done well, but had some major hic-ups this past weekend and figured it was important enough to spend some better money on it.

I'm looking at Dell and IBM. Not considering HP at this time because I've never heard anything good about their support/warranty. My initial contact with IBM is they only do expensive servers and may have sold their low end stuff off with Lenovo. Maybe I'm paranoid, but the Chinese government being a major holder of Lenovo makes me weary of using one. I've used their laptops, but I don't do that much on them, so didn't feel 'invaded'.

So really, the point of this post is: Would you trust Lenovo (the Chinese) with your livelihood?

I realize what I have, they don't need/want/care about. But what about "Fuck America" viruses/ransomware/etc. Think you are more vulnerable on a Chinese product?

At work I have a Power 7 and it's fine, but probably not what you'd be looking for.

I love Dell. I rarely have hardware issues with them, and when I do, it's something easily fixed. Their support is good, but I deal directly with a sales team and American support folks. Not sure if a private owner would have the same hookups.

Why the need for a server?

Cakedaddy wrote: Would you trust Lenovo (the Chinese) with your livelihood?

No.

To be fair, almost all servers are probably made in china though, Dell, HP, whoever. So manufacturing line targeting is always a potential problem.

I used Dell servers when I worked for companies. They mostly did well with good support.

Even if the servers aren't made in China, isn't most of the solid state IN the server made in China?

I looked briefly at the Power servers, but have a feeling they are priced out of budget. I think the lower end server line was sold off to Lenovo. Thus the question.

I realize everything is built in China. But I'd feel better about something that's finished (OS install, setup) being done here. I'm going to pretend that the OS isn't loaded in China. Which might be true given some laws about software being overseas and stuff.

Need for the server:
I currently have a PC setup as a server. Using the Intel RAID 1 setup on the motherboard. Have used this for about 5 years or so. It's never been stable. It will occasionally slow down and need to be rebooted. Sometimes when it would reboot, it wouldn't load. Windows would report an error with the harddrives that it couldn't repair. I would have to reboot 10+ times and then it would finally load. I found that if I wanted to reboot, if I used the Intel utility to verify and repair any errors on the RAID volume that it would normally reboot without issues. The last time I did this, it didn't reboot and I could not get it back up, at first. Rebooted many many many times with no success. Started removing RAM and booting with individual sticks. No help. Started researching how to actually use the RAID. I was hoping that one of the drives was still good. Would unplug one and Windows wouldn't boot. Unplug the other and PC reported a non-bootable drive. Kept messing with stuff and eventually the RAID got turned off. The PC then booted. Had two drives that had been properly mirroring (at least on the surface they were. Same directories, etc. Didn't do a complete comparison). So, everything had been doing what it was supposed to, except, when mirrored, the PC wouldn't boot. Also, many times when I ran the Intel verify, it would find between 2-8 errors that it would repair. Don't know what the errors were.

Don't know if I had bad harddrive(s) there were failing or if the RAID on the motherboard sucked, or what. So the PC was never 100% stable, but with only having to reboot once every 8 months or so and not having the boot errors in like 18 months or more, I just lived with it. But with this latest requiring the mirror to be broken to boot was the last straw. Must get something more stable. Currently not mirroring, but also not making any changes to anything other than email.

And that's the other piece. I host my own SMTP server and every time the server crashes, it fucks up email in a major way. I lose a shit ton of emails and a ton of old emails duplicate and show up as new. This has been the biggest problem with the server. Losing emails. Which will be the topic of another thread.

So I need a server that doesn't crash and will boot up any time it is shut down. PC's aren't always the best at this. Most are. . but I'm ready to buy something I can be more confident in. Basically want a system with a stable build (compatible parts that weren't piecemealed together from Newegg) and professional grade RAID that I can feel more confident in.

I talked to Dell and I have a "dedicated sales rep" now. But, not sure what that gets me. And I think I'm going to be paying for that support. Not sure I want to though. What kind of shit are they selling me that needs access to that much support?!

Personally, I have had 100% uptime with two separate Lenovo Thinkservers, over something like 4 years.

Less than 500, before you buy your own drives.

If you don't like it, you only spent 500 and you can use it for a juke box or UO emulator or something.

Does it need to be a self-hosted server? If I could avoid physical servers, I would, forever.

TheCatt wrote: If I could avoid physical servers, I would, forever.

This is stupid. Well, maybe not for your situation, but be flexible. Not every wants their data in the cloud. A big topic at Dell EMC World this year was how corporations are pushing back against the "put everything in the cloud" movement.

Cake, I'm retiring some servers. We wipe them and then they sit waiting to be recycled. If you wouldn't mind an older server I could probably hook you up with a nice one.

Leisher wrote: This is stupid. Well, maybe not for your situation, but be flexible. Not every wants their data in the cloud. A big topic at Dell EMC World this year was how corporations are pushing back against the "put everything in the cloud" movement.

Those people will be roadkill

TheCatt wrote:

Leisher wrote: This is stupid. Well, maybe not for your situation, but be flexible. Not every wants their data in the cloud. A big topic at Dell EMC World this year was how corporations are pushing back against the "put everything in the cloud" movement.

Those people will be roadkill

Yeah, except they won't. Putting all your data in the cloud is fucking ignorant if you have sensitive information or proprietary data. Ask the health care industry. Dumb fucks. My company is the only one of its kind in the world. We don't put our shit in public clouds. We do have a private cloud, of course.

I remember meeting with VEAM three years ago about a backup solution. They were adamant that their products only worked with virtual servers and they would NEVER do physical. They didn't see the point and couldn't understand why everyone wouldn't virtualize everything. Guess whose products now work with physical servers?

Just because something is popular, new, whatever doesn't mean it's a good fit for every company.

(I wrote this just to tell the VEAM story. Idiots.)

Leisher wrote: Putting all your data in the cloud is fucking ignorant if you have sensitive information or proprietary data.

I'm willing to bet the Chinese will get into private servers before getting into AWS' servers.

TheCatt wrote:

Leisher wrote: Putting all your data in the cloud is fucking ignorant if you have sensitive information or proprietary data.

I'm willing to bet the Chinese will get into private servers before getting into AWS' servers.

I'd take that bet.

If I was a Chinese hacker the AWS servers would be the prime target. Why hack one company when you can hack a bunch at once? Also, I know exactly how I'd do it. Easy Peasy.

Leisher wrote: If I was a Chinese hacker the AWS servers would be the prime target. Why hack one company when you can hack a bunch at once? Also, I know exactly how I'd do it. Easy Peasy.

Sure, but they're also massively hardened. It's like $$ in the vault versus your wallet.

How would you do it?

TheCatt wrote: It's like $$ in the vault versus your wallet.

Not an exact comparison. I'd say more like a bank vault versus a vault in your own home.

TheCatt wrote: Sure, but they're also massively hardened.

Absolutely. However, nothing is hackproof. NOTHING. Hell, one of the big silicon valley names, literally, just said that very thing last week in an interview.

However, that's not how I would hack it. I'd go after the employees and get in that way. Everyone has weaknesses that can be exploited. Corporate espionage is at an all time high and cheaper than R&D.

I'm not a fan of having my entire life on someone else's server. You KNOW their admins look at stuff. Plus I dont trust their backups. In the early days, the server hosts would email me about issues and had to restore from backup. I would lose everything. I would even have to recreate email accounts because EVERYTHING was gone. Nice back up. Ironic being that I can't restore from my own. But at least I know I can hire someone who could.

How old we talking? What kind of drives do they take? What OS are you running on them?

Cakedaddy wrote: How old we talking? What kind of drives do they take? What OS are you running on them?

Service Tag: 7P1CHS1 - I think that might be the best option. It's actually still in use right now, but I could virtualize it pretty quickly.

Cakedaddy wrote: You KNOW their admins look at stuff. Plus I dont trust their backups. In the early days, the server hosts would email me about issues and had to restore from backup. I would lose everything.

AWS is a whole new ballgame.

Truthfully, if we were interested in the cloud, I'm pretty sure we'd go with AWS.

We just don't have a need for cloud data storage at all. We don't use 365 or Exchange online either.

I am investigating Trend Online as we speak though. No data involved, so that deal breaker is off the table.

I'm very interested in the server. It's a bit older than what I have now (i5-4590s), but dual CPU should help. I'm going to take Plex off of it though, so those CPUs should be fine. Would only be doing email and supporting VNC remote control for Quickbooks as well as sharing some files. I'll rebuild the current machine and have it do Plex.

You going to keep the support running on it?

What OS were you running? I'm assuming Windows server 2013? Would it do 2016? Do I need to run Win Server? Currently using Windows 7 pro as my server OS. Will I be able to find drivers/etc? Do I need to do 2016 if it's currently doing 2013? Can I still get 2013? Hmmm. Does Quickbooks run on Win Server?

It has 2008 R2 on it.

I will begin doing some work to get it ready for you. Don't count on it right away though. I've got to turn it into a VM, retire it, make sure the VM is working, then let it sit for a month to make sure I didn't miss anything. And I don't know if I'll even be able to begin this process for a week or two.