I've been running an old PE 2800 for a decade now as a backup server and also use it to experiment with some enterprise-grade network hardware. Being 32-bit, I pretty much just let it be anymore - just a dumb rsync/NAS server.

I'm in the process of looking for and planning a new rack-mounted server, rack, and networking upgrade. Probably going to go with 2 data storage units and a unit with processing power and RAM for VMs (Linux with KVM as host), 10GbE internal-rack networking (freaking 10GbE switch prices are a killer man...), and a second UPS.

What I'm looking for in the storage servers:

• ~12 3.5" HDD capacity
• Up to 8TB drive support
• HW RAID capability does not interest me as I use strictly Linux's mdadm RAID, Btrfs, or ZFS
• Intel AESNI CPU instruction, required for dm_crypt encryption performance

For the VM server:

• 12+ Xeon cores
• Lots of ECC RAM
• Intel AESNI CPU instruction
• Good HW-based VM technologies (VT-X, VT-D, etc.)

For the switch:

• 10 Gigabit copper ethernet
• Atleast 8 ports
• Managed, or atleast web-managed
• VLAN, trunking, STP, QoS

Not really sure about the rack. I have a StarTech 12U right now. Works well, but looks kind of tacky. I like the fact that I can break it down and move it in my trunk, though.


My budget is around $3k not including harddrives.