I am a Solo MSP and getting my feet wet with XCP-NG. I have an opportunity to quote a small business a server job. will only be running 2 VMs DC and QuickBooks Enterprise. I would like some guidance on how to go about purchasing it. I have built my own using spare parts as well as the Ryzen build tom had a couple of months ago however I would like to get something i can get a warranty on. Super micro dealer? or Dell? Just curious about how other MSPs are selling XCP-NG hypervisors.
Supermicro or Dell are good choices. We have used a lot of Dell’s in the past because they are easy to buy from and have good warranties. Alternatively there is Tech Supply Direct who have some good deals on refurbished Dells that come with warranty.
Any of the big players - HP , Dell or Supermicro - just go with the cheapest one that meets your needs
Last server we purchased was Supermicro
Also think about how you are going to backup these machines ?
I would suggest an Intel Xeon Scalable processor so you can grow it if need be, and also buy the biggest Ram modules you can afford, again so you can grow it. My XCP-NG server are Xeon Scalable Silver (10 core/20 thread) and I put two modules of 64gb of RDIMM in each server. These are Supermicro 1u servers. I can go up to at least 36 core/72 thread and I Think 1tb of RAM in these servers. My server might be overkill for your needs, but it was minimum for mine.
I also went with three servers and a storage NAS, you will need to migrate VMs to another host during XCP-NG patches to keep them up during the host reboot. I went with three in case I have a host fail, technically right now I could run everything on a single host, but processors will be sharing cycles, but RAM should be fine. I was advised that over provisioning RAM when running Windows VMs is going to be a bad experience, and for right now 128gb should be OK, at least until things grow, and they always grow. Fill empty slot and swap to a “bigger” processor and I should be back to OK when this happens.
My servers were around $1500 each and you can build them right on Supermicro’s website. SHI also carries Supermicro and I think Dell, we have software contracts with them so they can sometimes shave off $100 each. We buy HP stuff on government contract, but their server prices are pretty high compared to Supermicro, certainly good stuff but Supermicro has been very good to me over the years to the point where all of my production servers are from them. https://store.supermicro.com/
I bought dells and a truenas for iscsi for the company I work for. It also depends on the licensing you want to spend if you are running windows, it goes by physical cores and hosts.
Yes the physical cores licensing part is kind of garbage, that’s how they are making money back on the Hyper V stuff with Server Datacenter and the 5 free VMs it can spawn. Nothing is really free.