For the last several weeks I’ve been trying to get quotes for a couple or “low end” Supermicro servers, products that they still have on their website, one of them I configured on their estore. None of our vendors are getting requests returned from Supermicro. I looked at new DELL and Lenovo, and prices are double for similar hardware and configuration.
Where else do I look for kind of a DIY rack mounted server with a 12-16 cores, 32-64gb or RAM, and 8+ data drives? Need to go with spinning 3.5 inch drives in the 2TB or 4TB size due to lack of money. Need something for the OS drive too, small nvme, 2.5 inch SATA , etc. Needs 10gbps SFP+, x710 or newer card.
I kind of looked at Synology, but not sure I want to go down that road. ASUS? Someone else? [edit] 45drives contact form keeps error out, anyone have an email for sales in the USA?
Price has kind of hobbled me, I had no way to know how bad the prices would rise back when I last adjusted the price over a year ago. I have $7500 each ear marked, I might be able to push it a little more due to general price increases over time. The stuff I can get from Supermicro is above $11,000usd
Intended use case: NFS and SMB shares from XCP-ng, two servers to create some kind of failover, even if it is very manual. Replacing similar server in the x10 family that is getting towards 10 years old.
Honestly, if this for personal use and not a customer, I would go with used CPU/motherboard/RAM and new drives. DDR4 ECC memory is not nearly as expensive as the DDR5 stuff, and for NFS and SMB, it will be performant enough. I recently picked up a used Datto S3P2000 with an Intel Xeon D-1541 motherboard and 64GB of DDR4 ECC ram for $250. I turned that into my new NAS. I transferred the motherboard to a 2U case, added a couple of 6 bay Icy Dock 5 1/4 inch docks, a handful of used SM863 SATA SSDs I had, and a Mellanox ConnectX 3 SFP+ card, and called it good. I also picked up a used Datto S4XP4000 with and Intel Xeon D-2143 and 48GB RAM for $250. Long story short, I transplanted that motherboard in a similar fashion, and it is a warm spare Proxmox node for me. I am sure you can find higher end stuff out there if you need more performance, but my 10 year old Xeon D 1541 system easily saturates my 10g connection.
Might be worth reaching out to TrueNAS, to see if their appliances could meet your capacity & storage performance needs, and if they can actually quote you? Spinning disk with small NVME cache might do the trick.
I’m currently all spinning disks and it is good enough. I may need to drop down to a Truenas Mini-R, but I really wanted a processor that was a bit newer and a little more powerful, and really dual power supplies. Anything bigger than a Mini-R is getting into $20k territory and back to DELL and Lenovo SSD prices.
Western Digital still suggests that they make Red Plus and Pro in 4TB sizes, I’d go with Pro and I may need to piece meal this build to get where I need to be, $240 for Plus and $300 for Pro retail. If supply is really an issue, I may need to jump up to 6TB or 8TB, it’s just a lot more storage than I need for this function, which tempts me to put other things on the same chassis, an option to explore.
I really hesitate to buy used, these will be in service for the next 10 years is our program is allowed to remain for the next 10 years.
The CPU in the TrueNAS mini is from Q3 2017 and those devices don’t offer redundant power. I would not buy one new here in 2026 as it’s just underpowered.
That’s my big issue. It would do what I need, and do it under budget, but I’m starting with 10 year old technology. An n305 or n355 would do the job, surprised they haven’t updated the hardware. I’ll have to look at used “recertified” stuff in the morning. Also need to call 45drives and see what they can do.
Currently using a 10 year old Supermicro x10 based server, so not a radical change to the Mini-R.
I just built a small TrueNAS server for a client with 4TB IronWolf drives, but I could have gone with WD Reds, as well. Not sure if they’ve ceased production, but they’re still available. Though for what they are, they’re overpriced between $165 and $185 on Amazon, and they’re purchase limited. I needed 4 drives, but could only order 3, wait until delivery and a few days after that, and then I was “allowed” to purchase the fourth drive.
Overall cost, excluding the UPS was about $3k for a case, power supply, ASRock X570D4U board, Ryzen 5 5500, 128GB of RAM, redundant 500GB SSDs for boot, and 4 4TB IronWolf drives.
And, I know the processor is overkill, but I value maintenance time reduction for the life of the machine over a few extra quid vs a low-end processor. I’ve put a few of those TrueNAS Minis in and the time for an update and reboot of the OS takes literally 4 times as long as the machines I’ve built (a full hour vs 15 minutes).
Overall cost, excluding the UPS was about $3k for a case, power supply, ASRock X570D4U board, Ryzen 5 5500, 128GB of RAM, redundant 500GB SSDs for boot, and 4 4TB IronWolf drives.
That’s very similar to my main Proxmox node. The RAM is the priciest bit, but its still not as bad as DDR5 ECC RAM. 128MB may be overkill for a TrueNAS box IMHO, but YMMV. The board itself is very nice. Just be careful to not use a Ryzen APU part, or the ECC memory function will not work. ECC is only supported in the Ryzen Pro APUs and the Ryzen CPUs without integrated graphics. The two PCIe4.0x4 M.2 slots also mean you can do things with NVME drives as VDEVs in TrueNAS (special metadata, SLOG, Storage, whatever.)