Motivation
We are running a small cluster of five servers based on all kinds of hardware collected and integrated during the past 20 years and installed in a 19″ rack. Some of the motherboards, the CPUs and even the harddisk in the storage cluster have reached the proud age of 10 years a while ago.
At this age of some of the components, we see more and more parts of our systems to come closer to their end-of life (SSDs, power-supplies, CPU ventilators, motherboards) increasing the risk of failures that might be hard to fix and have a negative impact on the storage and service cluster software running on these servers.
So we have started a project to create a new generation of six identical servers each of them with more power, memory, storage space and redundancy than current systems to get better protection against hardware failures and have more computing power available without really expanding amount of electricity to run these systems at the same time.
Highlights
Powerful CPU
- Two CPU Sockets. So you may start with one processor with up to 14 cores / 28 threads and double these numbers if needed or even use CPU types with a higher number of cores.
- Choose from the broad range of the Intel Xeon Scalable Processors family
Huge Memory
- Memory expandable to 256 GByte per CPU using 32 GByte RAM modules. This can be expanded to 1 TByte of RAM per CPU if needed
- ECC RAM for better reliability and fault tolerance
Ample Power
- Redundant 2x 800W power supply for more reliability and in-operations modifications of power sources.
High Performance OS Disk
- Large (2 TByte) mirrored very fast (write: 7 GByte/s SATA, read 14 GByte/s SSDs for the OS for more speed and reliability. Copy the content of an entire DVD in about one second..
Vast amounts of Storage supported
Host up to 12 Disks (3.5″, 2.5″, SSD) using 8 on-board 6 GBit/s SATA III connectors plus 4 SATA channels provided by a PCIe adapter. Using current 22 TByte Harddisks this provides you with 250 TByte = 0.25 PByte of raw storage space.
Highspeed Network Access
2 x 10 GBit/s Ethernet for high performance network access to exchange data with clients at the speed they need.
Modest Power Consumption
~75W with 1 CPU running idle, 2x 2 TByte OS SSDs running, 96 GByte RAM and active cooling. The motherboard supports monitoring power consumption from within the OS so you always know what’s going on.
Side-by-side comparison
An NeoJB2U server is about 65% less expensive than a comparable machine sold by companies like Dell and others. Here is a page showing a side-by.side comparison.
Components
Here is the list of components that go into a NeoJB2U server. All prices are actual prices paid in January 2023 for each of the components. Of course these prices change over time and might be different depending on your country. So it might take a bit of time to get a similar or even a better price for all the components. Feel free to change the list and adjust it to your particular needs. Be aware though that it has taken quite a bit of research and testing to ensure all the parts listed below play together well and as expected.
| Element | Type | Cost (CHF) | URL |
| Chassis | Fantec SRC-2612X07-12G, 2U, 680mm depth, Mainboard 12″ x 13″, 12 x 3.5″ disk slots | 265.80 | https://www.fantec.de/produkte/serverprodukte/19-server-storagegehaeuse/produkt/details/artikel/2482_fantec_src_2612x07_12g/ |
| Rack Rails | Fantec SRC-SR20 Rack Rails | 49.90 | https://www.fantec.de/produkte/serverprodukte/zubehoer/produkt/details/artikel/1671_fantec_src_sr20 |
| Power Supply | Inter-Tech ASPOWER R2A-DV0800-N, dual ATX power supply, 2U, 800W, platin standard | 363.70 | https://www.inter-tech.de/produktdetails-181/ASPOWER_R2A-DV0800-N_EN.html |
| Motherboard | Intel S2600STBR Server Board, 2x 10GBaseT | 709.10 | https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/192612/intel-server-board-s2600stbr/specifications.html |
| CPU | Intel Xeon Silver 4214R, 2.4 – 3.5 GHz, Socket 3647, 14-Core, 100W, Tray | 570.70 | https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/197100/intel-xeon-silver-4214r-processor-16-5m-cache-2-40-ghz/specifications.html |
| CPU Cooler | Inter-Tech B-13, CPU Cooler, LGA 3647 square (!) Socket, 2U, 80mm x 66mm x 108 mm | 36.50 | https://www.inter-tech.de/produktdetails-105/B-13.html |
| SATA Disk Controller | Supermicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8 8-channel SAS/SATA PCIe adapter | 124.80 | https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/accessories/addon/AOC-SAS2LP-MV8.php |
| Memory (3×32 GByte) | Crucial DDR4 32GByte, 3200 MHz, DDR4-RAM, RDIMM, MTA18ASF4G72PDZ-3G2F1R | 3x 95.00 | https://www.crucial.com/memory/Server-DDR4/MTA18ASF4G72PDZ-3G2F1R |
| SSD for OS (2x) | WD Blue SN570, M.2 SSD, 2280, 2TB, R: 3500 MB/s, R: 3000 MB/s | 2x 141.70 | https://www.westerndigital.com/products/internal-drives/wd-blue-sn570-nvme-ssd#WDS200T3B0C |
| M.2 SSD PCIe x16 Adapter | CableCC 4x NVME M.2 AHCI to PCIE Express 3.0 Gen3 x16 Card | 33.60 | https://www.cablecc.com/4x-nvme-m2-ahci-to-pcie-express-30-gen3-x16-raid-card-vroc-raid0-hyper-adapter-p-4680.html |
| SATA Cable SFF-8643 > SFF-8087 (2x) | ChenYang Internal Mini SAS SFF-8087 to Mini SAS High Density HD SFF-8643 Data Server Hard Drive Raid Cable 0.5m | 2x 12.05 | https://www.amazon.com/-/en/Internal-SFF-8087-Density-SFF-8643-Server-Black/dp/B00S6GSSXG |
| SATA Cable SFF-8087 > SFF-8087 | ChenYang SFF-8087 to Mini SAS 36 Pin SFF-8087 Internal Data Cable 0.6m | 9.25 | https://www.amazon.com/-/en/ChenYang-SFF-8087-Mini-Internal-Cable/dp/B00S6GRAB2 |
| 20 Pin USB 3.0 internal > USB 2.0 Pins | Delock USB 3.0 pin header 19 pin female > USB 2.0 8 pin male header | 3.70 | https://www.delock.com/produkt/83095/merkmale.html?setLanguage=en |
| Molex P4 > LP4 | GOOBAY 51362 Molex 4 Pin Stecker > P4 Pin Stecker, 16 cm | 1.30 | https://www.reichelt.com/ch/de/molex-4-pin-stecker-p4-pin-stecker-16-cm-goobay-51362-p314577.html |
| Total | 2’760.85 |
Prices are actual prices found online. However, please note that they may change over time. Nevertheless the total price will likely be below CHF / EUR / USD 3’000.
Assembly
There is a separate illustrated page that shows how to assemble a NeoJB2U server step by step which usually takes less than two hours of work.
Operating System
We are using Linux for our servers (Debian in our case) as it is not only very powerful and rock steady but also free at the same time. Of course the NeoJB2U hardware also allows you to run any other x64 compatible OSs like Windows for example and even makes it possible to run one of the pre-cooked storage server environments with a nice and easy to use user interface. In this case you will have to figure out the installation, setup and monitoring of your software environment yourself.
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