Basically what it says in the title. I did a lot of searching in Internet. I think small form factor computers are mt best bet. But I still feel they are costly for my purpose.
I am going to be running some ansible playbooks periodically on the machine. SBCs i looked at either had very high specs for this use case and thus higher price or they had other fratures i dont want like - wifi, graphics card etc.
I am preferring enterprise hardware because this would eventually be used in business where people will not settle for anything less.
You’re going to need to be more specific about your use case, because if you say “enterprise grade” I’m going to say “poweredge”, and those are not at all small.
I know. I felt while writing the post that this feels wrong writing those words in same sentence. The scenario is that we would deploy the hardware on customer premises so it has to be supported and very reliable(hence enterprise grade). But i personally think that all enterprise grade hardware is way overkill for running ansible playbooks. So was trying to see if there is an intersection point between these opposite requirements.
Maybe “industrial PC” is the category you should be looking at.
Two things you need to answer to get any relevant answers. What is the budget and what is your required spec and software stack.
Budget is not an issue actually. This is going to be deployed for customers but i want to it to be as cheap aspossible to get them maximum value for their money. Software stack is going to be minimal. Probably alpine linux or ubuntu server. Spec wise i think even an i3 level cpu is fine. Ram 8gb, hard disk 256 gb ssd should be more than enough. Dont require any fancy wireless stuff like wifi and Bluetooth.
Deployment is probably more important than hardware for enterprise one-off machines.
Raspberry pis are plenty reliable, though maybe you could opt for something with a case, an N100 and a more reliable SSD, for a similar price.
Your use case sounds like something a nuc or sff from minisforum could handle, but if you want “cheap” and “small enterprise,” both ambiguous terms, the supermicro superservers should fit the bill.
Having run a few SuperMircos in an enterprise they do fit this bill nicely. If one dies you have at least one or two to pull
Thanks. Will take a look.
Does it need to be replaceable or upgradable?
I personally used hardware from Pine64 but its not for everyone. You also could go with an Android tablet
Not really. Just has to run till at least 5years at least. Since this will be deployed at customer site, pine64 and android both are not feasible. Thanks for the suggestion though.
Bought many on my last job:
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_ssn=savemyserver&store_name=savemyserver&_oac=1
These guys are the bomb.
Just grab a cheap server off ebay
So this will be deployed for customer sites. I dont think they will be happy with second hand stuff from ebay 😀 For my personal stuff i would have been happy with that though.
In that case just go with a cloud service provider
I have a stack of HP Gen 8 servers in the lab that I got off of ebay, for cheap. Cause they’re G8s…and not 10/11 :)
I have one in the lab at office. Were abt to be thrown out. Nursed it back to life somehow. Good to play around plus company foots the electricity bill so win-win.
I wouldn’t at home. Enterprise hardware requires enterprise cooling and rack mount systems are loud.
Agreed. This is for customer site. At home i would do the same thing on a PI.
You can basically get rack mount level performance from:
- Supermicro SuperWorkstation Tower Servers
- Lenovo Thinkstation P Series Server Towers
- HPE ML series Tower Servers
- Dell Precision Tower Workstations
In your situation, I’d be looking at ebay, serversupply, or other used hardware resalers that offer 2 generations back hardware. Used DDR4 based systems are abundant and cheap enough, go that route.
Thanks for these suggestions. Will look into them. Hopefully they are still manufactured and supported by the vendors.
Both Supermicro and HPE have the longest support of their products than the others.
