

Ask HN: What's your favorite small server? - IbJacked

I&#x27;m replacing an old system that resembles Frankenstein&#x27;s monster, one that I have been using as a FreeNAS server off and on for a few years.<p>I want to modernize the system, and so far my top pick is a Lenovo ThinkServer TS140 70A4001LUX which nets me a system using ECC memory and 4 drive bays (OS would boot off an internal usb connector). The drive bays are not hot-swappable, and a bit awkward, but I can live with that. All for only about $350.<p>I&#x27;m looking for a home FreeNAS box, something with ECC memory, minimum of 4 drive bays (more and hot swappable would be nice-to-haves), quiet operation, enough power to transcode video on demand when using Plex media server.<p>What are your favorites?
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Aheinemann
HP N54L.

4x 3.5" internal drive-bays with trays (no hot-swap), 1 External 5.25" bay, 1
internal 3.5" bay, 2 PCI-E, 8 GByte ECC, takes 4 TB drives, 6 external USB2, 1
external E-Sata, 1 GB/s NIC. There is an HP-ILO Card for out-of-band servive -
access to bios, power down. 1 internal usb (could boot OS from USB...)

excellent VPN / and storage server (VPN ~ 340 MBit/s AES 256 throughput) (put
VPN Server in virtual machine)

mini-server ist suff. powerful to run data server at high speed. 5x4 TB raw ~
16 TByte Raid 5 storage size, 1 additional external hot spare possible.

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IbJacked
There seems to be a lot of love for these things. It's hard to give up the
4-core xeon and the lower price of the TS140, definitely food for thought.
Thanks!

Edit: Based on the reviews, it looks like it has previously been on sale for
as little as $229 after rebates, which would make it a much easier choice than
the current $399.

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svennek
In short... Proliant Micro Servers (the black "g7" not the silvery g8's)...

Cheap, 4 bays, ECC mem and an (optional) mangement card... but I don't know if
it is fast enough for you (probably not....)

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IbJacked
Thanks! I've seen a few comments that also mention the Proliants, people seem
pretty satisfied with them. And it might not be too slow, my current Plex
server is my 2010 MacBook Pro.

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ahazred8ta
For reference: the google results --
[http://google.com/search?q=%22small+server%22+%22hot-
swappab...](http://google.com/search?q=%22small+server%22+%22hot-swappable%22)

~~~
IbJacked
Thanks, but I was hoping to get a feel for what HN crowd might be using, to
see if there are some systems that keep coming up.

