[Rdo-list] Cheap, quiet hardware for a small RDO installation?

[Steven Hardy]

On Tue, Dec 02, 2014 at 10:39:03AM -0500, Dave Neary wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm looking for ideas of mini PCs I can use for a small RDO cloud -
> looking at maybe 3 shuttle PCs, each with "enough" disk (maybe 800GB
> total storage) and RAM (8GB per PC enough?). Also, I'm wondering if 2
> NICs is reasonable to ask for. My desired price point is *low* - all 3
> for under $1000 would be ideal, failing that, as close to it as possible.

I've got an HP microserver (which have already been mentioned), and they're
good if multiple drive bays is a requirement.  Not especially quiet with
multiple disks in it though (depends on your definition of quiet).

Also the small form-factor desktops (I have a Dell Optiplex 7010) are good,
they support up to 16G RAM, works well for a pre-built solution.

If I were doing this now though, I'd be tempted to look at the Intel NUC
boxes - they can only take one internal disk but are quite cheap and can
take up to 16G RAM in some models.  Very small too.

Personally, I'd view 8G as the bare minimum, so the option to expand to (at
least) 16G is probably a good idea, even if you don't fit that much
initially.

Steve