I am a newbie with server builds. Can you share an Ebay or Amazon link that can be a good/cheap starting point? Also, will these servers contain everything I need to get up and running (with the exception of hard drives, of course)?
With drive bays you'll see: SFF (small form factors, ie 2.5" drives) and LFF (3.5")
Usually written like "12 LFF" for say a server that can hold 12 3.5" drives.
Look out for if it comes with drive trays for the bays or not. They're usually surprisingly cheap because there's a bazillion of them out there but it could be $5-$20 each.
Then there's SAS / Raid controller stuff you need to look out for in regards to compatibility with your configuration.
For example if you're going to run TrueNAS (or whatever it's called nowadays) you'll want to search "XXXXX controller TrueNas compatibility" to stumble upon a thread or some hardware list to hear what people have to say. There actually aren't too many models, or they're clones of each other with a Dell or HP branding label on it, so you're bound to find some stuff, for mainstream stuff sold on ebay anyway.
The hardware will typically be at least power-on tested, which for this kind of equipment is usually good enough, but beyond that your experience will vary.
There will be typical gremlin stuff like an unseated cable which will throw errors and have you wondering if it's a bad drive, or bad install, or whatever... but I think if you're building your own and bringing older gear back to life, you won't be able to avoid that unless you're buying a pre-packaged NAS box.
Thanks for the detailed writeup, much appreciated!
Another thing I'd like your opinion on is this: my use cases involve running a few services at home (NAS, Nextcloud, Jellyfin, Photoprism etc.) and store "family" data (documents, pictures etc.) but nothing "data hoarder" level. So, 4 TB would easily last us a decade or more.
Do you think such enterprises servers make sense for me? (Noise, complexity etc.) Or should I just get a used desktop/laptop?
You could get away with whatever machine you have lying around with enough space that does differential back ups to an external (or with something hosted somewhere else over the internet).
Well, I don’t have any machine lying around. (I do have an RPi which is acting as my home server today. But it’s only 2GB and that’s why I am trying to replace it.)
So, my options are to buy old desktop, old enterprise server or build a new desktop. The first two are similar price points on eBay, but I am not sure about the noise and power tradeoffs between the two.
Like, if a 1U server is to noisy and power-consuming compared to the desktop, probably not a good choice for my case.
I am a newbie with server builds. Can you share an Ebay or Amazon link that can be a good/cheap starting point? Also, will these servers contain everything I need to get up and running (with the exception of hard drives, of course)?