[mythtv-users] Small backend server with IPMI (remote virtual console access)?

[Scott Knight]

on 7/16/2013 4:23 PM Tom Harris carved the following into a picnic table:
> So, I'm wondering if anyone has suggestions for IPMI enabled servers 
> suitable for MythTV.   My preference is to go as small as possible. 
>  My current backend is an Atom/Ion system with a couple USB drives. 
>  The candidates I've located thus far are: 

<snip>

> 2. Supermicro SYS-5015A 1U Atom server.  Excellent option, low power 
> Atom-based.  But, it's a rack mount form factor.  So it's probably 
> loud and it's larger than what I want.

I have never been happier with my servers since I built them out with 
the bigger brother SuperMicro X9SCM-F mainboard:
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C202_C204/X9SCM-F.cfm

With a Xeon E3-2130 CPU and decent case, it is powerful, fairly low 
power consumption (for a server) and very quiet.  The IPMI is a godsend 
and I will never go back to running a server without it.  I come from a 
world of Sun (SC/iLOM/aLOM) and Dell (DRAC/iDRAC) enterprise servers and 
place the out of band access as one of the top requirements.

Fortunately, I have space for the 4U rack mount cases that have many 
large PWM fans for cooling.  I have never met a 1U server case that I 
could stand using in my house.  They are all just too loud.  If I were 
really that concerned about space, I would probably buy the raw 
mainboard and fab up some kind of open frame system for cooling. With 
external drives, you can probably just run this with a picoPSU and 
ambient passive cooling.  There are also a few A/V cases that would 
probably work quite well.  They are quite expensive, but I have always 
been partial to the HDPLEX products.

Good luck, Scott