[AFMUG] New Server Hardware

[Nate Burke]

I'm going to need to bring online a couple new servers (OS Instances) in 
the next month or 2.  They could probably be housed inside a single 
physical machine as VM's.  It's been a while since I've had to pickup 
new server hardware.  What's a good spec now for a machine to do VM's.  
Are NAS prices cheap enough now that you'd go with external storage, or 
just have a single physical machine with internal HDD's.  Hardware NAS, 
or another machine running linux and ZFS?  With external Storage, does 
it all have to be 10G networking to prevent bottlenecks?  About 6 years 
ago I put in a single standalone server running VMWare, but it's out of 
resources to add new VM's to it.

It looks like Newegg has lots of Refurb Dell and HP servers (with no 
HDD's) for cheap.  DL380G5 ~$100.  I'd like to stay in the $2k-$3k range 
for this project.  Or is hosting your own hardware not even worth it 
anymore?  Just go get a server from 1and1 for $5/mo setup a VPN back to 
the network and be done?