Need 32TB+ usable storage — auction server or build my own?

I'm late to this but has anyone mentioned the IPMI/BMC situation on auction servers?

My Contabo R730 came with iDRAC 8 Express. No remote console without Enterprise license, which Dell doesn't sell anymore for these. So "IPMI included" is technically true but functionally useless for remote recovery. I had to drive to Nuremberg once when the boot pool got stuck.

Verify what you're actually getting before you count on remote management.

This is a huge gotcha. Dell killed iDRAC Enterprise licenses for 12th/13th gen. EBay keys are hit or miss, often already burned. HP iLO is slightly better but Gen8/Gen9 Advanced licenses are climbing in price.

Supermicro is the winner here: IPMI is full-featured on basically everything, no license games. But their auction availability is lower.

For colo, remote console is non-negotiable. For home, you can walk downstairs. Another point for home if you're on a budget.

So where did we land? Reading back:

• Auction server: cheap upfront, 150-180W idle, license/remote management risks, used drive lottery
• Home whitebox: efficient, quiet possible, you eat power/heat/noise, no remote hands
• Colo whitebox: efficient, remote hands, monthly cost forever, bandwidth fine print matters
• Hybrid/Synology: less capacity hot, cloud cold tier, simpler

For 32TB usable with "mostly replaceable" data and one local backup, any of these work. The real differentiator is whether you can tolerate the noise and whether you have cheap local power.

Denver at $0.13/kWh is pretty good. I'm in California at $0.32 and colo pays for itself in year 1.

Thanks all, this has been genuinely helpful. Summary of where I'm leaning:

• Auction server is out. The iDRAC license issue deer_goat raised is a dealbreaker for anything I'd want to manage remotely, and I'm not driving to a datacenter for console.
• Colo is closer than I thought. At Denver power rates, the gap is only ~$50/mo vs home. But OVHcloud's bandwidth cap dhifiwoot mentioned is annoying, and I do push multi-TB backups.
• Home whitebox with efficient build is winning. Ryzen 5600, B550, 64GB, 8x 8TB in Define 7 XL. ~70W idle, $12/mo power, my own network, no bandwidth games.

I'll keep the external 8TB for real backup, look at Backblaze B2 for offsite of the irreplaceable subset (~2TB), and accept that "Linux ISOs" can be reacquired.

One more question: anyone running ZFS on Linux with ZoL on a B550 chipset? Any issues with ECC support on Ryzen 5000 + Pro boards?

Non-Pro Ryzen 5000 "supports" ECC but it's motherboard-dependent. B550A Pro from MSI: yes, confirmed working, but only with UDIMM ECC, not RDIMM. The board validates ECC on boot but doesn't log corrected errors to Linux EDAC on all BIOS versions. Check the specific board revision.

ZoL itself doesn't care about ECC. It cares about RAM integrity, which ECC helps with. Without ECC, ZFS detects corruption but can't prevent it from bad RAM. For home use with replaceable data, non-ECC is fine. For the 2TB irreplaceable subset, consider ECC or at least monthly scrubs and a second local copy.

Also: Define 7 XL fits 18 drives with add-on cages. You have room to grow beyond 8.