Got a free server, not sure what to do with it.

[beyoku]

Long story made short:

My firm "ATE" another smaller firm which had a one man IT staff, 2 small slow servers and a fast one. After we ate them we decided to recycle their equipment INCLUDING the fast server, finally pulling the plug on their stuff after a year.. MY firm said i could have it!

It's one of these slightly different specs:
http://www.scsistuff-store.com/servlet/the-9212/DELL-PowerEdge-2950-III/Detail

Dual (2) Quad Core Intel® Xeon® E5405
12 MB 2 x 6 Mb Cache
2.00 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB
4 GB PC2-5300F 677 MHz
(6)Internal Hard Drive: 300 Gb 10K 3.5" SAS
2003 server license.

Other than selling on eBay for around 2k what would be some cool projects i could do with it. Is there anyone familiar with how much a machine like this would raise my electric bill running 24/7 for a month? What would you guy do with it? I have owned a domain name for the last 10 years and could pop up a real site but i dont know if its worth the electricity.

...and no I wont give them to you. Although i may take the slower ones {HP ProLiant ML570 G3} and pass them off to a local non-profit.

Any suggestions (as well as indications relative difficulty) are welcomed.
about me:
I am familiar with 2003 server, and active directory etc. studied for mcp but never taken, studied cisco in 1999 failed CCNA. So I am not a totally newb, I only console game. Willing to learn.

Thanks

 

[RebateMonger]

I'd do what I did when I won a brand-new HP server a couple of years ago. Sell it.

If you want a cheap Server 2003 license and want to host web sites or make a file server, buy a $100 Windows Home Server license and put it on a Atom motherboard with 2 GB of memory and a 1- or 2-Terabyte disk. It'll burn very little power and be dead quiet

If you want to learn Active Directory, download the six-month Trial of Windows Server 2008. There are various virtualization options you might consider if you don't have spare hardware to install it on. You can even buy a $50 VT-enabled CPU for your Windows Home Server, virtualize the Home Server, and virtualize the Server 2008. You'll want 4 GB of memory to do that.

 

[beyoku]

I'd do what I did when I won a brand-new HP server a couple of years ago. Sell it.

If you want a cheap Server 2003 license and want to host web sites or make a file server, buy a $100 Windows Home Server license and put it on a Atom motherboard with 2 GB of memory and a 1- or 2-Terabyte disk. It'll burn very little power and be dead quiet

If you want to learn Active Directory, download the six-month Trial of Windows Server 2008. There are various virtualization options you might consider if you don't have spare hardware to install it on. You can even buy a $50 VT-enabled CPU for your Windows Home Server, virtualize the Home Server, and virtualize the Server 2008. You'll want 4 GB of memory to do that.

yeah you make the classic point. This thing is overkill for anything that i would want to do that is Practical in my own home. How/What did you win and where/how much did you sell it for?

 

[RebateMonger]

Mine was a brand-new $1800 HP server with some SAS disks that I had no need for. I asked around, couldn't find anybody local who needed it, so I eBayed it. I sold the two disks individually and the server separately.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

Long story made short:

My firm "ATE" another smaller firm which had a one man IT staff, 2 small slow servers and a fast one. After we ate them we decided to recycle their equipment INCLUDING the fast server, finally pulling the plug on their stuff after a year.. MY firm said i could have it!

It's one of these slightly different specs:
http://www.scsistuff-store.com/servlet/the-9212/DELL-PowerEdge-2950-III/Detail

Dual (2) Quad Core Intel® Xeon® E5405
12 MB 2 x 6 Mb Cache
2.00 GHz, 1333 MHz FSB
4 GB PC2-5300F 677 MHz
(6)Internal Hard Drive: 300 Gb 10K 3.5" SAS
2003 server license.

You can do a ton of stuff with it, but it will be loud and probably generate a lot of heat. I ran a Proliant 1600 in my home 24/7 for several years and before that, an IBM behemoth of some nature (maybe a PC Server 520). They were very loud and warmed the room nicely, but when it was time to upgrade, I decided to build one from scratch so I could reduce the noise and heat.

I'm with RebateMonger. Sell it and build something else.

 

[mfenn]

EBAY. You do NOT want a rackmount server in your house. It will be nothing but a giant headache (and wallet-ache).

 

[Trizik]

lucky dog!

i am shopping around for a server very similar to this

 

[Red Squirrel]

Damn, too bad those are SAS drives. Maybe it supports sata too? I would look into that. That's still 6 bays, which is not bad for a file server if you can put in some 2TB drives. Hopefully they would be compatible though... not sure if dell locks you in to buy only THEIR expensive low capacity drives or if standard drives work too.

That does look like a fairly newish server so you're lucky you get to keep it. I'm guessing you meant GB and not MB as far as ram goes. That would make a nice ESXi box come to think of it.

 

[Soundmanred]

I'm guessing you meant GB and not MB as far as ram goes.

The RAM is listed as 4 GB.
The cache is listed as 12 MB (2 x 6)
Both are correct as far as specs go.
It amazes me you have a job working with computers.

 

[RebateMonger]

The RAM is listed as 4 GB.
The cache is listed as 12 MB (2 x 6)
Both are correct as far as specs go.
It amazes me you have a job working with computers.

Did RedSquirrel write something that insulted you? If so, I didn't see it.

 

[beyoku]

Damn, too bad those are SAS drives. Maybe it supports sata too? I would look into that. That's still 6 bays, which is not bad for a file server if you can put in some 2TB drives. Hopefully they would be compatible though... not sure if dell locks you in to buy only THEIR expensive low capacity drives or if standard drives work too.

That does look like a fairly newish server so you're lucky you get to keep it. I'm guessing you meant GB and not MB as far as ram goes. That would make a nice ESXi box come to think of it.

Not too bad at all, because the drives are already there. 300gig x 6 Drives = 1.8 TB o' space.
BTW i Do have a "house" house and not an apartment. I would keep it downstairs in one of those "under the stairs" storage rooms, heat nor sound would matter. Hmm i am kind of torn now, i really dont want to sell it because it gives me the opportunity to own and use something that i would like but never otherwise actually BUY.

Anyone familiar with applications to wipe the data on this? Before i have used apps that just do a "Zero fill", is that appropriate for a machine like this?

 

[Soundmanred]

The RAM is listed as 4 GB.
The cache is listed as 12 MB (2 x 6)
Both are correct as far as specs go.
It amazes me you have a job working with computers.

Did RedSquirrel write something that insulted you? If so, I didn't see it.

No, he's just wrong every time he posts, even about computers which is his job.

 

[boostcraver]

Don't think twice about this:

Sell it. Sell it as fast as possible before it devalues any more. Sell all three in fact. Securely wipe the hard drives first using dban (www.dban.org)

That is a nice server and would probably yield over a grand if it is a Dell 2950. If it is some generic, maybe not as much.

Rackmount servers are not worth the noise. Even under the stairs you will probably hear it. Power will probably be another $30 a month at least. You can do anything you would want to do with that machine using a virtual environment with virtualbox.

HTH,

boostcraver

 

[rudder]

Sell it and use the money to buy a much cheaper, quieter, less power hungry windows home server. Use the rest of the money to buy a TV and HTPC box.

 

[gramboh]

Sell immediately unless you are going to use the processing and transaction (HD) power for something specific. General tinkering/file server it's hugely overpowered and as said by others, heat and electricity will be an issue.

Since it's already used just play with it for a week during the auction to get the cool new toy feelings taken care of

 

[mmntech]

I was going to suggest using it for a home media server/file server. Then I saw the dual Xeons. 80w TDP times two. That thing will suck up a ton of electricity. SAS will also be a problem.

I'd sell it. Some small business would love something like this. Then use the money to get something useful.

 

[RebateMonger]

Assuming mmntech's power numbers are roughly correct, let's say this draws at least 150 Watts. I'm probably way low on this because those SAS disks are going to burn a lot of power. If we assume the lowest possible value, 150 Watts:

Power consumption = 0.15 KWH per hour = 3.6 KWH per day x $0.10 per KWH

$0.36 a day or $11 a month or $130 a year

An Atom-based server wil be around 40 Watts, or around $30 a year.

The amounts and the difference wil be higher if you pay more than 10 cents a KiloWattHour for electricity. If you live in a cold climate, your "real" cost could be lower. If you live in a warn climate, your "real" cost could be higher.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Someone mentions 6 10k SAS drives and Rubycon is not around?

"yes, you are in the twilight zone" do do do do do do do do ...

 

[Davidh373]

I'll take the two Xeons, the ram, and motherboard if you're feeling generous lol . If you use any 3D apps, Photoshop, Ect. those are REALLY AWESOME! and you could cannibalize a lot of it to build a workstation. actually with all the parts you could probably build a hefty comp with $400. You are a lucky man. As far as gaming goes those Xeons are equivalent to a Core 2 Quad (per processor, I believe). If you wanted, you could buy a relatively new card, and a cheap disk drive and you would be gaming like a maniac. Of course that thing would probably have like a 800W PSU, with an extra there for redundancy. You may want to consider selling off a few parts and getting a few things for a more efficient machine.

If you don't want (or need) that much of a beast, I agree with most everyone else. Rack mounted servers are really loud and will probably double your electric bill. If you aren't tech savoy enough to pull it apart, sell it. Take the $3000 and you can build a home/ web server and a giant gaming rig with all the frills attached, or pocket the money and build a $500 home server to mess with web hosting and file sharing.

 

[GprophetB]

SELL IT (no trust me sell it, if you want to do a project that involves a server you can sell the one you have, buy something else that fits the job better and still pocket several hundred dollars)

 

[Red Squirrel]

The RAM is listed as 4 GB.
The cache is listed as 12 MB (2 x 6)
Both are correct as far as specs go.
It amazes me you have a job working with computers.

4GB is very low for a server, I assumed it was a typo. Our servers at work have 32GB+. 12GB is like bare minimum for a server these days.

If he can't get more ram for it cheaply then it may be useless for the stuff I suggested. He could always collocate it though and it would make a decent web server and you don't need that much ram for that unless you host other people's sites too.