EMC Isilon NL108

[Zach Messaglia]

I found a EMC isilon NL108 (http://www.ndm.net/isilonstore/storage/isilon-108nl) with two 4C8T L5600 series CPUs and no drives, for $250. It has been in a data center for two years and has been pulled from production a month ago. I am unfamiliar with the EMC isilon brand, can I use this single server and run freenas on it? I am looking for a storage solution that will be located at home and one that my family can use to backup their computers. Should I go for this server or keep looking?

 

[BigDave]

The CPU is socket 1366 and therefore the motherboard is going to run a Front Side Bus interface.
Read about the Front Side Bus bottleneck here.

I'd keep looking...

 

[Ericloewe]

The CPU is socket 1366 and therefore the motherboard is going to run a Front Side Bus interface.

LGA1366 CPUs do not have a front side bus. LGA1366 is Nehalem and its die shrink.

They're the oldest usable processors, but full support for bhyve is not universal on that platform.

 

[Stux]

Need Westmere (nehalem die shrink) for bhyve

Luckily, westmere xeons are cheap on eBay (because they suck down the watts)