Looking for server use ideas. Any suggestions?

[Brad1976]

Hey everyone!

I hope I'm posting this in the right area. Please feel free to move it if not.. While not specifically a "FreeNAS" question, but as FreeNAS is my first server OS I've played with and there are no better group of smarts I can think of that would be better to ask then you guys! :D

So recently I bought a 42U IBM rack, for only $200 (Canadian, so like perhaps $5 for the rest of you guys... lol) When I went to pick it up, little did a I know that it also came with all the hardware that was in it!!! Unfortunately, the hardware is all really old. But hey, free hardware!!! lol

I'm curious if anyone can think of any uses for the following. I made each name a link to the specs as I could find online. I will also confess that given the schedule I have to play with my computing "hobby", I haven't had the opportunity to fire anything up to see if it all works or not. But, depending on if there's any use for any of it, other than what I'm thinking of already, I might be able to save time just by throwing it out... (I will also mention that as I know none of this stuff will be "power efficient", quite frankly I don't really care... I'm a Resident Building Manager and my hydro bill is paid for by the company as part of my jobs compensation package!) :)

Item 1: Sunfire X2100 1U M2. Not 100% sure of the CPU that's in there, but I do know it only has 500Gb of RAM installed at the moment. I can however upgrade to 8Gb RAM for a little over $100. I was thinking of possibly dedicating this as a firewall using pfSense between the outside world and my LAN and since there's two drive bays, having them mirrored with two small drives.

Item 2: Dell Poweredge 6850. I'm not sure what they are, but this has 4 CPU's already installed. Also uses DDR2 ram and will need an upgrade as not all slots within the two modules are populated. I am kind of hoping that I might be able to use the CPU power of this as a dedicated Plex Server, keeping my storage on my existing FreeNAS server (specs in my sig below) and config a 10Gb point to point between the two servers. But, I'm not sure if this 6850 would even remotely be up to the task to put it into production. Perhaps just use it as a non-production test server so I can play around with things and experiment? (Please keep in mind that I'm a humble hobbyist *polishing halo* lol)

Item 3: Dell Poweredge 2800 x 2 (Yes, there's two of them...) Both have 8 SCSI bays. Haven't had the opportunity to even open them up yet. While the company I bought them from literally drilled through all the hard drives that were in the servers, I do have access to buy about 15 x 300Gb SCSI drives from someone about an hours drive away for only $17 each... Other than some very power hungry data storage, not really sure what to do with these ones...

Item 4: Dell 1U KVM: Hopefully it will still work, as it slid off the top of the pile of kit in my truck on my way back when some dirty sphincter slammed on the breaks to run at the last second and no turn signal... Yes, it WAS a BMW, but that's another forum thread!!! lol

Item 5: APC Smart-UPS: Model number DLA3000RM2U. 3000VA 2700W USB RM 2U. Will probably need new batteries though.

Item 6: Another APC Smart-UPS: Model number DLA3000RMT2U. (Not really a lot of "specs" available online for this one, but will probably need new batteries for this as well.

Item 7: IBM TotalStorage Ultrium Tape Library 3582 Model L23. (Obviously this is pure backup... lol) Again, no idea if it works, if it will even have a use or what... Once I start playing around with the kit, perhaps I'll take a look around online in order to see if there are any tapes available and perhaps backup my non-Plex data on it or something...

Anyways... Open to hearing what anyone out there may be able to come up with as I know these are VERY old servers... Hopefully I'll be able to answer any questions as soon as possible, but life as a live-in building manager is always crazy and each day is a constant game of wack-a-mole... (Too bad I can't use the same hammer on some of the tenants..... lmao)

 

[Heracles]

Hey Brad,

Honestly, I would not use much of that. It is WAY too old for the kind of stuff I do. ESXi will not run any decent version on that hardware and ESXi is a big part of any lab in my opinion. There is nothing to do with a server running on 512 Megs of RAM (your Sunfire) and that one is probable a Sparc CPU.

As for the rest, my colleague just bought a used server for about 500$ CAN. It is 2x 8 core and 96G of RAM. It is an HP Proliant DL380. An old one, but still by itself maybe 4 time more powerful than all of your stuff merged in a cluster.

When I saw his deal, I asked the guy for a more powerful server. I ended up with an R820 32 core, 256G of RAM and 8 SAS drives (10K 300G), all for about 2 500$.

The only thing I can figure would be to install a Linux host on each of them and use Docker instead of ESXi. Pop your containers here and there, deploy new services, do some clustering but at the end, even that I would rather do in a more decent server...

Still, have fun with your free stuff,

 

[flyingpengwin]

To add to Heracles comment, the issue is that free computers are "free" to run. Playing around with them just to play around is fine. But the issue comes when you try to actually deploy them as a solution. Their effectiveness vs power consumption will start to cause them to just not be cost effective. Why spend $50-100 a month in power to run all of those when if you saved up that money a few moths later, you could buy something much more modern?
Personally, I struggle with this because I hate generating e-waste, but at some point it just gets so outdated that the cost of running it vs buying something new doesn't make sense.
I would try using this hardware more as a test for things you "might" want. Like you mentioned, pfsense and PLEX. And see if those are things you are actually interested in having, then purchasing newer hardware for that use. That way, you will be able to spend exactly the amount you need too, to get all the features you will need.

GL

 

[Brad1976]

Thanks guys!!!

Heracles, until such time that I am able to get a dedicated Plex server, I don't want to use any virtualization. My understanding is that when using virtualization, each vm grabs a hold of X CPU cores and doesn't let go of them until the vm is destroyed. Whereas when using the iocage jails, each jail will use and release cores as required. As such, whenever I do get the opportunity (which likely won't be until some time in Oct of Nov at the earliest) I think I will play around with these servers just for the simple fun of it... It'll be nice to be able to play around and gain a little experience on something with multiple CPU's and rack mounted and gradually get other used servers that are much better to put into production...

Thanks again for the input from both of you though!!! Pretty much 100% confirmed exactly what I was thinking... Not quite what I *wanted* to hear, but it is what I *needed* to hear... lol :)

 

[Heracles]

Hey Brad,

My understanding is that when using virtualization, each vm grabs a hold of X CPU cores and doesn't let go of them until the vm is destroyed.

Well, that is not at all how it works... Usually, you can do over commit in ESXi up to 3 for 1 without any concern. That is, to allocate 3 times as many CPU as you have to your VMs. ESXi will rotate the resources between the VMs as they need. Do not give too much CPU for no reason but do not fear to overcommit CPU either. You will know that you went too much when your VMs will start having higher percentage of CPU Ready. CPU Ready is the time the VM is waiting for having its CPU ready and so, for it to run. Most of the time, CPU Ready will be below 1%. You will be short in RAM way before being short in CPU.

Should you end up with a multi-socket server, you will have to learn about NUMA and how to optimize your VMs accordingly. But as long as you have a single socket, no matter how many cores in it or HyperThreading or not, you can overcommit CPU without risk. It is actually one of the very purpose of virtualization. Most systems are sleeping most of the time, so to dedicate CPU on a permanent basis is a pure waste.

Have fun playing with your lab,