[geeks] Cheap Dell Servers

[Sridhar Ayengar]

Lionel Peterson wrote:
>> Those cheap Dell servers that people have been picking up lately...
>> do their motherboards conform to a standard form-factor or are they
>>  something proprietary?
> 
> They look *pretty* standard, not really sure - I'll take a closer
> look tonight (my second pair of 2 Gig DIMMs arrived, so I'll be
> maxing out my "octopussy" server, and probably putting two 500 Gig
> HDs internal and rebuilding it as a Server 2008 test box, beta first,
> actual release software in early March).
> 
>> The reason why I ask is that I've found a case which has 9 (!)
>> 5.25" open drive bays in the front for less than $110 shipped.  I'd
>> love to be able to throw a few hundred dollars at the problem to
>> get a solution as beefy as an 8-core Xeon.
> 
> I wonder if you might not be better off starting with a proper MB
> (Supermicro, Tyan, etc.) and a pair of CPUs - it will aproximate the
> $800 or so the Dell server will cost you, I'd imagine...

The Dell would come with RAM, though.

>> I'm building an extensible NAS box.  I'll be able to fit up to
>> fifteen 1TB SATA drives in this thing, five at a time.
> 
> That would cost some serious coin: 8 Gig of RAM is about $400, 15
> drives at $225/each is over $3,000, add in the three 5 drive hot-swap
> trays, your adding another $300-500 to the total making it about a
> $4,500 *before* you add in the $800 for the Dell server. You are over
> $5K:

I don't need 8GB RAM (since this is not going to have that much load -- 
it's for my own personal use), and I'm starting with only one hot-swap 
cage and five drives (because 4TB is enough for my immediate needs). 
The rest of the drives will come later, five at a time, as my storage 
needs increase.  The machine is going to come in under $3000.  Very 
possibly under $2500.

> Supermicro MB:
> http://supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon1333/5100/X7DCL-i.cfm
> 
> about $320: 
> http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?p=MB-X7DCLI&c=fr&pid=1ceaeec311f7a28640770e3bcc168597b845b8a3a35542f7cc261c6709b69038

I've had good luck with Supermicro in the past, but I need PCI-X because 
PCI-Express SATA RAID cards of a sufficiently large configuration are 
expensive and not well supported.

> CPUs are $280/each: 
> http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117127
> 
> So for the same $800 you would get a much better MB, choice of CPUs
> and wouldn't have a scrap server to sit around...

I'll have to look into that.

Peace...  Sridhar