What to do with 2 Poweredge 1950 servers?

[matt91]

My wife's IT company has a bunch of 4-5 year old Dell Poweredge servers. They tried to sell them, but no one wanted them. They then let the employees take their pick, and so I grabbed two.

They are both Poweredge 1950's - dual quad-core Xenon @ 2Ghz. One has 16GB RAM, the other 32GB. Both have the Dell server RAID card.

The question is now what to do with them....

I currently run a headless Sage server on WinXP. I have 2 HDHRs and a single internal Hauppauge card (150? 250?) tuning a STB via USB-UIRT. All my recording drives are currently local to my Sage box.

I also have another WinXP computer that runs my HomeSeer and Squeezebox software (and that I also use for www surfing, photo organization, etc.)

I figured that I might be able to combine these tasks into one of the Poweredge servers - Sage + HomeSeer + Squeezebox.

I had a Windows 8 demo disk that I was able to install successfully (after a failed WinXP x64 try) so I have an operational Operating System. I had contemplated running a linux flavor of some sort, but my lack of a sage linux license - and general unfamiliarity with linux - scared me away.

Perhaps I'll turn my current Sage box into a NAS and record from the server via UNC to the NAS.

Anyway - any thoughts from anyone one what to do here? Any use for the second rig? (I'm just trying to not miss an obvious "gotcha" or, conversely, lose out on some cool functionality.)

Thanks
Matt

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by matt91

My wife's IT company has a bunch of 4-5 year old Dell Poweredge servers. They tried to sell them, but no one wanted them. They then let the employees take their pick, and so I grabbed two.

They are both Poweredge 1950's - dual quad-core Xenon @ 2Ghz. One has 16GB RAM, the other 32GB. Both have the Dell server RAID card.

The question is now what to do with them....

I currently run a headless Sage server on WinXP. I have 2 HDHRs and a single internal Hauppauge card (150? 250?) tuning a STB via USB-UIRT. All my recording drives are currently local to my Sage box.

I also have another WinXP computer that runs my HomeSeer and Squeezebox software (and that I also use for www surfing, photo organization, etc.)

I figured that I might be able to combine these tasks into one of the Poweredge servers - Sage + HomeSeer + Squeezebox.

I had a Windows 8 demo disk that I was able to install successfully (after a failed WinXP x64 try) so I have an operational Operating System. I had contemplated running a linux flavor of some sort, but my lack of a sage linux license - and general unfamiliarity with linux - scared me away.

Perhaps I'll turn my current Sage box into a NAS and record from the server via UNC to the NAS.

Anyway - any thoughts from anyone one what to do here? Any use for the second rig? (I'm just trying to not miss an obvious "gotcha" or, conversely, lose out on some cool functionality.)

Thanks
Matt

If nothing else, they will make excellent space heaters. Seriously, as nice as those are build quality wise, I'm not sure I could find a use for them in a home environment. They draw a ton of power, have very limited storage capability (I think they only have 2 bays, which is silly when this likely have a really nice PERC 5i or 6i controller in them). No real expansion potential, etc. They are meant to be a heavy processing node, attached to a SAN for storage/database duties - on their own they are just a really powerful processor, without much else (and really, their processor's aren't that great compared to a modern i7).

best bet, in the end, is to be patient and unload them on ebay. There are a lot of them going through there, many auctions ending in no sale, but the few that do sell, are running about $500-$700/unit, then buy something more appropriate for your use.

[matt91]

True. Which, I imagine, explains why no one else wanted them!

But, they are free...so i wanted to at least explore my options.

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by matt91

True. Which, I imagine, explains why no one else wanted them!

But, they are free...so i wanted to at least explore my options.

Hey, I'm all for grabbing free stuff when you can get it, but remember, if you don't have a direct need for it, it's just wasted - better to sell it, even at a decently below market value, and get something you DO have a need/want for.

[tmiranda]

At one point I had a 1950 setup as my Sage server. I generally agree with Fuzzy, the beast is power hungry, hot, and difficult to expand. I suggest you sell it to somebody you do not like

[Fuzzy]

Originally Posted by tmiranda

At one point I had a 1950 setup as my Sage server. I generally agree with Fuzzy, the beast is power hungry, hot, and difficult to expand. I suggest you sell it to somebody you do not like

well, I never said they were bad for what they are. I run a couple at work for our building management systems. But for media, they just don't have the data capabilities needed.

[osx-addict]

Yeah.. What Fuzzy & crew said.. I've got 5 (yep - 5) HP Proliant servers at home -- 4 are spares and one live.. The live machine is great in the feature set -- all hot-swappable hardware -- redundant power supplies, RAID with battery backup -- you name it.. However, it cost me somewhere in the $40-$45/mo to run the damn thing in power alone based on some WAG figures I did a while back.. The 450W PSU just eats power constantly regardless of what it is doing!

Needless to say I do NOT run them anymore and save me $$ for something else!

[farscapesg1]

My company was getting rid of some old server hardware and I picked up a 2950 and 1950 thinking the same thing... hey, free gear.

Unfortunately, after getting them home I realized that what I thought was loud in a datacenter was 10 times worse in a home office... not to mention the extra heat they generated as well as the power they sucked up.

My original plan was to use them as ESXi boxes to learn VMWare, but I ended up taking them back and letting them go to the scrap company. Just wasn't worth the hassle to try to use them, and since the company was nice enough to let me take them home for "testing\training" purposes I didn't feel right selling them to make a buck.

If you really want to keep them and use them, look into the free VMWare ESXi version, or similar software. WIth 8 cores and 16-32 GB RAM you could run multiple virtual systems on one box. With HDHR's (and the Prime) being network based, you can even virtualize the SageTV "server" if you decide to set up a seperate NAS.