Server prices vs Desktop prices

[toseland]

in your house the main power comes in and is then most often split into seperate circuits (imagine a T peice in a pipe sort of thing)

basically if you run a more modern fuse box, you will likely run several seperate rings, most common is one for upstairs lights, one for upstairs plugs, downstairs lights, and plugs, and sometimes there is one for the shower, oven etc.

in each of these circuits, there is an RCD, and the RCDs tend to interfere somewhat with signals running through the wires and/or put a tiny bit of interferance in the line.

hence if you are connecting between plugs on the same ring its not a problem, but if you have to go through the board, you will go through 2 RCDs as you change ring mains (for example your modem is on the downstairs ring main, and your PC or server is on the upstairs one)

[DarkInferno]

As a RCD is little more than a common mode choke with a added sense coil, It blocks the signal pretty efficiently by design.

[procta]

havent really been paying much attention to the coin mining scene but as far as i was aware it was difficult to make any money at home as most machines cost too much to power compared to what they can actually mine.

Who said anything about making money? I was just saying it could mine ALT COINS if it wasn't doing anything else.

if its just for a home use, then id just use the p4 and beef up the ram and HDDs, and bung what ever os you want on it with the programs of your choice.
what I did for my Microsoft shit, was build a Server with a basic motherboard and a graphics card, bit of ram, so it would run 2k3, bought a raid card for my 4 hdds and bunged into a full blown server ATX tower.
Ran spot on,

Ran like a beut' did she! What was yours used for?

my server was used for various roles, as I was doing windows xp and 2003 mcps at the time,
I set it up for file sharing, print sharing, active directory (domain controller) and also as a DNS server too. so it had a fare few services running, I even had the remote terminal services running too, as I had to use that for a few labs,
I had a the raid set for spanned, I used the hardware raid card for that too.
she ran for hours with my two workstations, i used to use the server to install windows over the network. So she did her job really, really well!
A fantastic system she was! My dad thought it was a right cracker!
just powered her up, logged on, and locked the system.
She ran windows 2003 enterprise server, her hardware wasn't all that hardcore tbh, a 30 quid mother board that took a P4 processor, and 256mb of ram at the time, with two 30 gig drives, and 4 odd ball sized drives for the spanned raid, two cd roms, one a burner for practice back up. i think i even left the floppy drive in just for the crack! Done the job tbh,

[silverzx]

Today I've been given a "Primergy TX200 S4".

It's beast, weighs a ton, have no idea of the spec of hardware in it but will find out when I get home with it.

Based upon this: http://www.infrasup.com/downloads/eco/TX...8EN%29.pdf

Looks like it could be quite beast..! 2 CPU sockets, up to 24GB RAM, bla bla bla!

[Eeyore]

well if you were given it it can only be winning! Keep us posted!

[silverzx]

They are going for around £100 on eBay or £20 if you buy in bulk: www.ebay.co.uk/itm/231368795045

[procta]

Today I've been given a "Primergy TX200 S4".

It's beast, weighs a ton, have no idea of the spec of hardware in it but will find out when I get home with it.

Based upon this: http://www.infrasup.com/downloads/eco/TX...8EN%29.pdf

Looks like it could be quite beast..! 2 CPU sockets, up to 24GB RAM, bla bla bla!

looks a powerful unit, missing some of the caddies on the front sadly.
also hot swop too by the looks of it.
What OS are you going to bang in it?

[silverzx]

looks a powerful unit, missing some of the caddies on the front sadly.
also hot swop too by the looks of it.
What OS are you going to bang in it?

Mmm? They all seem to be there? Or what do you think its missing?

I was leaning toward Ubuntu server but seeing as Ubuntu server and desktop share the same Kernel I'll probably go with Ubuntu Desktop for ease of use.

However I'm not 100% sure and open to suggestions, I want it to be able to back up files via network, provide FTPS and a few other bits and bobs primarily to Windows based PC's.

[Eeyore]

well that spec is fairly terrible on that ebay link. 2x Dual Core 1.8 and 4GB of memory with no HDD for £100 :/

[silverzx]

well that spec is fairly terrible on that ebay link. 2x Dual Core 1.8 and 4GB of memory with no HDD for £100 :/

I'm hoping mines better! If not I'll stick with my miniature thing!

[Eeyore]

well that spec is fairly terrible on that ebay link. 2x Dual Core 1.8 and 4GB of memory with no HDD for £100 :/

I'm hoping mines better! If not I'll stick with my miniature thing!

yeh I hope yours is better too! D:

[silverzx]

well that spec is fairly terrible on that ebay link. 2x Dual Core 1.8 and 4GB of memory with no HDD for £100 :/

I'm hoping mines better! If not I'll stick with my miniature thing!

yeh I hope yours is better too! D:

Well I've got both so whichever is better really!

[procta]

looks a powerful unit, missing some of the caddies on the front sadly.
also hot swop too by the looks of it.
What OS are you going to bang in it?

Mmm? They all seem to be there? Or what do you think its missing?

I was leaning toward Ubuntu server but seeing as Ubuntu server and desktop share the same Kernel I'll probably go with Ubuntu Desktop for ease of use.

However I'm not 100% sure and open to suggestions, I want it to be able to back up files via network, provide FTPS and a few other bits and bobs primarily to Windows based PC's.

might be missing the blanks or then again it might be as it is, As I now some server cases are like that to keep the thing cool, with the amount of drives it has in.
Id just bung on either windows 2000 server or windows 2003, as they have the bits and pieces in. or even shove a version of Windows XP on it.
Keep it basic and simple.

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well that spec is fairly terrible on that ebay link. 2x Dual Core 1.8 and 4GB of memory with no HDD for £100 :/

tbh srowell I think your really paying for the twin CPU board.

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well that spec is fairly terrible on that ebay link. 2x Dual Core 1.8 and 4GB of memory with no HDD for £100 :/

I'm hoping mines better! If not I'll stick with my miniature thing!

mad those little things are! you could have about 6 in the space of full size tower!

[silverzx]

Mmm, Windows...

I quite like the idea of getting some Linux experience and it should get more out of the system!

I need Linux experience for my industry.

[procta]

Mmm, Windows...

I quite like the idea of getting some Linux experience and it should get more out of the system!

I need Linux experience for my industry.

reason for windows is for the support side of things, will Linux have the drivers for it etc? that's one thing you got to look at with Linux. At least with windows you have more of a chance, with support for drivers. Plus if its built for a certain windows too, your laughing!

[darrenjlobb]

Linux ftw.

After fully converting, originally to debians based stuff, but more recently rhel, I would never look back. Free, open source, solid as a rock once you get things setup / working, and so powerfull. Run it in a vitalized environment on a sun server, and its epic.

[Ruan]

mad those little things are! you could have about 6 in the space of full size tower!

Wait until you see some of Dell's newer Cloud stuff - easily get 8 servers in 4u of rack space...

[procta]

mad those little things are! you could have about 6 in the space of full size tower!

Wait until you see some of Dell's newer Cloud stuff - easily get 8 servers in 4u of rack space...

that looks like a cisco router setup that! mind dell do good systems, as the hospitals and colleges uses them.

[procta]

sorry for bring back up this old thread, but today I dragged out my server I built sometime ago. For my Microsoft stuff, fired the old girl into life ( never been powered up since 2010!) I have a few hardware faults with her, as I spent a best part of the day working on her, My psu and 2 drives maybe 3 drives are failing, a part from that she fired up into life! laugh was she was smelling a little dusty, as she was laid up, so I pulled her to bits and give it a hoover and a clean inside to kill the smell.
When I was working on her, I remembered this thread! so I took two photos of her,
she runs nothing special tbh, P4 with 512 Ram 6 HDDs, 4 on a hardware raid, two internal drives. All she was built for was for my server course, which was for windows 2003. Did the job with out a bother.
My dad came in from work and said, why don't you drop a twin processer board in her, so I have been looking for older server stuff, as the prices have dropped now since I built this. So she is getting a little bit of a rebuilt. With proper server parts ( well board) and bigger HDDs, ram and a more powerful psu, as I think the one that's in it, cannot cut the mustard with the drives. The floppy drive is staying too! As I am starting to collect old windows Operating systems, and some older software, As I am going to try and get my old Domain network going, and look into something else ( pay roll software) so I can learn.
I think these time of cases now, are like rocky horse shite now, that tells you server nuts how long a go it was!

[timpug]

I work as a Systems Engineer and the reason that kit is so cheap is because for a business they write the kit off after 3-5 years. After that point we unrack them, put replacements in, destroy hard disks, and send for recycling/discard them.

Overall good thinking though, servers are built for that kinda stuff and you are correct in saying that if you arent concerned about power/noise you are golden! Also check in the BIOS there will be settings for altitude/power consumption. Almost all servers have power settings, if you see your bill is a bit steep, maybe tweak that stuff

In reply to Ruan, I agree re the memory speed and technology. Everyone see's DDR4 and thinks, its a bigger number than 2, it MUST be better. Incorrect assumption. When the system reads through the memory table it has settings that govern how fast the lookup happens, called a CAS Latency. So you will see gaming RAM has a lower CAS Latency as it searched memory faster. So having DDR3 with a CAS Latency of 11 is probably equivalent to DDR2 667 with CL 4/5.

In my opinion, I love VMware ESXI. I deployed that on my own personal server (Poweredge 2950) in a datacenter and never looked back. Its simple, and I can run whatever OS on top. I run a mix of Linux/Windows - depending what piece of software Im playing with.

What has your decision been so far OP?

[procta]

timpug, how did you get to be a systems engineer? as I did my mcps at college 10 years ago, and no one would even gave me experience in anything! only bit I got was repairing desktop pcs for friends, work mates and family. .
I built my own server for windows 2003 labs so I could built my experience up in my own domain.

[Fooby]

I missed an entire thread on everything i know. Arse.

Timpug, I'm glad someone mentioned CAS timings, i was about to get on my soapbox of DDR2 bashing.. But now there is no need.

In terms of usability Vmware.. 'works' but i agree with Ruan, from experience it needs chronic hardware for no reason.

[Seb_Ryan]

I missed an entire thread on everything i know. Arse.

Well if Mr God himself spent more time on here you wouldn't of missed it :p lol

[Ruan]

VMWare is a great product, but sadly walked all over by salesmen in shiny suits, so now it's ungodly expensive for any other functions for no real reason and anyway qemu-kvm is faster, just a bit more awkward for non-Linux users....

VMWare is a mass of overheads and a massive code base that doesn't run operating systems natively... It virtualises the entire lot - why do that when you can run it natively in proper hardware...

[procta]

When I did windows XP MCP and windows 2003 server MCP 10 years ago, My lecture said VMware was going to kick off big time. My mate who is in ICT didn't believe me at the time, He told me over a pint a couple of years ago, He you know something Andy, I wished I listened to you know about VMware, as its now heavily used now.
I found its great for it to run some old Windows Operating systems I have, ( ie NT4 ) but anything older than that can be a bit of bastard to setup. So if you have old DOS based stuff that requires a DOS based system, its going to be a bit of a bugger. Not sure what Vm machines are like to play games on, if you want to play those old PC games you have either.

I am wanting to have a go at diskless stuff and brush up on my ICT stuff again, as I think I still have unfinished business in that front. But going to play about with proper hardware rather than VMware.