[geeks] Cluster in a box? Interesting item on offer at eBay

[Lionel Peterson]

A little more info:

The system has three blades installed, you can not *easily* add a fourth -
you'd need to obtain not only another blade, but you'd need a number of
custom cables (to power switch, power supply, 4x SATA), but the power
supply doesn't seem to have connections for a fourth blade.

Each blade has four hot-swap bays available to it, not three - the blade
has 6 SATA ports & some on-board RAID solution that appears to support hot
spares, but hot-spare drives are only available for the blade they are
connected to (remember, it's just three independent systems in one chassis).

You can not add a second power supply to system - there is an empty space
for another power supply, but there are no connections to actually use a
second PS if you added one.

The BIOS settings appear to be 'unique', and it appears to be possible to
'brick' a blade if you decide to start updating BIOSes willy-nilly.

There's a brief discussion of these servers over at servethehome.com with
reports of success with Windows 2012 & ESXi -
http://forums.servethehome.com/processors-motherboards/3100-dell-3-node-amd-dcs6005-2.html


I'm gonna wait till tomorrow when I can prepare 3x USB keys to stick inside
each blade (I think 16 Gig USB would be good, plenty of room for drivers &
what-not, besides, Best Buy has some tiny Sandisk micro USB drives on sale,
$13 for 16 Gigs, $9 for 8 Gigs).

Lionel

On Friday, February 7, 2014, Lionel Peterson <lionel4287 at gmail.com> wrote:

> The system arrived, a few quick notes:
>
> It was packed in custom foam, arrived in great shape, looks good as new.
>
> It has one 1100W power supply, it has room for a second PS, assume
> redundant PS operation possible.
>
> The three Windows COA stickers were scraped off (darn it!) - I could see
> the gum residue on the side.
>
> The unit powered-up fine, it was a bit loud - not enough to drive he out
> if the room when it's on, but loud enough I won't keep the system on when
> not needed. Think DustBuster-type handheld vacuum.
>
> As shown in the system photos there are two LAN ports, BMC & IPMI share
> the ports. The consensus is that BMC/IPMI implementations suck, I haven't
> tried them yet.
>
> It is a C6005 chassis.
>
> I'm gonna put a dedicated KVM on each node, and that will leave one USB
> port available for booting off USB/USB DVD. I think I'm going to get a
> micro USB drive to put inside each blade to install a bootable OS image.
>
> That's it for now,
>
> Lionel
>
> On Friday, February 7, 2014, Lionel Peterson <lionel4287 at gmail.com<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','lionel4287 at gmail.com');>>
> wrote:
>
>> I think I'll either limit usage to cooler night time operation or invest
>> in a big fan... It won't ever be a 24x7 machine for me, just an on-demand
>> play area.
>>
>> Lionel
>>
>> > On Feb 7, 2014, at 3:51 PM, Joshua Boyd <jdboyd at jdboyd.net> wrote:
>> >
>> > The Dell cloud machines may well be meant for warm operation.
>> >
>> > I'd be tempted to build an insulated closet with a wall mounted AC for
>> > the servers in that case.
>>
>
>
> --
> Lionel Peterson
> lionel4287 at gmail.com<javascript:_e(%7B%7D,'cvml','lionel4287 at gmail.com');>
>


-- 
Lionel Peterson
lionel4287 at gmail.com