[geeks] Cheap Dell Servers

[Lionel Peterson]

>From: Sridhar Ayengar <ploopster at gmail.com>
>Date: 2008/02/06 Wed PM 02:50:07 CST
>To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
>Subject: [geeks] Cheap Dell Servers

>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...

>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:

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

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...

Lionel