Dell 2850

ace2109 · 27 Feb 2012 at 21:59

Hi guys, I was thinking of getting one of these of the bay as they are pretty cheap and I would like to play about with RAID and other bits, possibly an exchange server. It would be great if it would run VMware for some virtualisation but after some reading on here and online I don't think it's possible.

Wanted to put it in the attic due to the amount of noise etc but I wanted to get your input on the matter as well. I would also be open to adding a SAN in the future if the budget allows

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Any input you guys have would be greatly appreciated.

MartinBen439 · 27 Feb 2012 at 22:21

I've got 2 of those at work - one I'm in the process of demoting to get rid off it and they sound like concorde with all the fans running so you definatley need to find somewhere out the way for it.

Also seems to use a lot of juice compared to the new servers.

droyden · 27 Feb 2012 at 22:40

2850's specifically pump out a lot of heat. The 3 that I had did not have 64bit cpu's so be aware of that if going for virtualisation. They do run ESXI but the PERC4 wasnt the best

ace2109 · 27 Feb 2012 at 23:04

can't really afford any of the ones, I was looking at the 2950's they looked nice but can't really afford that however i am open to suggestions.

bremen1874 · 27 Feb 2012 at 23:37

For home use the lower end tower servers (post Core 2) are more practical.

ML110 G5, Dell T100 and the Dell 840 are all worth a look. With a quad core processor installed you get reasonable performance, relatively low power consumption and fairly quiet operation. The only real downside is getting stuck with an 8GB memory limit.

ace2109 · 28 Feb 2012 at 07:23

I was looking at these however i wasn't sure if they would let me run a VM machine?
I wanted to run VM for testing and playing around with also wanted to run a MySQL server of one, for internal network use, and possibly access from another site via VPN in the future

bremen1874 · 29 Feb 2012 at 03:38

ace2109 said:
I was looking at these however i wasn't sure if they would let me run a VM machine?
I wanted to run VM for testing and playing around with also wanted to run a MySQL server of one, for internal network use, and possibly access from another site via VPN in the future

All of those servers will happily run VMs if the processor supports VT-x.

If you're after something to run a few low stress VMs then the HP Microserver is worth a look. It's cheap (especially if the cashback offer is still on), and the low power consumption means you can leave it on without it costing you very much.