Incredible Value or what?

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i've been looking at rackmount hardware with a friend of mine - we're looking into setting up a server to run Google-Wave on when it eventually shuts down. (among other things)

browsing the 'Bay, i came across a 1U rackmount server for £130 shipped.

it is equipped with this hardware:
2x AMD Opteron 270 Dual-core CPUs
4GB of DDR
LiteON PSU (unknown maximum output)
4x HDD Caddies
iSCSI Backplane
4x SATA 150Gb/s ports on motherboard

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Twin-Dual-Cor...K_Computing_Networking_SM&hash=item19c18347a3

considering that a single Opteron 270 is slightly greater in CPU-grunt then an Intel Core2Duo E8500, and this unit has two of them, is this not a shockingly good value machine for a light-duty, low cost server, considering that all it needs to be fully functional are HDD's and it can take affordable consumer-units?

 

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seller has more than 10 available, says they're all tested working.

 

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Only thing that put me off proper server hardware was power usage I looked at some HP and DELL ones and they would have cost a fortune to run

that's certainly true, but the TDP of these opterons is 95W max (depending on model of the opteron - it could be lower) so i can't imagine the total power draw on this server when it's at 100% load exceeding about 225-250W, although i'd be happy to be informed if i'm disillusioned.

A quick search on eBay turned them up - very good value for money. The only issue for me would be lack of iLO/DRAC, but if that wasn't such a limitation I'd buy all the remaining ones!

aye, but that's the cost of not going brand-name i suppose.

 

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MAke sure the BIOS is config'd for powernow, or Powernow support is actually enabled. Las one I setup I had to hack the BIOS to support it, otherwise it was running full throttle 100% of the time and was probably worse than an Intel based one.

Good advice!

If it's the ones I've just seen, saw no mention of SATA, and if it's SCSI based they usually don't bother with SATA anyway! SCSI RAID can actually be slower than SATA raid these days, but I'm sure you're aware of that. Otherwise, get yourself 4 decent SCSI drives and away you go....

Sounds pretty good.
Are they sata or scsi internal,drives though? Scsi seem expensive to purchase seperately.

Cannot see thwm listed now - are they still on

the backplane and caddies are SCSI, but the motherboard has four SATA ports. if i could find a SATA backplane then i could use sata drives in hotswap but without i'd just need to cable each drive in manually.

i'm unsure of the rules on this matter? - would it be okay to post a link to the listing? they do count as desktop systems i suppose

 

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I found it - thanks for that
Had been searching for AMD or Opteron.

Actually had seen that seller already as they have some Poweredge 2850s. Older single core Xeon 3.6Ghz x2 but they also have 6Gb and scsi disks. Not sure how those CPUs compare to the Opterons?
Couple SATA drives would do though if as mentioned they could be fitted.

you don't want those Xeons - they're Nocona-core which is the Xeon version of Presscott - lots and lots of electricity, CPU-Cycles and heat, not much actual performance at all.

my rule of thumb when it comes to buying old intel hardware is not to bother unless it's from the "Core" architecture or newer (so that's Conroe or better)

<edit>
this is the Server in question = LINK
Mods - if this is inappropriate, please feel free to edit it out of the post, but pleast don't delete the rest.

Just to compare i've got a few duel processor xeon servers they use about £1.5 of power per day

are they netburst Xeons? either way, that's madness!

 

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270's support:
MMX, SSE, SSE2, SSE3, Enhanced 3DNow!, NX bit, AMD64

no AMD-V i'm afraid

Opterons didn't have AMD-V support until two generations later, with the 1200-series.

 

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i was pondering using one for a VMware workstation, but it'll still work without AMD-V... just not quite as well.

 

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I've been reading up (only used intel for god know how long) and it appears than AMDs implementation of the 64bit instruction set means you can run 64bit guest OSes within esx even without amd-v. However for intel, you need to have VT (which I currently lack on my lab machine).

Bugger, this evening may have just got expensive!

i think mine just did too

seeing as the link i posted (and self-reported) was not removed, i'm going to go ahead and pop it into the opening post.

<edit>
yeap, my evening just got expensive. made the seller an offer for £104 (£110 shipped) and the seller accepted.

 

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Good price...I just snagged a Poweredge 1850 with 1 x dual core Xeon for £30 and it's about 20 miles away for pickup. Can't buy a rack mount case for that amount and it has 1.5 gig, 36 gig SCI drive etc. If it's a bit power hungry it doesn't matter as the amount I saved will offset it...

nice!

remember, Ikea LACK tables and coffee-tables are exactly 19 inches wide and accommodate rackmount hardware very comfortably.

 

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Server Arrived today

unfortunately the seller put the labels on the wrong side of the box, so the front of the server was facing down in shipping, and it's badly damaged the retention flanges at the front.

if you buy one ask the seller to remove them during shipping.

otherwise, the thing's ship-shape and tickety-boo.

the broadcom gigabit ethernet controllers are BCM5721 for those intending to use these with ESX/ESXi, google says that this chipset works with ESX/ESXi

 

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I don't think those cpus support virtualization, I bought a server last year similar in spec to that but with 2x 285 Opterons and realised they didn't support it. Hyper-v wouldn't install, Virtualbox would but would only run in 32-bit mode and wasn't very efficient with the cpu utilization.

Also don't under estimate how loud those 1U servers can be

MW

Yeap, the Opteron 270's don't support virtualisation.
that said, according to eksmen, VMware ESX can support 64-bit guests on AMD-64 CPU's even if they don't have AMD-V due to AMD's 64-bit instruction set.
at Any rate, i hadn't intended to try MS Hyper-V on it.

It sounds like a turbojet on afterburners when first turned on but after it posts it quietens down significantly. the fans are PWM.

Any idea if it will take non ecc memory?

none whatsoever i'm afraid. i don't have any regular DDR to test - if i see some on the cheap in CEX i'll buy it and let you know.