Buying used server from another IT guy... Not sure what to look for
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So I am in a market for a NAS and while I am shopping around I noticed that a decent NAS (consumer grade) cost roughly $300-$400...while an old server cost around $400-$500. Both are drive-less.
Later, I found out that one of the IT guy working here is selling his old server for $300. Here's the spec from dell website:
224-8609 : T710 Tower Chassis for Up to 8 3.5-In HD (3Gbps) and Intel 5 6XX Procs
310-8509 : Power Cord, NEMA 5-15P to C13, 15 amp, wall plug, 10 feet / 3 meter
430-3251 : Broadcom 5709 Dual Port 1GbE NIC w/TOE PCIe-4
330-4219 : Optical SATA for PowerEdge T61 0/T710
317-0259 : E5520 Xeon Processor, 2.26GHz 8M Cache, Turbo, HT, 1066MHz M ax Mem
313-9100 : 16X DVD-ROM,SATA, INTERNAL
341-8726 : 160GB 7.2K RPM SATA 3.5" Hot P lug Hard Drive-Entry
317-1218 : E5520 Xeon Processor, 2.26GHz 8M Cache, Turbo, HT, 1066MHz M ax Mem
317-2061 : 16GB Memory (8x2GB), 1333MHz Dual Ranked RDIMMs for 2 Processors, Advanced ECC
330-4331 : 1100 Watt Redundant Power Supply
341-5700 : SAS6iR SAS RAID Controller
330-5280 : Dell Management Console
330-4332 : Electronic System Documentation and OpenManage DVD Kit
317-0265 : PowerEdge T610/T710 Heat Sinks for 2 ProcessorsMy only problems here are its 4U (HUGE) and the sound pollution from this server. Sound matters as I will be putting it in a closet in my bed room (I rent a room in a condo).
What are everyone's thoughts? As I mentioned before this is primary for a NAS and maybe VM in the future. -
That server is likely to draw a lot of power. A NAS for $300 is often a super low power ARM or SPARC processor. Maybe MIPS. That server is likely Intel and going to use 10-100x the power of the NAS. Plus the size and the noise.
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I'm pretty sure the SAS6iR has a max drive size of 2TB, so that should be a consideration depending on what drives you want/have.
I would personally go to www.servermonkey.com and get an R510 or R710 exactly the way you want it. $400-500 seems a LOT for a server that doesn't have exactly what you want/need.
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@bnrstnr said in Buying used server from another IT guy... Not sure what to look for:
SAS6iR
That's a very good point. I have 4x 4TB WD Red. This probably already killed my idea. I will look at servermonkey.com.
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Also, as @Reid-Cooper the power draw on a NAS will be massively less, but it's extremely limited on processing power.
I'm kicking myself now for buying my Synology NAS 3-4 years ago, even though I really do love it. I could have had a full blown server that I can run whatever I want on for like $150 more.
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@bnrstnr said in Buying used server from another IT guy... Not sure what to look for:
Also, as @Reid-Cooper the power draw on a NAS will be massively less, but it's extremely limited on processing power.
But what will you do with that excess power in a file server anyway?
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Thanks @bnrstnr @Reid-Cooper for the input.
@Reid-Cooper I'll spin VMs in the future (if I did go for server that is)
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@reid-cooper I'd setup the KVM host that I've been wanting to try out and have a nice home lab, instead of a single purpose NAS that can't really do anything else all that well.
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@bnrstnr said in Buying used server from another IT guy... Not sure what to look for:
@reid-cooper I'd setup the KVM host that I've been wanting to try out and have a nice home lab, instead of a single purpose NAS that can't really do anything else all that well.
He only mentioned wanting a NAS here. No talk of any functional needs beyond storage.
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@stess said in Buying used server from another IT guy... Not sure what to look for:
As I mentioned before this is primary for a NAS and maybe VM in the future.
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@bnrstnr said in Buying used server from another IT guy... Not sure what to look for:
@stess said in Buying used server from another IT guy... Not sure what to look for:
As I mentioned before this is primary for a NAS and maybe VM in the future.
Hmmm... NAS doesn't do that.
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I didn't even see the VM bit until I quoted it. I was just assuming since he was considering buying a used server in the first place that he may be interested in having something capable of doing more than just a NAS.
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@bnrstnr said in Buying used server from another IT guy... Not sure what to look for:
I didn't even see the VM bit until I quoted it. I was just assuming since he was considering buying a used server in the first place that he may be interested in having something capable of doing more than just a NAS.
I did the opposite, assumed that since he was looking at a NAS that he only wanted storage
