Dell Blade: Any value / Use

gjacobse

Dell poweredge server 1855 Blade center w 4 blades

Dell poweredge blade center with 4 blades. 3 blades are 1855 with 2 dual core processors with 4 gb ram and 2 hard drives. 
The other blade is a 1955 with 2 quad core processors 4 gb ram and 2 hard drives. 
The chassis has 2 10 port gigabit switches so each blade can have 2 ethernet ports. It also has 2 10 port fibre channel cards. 
There is also the remote management card and kvm card installed. I have 2 front kvm adaptors for the blades. 
The servers run great and have no issues.

This isn't that far from me. I'm looking at it, trying to figure out if it is something I could use. I expect the Hard Drives are almost shot - so they would need to be upgraded / replaced.

But for home use - storage, messing around - is there any need for such a beast.

PSX_Defector

The only thing you need the drives on the box to do is to boot up. Even then, boot from SAN has been great for the past few years. Although these are older than shit, so boot from SAN wouldn't be so hot.

Other than understanding the nuances of how blade management works and getting some practical experience with Fibre Channel, these are giant heat generators. Get it for cheap, might be worthwhile. Gonna need a SAN, and I doubt you wanna know how much a FC switch/SAN is gonna cost ya.

scottalanmiller

Is this for home? An old blade system, while neat sounding, would hit the "even at free, it's not work picking it up out of the trunk" for me. Too much effort, too little value, too much cost to operate.

IRJ

You might be able to get $10-20 in scrap for it.

PSX_Defector

@IRJ said:

You might be able to get $10-20 in scrap for it.

Sadly, that's about right. Was trying to get a spot price for steel to maybe get a few more bucks, but its pretty bad.

Probably has about $50 worth of gold in it. Some specialized recyclers here in Dallas can get that, the lead, and the copper. Although there isn't much left after that. I would say $100 total for the whole shebang.

These are very old. And will generated a ton of heat and excessive power usage.
Also if you really want Blade/Unified Computing type systems.. Dell isn't really the manufacturer to get them from.

gjacobse

It's about what I thought - while cool it's not practical to try to drag old tech into the present. While the idea of having 'one' unit with four computer is kind of nice,... it's impractical.

And the power requirements are going to be higher.

scottalanmiller

@g.jacobse said:

It's about what I thought - while cool it's not practical to try to drag old tech into the present. While the idea of having 'one' unit with four computer is kind of nice,... it's impractical.

And the power requirements are going to be higher.

After the power costs are considered getting something new from Dell or SuperMicro would actually probably cost less!