Got a Dell Poweredge t610 for free, what should I do with it?

[medialupa]

So I was given a t610 for free, and I'm trying to decide what to do with it. Figured I'd see what the LTT community can come up with. 

 

First though, some backstory on my current rigs, and what I do.

 

I'm a content creator/media director, and I work in the Adobe CC suite all day. My desktop rig is built on an Asus z87-pro with with a water cooled 4790k. 32g ram, and a gtx 970. My hard drive situation is a bit peculiar. I have 2 250ssds in Raid 0 as my OS and render-to drive, 2 1tb hdds in raid 0 as my scratch disk/desktop/etc, and 2 2tb hdds in raid 0 as my media drive. I KNOW RAID 0 is risky, but when working with large RED cam files (5k+) the speed is absolutely necessary. I back all of these up to a puny WD ex2 (i know....), and I'm nearly out of space on the 4tb media array. I also use a Dell XPS 15 (2016) as my daily "out of the office" driver. 

 

I'm inclined to turn the t610 into a file server, but I'm a novice with doing any VM or server-style machines. I've followed closely with the LTT unraid builds, knowing i would eventually need to expand my storage capabilities, but i want to maximize the use of the t610. I have not yet received the unit, so I'm unsure which xeon it has, or if it has 2, nor do i know how much ram it has. 

 

I'm wondering if i can offload some rendering to the t610, how to maximize its benefits, and just in general what I should do to use it fully.

 

I appreciate the feedback guys,

 

Cheers

 

Kris

[BailyStufins]

if you game start a game server or like you said turn it into a NAS but a NAS doesnt take very much horsepower. I personally recommend having a nas and a render machine in one box. 

[Sir Asvald]

10 minutes ago, medialupa said:

So I was given a t610 for free, and I'm trying to decide what to do with it. Figured I'd see what the LTT community can come up with. 

 

First though, some backstory on my current rigs, and what I do.

 

I'm a content creator/media director, and I work in the Adobe CC suite all day. My desktop rig is built on an Asus z87-pro with with a water cooled 4790k. 32g ram, and a gtx 970. My hard drive situation is a bit peculiar. I have 2 250ssds in Raid 0 as my OS and render-to drive, 2 1tb hdds in raid 0 as my scratch disk/desktop/etc, and 2 2tb hdds in raid 0 as my media drive. I KNOW RAID 0 is risky, but when working with large RED cam files (5k+) the speed is absolutely necessary. I back all of these up to a puny WD ex2 (i know....), and I'm nearly out of space on the 4tb media array. I also use a Dell XPS 15 (2016) as my daily "out of the office" driver. 

 

I'm inclined to turn the t610 into a file server, but I'm a novice with doing any VM or server-style machines. I've followed closely with the LTT unraid builds, knowing i would eventually need to expand my storage capabilities, but i want to maximize the use of the t610. I have not yet received the unit, so I'm unsure which xeon it has, or if it has 2, nor do i know how much ram it has. 

 

I'm wondering if i can offload some rendering to the t610, how to maximize its benefits, and just in general what I should do to use it fully.

 

I appreciate the feedback guys,

 

Cheers

 

Kris

What are the specs?  If you could get the specs, You could use it as a VM server or use it as a secondary Workstation? 

Edited February 24, 2016 by Abdul201588

[BailyStufins]

2 hours ago, Abdul201588 said:

What are the specs? You could use it as a VM server or use it as a secondary Workstation? 

 

2 hours ago, medialupa said:

I have not yet received the unit, so I'm unsure which xeon it has, or if it has 2, nor do i know how much ram it has. 

 

[Sir Asvald]

2 minutes ago, BailyStufins said:

 

 

I've edited my post.. 

[medialupa]

I'm a one man band, so a secondary workstation isn't really necessary at the moment.

[BailyStufins]

2 hours ago, Abdul201588 said:

I've edited my post.. 

Everyone makes mistakes, I recently thought there was a 960 Ti 

[Nowak]

If it has a hot swap bay at the front, I'd recommend setting it up as a file server.

[BailyStufins]

2 hours ago, medialupa said:

I'm a one man band, so a secondary workstation isn't really necessary at the moment.

Half NAS half rendering farm?

[KSores]

7 minutes ago, BailyStufins said:

Everyone makes mistakes, I recently thought there was a 960 Ti 

lol