whatto do with all this hardware

[Mr_Cool59]

so i got a dell c6100 from ebay. this unit has 4 nodes in it i have set up one of the nodes as a freenas server and another has xenserver installed at this point i do not know what to do with the other two nodes any help would be greatly valued.

[RedWulf]

folding?

you could always use one to toy with, run folding on it with something like ubuntu server when your not using it. 

 

host a website(s)

I'm not sure what I/O they have but you could run openwrt or pfsense

you could be trivial about it and run daphile as a music/web radio server/streamer/remote sound system

[Ben Potter]

Hi,

 

I would use one of the nodes as a Plex Media Server. With that, you could put all of your movies, music, and TV shows on it (even write protected ones with MakeMKV) and you would be able to stream them from anywhere. At first, I thought I didn't need a Plex server then I realized that I have a lot of DVD movies that are not available on Netflix or any streaming sites without buying them again.  

[Mark77]

Basically its obsolete equipment which you really wouldn't want to run 24/7 on account of being relatively power inefficient.  That's why you were able to pick it up for a song.

 

Have it around for occasional use/testing perhaps, but the payback period on newer gear for most home-type server stuff is likely to be quite short. 

 

I really should write something up for Linus to do a video on "payback periods" and the financial absurdity of running old gear as 'servers'.

[leadeater]

5 hours ago, Mark77 said:

Basically its obsolete equipment which you really wouldn't want to run 24/7 on account of being relatively power inefficient.  That's why you were able to pick it up for a song.

 

Have it around for occasional use/testing perhaps, but the payback period on newer gear for most home-type server stuff is likely to be quite short. 

 

I really should write something up for Linus to do a video on "payback periods" and the financial absurdity of running old gear as 'servers'.

Plus once you can't carry existing components over to a new system e.g DDR3 to DDR4 you can sell the current system on ebay yourself to make up any differences and be back with a new, in warranty, system with all the performance and power efficiency benefits.

 

Not to say that there aren't good options on ebay but disciplined saving to get that first new initial purchase can work out better in the long run, that may however be 5+ years easily though to see the benefit.

 

Also when buying systems from ebay it is extremely easy to buy something that is much more than you need, performance/spec wise, which has an ongoing cost.

[Mikensan]

Not having experience with this type of equipment (blades / nodes) - can each node see every drive? If so it'd make one hell of a fun setup. One node is FreeNAS and then via iSCSI / NFS you'd share the storage to the three other nodes running Xenserver / ESXi / Hyper-V and create a cluster. Or if each node can only see x amount of the drives, then 1 node is still FreeNAS, the other three ESXi and play with vSAN. With the trial you have full functionality, so it would all be for learning purposes.

 

Or setup proxmox and create a redundant cluster. Or setup one of the nodes as either a hypervisor with a firewall or dedicated firewall.

 

Others are correct, that thing is going to pow through energy.

[leadeater]

1 hour ago, Mikensan said:

Not having experience with this type of equipment (blades / nodes) - can each node see every drive? If so it'd make one hell of a fun setup. One node is FreeNAS and then via iSCSI / NFS you'd share the storage to the three other nodes running Xenserver / ESXi / Hyper-V and create a cluster. Or if each node can only see x amount of the drives, then 1 node is still FreeNAS, the other three ESXi and play with vSAN. With the trial you have full functionality, so it would all be for learning purposes.

 

Or setup proxmox and create a redundant cluster. Or setup one of the nodes as either a hypervisor with a firewall or dedicated firewall.

 

Others are correct, that thing is going to pow through energy.

Depends on the model and what features were available at that time. With those systems you can either split the drives up on a per node basis or configure a storage pool in front of the nodes and share it.

 

If you need to pool the disks and that is not available you can use FreeNAS like you mentioned to do it.