Suggestions for re-tasking a Dell PowerEdge 2450

[Michael Butash]

I second simply killing it off, unless you need a space heater.  I've 
got a pair of 1850's with p4-based xeon's running esx that are barely 
suitable for any heavy crunching guests (my minecraft server would 
regularly kill the box with a big world), so I doubt you'll get much 
mileage with p3-level gear.  I'm in the process of putting to pasture 
the 1850's in favor of some dell c6100 boxen I picked up off ebay.

I see people selling servers like hp dl380g5's on CL for a few hundred 
bucks that already put that system to shame.  You'd save that in power 
alone likely with a more modern platform, not to mention maybe actually 
find ram/disks for it that don't cost more than modern equivalents due 
to scarcity.

-mb


On 06/14/2012 09:23 AM, Eric Shubert wrote:
> On 06/13/2012 09:11 PM, Thomas Cameron wrote:
>> On 06/12/2012 04:20 PM, James Dugger wrote:
>>> I have inherited a Dell PowerEdge 2450 and want to re-task it somewhere
>>> in my network running as a linux server. It was being used two months
>>> ago as a VPN server running Windows 2003 Server.
>>>
>>> Here are the secs:
>>>
>>> 2 - 866 MHz Pentium Processors
>>> Bus 133MHz
>>> cache 256 KB
>>> 2048 MB ECC SDRAM
>>> built in adaptec hardware RAID controller
>>> SCSI dual channel backplane - w/1 daughter card installed
>>>
>>> 4 - 3.5 hot swap drivebays
>>
>> Man, that thing is going to suck LOTS of power and pump out LOTS of heat.
>>
>> If it were me, I'd sell it on craigslist or eBay and use the cash to buy
>> a modern multicore motherboard, memory, and processor in a desktop case.
>> Seriously, for a few hundred bucks you can get a system that sips power
>> comparatively, has many more - and much faster - CPUs, and has as much
>> more more memory.
>>
>> I've given up trying to repurpose machines that old. The cost in power
>> alone over the course of a year makes it smarter to get rid of it.
>>
>> TC
>
> +1.
>
> Speed of memory/bus is a big consideration for a server. The bus speed
> on what you have is, well, pathetic. You can buy a new Fusion/Atom board
> that uses 1066ram for ~$100 that'll run circles around that thing. 8G of
> ram for one of these can be had for $30-$40. Cooling is a non issue with
> these, as they consume so little power. I don't know if these would fit
> the 2U case or not (they're std mini/micro though). Some of these boards
> have up to 6 SATA6 ports, so software raid (1 or 10) works nicely.
>