Should I pick up these servers?

Everyone

I found 4 servers on craigslist, the guy is asking $100 each, or make an offer for all 4. He doesn't seem to know much about them other than that they may be Supermicro. Rather low end stuff (really more desktop grade than server, but the chassis are nice 2U rack mounts), and a little behind, but cheap and will probably do what I want.

Here's what I was able to find out...

Core 2 Duo 2.13GHz CPU.
2 GB DDR2 667MHz RAM
2x 80GB SATA Drives
PCI Express RAID controller
Redundant power supplies.
Dual Gigabit NICs

The chassis' have LCD panels on the front and 3 hot swap drive bays. 6 USB ports. Comes with rails.

I'm kind of thinking the cases alone may be worth the $$$, although they do not look like any Supermicro cases I could find.

I was thinking of offering him $300 for all of them. It'd be an hour drive to go pick them up.

I've just been looking for something low cost to move my lab off of my desktop. I'd probably use 1 as a dedicated pfSense box, and throw some extra RAM in the others for vSphere 5 boxes. Just not sure how great an old Core 2 Duo is going to be for vSphere 5, don't think I could get many VMs per server. In total I'd have more RAM then my current lab setup, but fewer cores.

Bl8ckr0uter

Check to see if the MOBOs are on the supported list.

For Pfsense, spend like 200 and go for something like this: ALIX.2D2 @ Netgate With an enclosure and stuff

Bloogen

I would do it at that price it's a really good deal. I manage a few servers that regarding specs I would love to replace them with those. If the chasis is decent it is worth more than $100 on its own and everything else is bonus value especially with a hardware raid controller. Might need bigger HD's but at that price it's no problem. I was going to build something new recently but couldn't justify the cost because I dont need it really but I would grab those if I could.

Let us know how it goes.

Everyone

Bl8ckr0uter wrote: »

Check to see if the MOBOs are on the supported list.

That's the problem, he doesn't know what the model number for the MOBOs. This guy told me someone that worked for him ordered them, and that guy no longer works for him, so he doesn't know much about them. He tried findind a model number and couldn't. The only thing he knew is that he thought it was a supermicro mobo.

Based on the fact that it has a Core 2 Duo CPU in it, 5 PCI and 2 PCI-Express slots, and 4 RAM slots.. I think it is this one: Super Micro Computer, Inc. - Products | Motherboards | Core™ 2 Boards | C2SBC-Q

If it turns out to be that mobo... that one is still going for $157 on Newegg right now, which means the mobo alone will be worth it.

Anyway, all 4 of them will be mine tomorrow morning for a total of $300. Best part is, the guy just happened to be driving past my area tomorrow morning, so I'll only have to drive ~30 minutes to pick them up, instead of almost 2 hours.

Bl8ckr0uter wrote: »

For Pfsense, spend like 200 and go for something like this: ALIX.2D2 @ Netgate With an enclosure and stuff

That won't do what I need. I do Multi-WAN load balancing, so I need at least 3 NIC ports. I already purchased a couple Intel Pro 1000 NICs and put them in my desktop. Right now I have pfSense 1.2.3 running on VMware Workstation 8 on my Windows 7 desktop (I think you saw my thread and article on that).

Only reason I was saying use one of these as a dedicated pfSense is because I don't really need 4 servers, but at this price, may as well get all 4.

I will probably pick up four USB sticks tomorrow after I get these servers. I'll take the HD's and 1 GB of the RAM out of 1 of them, load pfSense on it, and put the Intel Pro 1000 NICs from my desktop into it.

The others I will get some upgrades for before putting into service, max out the RAM at the very list, maybe get some bigger HD's. 1 of them will probably end up a FreeNAS box, and the other 2 will be ESXi 4.1 or vSphere 5 servers.

MentholMoose

It's probably a good deal. You could ask him to check the model # on the mobo itself... the case should be tool-less so it would take about 2 seconds to pop open the case and find the model # printed on the mobo.

Everyone

MentholMoose wrote: »

It's probably a good deal. You could ask him to check the model # on the mobo itself... the case should be tool-less so it would take about 2 seconds to pop open the case and find the model # printed on the mobo.

Oh believe me I did. He couldn't find one, and now that I have them, neither can I.

However one of them had a sticker on the bottom of the chassis still... this is what I ended up with:
Aegis 3420

Not quite what I was hoping for. 945G chipset = 4GB of RAM max, and no possability of putting a Quad Core CPU in.

I can't seem to attach pics to this post, so I'll have to put them on my server and link to them later.

They each have 2 Seagate 7200RPM 80GB SATA drives in them, connected to an Adaptec 1220SA, which is just a 2 port SATA RAID 0/1/JBOD controller.

2 of them have some sort of Digit Networks 2 port modems in them. I think these may have been used as part of some phone system, I guess if they haven't wiped the drives I'll find out.

They all have a Crystalfontz LCD display in the 5.25" bay.

I may try to part out a couple of them, keep the chassis, and buy newer components.

Everyone

I figured out what motherboard is in these now... BCM BC945G: 945G Motherboard | Intel 945G ATX Motherboard | 5 PCI | SATA RAID | PCI Express x4 | SPDIF

One of them actually has a Pentium D 3.4GHz, while the rest have the Core 2 Duo E6400 2.13GHz. It seems the Adaptec 1220SA was only in the one, the other 3 have 3ware 9650SE-2LP cards in them.