I’m a college student studying computer science, and I recently came upon a retired custom-built server from my current internship. It was given to me for free, so I set it up at my parents’ place with the intention of creating a “playground” virtualization environment with Windows Server for running ASP.NET web applications and Ubuntu Server for open-source development. Turns out it uses about $2 worth of power a day (running idle), and there’s no way I can justify a $60 / month increase to my parents’ electricity bill.
So now I’m looking to sell it (I do have permission from the company) and replace it with something more energy-efficient, but also capable of running a virtualization environment, specifically VMWare’s ESXi HyperVisor free edition.
Here are the specs on the custom-built machine:
- 2x Intel Xeon CPU @ 3.00 GHz. I believe each one has two cores, because the device manager lists four individual processors.
- 8 GB memory – this is maxed out
- 4x 500 GB SATA 3.5” HDD in a RAID5 configuration. There are 8 drive bays on the case, but only four are used right now, and the current RAID controller only has four slots.
- LSI 3ware 9550SX SATA RAID Controller with four slots
- I don’t know the specifics on the case, so I’ll just link to an image to give you all an idea. It's not the best picture but the machine is a couple hundred miles away. I'll try to get my dad to take a few inside the case. http://tinypic.com/r/2ezpr3m/8
For the replacement machine, I think a solid desktop PC would suffice. I’m just not sure on the specs, specifically virtualization capability vs. energy efficiency vs. what I can afford from the machine I was given.
I don’t need a lot of hard drive capacity, because this will be used mostly for web applications which don’t require huge amounts of data storage. I’m fine with backing up to an external hard drive in case of failure, so I don’t think something with a RAID controller is necessary. A good 1TB HDD with another external for data backup would be more than enough for my purposes. I also don’t think any special graphics card would be necessary.
So I have two questions:
1) Given the hardware, how much could I get for this machine?
2) What would be a cost-equivalent replacement that satisfies my needs? I’d prefer to buy something pre-built, I just need an idea of what specs I should/can afford be.
Thanks in advance for any help and advice!
So now I’m looking to sell it (I do have permission from the company) and replace it with something more energy-efficient, but also capable of running a virtualization environment, specifically VMWare’s ESXi HyperVisor free edition.
Here are the specs on the custom-built machine:
- 2x Intel Xeon CPU @ 3.00 GHz. I believe each one has two cores, because the device manager lists four individual processors.
- 8 GB memory – this is maxed out
- 4x 500 GB SATA 3.5” HDD in a RAID5 configuration. There are 8 drive bays on the case, but only four are used right now, and the current RAID controller only has four slots.
- LSI 3ware 9550SX SATA RAID Controller with four slots
- I don’t know the specifics on the case, so I’ll just link to an image to give you all an idea. It's not the best picture but the machine is a couple hundred miles away. I'll try to get my dad to take a few inside the case. http://tinypic.com/r/2ezpr3m/8
For the replacement machine, I think a solid desktop PC would suffice. I’m just not sure on the specs, specifically virtualization capability vs. energy efficiency vs. what I can afford from the machine I was given.
I don’t need a lot of hard drive capacity, because this will be used mostly for web applications which don’t require huge amounts of data storage. I’m fine with backing up to an external hard drive in case of failure, so I don’t think something with a RAID controller is necessary. A good 1TB HDD with another external for data backup would be more than enough for my purposes. I also don’t think any special graphics card would be necessary.
So I have two questions:
1) Given the hardware, how much could I get for this machine?
2) What would be a cost-equivalent replacement that satisfies my needs? I’d prefer to buy something pre-built, I just need an idea of what specs I should/can afford be.
Thanks in advance for any help and advice!
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