[s3l3ct3d8794]

I have just acquired three new to me servers. These are all Rack mountable servers, they are all Dell Poweredge servers. I have a Dell Poweredge 2950, and two Dell Poweredge 1950's. I also acquired a Buffalo TeraStation NAS. Please help with some ideas on what to do with this equipment.

I love my company that I work for, they are the ones who has given me this equipment. They was going to sell it on ebay, but decided that they would give it to us techs.

Let me know what you guys think I should do with them.

 

[Syjeklye]

You should learn Virtual machine software. Try all of the major brands!

Vmware, Citrix, Microsoft

Also, give this one a try: http://www.proxmox.com/proxmox-ve It's open source!

 

[parityboy]

@OP

The above poster is right, that's a good base to learn virtualisation. Does that Terastation support NFS or iSCSI?

 

[Peiler]

Virtualisation for Sure! Try the free versions that the major companies offer!

 

[Syjeklye]

If that Buffalo Terastation supports iScsi, then try to use it. There are plenty of guides and toturials out there that show you how to set up iScsi targets and how to get them connected to your virtual host.

Here is one for VMWare ESXI 5.X

 

[s3l3ct3d8794]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Syjeklye

You should learn Virtual machine software. Try all of the major brands!

Vmware, Citrix, Microsoft

Also, give this one a try: http://www.proxmox.com/proxmox-ve It's open source!

I have some experience with VM's. We use VM's all through out school. So that is a great idea. Thank you for your input. I have thought about doing something like that. I am just new to messing around with servers really.

I do know that I want to be able to use my servers for my home media. I have over 3TB's worth of movies. So that will be one task that the servers will do. One question though is when I put these VM's on the server, what would I use all the VM's for? I know that I could have a VM for AD and one for DHCP and another for a File Server and so forth. Mainly I would just use the VM's to gain knowledge in the server side of computing?

Again, thank you for your input.

 

[s3l3ct3d8794]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Syjeklye

If that Buffalo Terastation supports iScsi, then try to use it. There are plenty of guides and toturials out there that show you how to set up iScsi targets and how to get them connected to your virtual host.

Here is one for VMWare ESXI 5.X

I have not looked into the Buffalo Terastation that much. This is the exact one that I have. I do know that it is a Rackmount Model and is 4x1TB I am pretty sure that the model # is TS-RH4.0TGL/R5

 

[fragamemnon]

Run them headless and virtualize whatever you can think of. Host a VPN server for your convenience when you need remote access to certain resources; then host some game servers for your friends.

There is a lot that comes in mind. Automation of certain electronics if you have the interfaces to control them, sandbox environments for testing out stuff that you can safely wipe afterwards, it goes on and on...

You truly are lucky to have that little fortune.

Have fun with it!

 

[parityboy]

@OP

Yep, knowledge owns all.

Use them to practice things like failover and teleportation. You could set up a VM for a media server like Plex. You could get a cheap smart switch off eBay and use it to put the host computers on one VLAN, the VMs on another and the Terastation on another, and then route between the networks. In fact, you may wish to put something like pfSense in a VM on one of the servers and let that do all of your DNS & DHCP duties, as well as routing between VLANs.

The possibilities are endless...

NOTE

Also don't forget projects like XCP. By the way, that model TeraStation doesn't support NFS or iSCSI, looking at the specs. No matter, you can always use the 2950 as an iSCSI target.

 

[s3l3ct3d8794]

Quote:

Originally Posted by fragamemnon

Run them headless and virtualize whatever you can think of. Host a VPN server for your convenience when you need remote access to certain resources; then host some game servers for your friends.

There is a lot that comes in mind. Automation of certain electronics if you have the interfaces to control them, sandbox environments for testing out stuff that you can safely wipe afterwards, it goes on and on...

You truly are lucky to have that little fortune.

Have fun with it!

Yes I am truly lucky to have this. I thank my bosses every day for the stuff that they have given me. I just got another server they gave me this morning. Although this is not one that is a Brand Name. Basically it is a 4U Rack mountable server chasis with a regular motherboard in it that they was using for their Video Survailance System. I just replaced this yesterday morning. My boss just gave this to me this morning, so I can add that to the list.

They are so generous to their employee's. I have also received a Cisco Catalyst 2960 8 port switch and some KVM switches. I just don't know what to do with it all. How to begin to use it usefully. That is why I am asking for advice on here.

 

[parityboy]

@OP

loooool, ffs.

OK, you now have a box you can stick Openfiler or FreeNAS on.

 

[s3l3ct3d8794]

Quote:

Originally Posted by parityboy

@OP

loooool, ffs.

OK, you now have a box you can stick Openfiler or FreeNAS on.

So this box does not have iScsi I take it. Should I try and get one? My bosses have a lot of stuff just laying around and if they are not using it, they will let me or any of the other Tech's use it to learn with.

 

[parityboy]

@OP

Depends what's already on that 4U. If it already has an OS on it, that OS might have an iSCSI target built in. If not, you can always install software that supports iSCSI (i.e. OpenFiler or FreeNAS).