Dell Rack-Mount Servers $279

[wardmundy]

Great buy: Dell PowerEdge 2650 Dual 2.8ghz Xeon / 2GB / 2x73gb / 2U rack-mount server $279.99

 

[wardmundy]

If you're on Twitter, you've already seen this feedback on our Tweet:

hoosiermac @NerdUno I picked up 2 of these and they're GREAT! I have PIAF running in a VM on ESX on one of them with a 5x150GB scsi raid array.

 

[rugby]

Yep, that was me. I have 4 VM's on this box, 3 Kerio Mailservers and 1 PIAF VM. The PIAF VM is really just for testing at this point as the company I just joined needs a PBX badly. Their hosted VoIP bill is getting up to $400/month! I did cheat on this server and put in 5x150GB 15K scsi drives instead of the 36GB scsi drives that came with it.

ESXi runs great on this box, installs with no issues. I use PRTG to monitor ESXi and all the VM's themselves and it's a great inexpensive solution. I would definitely recommend putting the 2650 in another building from you as it's LOUD and heavy and LOUD.

 

[hkgonra]

Must... resist.... the ..... urge..... to.... spend ..... more.....money

 

[rugby]

If you look on eBay you can find them pretty cheap as well. I just got another one with 2x3Ghz CPU, 12GB ram, 5x150GB 10K scsi drives for $530 shipped. I also got the rails, but no front plate.

I'm going to load proxmox on this one to see how it's different from ESXi.


BTW, these are 32-bit processors, not 64-bit.

 

[rugby]

I could not get Proxmox 1.2 to boot my 2650. It said that it required a 64-bit processor and I only had a 32-bit processor.

I don't see a 32-bit version of Proxmox.

 

[wardmundy]

I know it needs the VM extensions. But I thought those were included in all of the Xeon processors. I've only used the AMD Opterons so no first-hand knowledge here.

 

[rugby]

I thought so too, but the Xeons used in this model are single core non 64-bit capable.

ESXi 3.5 works great so I'll just stick with that.

I use PRTG to monitor the ESXi install itself and all the VM's. Sucks that it runs on Windows but there's a web interface that looks great on the iPhone.

http://www.paessler.com/prtg