Another mass build and some hardware thoughts

[Handruin]

The people I work with have a very different perspective on this stuff. They want the facilities to most closely resemble what people are going to use at home and/or at work. I'm having to expend all my efforts at the moment justifying the use of VMs for older versions of Windows so that I don't have to configure a four-way multiboot system (what everyone else wants) as it is.

I think it's important some times to try and get an outside source to come validate what you already know. It's not for your own validation, but for those above you who cannot be convinced. I mentioned earlier to get someone in your lab to try and sell you something (even if you don't want it). This method has been working for our team in certain cases. Not specifically for my manager because I'm very fortunate to have a great boss who is very technical and practical with these things, but for his boss and his bosses boss (who are also very technical, but require us to prove why one solution is better than another when spending this amount of money). For the past several weeks we've had meetings with Cisco, CDW, and another local vender to discuss solutions to a problem we are trying to solve for a project. Since we're looking to acquire almost 30 blades, we needed to make arguments for or against the rack vs. blade argument. I know we're talking a different level of budget, but the concept of getting multiple venders to converge on an agreement of a setup can help enforce your opinion to your boss to show that it's not just you, but also several other technology leaders.

Your job is cockblocking your knowledge expansion and progression in the advancement of labs and technology. I can only hope that maybe some day you can find the courage to break free from its grips and get into a place that will make use of all your skills and actually teach you something. Don't mistake my remark for having it teach you something as an insult. I mean it in quite the opposite as in a challenge much greater than you've faced today that teaches you something new that you might not be able to do on your own.

 

[Bozo]

It's the same where I work. I have been trying to virtualize a number of servers and computers for years. But not with the current management group. Combined they all have the technical expertise of a banana, and they won't listen to anybody. Even outside venders. So, we are stuck in the 1990s.

 

[CougTek]

• Intel R2224GZ4GCSAS server with two LGA2011 sockets

Found another similar server, but this time from Cisco : the UCS C240 M3. The power supply is a bit smaller at 650W (normally, the server comes with only one and you have to buy the 350$ second PSU in order to get redundancy), but it's also 80Plus Platinum certified. The RAM from Kingston for that model cost more than the one for the Intel server. And it typically doesn't come with the CPU heatsink, so you have to buy them separately at 60$ each (2 sockets). Something I don't know is if it comes with the hot-swap caddies for all 24 hard drives, like it's the case with the Intel. They are often missing on brand name servers. If the caddies are included, the entire server with the second power supply and the two heatsinks, should cost a few hundred bucks less than the Intel variant, if your prices match mine. Depending on how much memory you put in, the overall cost should be more or less the same.

As Handruin will be able to attest, the remote system monitoring (IPMI-like) from Cisco is quite extensive and reputed to be a notch above what other server brands offer.

Of course, all the above info is useless unless you can convince your wallets holders to go for a centralised server solution. Still, more info is better than not enough.

 

[CougTek]

ISo, we are stuck in the 1990s.

Did I mention that up until two months ago, we still had an OS/2 server in production?

 

[Handruin]

Found another similar server, but this time from Cisco : the UCS C240 M3. The power supply is a bit smaller at 650W (normally, the server comes with only one and you have to buy the 350$ second PSU in order to get redundancy), but it's also 80Plus Platinum certified. The RAM from Kingston for that model cost more than the one for the Intel server. And it typically doesn't come with the CPU heatsink, so you have to buy them separately at 60$ each (2 sockets). Something I don't know is if it comes with the hot-swap caddies for all 24 hard drives, like it's the case with the Intel. They are often missing on brand name servers. If the caddies are included, the entire server with the second power supply and the two heatsinks, should cost a few hundred bucks less than the Intel variant, if your prices match mine. Depending on how much memory you put in, the overall cost should be more or less the same.

As Handruin will be able to attest, the remote system monitoring (IPMI-like) from Cisco is quite extensive and reputed to be a notch above what other server brands offer.

Of course, all the above info is useless unless you can convince your wallets holders to go for a centralised server solution. Still, more info is better than not enough.

I was just coming in here to say just that. Just this evening I was setting up a Cisco UCS C260 (20 core monster with 512GB RAM, 6 x 1Gb NICs, 2x 10Gb NIC, 2x Emulex LPE12000 FC HBA, 1x 146GB SAS HD) and the first piece I always want to get working is the Cisco Integrated Management Console (CIMC). I absolutely love this piece of Cisco servers. Once the CIMC is setup, I can get back to my desk (or work remote from home) and attach virtual ISOs to the system and setup whatever OS you need. You get a full KVM through the web and the only time you need to go physically back into the lab is if something breaks. You can even alter the BIOS through their web page. I wish all rack servers came like this now. I used to love the Dell R710s we would buy, but now I'm glad Dell shit on us and we no longer buy their stuff. The Cisco equipment costs less and is so much more manageable.

 

[CougTek]

Do you know I they come with the drive caddies or if you have to buy the horribly expensive drives made for them in order to get them? It's a lot less interesting if you have to pay two or three times the price of the drive in order to have storage. A 2173$ 100GB SSD? No thanks.

 

[MaxBurn]

~Once the CIMC is setup, I can get back to my desk (or work remote from home) and attach virtual ISOs to the system and setup whatever OS you need. You get a full KVM through the web and the only time you need to go physically back into the lab is if something breaks. You can even alter the BIOS through their web page. I wish all rack servers came like this now.~

I made sure I had IPMI2 on my little home media server so I could have this and I can't see why IT people wouldn't make this mandatory in everything they get. Almost life changing the first time you configure the BIOS and load an OS remotely on real hardware. With the one I have as long as you have DHCP you don't ever have to connect a monitor or keyboard to it if you don't want to, plug it in, power on and go discover it.

My company has a bunch of management products headed in this direction. It's going to be integrated into nearly everything infrastructure related.

 

[CougTek]

Do you know I they come with the drive caddies...

Lack of sleep, the things it will make you do... Do you know if they come with drive caddies...

We don't use IPMI on our servers, but we should. We just don't know how it works, but I'll try to get information about it.

 

[Mercutio]

Did I mention that up until two months ago, we still had an OS/2 server in production?

One of my customers still has a Netware 3 machine that runs some portion of his POS system.
Another one has some CNC systems that demand to talk to x86 computers running something called ROX (Copyright 1989) that's installed from 720k floppies. I've never been able to find anything out about it.

And another has an AS/400 that was purchased in 1982. IBM set up a database system for the previous owner of the business. He still connects to it with a 3270 emulator and has an employee doing data entry on it. I have no idea if it's still the same one his father bought 30 years ago or not since it's been walled in with bankers boxes for at least the last 15 years.

 

[Handruin]

Lack of sleep, the things it will make you do... Do you know if they come with drive caddies...

We don't use IPMI on our servers, but we should. We just don't know how it works, but I'll try to get information about it.

The machines I've seen have a single drive and the remaining bays have blank panel covers (I think). When I get a chance to run into the lab, I'll verify. I can confirm that their SSD pricing is off the charts in regards to cost. Their retail price for us for the 100GB SSD is $2,436.00. After discount, I'm seeing prices of $974.40. Even with the discount, the price is insane.

 

[CougTek]

The machines I've seen have a single drive and the remaining bays have blank panel covers (I think). When I get a chance to run into the lab, I'll verify.

Thanks, I appreciate you check this.

 

[Handruin]

Thanks, I appreciate you check this.

I checked both C260s that I work with and both came with plastic fillers in the extra bays.

 

[CougTek]

I checked both C260s that I work with and both came with plastic fillers in the extra bays.

Bummer. So it means we have to buy the drives from them for much mucho dinars. I haven't found a part number for the 2.5" drive tray. I'll go with the Intel server then. Thanks again.

 

[CougTek]

So Merc, when are you supposed to make a decision on this? Please let us know. I'm curious about the outcome.

 

[Bozo]

My $0.02 worth. I have been using Intel motherboards for over 12 years now. I've had two failures. Both had been running 24/7/365 on our factory floor. A couple of capacitors died on the boards. These motherboards (D865...) were built about the same time as the Japan capacitor mess. I still have some of these motherboards in operation around the plant.
I did buy 15 Supermicro motherboards at the insistance of an outside software vender. He claimed that their software would only run on Supermicro motherboards. Of course our lame-ass management then insisted that I buy Supermicro. Nine of the Supermicro boards failed.

 

[Mercutio]

So Merc, when are you supposed to make a decision on this? Please let us know. I'm curious about the outcome.

As I said, the thin client thing is not happening.
I have a proof of concept machine dual booting Win7 and Win8 (haven't decided how I'm going to handle the VMs) right now that I need to show to other instructors.

 

[Mercutio]

180GB is not a ton of room once VMs and a backup image are included. I've not tested a restore using TrueImage; the version I have licenses for is 2010, and that doesn't work with Windows 8. I'm a little worried that it won't restore properly, and because of the dual boot setup I can't use Windows integrated backup software either.

For the time being I'm using VMware Player. I think I could and I'm tempted to do Virtual PC on 7 and Hyper-V on 8 since I think those both use the same data files. I just don't know yet if that would save me anything or gain any performance. Why the VMs in the first place? Because installing multiple versions of Office on the same OS install breaks some stuff in one or other Office installation. The only bright spot is that I do get to dump Vista.

The Silverstone case is not perfect. In particular, I really don't like the exceptionally flimsy rear of the case. It's a very thin steel mesh, so there's nothing with which to apply pressure when installing the I/O plate. I was already aware that there's very little clearance between the optical drive and the power supply and yes, that really is a problem. On the other hand, there are easy mounting points 3.5" and 2.5" drives, it supports front USB3, they run cool without a crap-ton of fans and I really don't think I'm going to have a problem setting LCDs on top of them.

 

[Mercutio]

Virtual PC actually does wind up being a better deal for my usage scenario. It shares the Documents library with the host PC and inherits its printers as well, which means less crap to manage and a smaller image file.

For people who think a 60GB SSD is too small for Windows 7, my classroom Win7 partition has Office/Project/Visio 2010 and two XP images with Office/Project/Visio 2003 and Office/Project/Visio 2007 and a half-dozen other random apps we use, plus around 1GB of static images, demo files and drivers. It's current on Windows 7 and Office Updates, and the total used space of the partition including the swap file is 28.5GB.

 

[mubs]

Well, when I was planning to use a 60 GB SSD with my new Win7 build (since aborted), you cautioned me against it!

My experience with my work laptop running Win 7 tells me 60 GB is adequate.

 

[LunarMist]

It may be adequate, but 120/128 is cheap now. The smaller size will experience reduced write performance and longevity.

 

[Mercutio]

Well, when I was planning to use a 60 GB SSD with my new Win7 build (since aborted), you cautioned me against it!

I still don't think it's a great idea for a general-purpose Windows install to be confined to a small space. All it would take to blow out that 60GB is installing and working with some developer or content creation tools, or a blockbuster game or two.
That being said, I have several machines with 80GB drives and that's plenty. The extra space is necessary padding.

 

[mubs]

Point taken, Merc.

 

[Mercutio]

Amazon was perfectly happy to sell me 80 180GB Intel 330 SSDs and 86 DH61BE motherboards, but Silverstone ML03Bs? Screw you. Limit 1.
Guess I'll have to go see if I can work something out with Ingram or something.

 

[Handruin]

Did you try contacting Amazon customer service? Usually they are pretty helpful. Maybe it's a limitation imposed by Silverstone?

 

[Mercutio]

I'm probably better off talking to a traditional distributor. I may even be ordering enough to make talking directly to Silverstone worthwhile.

 

[Will Rickards]

I think we had a thread for budget pc builds, was this it?
What would you build in 2016?

 

[Mercutio]

An i3, 8GB RAM, 250GB SSD. Probably on an ITX board unless I knew I had a reason to do something else. That's plenty of computer for almost every non-gaming task.

 

[ddrueding]

Yup. If the machine is projected to have a long life consider upping the capacity of SSD. This will fend off OS growth and balance writes across more cells.

 

[Will Rickards]

So something like this?

 

[CougTek]

You could do worse than that. It is an old PSU model. I used to sell it five years ago. I haven't had any problem with those. A Seasonic SSR-360GP would be better, but it's 30$ more and not really worth it on a low-budget build.

 

[Buck]

So something like this?

That is a decent selection for a low budget. I second Dave's recommendation for a larger SSD, unless you have plans to use an HDD for data storage.

 

[Buck]

Typically not my first choice of motherboard manufacturers, for a recent low budget build, I did use an ASRock H97M Pro4 and it worked great....five months later and no failure.

 

[ddrueding]

Very similar to the build I recently did for my kid, only I used a different board and an M.2 SSD to clean up the cabling. That CPU is really quick for simple stuff.

 

[Chewy509]

Typically not my first choice of motherboard manufacturers, for a recent low budget build, I did use an ASRock H97M Pro4 and it worked great....five months later and no failure.

That's the exact same board I have in my main home system. Excellent board. The only downside I've noticed with ASRock boards in general, is that the DIMM slots are very tight which has lead to DIMMs not being seated correctly, and POST error reporting is very lackluster, but otherwise very happy with their offerings.