HP ProLiant Servers going cheap

[Pear]

I received a flyer today for the HP ProLiant DL140 G2 server. Its on this page as the best buy. Its currently at £825 but I can receive a £250 cash back if I purchase before the end of the month.

 

Basic specs are 2.8ghz intel xeon, 80gb sata, 2gb PC-3200 DDR2 RAM.

 

The aim is to buy a few servers to run thin clients. At the moment I think that will be around 100 clients. I was thinking I could add an extra 1gb of ram for £180 so that would put the cost up to £755. At this price I would be tempted to buy 3 or 4 of these.

 

If this is a big mistake please tell me before the end of the month. I'm also looking for a fileserver too but I don't think the hard drive spec on these is good enough, I'd want something with 15000rpm.

 

This is a list of servers that can earn a rebate -HP servers

[Geoff]

Sounds good to me. I'd go for 4Gb though if possible.

[plexer]

The DL140 G2 from Inmac lists at £644.67 and from Bechtle is £558.00 so Bechtle is cheaper than HP without the rebate but as they are and HP partner can you still get the rebate?

 

Allthough they are 1gb ones I think and not 2gb

 

Plus HP lists 4 weeks waiting time on it. Bechtle have low stocks.

 

I'm looking for a rackmount to run censornet or another filtering proxy solution.

 

Ok the claim form is there on the HP site and they will send you a cheque but the claim form just has the DL140 G2 listed but the qualifying product is listed as a specific one.

 

Ben

[ChrisH]

Be very careful what hardware you buy for Censornet it doesnt support alot of stuff especially SATA and RAID adaptors and adding support is very awkward.

[pooley]

"HP ProLiant Servers going cheap"

 

Must be bird flu ?

 

Sorry - but its friday

[NetworkGeezer]

Be very careful what hardware you buy for Censornet it doesnt support alot of stuff especially SATA and RAID adaptors and adding support is very awkward.

 

How about buying the actual Censornet appliance and supporting OSS

[Geoff]

How about buying the actual Censornet appliance and supporting OSS

 

So using OSS doesn't count then?

[webman]

Censornet appliance

 

SME Server / Secondary School Server (max 500 users)

 

Specification

• 1u Rackmount Communications Appliance

• Pentium IV 2.4GHz

• 1GB DDR Fast RAM

• 60GB Serial-ATA Storage

• Two Fast 10/100 Ethernet Cards (gigabit option available)

 

£1,299.00 (excludes VAT and Shipping)

 

8O 8O 8O

[Geoff]

Presumably you get some technical support time from a consultant with that for installation/setup/etc too?

[plexer]

Yeah that would be one reason for not buying it geez.

 

Censornet doesn't support SATA?

 

Ben

[NetworkGeezer]

How about buying the actual Censornet appliance and supporting OSS

 

So using OSS doesn't count then?

 

I just meant that if there was chance to buy the commercial product then we probably should. That way more companies will be convinced that the OSS charging-for-services model is worth while.

 

At this moment MS is getting money for ISA while the Censornet guys may not be seeing as much ROI despite having a good as if not better product.

[webman]

But come on, £1,300!!!

[Geoff]

Censornet doesn't support SATA?

 

It's Linux. Linux supports SATA. However I suspect a kernel recompile is in order. If Censornet doesn't include the compiler/libraries by default then it's going to be fiddly to sort out. Especially if you don't know what your doing.

[NetworkGeezer]

But come on, £1,300!!!

 

OK we in the education sector may need to count the pennies every now and then but if there is option of buying the shrinked wrapped/boxed version of your favourite OSS solution then why not consider it.

[john]

For censornet, stick to the Big names chipsets by Via etc....

[Pear]

The DL140 G2 from Inmac lists at £644.67 and from Bechtle is £558.00 so Bechtle is cheaper than HP without the rebate but as they are and HP partner can you still get the rebate?

 

Allthough they are 1gb ones I think and not 2gb

 

 

The ram is pretty important. I notice on the HP page in the original post that this is the only model that comes with 2gb of ram so its obivous they are desperately trying to get rid of them.

 

For around £800 I've been unable to find any other unit that has a better spec than 2.8ghz xeon, 3gig ram and 80gb sata. Having a server with 3gb ram is quite something for under £1000 I think.

[plexer]

Yup I'd agree with that I've been looking as well.

 

Ben

[Disease]

I have 4 of those servers, I bought them with dual chips in them and when they were full price

 

They have been discontinued now and replaced with a new varient of which I bought 4 more.

 

Decent servers not had a problem with either of the models I bought.

[plexer]

Well I took delivery the other day of my DL140 and took delivery today of the additional 2GB of RAM to go in it which I have just installed.

 

Now to install something on it to act as a filtering proxy.

 

Ben

[HodgeHi]

Where do you get your HDDs from to fit in your proliants?

 

I purchased my first ml150 g3 from pcwb for 449 and found that the HDDs need "special caddies to have the drives fitted. These seem a little expensive and a little pointless?

[ChrisH]

Its the same with all brands they sting you for some cheap looking caddy.

[HodgeHi]

What really got my goat though is they went out of their way to manufacture a caddy that slots into the hole where the real caddies go which could of easily have been a caddy in itself and probably cost just as much to make.

[john]

Proband, Insight, PCWB, Dabs are all places I have had HDDs from for HPs. Another way is get bare drives and buy empty caddies off eBay for a few quid did for one rush job I did, but it was a HP drive just caddyless.

[tarquel]

That sounds ideal john...

 

I made the silly mistake [in that I've been getting HP server's and gear for years] of getting a very large SATA HDD for our email box - but then forgetting to get the caddy'd version

 

So one off ebay wud be good - except that i dont know whether ebay do purchase orders hehe [we dont have a credit card]

 

Got a link for one of these caddy's?

 

Nath

[john]

ebay search is your friend - http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/HP-Compaq-SCSI-Disk-Caddy_W0QQitemZ200056520090QQihZ010QQcategoryZ96894QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem Never used the seller but I assume thats the bit you want.

 

As for the PO can't you buy the caddy yourself and take home a stack of blank DVDs IE something you get as a school that is a consumerable to cover the cost of the caddy thats of use to you so your problem is solved? I did that once with an eBay thing, a school wouldn't go for it so I purchaed it, was an old P3 CPU needed for a job, and I took a CD-RW drive so it wasnt as if its was asset listed but covered the cost, the Head checked the paypal recipt for the goods and the CD-RW invoice and said it was fine but we shouldn't do it often as its naughty, but we were fine with it, as if anyone asked you could point to any CD-RW drive or say it died as its a consumerable really.

 

Also I take it the drive is the right type and height to fit?