IKWeb Posted November 4, 2011 Posted November 4, 2011 Hi All I am about to purchase some 2nd hand dell PE 2950 servers, and wanted to know if there is an ISO I can download, but to a CD and then run this CD on the servers and it will check the hardware for any errors b4 I purchase them and find I have 2 rather huge door stops.. TIA
glennda Posted November 4, 2011 Posted November 4, 2011 memtestx86 could be a start - bartpe from which you could then run chkdsk on it - apart from that not much really.
Arthur Posted November 5, 2011 Posted November 5, 2011 There are several things you could use.... Dell Diagnostics Utility - This will test all hardware within the server (or a specific subset) and would be the best utility to run first or if you have limited time. Dell Diagnostics are designed to verify proper operation of the hardware in your system outside of a high level operating system environment. The packages in this release are designed to create bootable media from which to run these diagnostics. Both packages are capable of creating bootable USB flash drives, diskettes, or CDs as well as diskette or hard drive images capable of being used for PXE booting or as virtual media images with additional hardware and/or software. These packages are also capable of being used to update an existing diagnostic (utility) partition on a system supported by the package. Ultimate Boot CD - Burn the ISO to a CD/DVD or USB flash drive and then boot from it. Use MemTest86+ to test the RAM (the plus is important, btw) and MHDD32 or the relevant hard drive manufacturers diagnostic utility to test the HDDs e.g. SeaTools for Seagate's. If you want to check exactly what hardware is in the server, use Hardware Detection Tool (located under the System menu). 1
MatthewL Posted November 5, 2011 Posted November 5, 2011 They are quite old servers now if I am thinking rightly.
FN-GM Posted November 5, 2011 Posted November 5, 2011 They are quite old servers now if I am thinking rightly. Not that old, pretty good specs and can handle a large amount of RAM. Still in warranty and stuff..
IKWeb Posted November 5, 2011 Author Posted November 5, 2011 Looking at the times on those posts, do you guys not sleep :-) I have downloaded the dell Diag application from dells website, thanks for that, so guess I will find out later today. Matt, the servers were built at the end of 09, so they are only 2 years old, and as FN-GN says they hold allot of memory, for example, the ones I am looking at getting are the below spec Dell 2950 Bios 2.7.0 64Gb RAM (8 x 8Gb DDR2 FB-Dimm) 2 x Intel Xeon E5430 2.66Ghz quad core processors each with 2 x 6Mb of L2 cache 1333Mhz bus speed Perc 6/i raid controller with 1.21.02 firmware 6 x 250Gb enterprise 250Gb SATA drives Single PSU so the spec looks good, and they are going to be used with VMWare, so hopefully they will have a few years left in them yet! :-) Thanks again to all for your help!
kmount Posted November 5, 2011 Posted November 5, 2011 With a single psu make sure you provision n+1 boxes (and spare psus) to cope should a box go down with a single psu. Good spec boxes.
IKWeb Posted November 5, 2011 Author Posted November 5, 2011 With a single psu make sure you provision n+1 boxes (and spare psus) to cope should a box go down with a single psu. Good spec boxes. Hi have already got prices for new psus so they will both have 2 in by the end of next week :-)
kmount Posted November 5, 2011 Posted November 5, 2011 Good call Some nice boxes, will be interested in hearing your experiences.
IKWeb Posted November 5, 2011 Author Posted November 5, 2011 I will update this evening when I manage to get esxi installed
IKWeb Posted November 5, 2011 Author Posted November 5, 2011 Well machines are now home.. Just had one open to take a look, and noticed they have an internal USB port... Hmm so was thinking about getting a 32GB or even 16GB USB Pen drive, and putting this into that internal slot, and then installing ESXi onto that... What do you guys think, then I can use all 6 SATA disks for the VMs?? Your thoughts please :-)
glennda Posted November 5, 2011 Posted November 5, 2011 Yup its do able - I do it with SD cards in my hps
SYNACK Posted November 5, 2011 Posted November 5, 2011 Well machines are now home.. Just had one open to take a look, and noticed they have an internal USB port... Hmm so was thinking about getting a 32GB or even 16GB USB Pen drive, and putting this into that internal slot, and then installing ESXi onto that... What do you guys think, then I can use all 6 SATA disks for the VMs?? Your thoughts please :-) Yeap, that is what it is there for and gives you that tiny (miniscule) bit extra throughput to you're VMs as they don't have to compete with the hyperviser.
3s-gtech Posted November 5, 2011 Posted November 5, 2011 Did the same on a HP DL385 G5P with internal USB header, with ESXi. Just make sure you use a decent quality USB stick!
IKWeb Posted November 5, 2011 Author Posted November 5, 2011 Yeah I have one somewhere Plan is the followling Server 1 Mirror 2 of the 6 disks and install the ESXi OS onto this, I know 250GB is way over kill, but it keeps it simple, the other 4 250GB are going to be raid 5. They are setting up as I type.. (they take ages) Server 2 This will have a 16GB pen drive in the internal USB port, and the 6 250GB disks will be removed, and 2TB disks will be installed, in RAID 6. Need to find out tho 1st if the PERC 6/I card can take 2TB disks. Dont see why not. That way I get the best storage out of it for the VMs and the files which will be going onto it.
plexer Posted November 5, 2011 Posted November 5, 2011 What is server one going to be running can you not use the 250gb disks you're taking out of server 2 to increase the storage or to enable you to run raid6 on server 1? Ben
IKWeb Posted November 5, 2011 Author Posted November 5, 2011 Server 1 already has 6 250GB hard disks. Both servers will be running ESXi, just the 1st dosnt really need much space as it will only have about 4 / 5 VMs tops. Were as server 2, will be hosting about 10 VMS, and media servers. hence the 6 2TB disks.
bossman Posted November 5, 2011 Posted November 5, 2011 @IKWeb: We run 3 of these with 2 x 73Gb drives mirrored coupled to a Sun 7110 SAN for the VM's with 3 x 1Gb nics on each server one of them for redundancy and Xenserver as the hypervisor with HA running off an old NAS box. They are incredible!!!
IKWeb Posted November 5, 2011 Author Posted November 5, 2011 Hi Guys Well just got ESXI 5 installed, just installing the 1st DC. amazing how fast these servers run. Need to look into a NAS now, which I guess I would connect to the Dell server via RJ45 ???
bossman Posted November 5, 2011 Posted November 5, 2011 @IKWeb: Yes that's how we have it, 3 x 1Gb nics and the speed of them is just great.
webman Posted November 5, 2011 Posted November 5, 2011 Our primary network servers are all PE 2950s. 5x Bare metal for the RM CC4 servers, and 3x XenServer hosts. They vary in RAM between 4 and 32GB, all have 10k SAS disks in RAID1 but are also attached to 2 SANs. We've never had any problems with them. As kmount said, they're great boxes. If all is in working order, you've got yourself a good deal
IKWeb Posted November 5, 2011 Author Posted November 5, 2011 Our primary network servers are all PE 2950s. 5x Bare metal for the RM CC4 servers, and 3x XenServer hosts. They vary in RAM between 4 and 32GB, all have 10k SAS disks in RAID1 but are also attached to 2 SANs. We've never had any problems with them. As kmount said, they're great boxes. If all is in working order, you've got yourself a good deal Thanks for the comments. Must admit dont normally like Dell kit, but these servers are changing the way I think.
plexer Posted November 5, 2011 Posted November 5, 2011 So 6 disks are all you can get in them? Keep the other disks as cold spares? Ben
IKWeb Posted November 5, 2011 Author Posted November 5, 2011 Yep. I thought 6 disks was quite good. the 250 would be spear yeah, and also spari for Server 1 as thats using 6 250gb disks. Looking at a NAS now to extent the system storage.
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