Cheap Xeon Servers

[Bobpaton]

I have seen on ebay recently a heap of cheap xeon based multi-processor servers. Being a huge believer in "proper" server hardware I have finally bought myself something for home. I have a few non-beliver friends that came around to look at my new "beast" so I thought I would give them a quick demo of what it could do. The QUAD xeon compaq server (P2/450 1Mb Cache CPUs) was fired up next to my old "server" which was heaps higher spec'ed in terms of CPU speed. To their surprise it was the older, "slower", cheaper XEON machine to win the race to boot, then had less CPU load, and was simply much more responsive in the OS.

Now a few of my friends are keeping an eye out for a cheap server for themselves.

So again, I would like to reiterate to those non-belivers. There is a difference between server hardware and spec'ed up desktops, and there is many many bargains to be had.

Any other similar experiences I would love to hear - gimme some additional ammo to pass on to my friends

[ownz0r]

just out of interest what are the full specs and how much did you pay for it?

[kogi]

How was your old server specced?
I think it was not the difference between server and workstation but the difference between quad cpu and scsi raid.
It will be better in disk and memory i/o because of that.

kogi

[Aetherone]

Hi Bob,
/me pats his dual 450/1mb xeon supermicro server

they are nice arnt they? I like the multiple PCI busses and how well that makes them serve files

[infiltraitor]

i havent used any xeons.. old or new.. but i do have a Dual Opteron rig.. loving it.
SMP makes things much nicer/smoother..

if you can seperate things onto seperate pci / pci-x busses they get more bandwidth to play with (same as putting drives on different channels)

[death_muncher]

I am making my debut into the world of SMP soon, I am building myself a small server .... Dual P3 800's, Its probably abit overkill for what I need, just running a ftp + web server. But I couldn't go past the coolness of a dual machine.

One part I am having abit of trouble sourcing is a 80pin SCSI cable.... After a long search I finally sourced a 80pin card (I am led to believe, I haven't actually bought it yet, its from a guy on OCAU). Where do you guys get little parts like this?

I dont like the idea of gettinga 68pin card and a 68>80 pin adapter

[Aetherone]

Originally Posted by death_muncher

One part I am having abit of trouble sourcing is a 80pin SCSI cable.... After a long search I finally sourced a 80pin card (I am led to believe, I haven't actually bought it yet, its from a guy on OCAU). Where do you guys get little parts like this?

80 pin is typically meant for hot swap backplanes where the drive receives both power and data over the same block of pins. It still only uses 68 for data transfer, and happily uses the same "regular" 68wire cables to connect the backplane to the controller.

AFIK there is no such thing as an 80 pin controller, although since I've only been playing with scsi for 5 or 6 years I could well be incorrect on this.

http://www.transintl.com/technotes/scsi.htm <- this was somewhat informative

Aeth..

[infiltraitor]

Originally Posted by death_muncher

I dont like the idea of gettinga 68pin card and a 68>80 pin adapter

ive got 5..
3 running and 2 for backup.. havent had any problems with them yet

[death_muncher]

Ok, I just bought myself a couple of adapters

thanks for your help guys. I didn't realise the 80pin was just with power incorporated, but i'm happy to learn