Scored a server on ebay. wow!

SilentK · May 30, 2009

Well about two weeks ago i was playing around on ebay looking for something to store my gigs and gigs (turning into terabytes) of music in FLAC format on. i had a large external hard drive in mind. but after some hard searching, i did not see anything that thrilled me, so i decided what the heck, and typed in "server" into the search bar and went through a couple of pages of results. around page three, half way down, i see an hp g2 server, in great condition with a current bid of $75.62. so im thinking to my self, "oooh yeah" :naughty: so i place a bid on that sucker of eighty something. then someone else bids once more, and then i tell myself, "no more than one hundred," but i know that this thing is going for way more than that. so i place my last bid of $97.23 on it. i wait and wait. 5 minutes remaining, my bid still up there. :grin2:

i win. :twothumbs i look at the page some more and look at the weight, 153 pounds!!! i then realize that because i got free shipping with this thing, it cost the guy more to ship it than what i paid for it. oh well. 2 or so days later i look it up online some more and notice that this sucker retails for over $2800!!!! :faint:

What a steal!! a few more days later ups arives with an absolutly huge box on a dolly. i thank the ups guy, and bend down to try and pick the box up, FAIL. i got it maybe 5 inches off of the ground when i almost drop the thing on the ground. i set it back on the dolly and the ups guy laughs at me. i had to ask if i could use the dolly just to get the blasted thing throught the front door. after that, i manage to get it to my room and out of the box and do the little routine for setting up a computer, and i notice the dual processors (not two cores, but two 2.4ghz cpu's) and massive fans. i plug it in, and this green led comes on in the front. this thing has some bright leds. (brighter than a minimag led) so i slowly press green button only to phave my ears blown off by the massive 6000rpm fans. :clap:

so i boot the thing up (still deafened) and play with the only two 10000rpm 147gb hard drives i havd for it. so now i filled those up and are getting more drives on ebay a such, and doing a RAID 1 for my music. but now, i do not know what to do with it. :candle: i know it may sound stupid, but i have a $2.8k storage solution when i could have gone to walmart to get an external hard drive instead. some time tomorow i will post some photos of this beast. so, i just wanted to share my story of my ebay "deal of the day" and see if any of you guys have any ideas of what to do with it. or should i just keep on using it for music?

mechBgon · May 30, 2009

SilentK said:
Well about two weeks ago i was playing around on ebay looking for something to store my gigs and gigs (turning into terabytes) of music in FLAC format on. i had a large external hard drive in mind. but after some hard searching, i did not see anything that thrilled me, so i decided what the heck, and typed in "server" into the search bar and went through a couple of pages of results. around page three, half way down, i see an hp g2 server, in great condition with a current bid of $75.62. so im thinking to my self, "oooh yeah" :naughty: so i place a bid on that sucker of eighty something. then someone else bids once more, and then i tell myself, "no more than one hundred," but i know that this thing is going for way more than that. so i place my last bid of $97.23 on it. i wait and wait. 5 minutes remaining, my bid still up there. i win. :twothumbs i look at the page some more and look at the weight, 153 pounds!!! i then realize that because i got free shipping with this thing, it cost the guy more to ship it than what i paid for it. oh well. 2 or so days later i look it up online some more and notice that this sucker retails for over $2800!!!! What a steal!! a few more days later ups arives with an absolutly huge box on a dolly. i thank the ups guy, and bend down to try and pick the box up, FAIL. i got it maybe 5 inches off of the ground when i almost drop the thing on the ground. i set it back on the dolly and the ups guy laughs at me. i had to ask if i could use the dolly just to get the blasted thing throught the front door. after that, i manage to get it to my room and out of the box and do the little routine for setting up a computer, and i notice the dual processors (not two cores, but two 2.4ghz cpu's) and massive fans. i plug it in, and this green led comes on in the front. this thing has some bright leds. (brighter than a minimag led) so i slowly press green button only to phave my ears blown off by the massive 6000rpm fans. so i boot the thing up (still deafened) and play with the only two 10000rpm 147gb hard drives i havd for it. so now i filled those up and are getting more drives on ebay a such, and doing a RAID 1 for my music. but now, i do not know what to do with it. :candle: i know it may sound stupid, but i have a $2.8k storage solution when i could have gone to walmart to get an external hard drive instead. some time tomorow i will post some photos of this beast. so, i just wanted to share my story of my ebay "deal of the day" and see if any of you guys have any ideas of what to do with it. or should i just keep on using it for music?

SCSI storage is expensive on a $-per-GB basis. I wonder if there's an alternate backplane/drive rack module for it that would allow you to use Serial ATA drives, assuming it has some form of RAID-capable SATA controller built into the motherboard's chipset. SATA would get you a lot more storage per dollar.

RA40 · May 30, 2009

Will be looking forward to the pics. The case alone would be a good score let alone a working box.

tebore · May 30, 2009

I bet you it'll cost you close to what you paid for it to run it for a year. SCSI drives are pretty power hungry and I bet those are Xeon processors based on the older P4 technology.

I'm surprised someone would let a machine like that go for 100. Must have been a bankruptcy or a lease something went south for someone.

If it's decent server board it'll have the required PCI slots (Just can't remember the name at the moment) for the larger RAID storage cards.

csshih · May 30, 2009

heheheh.. .on a server like that...

try popping off the lid, and booting it up...
hurricane time.

ackbar · May 30, 2009

tebore said:
I bet you it'll cost you close to what you paid for it to run it for a year. SCSI drives are pretty power hungry and I bet those are Xeon processors based on the older P4 technology.

I'm surprised someone would let a machine like that go for 100. Must have been a bankruptcy or a lease something went south for someone.

If it's decent server board it'll have the required PCI slots (Just can't remember the name at the moment) for the larger RAID storage cards.

I second what tebore said. You'd be better off buying a used laptop and attaching an external HD. Would save you some cash and would be more green.

Does adaptec still make IO cards? cause that is what comes to mind.

I am totally shocked that someone would pay more to ship something that they received from the buyer. That is insane.

ElectronGuru · May 30, 2009

It's part of the 'new' eBay, very anti seller. In this one example, lots of emfouragement to offer free shipping but no suggetion of even using a reserve.

I third the comments here. Try selling it for more than you paid and getting something smaller and storage specific, the noise and power costs alone are worth it. If a single drive will do it, the Time Capsule makes an excellent media server. If not newegg offers an array of options to look at.

geepondy · May 30, 2009

If one decided to get ebay it, what would it cost to ship it? I wonder if trying out craig's list first and encouraging local pick up would be a better first try.

SilentK · May 30, 2009

Yeah i think i would be better off to sell it and buy a home server that uses normal SATA drives. This thing would take me a year or so just to read the manual. (1000+ pages) and it is just impractical in general, but it is just plain bad @$$. :grin2:

it would be even cheaper to buy a 128gb 2.5" solid sate drive, than to buy a 10000rpm 147.9gb drive. i am on CPF using the server right now, trying to upload the photos from my camera to it, but no go. so you poor people will just have to wait another 30 or so minutes. :nana:

tebore · May 30, 2009

I just noticed you put HP G2 server. It's a fairly recent model server and seems very feature packed but without knowing the exact model I don't know what exactly is equipped in it.

You should join the CPF folding at home team with it.

Some versions of it are equipped with Hot-swappable RAID capable SATA controllers. If you don't need the power I'd sell the extra processor and the SCSI drives and get a set of WD Green 1.5TB SATA drives. The sale of the drive and processor will more than cover the cost of your purchase and allow you to swap the fans for quieter ones. It's what I would do as shipping and selling the whole thing would be a hassle if it's as heavy as you say it is.

Some versions of the server have Quad (4x) dual core Opterons if you have 2 CPUs you might be running Dual Dual core Opterons which is some awesome overkill.

watt4 · May 30, 2009

for those saying it will use a lot of electricity, consider that it only needs to be turned on when he is using it to back up stuff.

some servers can take three or four drives. he might be able to get a large (non-scsi) drive and add it. not raid it, just add it.

RA40 · May 30, 2009

Join the CPF Folding @ Home team and put that beast to work running SMP.

Start buying up more boxes to assemble a network. Of course all those boxes Fold as well. Do it...it's only money and you have enough flashlights. :poke:

:twothumbs

SilentK · May 30, 2009

Alright, here we go (if the photos are to big, please tell me so i can change them)

blasterman · May 31, 2009

Some versions of the server have Quad (4x) dual core Opterons if you have 2 CPUs you might be running Dual Dual core Opterons which is some awesome overkill.

I'm pretty sure that server is the older, P4 Xeon 'Prestonia' version and not the Opteron one, which are the only Server processors at 2.4 ghz. I see another one on Ebay just like this one.

I've deployed a lot of P4 Xeon servers, and they were mostly power sucking junk from the start. They make horrible workstations because of their inefficient pipelines. To put thing in perspective, I had dual and quad 1.26ghz servers based on much older Intel P3's, and 2ghz based P4 Xeons couldn't beat the 1.26 ones on my application Benchmark tests. I could easily virtualize half a dozen of these with any $300 Core Duo or AMD 64 based desktop computer, and get better performance :twothumbs

It will make a decent file server because the SCSI drives have pretty hefty I/O.

A year ago the server was worth more as scrap steel. It will keep a room warm though because without any decent power management it will take a steady amount of current from the wall and happily convert it to heat.

HP/Compaq have always had a notorious reputation for building noisy, heavy, albeit heavy servers for no reason other than they like proving the law of gravity. Best thing about having these things for a home PC is if you have an apartment, the odds are 99% that you will leave it when you move, which will totally baffle your landlord, especially if you leave it plugged in.

Lumenshroom · Jun 14, 2009

Buy a business account from your ISP and host your own server for your game of choice.

paulr · Jun 15, 2009

I've played with the idea of a server at home, but what you've got there is a boat anchor, and the power costs will kill you.

eracks.com has some low powered servers, but maybe more expensive than makes sense for your purposes. Your idea of adding an external (or internal) HD to your existing PC is probably the best approach.

SilentK · Jun 15, 2009

Lumenshroom: I had considered it, but it is to costly for a bussiness package. However, i have done some toying around with a cable modem and managed to draw more than 35Mbps down out of it. (Megabits) However, i do not feel like drawing attention to myself by using it 24/7. at this point it is more of something i show to my friends to tease them. :nana: However, i belive that if someone like me could get that kind of speed out of something, then imagine what a pro could do. Yet i do not feel like going in detail with this, seeing as this is not the place. :sssh:

Also, i would need more drives, and i do not feel like spending thousands on filling this beast up with 147gb drives, or spend weeks on ebay looking for them cheaper.

Paulr: acording to my UPS, with one power supply installed, it is only drawing 250 watts on avarage. But then again, i do not have it loaded up with fans due to noise, and there are olny a few drives in it right now. So im sure if that were different, i would need the extera PSU in it and it could draw more than 500 watts easy. Yet my current dual pc set-up is drawing more like 700-800 watts. So it does not really matter to me.

SilentK · Jun 15, 2009

Ok, so today i tried to jerry-rig the fans in the thing so it would be quieter and i could run it more often. so i visit my friend who has so many pcs laying around it is unbelivable, to see if he had any 120mm fans i could buy from him. turns out he has boxes of 1800rpm 120mm fans. The ones you usually find on a standard pc. So i use a power adapter and i hook them up. a total of 10. (i could have put 12 in there at least) i fire it up, it goes throught the diognostics and all that good stuff, (takes a good 5 minutes to boot up on avarage) and when i get around 30 seconds into it, i get an error saying "insuffesiet air flow" (sorry, cant spell) and i am questioning my self, knowing that i am getting a good 400+ CFM. I do not know why it says that. but, a single one of those big fans that i got with the server could move 300cfm i would bet. i am thinking that those fans are not drawing enough amps. So, i am thinking about getting a few WA 1185 bulbs

party

and rigging it up so that it works correctly, by drawing more amps. Only a cpf'er would think of something like that. :grin2:

So does anyone know if this would work? or is there actually an airflow meter in there?

mechBgon · Jun 16, 2009

SilentK said:
Ok, so today i tried to jerry-rig the fans in the thing so it would be quieter and i could run it more often. so i visit my friend who has so many pcs laying around it is unbelivable, to see if he had any 120mm fans i could buy from him. turns out he has boxes of 1800rpm 120mm fans. The ones you usually find on a standard pc. So i use a power adapter and i hook them up. a total of 10. (i could have put 12 in there at least) i fire it up, it goes throught the diognostics and all that good stuff, (takes a good 5 minutes to boot up on avarage) and when i get around 30 seconds into it, i get an error saying "insuffesiet air flow" (sorry, cant spell) and i am questioning my self, knowing that i am getting a good 400+ CFM. I do not know why it says that. but, a single one of those big fans that i got with the server could move 300cfm i would bet. i am thinking that those fans are not drawing enough amps. So, i am thinking about getting a few WA 1185 bulbs party and rigging it up so that it works correctly, by drawing more amps. Only a cpf'er would think of something like that.

So does anyone know if this would work? or is there actually an airflow meter in there?

The motherboard may be freaking out because it's not getting tach signals from the stock fans anymore.

What OS does that puppy run, out of curiosity?

tebore · Jun 16, 2009

SilentK said:
Ok, so today i tried to jerry-rig the fans in the thing so it would be quieter and i could run it more often. so i visit my friend who has so many pcs laying around it is unbelivable, to see if he had any 120mm fans i could buy from him. turns out he has boxes of 1800rpm 120mm fans. The ones you usually find on a standard pc. So i use a power adapter and i hook them up. a total of 10. (i could have put 12 in there at least) i fire it up, it goes throught the diognostics and all that good stuff, (takes a good 5 minutes to boot up on avarage) and when i get around 30 seconds into it, i get an error saying "insuffesiet air flow" (sorry, cant spell) and i am questioning my self, knowing that i am getting a good 400+ CFM. I do not know why it says that. but, a single one of those big fans that i got with the server could move 300cfm i would bet. i am thinking that those fans are not drawing enough amps. So, i am thinking about getting a few WA 1185 bulbs party and rigging it up so that it works correctly, by drawing more amps. Only a cpf'er would think of something like that.

So does anyone know if this would work? or is there actually an airflow meter in there?

If you want a 50lb paperweight hooking up some WA1185 would be a great idea. I think the reason why you're getting that warning is the system is looking for a minimal amount of RPMs from the fans once the chips hit a certain temp if it doesn't see it you'll get the warning.

I had an IBM server that did this. It didn't shut down it just fires an alarm. I think I just disconnected it or I just hooked up fans with RPM sensors and and use a PWM controller on them it was 3 years back I don't quite remember.

Scored a server on ebay. wow!

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