Dell poweredge 1600cs what can i do with it? And some random switches/routers

[LeperousDust]

I've been offered a Dell poweredge 1600cs for £30 seems to good a deal to say no to. After an inital boot up it's running one (boooo) 2.4ghz Xeon, with (only) 512mb ram.

I tried entering the BIOS to see what the hard drive is but i've got no idea at all, i assume it must run some sort of SCSI stuff i don't understand at all. Looks like a RAID kinda controller loads up in the BIOS but its too quick to check what the hell its saying...

The thing is bloomin heavy so apart from possibly having a backup PSU inside, i guess its just fully of hard drives (i cba taking it apart just yet).

If i buy this for £30 just to curb my curiosity, what the hell could i actually do with it? :D It has special connectors on the back i've not see before either, i'm guessing either something strange or just external SCSI (if you can even get that i don't have a clue).

I've got some switches and ADSL routers (ancient i guess) too now and they have some strange flat connectors on the too for setup i guess, maybe making them managed? I dont know, i'll take some pictures in a bit i'm popping out now.

Any ideas then? :)

[Mark]

I assume you probably mean 1600SC?

http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/root/en/product_support_central?c=uk&l=en&s=gen

And yes, you can get external SCSI. There are several different connectors possible though.

[Flibster]

Hmmm.

Wait for Windows Home Server to be released to OEM's and then have a play with it. It's like a NAS with automated backup.

Looking at it myself as well for my photo's

Simon/~Flibster

[Del Lardo]

Dedicated torrent machine with a nice web interface so you can access it when away from home.

[LeperousDust]

Sorry SC i couldn't remember the name off the top of my head... It might be worth £30 for the drives in it, but without me butchering it how would i go about finding out whats on it?

Yeah i'm gonna use WHS but i've got a PC ready for that, P4 with 4x 400gb drives in caddies, i've been playing with that with loads of linux NAS distros and other stuff and i've not got on with any of them yet. i WISH WISH WISH WHS could at least enable RAID though, tis a pain...

[LeperousDust]

Right had a bright idea, just burnt off the Hirems BootCD thingy i'll boot from that from the dvd drive see what i can see on there. I can't get into windows because they've left 2003 server on it, probably with all their sensitive information too, stupid really, good job i'm not out to blackmail for any reason lol... Although i could probably sell it for more then £30 to a competitor of theirs :evil: haha

[Mark]

Got the service tag for it? Providing it's still 'as sold', it used to be possible to pull up the specs based on the service tag.

[Flibster]

Yeah i'm gonna use WHS but i've got a PC ready for that, P4 with 4x 400gb drives in caddies, i've been playing with that with loads of linux NAS distros and other stuff and i've not got on with any of them yet. i WISH WISH WISH WHS could at least enable RAID though, tis a pain...

It kind of does use raid...
...ish...

It's a weird system in that adding a 400gb drive may only give you 300gb more space as it mirrors everything across. It's almost Raid5 in that you can plug in a USB HDD and it then adds that to the storage pool, and if you remove it you won't lose any files as there's copies across the other drives.

I think anyway.

I'm going to see how much the pre-built systems are before building one of my own at the moment. 1tb system looks to be $750 in the US, which is a bit pricy...

Still looks bloody useful though.

Simon/~Flibster

[Daz]

Useful, but nothing you couldn't sort yourself easy enough and have better control/access to the system. For Joe user absolutely - they dont want to understand what's happening and make decisions about it - but for a techie? From what I've seen it will just frustrate someone who knows what they're doing and what they want to achieve.

As for the disk expansion - it's quite clever from what I can tell, though typical Microsoft, it's not clear what's exactly happening (security through obscurity). 'Drive Extender' as they're calling it is a cludge of DFS, Volume Shadow Copy, some hot RAID-5 technology and SIS. Very clever, but should the thing go wrong and you want to recover data off it, I shudder to think how difficult it could prove.

[LeperousDust]

Yeah i wish there was an option to turn it on and off, like you can enable different RAIDs in windows now, thats the ONLY thing putting me off, but i know its the only thing i can sensibly set up and keep running, its unfortunate but all this nix stuff goes right over my head and takes me hours of googling to work out the simplest of problems...

Finding service tag now, thats a very good idea Mark :)

Service tag: 3twrw0j i don't like the dell site where the hell do i find out whats in this? :D

[Daz]

http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/en/details?c=uk&l=en&s=gen

Then original system configuration at the top :)

1 PE1600SC - NON HOT PLUG SCSI - XEON 2.4G
1 PROMO - DOUBLE MEMORY PROMO SKU FOR PE16
1 PROMO - MONEY OFF FOR PE1600SC
1 UK/IRISH - DOCUMENTS, CD AND UK/IRISH PO
1 NON-REDUNDANT CHASSIS OPTION
1 512MB DDR ECC SDRAM MEMORY, (2X256MB)
1 NO SECOND PROCESSOR OPTION - MUST HAVE T
2 36GB SCSI ULTRA320 (10, 000RPM) 1IN 68 PI
1 PERC4 SC RAID CONTROLLER, 64MB, U320, SI
1 48X IDE CD-ROM DRIVE(N)
1 CRT / MG - UK/IRISH - 15IN (E551) VALUE
1 SC - DELL/LOGITECH MIDNIGHT GREY PS/2 MO
1 UK/IRISH (QWERTY) - PS/2 DELL ENTRY MIDN
1 ENGLISH - WINDOWS 2000 SERVER 5 CAL (SP4
1 OPENMANAGE SERVER SOFTWARE
1 UPG TO BRONZE 3Y NBD PREMIER ENTERPRISE
1 BASE WARRANTY
1 1Y NBD (NEXT BUSINESS DAY )
1 C09 AR1 /N - SCSI 68 PIN DRIVES - RAID 1
1 ROAD FREIGHT CHARGE PER UNIT

Ran out of warranty in October last year.

[LeperousDust]

Why the hell is it so heavy then? There doesn't seem much in it to me :p. I don't even know if i'm gonna bother paying £30 for it, i just don't see (other than inside company knowledge) what i can gain from this, can't see the hassle of ebaying it worth the profit either!

[Mark]

It's a server, ergo designed for 24x7, ergo lots of cooling, ergo heavy.

If you can't see the point, then save your money. Can't believe I just said that.

PS - If I can get an idea of the value of my old Dual Xeon box, I might let that go.

[LeperousDust]

Wow, its bloody heavy for some extra cooling!
Yeah i'm really failing to see the point in me buying it cause i just dont know how to use it properly and how half of it works! Shame it probably is quite cool...

[Mark]

Without taking the lid off...

You could have a read of the manuals for it (they'll be online) and see what can be swapped out. I'm not sure what PERC4 cards go for, but might be worth a punt.

[LeperousDust]

Sounds like hassle for something pretty much out of my depth (i just don't do server stuff i have enough problem with home server stuff made from generic hardware haha), if anyone wants it here, i can get it for £30 theyve already dopped that from £50 so probably less, name your price, but postage ain't gonna be nice. I'll drive to meet you half way for some money though i'm fine with that...

[FakeSnake]

dont wanna set on anyones shoes.. but is this on offer, or are you planning on keeping it?
I presume its working and boots into an OS?

I really could use a decent server tbh.
If it was on offer, and I am not shoe stepping... I will take it.
Delivery may be an issue though ;)
it would cost LOTS to post... and I live miles from you :(

[LeperousDust]

Yes its an offer i don't want it, youre right, you live miles away... :)

Devons off my cards any time soon lets put it that way, i don't mind meeting somewhere though if you pay fuel. I dont want this server, and i'm sure its going to be great, but ive not got a clue and dont want to know really, over my head...

Give me £30 and some petrol and beer money i can possibly meet you half way, im off out the pub now, add me to msn we can talk properly tomorrow maybe? See if we can sort something out... Or email if you don't have msn :)

[FakeSnake]

Yes its an offer i don't want it, youre right, you live miles away... :)

Devons off my cards any time soon lets put it that way, i don't mind meeting somewhere though if you pay fuel. I dont want this server, and i'm sure its going to be great, but ive not got a clue and dont want to know really, over my head...

Give me £30 and some petrol and beer money i can possibly meet you half way, im off out the pub now, add me to msn we can talk properly tomorrow maybe? See if we can sort something out... Or email if you don't have msn :)

sorted then..
i will add you wednesday evening to msn.. we can discuss sorting the transportation.