is this server suitable for home media network.

techguy

Hi There,

Just wondering wondering would the following Dell PowerEdge 2850 server be suitable as the kernel for a home media network.

Details are as follows:

System service tag: 39WXH1J

16GB of RAM 4x4GB
6 x 73GB @15k
2 x 3.20GHZ Intel Xeon ( +1 additional 2.80 Ghz)
PERC 4Di RAID controller
2 x Gigabit Ethernet

I know this is a little light on storage but I could probably get a NAS drive to complement it.

I'm thinking that this could do the job nicely as I could have all the different servers running in independent Virtual Machine. I'm thinking the 2 physical CPU's would be outrageous for live transcoding etc.. ?

According to the dell documentation it has "PCI-X RISER CARD - 3 PCI-X SLOTS"

Does this mean I can fit three extra PCI Express cards like TV cards, GPU etc? THE GPU I have in mind is 8600 GTS (Only one space)

Should I be a little skeptical as this server is 5 years old?

Thanks in advance..

techguy.

peterk19

Thats a great server but it wont take PCI Extpress cards as it only has PCI-X slots on the mainboard which will only take PCI-X server Hardware E.g. SCSI, Raid, SAS, Fibre, multi port NIC's but it is also backward compatible with standard PCI Cards but not PCI-Express

see this for more info http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI-X

Isnt that massively overspecd and power hungry for a media server? When would you need to to live transcoding? I would have thought it is completely unsuitable for use as a home media server. A low power athlon or atom cpu is perfect for serving files and very low power consumption and can be implemented as a silent system in one tower with alot of 3.5" bays. If you are getting it for free though i suppose it might be a differant story.

JDxtra

Yes, agree. Total over kill. Plus the noise of the thing will be unreal!

jhegarty

That's some beast for a 5 year old machine.

Unless you home is a tv station, it's overkill.

LoGiE

Get yourself a Hp workstation or something. Put 3 1tb drives in it with RAID 5. It will have a quad core in it as well as the PCI express slots.

Having a server like that poweredge running in your home would be insane. With the money you could buy 3 workstations!

techguy

Ok, I will accept that it is overkill.

The noise wouldn't bother me as it would be rackmounted in a storage area. It's going on adverts.ie for €550. I'd prob get it for €400 though. Would that be a good deal.

The fact that the PCI-X card is not the same as PCI-ex is a dealbreaker. I would probably want to add some PCI-ex cards in there.

Just out of interest would a Q6600 CPU and 4-6GB RAM do for a media server? I don't think i'd need an i7 would I?

techguy

techguy wrote: »

Just out of interest would a Q6600 CPU and 4-6GB RAM do for a media server? I don't think i'd need an i7 would I?

Well if you have it already not doing anything go ahead and use the Q6600 and 4Gb of ram but, again, that is massive overkill. A 40 euro low power cpu and 2GB of ram is more than enough for a file server. A dual core atom can saturate 2Gbit lan at ~70% cpu(oced from 1.6 to 1.9) with 1.5Gb Ram used under win 7. Ive seen that myself on a dual nic mobo. The big bonus with an atom or athlon is the power consumption. Atom is something like 7/8w at idle, compared to Q6600 10KW (or something like that!).

techguy

Ok guys.. ye have made me aware of one thing for sure..

I'm not sure of the capabilites of lower end components so i'm just planning overkill so I don't get let down.. performance wise anyway. ESB bill would probably be crazy.

I'll come back here later with a list of my actual requirements.. Thanks for the help guys.:)