Dell Poweredge 2650

Dr Galen

Hey everyone

Looking for a little advice if anyone can advise.

The boss bought a load of Dell equipment a while back for the office from a liquidation sale. We've ended up with some decent desktops and a few laptops, which are all great. A Dell 840 server and today I just discovered that he got 3 Poweredge 2650s in the deal for practically nothing.

They have been sitting in a corner of the office and tbh we're not entirely sure what to do with them.

We don't run Exchange so a mailserver type thing isn't a runner as we are migrating to Google Apps in the next few weeks. We currently have a few shared drives along with a CRM database running on the 840. While I'm no sys admin, between a few of us, we'd have enough knowledge to get something going with them, just seems a waste to leave them sitting.

Any ideas would be welcome We'd be open that might be a bit off the wall or different too

M.J.M.C

Hi

-Do you have a web proxy, you could install Websense

We run it here, it can filter websites, run reports, block traffic etc
Very handy tool to have. We actually run Websense off a PowerEdge 2650 as well.

Other ideas
-An auditing tool (i can suggest names) to show what workstations are assigned to who, what software is currently installed, etc etc
-We run a sever here that we can push software to end workstations, be they security patches, or software like say office, rather than installing it on each machine manually
-You could run an imaging server and install Achronis
Install an OS on a desktop, all the software your business needs, and set it up just how you want it. Then copy that image to your Achronis server.
Use any workstation to boot from their network card, and you can image that computer with whatever image you just made. Works for servers too. Handy if anything goes wrong, you can just re-image a machine in minutes.
-A backup server, everyone should have one of these

Sorry if this is too basic

woolymammoth

you could build a (very) small supercomputer! cluster them all together and play solitaire

Seriously though, LTSP Cluster would be cool.
You could build a virtual network with VMware's ESXi free version. You'd get double the amount of servers out of them then.
VMware have loads of appliances for great ideas.

You still need some network infrastructure don't you? Domain controller with active directory.. firewalls.. security.. WSUS servers..

Dr Galen

literally these are 3 blank boxes. They've been powered up ages ago when bought, but not by me. I don't even know whats on the inside yet. Fun starts tomorrow.

I just thought, where else to ask but boards.....

thanks for the ideas guys. A mini (very) cluster would rock. God knows what we would do with it, but still would be nice

Gonna boot them up tomorrow and take a looksee at whats on the inside

woolymammoth

the clusters are pretty cool, but pointless really unless you can use them. That's why ltsp clusters are cool. I built a heterogeneous terminal server cluster before where every node that joined it became part of the cluster. In an environment where everyone is only using web apps, it's a pretty good set up. no need to worry about client operating systems.

Dr Galen

ltsp looks cool alright. had a good read about it last night. I'm half using this as a bit of a "project", something for a few of us to have a bit of fun with but maybe also get something that will be of a bit of benefit to us professionally. Be also be good experience from a technical point of view, up our skills so to speak, because as I say we're not actually technical people by trade

Capt'n Midnight

the 2650's will probably use about 250watts so several hundred euro in electricity over a year if on 24/7

if you already have a decent server that isn't being fully utilised then a vm is probably a better option

another option is to prep them up for disaster recovery so they are ready to go if you need them