Donated Equipment - Data Centre

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johnberman

New Member
Dec 10, 2019
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I work with a group of Radio Astronomers EAARO.ORG.UK and am about to start some projects (SETI, Satellite Ground Station and others) which will have quite heavy storage and processing requirements, we have been very lucky and been donated some equipment and racks (its quite old but free) - I have uploaded an txt list of the kit.

I am an IT project Manager so have a decent understanding but help logically grouping the equipment will be my first step – is this the right forum to get assistance ?

Regards
John
 

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T_Minus

Build. Break. Fix. Repeat
Feb 15, 2015
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Hi John! Welcome to the forum.

Someone here I'm sure will be along soon that's experienced in your hardware, and give you feedback :)

You're in the right place
 

EffrafaxOfWug

Radioactive Member
Feb 12, 2015
1,394
511
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Do those BL460c G6's come with an accompanying C7000 enclosure (along with network/storage fabric IO bays)? They're pretty much useless without it, and if you don't have the enclosures I'd seriously think about looking at flogging them. Obtaining new enclosures is a possibility but only if you can find them s/h for a good price; they're dead-end technologies being replaced by the Synergy series and there's little point in obtaining a service contract for firmware updates etc.

The G6 line is pretty old hat - they came out nearly 10 years ago now are are vastly outclassed in performance and especially power by kit in the last three years; as Patrick and this site has championed, the bang per buck and per watt on the Epyc line is nothing short of spectacular. Selling off your kit and buying/building some Epyc whiteboxes would be my preferred approach but that's going to depend on the people you have available as well as the specifics of your workload.
 

BeTeP

Well-Known Member
Mar 23, 2019
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The HP stuff is about 10 years, NetApp is about 11 years and the Sun stuff is 12+ years old. Whoever "donated" this pile of ancient crap is a crook. Instead of having to pay for proper e-waste recycling they get to enjoy a tax write off.
 

Evan

Well-Known Member
Jan 6, 2016
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Yeah I hate to say it but if somebody is donating equipment then in terms of HP only Gen8 or newer would be fair. The the first e5 CPU’s v1/v2
Anything earlier than that I think is hardly worth the power draw.
 

johnberman

New Member
Dec 10, 2019
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Thanks for the feedback, its apprecited. I shoudl say the compnay who donated the kit have been quite clear and will take back for proper WEE Disposal any kit that we dont want

The BL460c G6 do have the associated C7000 enclosures (along with network/storage fabric IO bays)

So my thought was to retain and group as following:


DS14 MK4 x 6
NAF-0702 - MPN: FAS3160 Storage controller

They come with 300GB Disc's no doubt some will probably fail on start up but there is potentially a decent amount of storage for us


The BL460CG6 x 23
STORAGEWORKS 302969-B21 x 2

Again some discs may fail but a decent amount of storage


I have no experience with Sun so not really sure if its worth keeping but as there is plenty of rack space maybe I will


STOREDGE 3310 RAID AC x 2


Regards
John b
 

BeTeP

Well-Known Member
Mar 23, 2019
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Do not get me wrong, at some (very distant) point in time all this gear on the list was either top of the line or close to it. But you could not pay me enough to run either U320 SCSI (both Sun Storedge and HP StorageWorks) or FC 4Gb (NetApp FAS3160) today.

You did not mention the actual storage requirements for your project. Let's assume it matches the NetApp config you got. But unless you absolutely need high availability of FC SAN - you can get a 5-6 year old server with more capacity and better performance for under a $1000.

A server which would
  • consist of generic parts (easy and inexpensive to scale up and maintain)
  • take 2U of rack space instead of half of a rack
  • draw 300W instead of 2kW+
  • be infinitely more flexible and not restrained by ONTAP
 

johnberman

New Member
Dec 10, 2019
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1
Thanks for all the replies, we will look at some raising funds and getting some slight newer kit, in the interim we are going to have a look at the NetApp and HP Kit and see where we get

Regards
John