Local SE Texas (Houston) - Dell PowerEdge VRTX 25xSFF Tower /w Casters, 4 Dell M630 Blades, fully loaded

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frogtech

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Jan 4, 2016
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Hi, yes it's me, selling one of these again. At this point I need therapy lol. Bottom line: I don't have the time for this stuff, it doesn't interest me that much and with stuff going on in my family my lab has gone neglected for too long and I have other plans in mind if I'm forced into another career.

timestamps/pics: vrtx

This is a 25x2.5" SAS tower Form factor configuration, complete with all plastics, and caster kit. Cosmetically the unit is in mint condition save from whatever dust I just need to blow out.

I'll try to keep this short and sweet:

VRTX Tower Includes:
  • 4x Dell M630 Blade Servers (LGA2011-v3)(configuration detailed below)
  • 2x Chassis Management Controller (CMC) cards /w Enterprise License
  • 2x Shared PERC8 Raid Controller
  • 1x PCIe Riser Cage (8x PCIe slots total in chassis)
  • 20x Samsung SM1625 400GB SAS SSD (basically the S3700 of the SAS space) (400GB x 20 = 8 TB in shared storage)
  • Dual Expander /w Cabling (combines /w dual PERC8 to offer high availability of shared storage)
  • 1x R1-PT 1 Gigabit Passthrough Module
  • 11x 2.5" Trays, Dell PN is NRX7Y if buyer ends up getting the rest.
  • 6x internal fans, 4x blower modules
  • 4x 1100W PSUs
  • Locking bezel, caster kit
Each Dell M630 Blade Includes:
  • 4-slots-by-1.8" SATA/SAS Backplane (1x per blade)
  • 4x Intel S3700 1.8" 400GB SSD (16x total)
  • 1x Dell HBA330 RAID Controller (4x total)
  • 2x Intel E5-2678 v3 (12 core, 24 thread, 2.5 Ghz nominal 3.3 Ghz boost, it's an OEM part but confirmed working no problem) (8x total) (24 cores x 8 = 96 cores total across 4 blades)
  • 8x Samsung M393A2G40DB0-CPB 16GB 2Rx4 PC4-2133P (32x total) (128GBx4 = 512GB total across 4 blades)
  • 2x Dell 3N9XX PCIe Passthrough Mezz Card v2 (8x total)
  • iDRAC Enterprise, 2x heatsinks, 16x DIMM blanks (1x per blade)
Everything is in 100% working order and I will also happily demo functionality of the chassis for any potential buyers in-person. I've sold 2 of these before without any trouble.

This is perhaps actually one of the best builds of these I've ever done, in my opinion, mostly because of the blades themselves. The versatility of the M630 to be able to use 4 drive backplanes make this pretty close to truly being THE lab in a box. You can do local storage (which is natively clustered) or hyper-converged/distributed file storage(vSAN, Ceph, Gluster) all in the same box if you ever get a 10 Gigabit Switch Module. You can still do HCI but you just need an external 10 Gigabit switch of course. You also get the power savings of the DDR4 and C612 chipset and the ability to upgrade to E5-2600 v4 processors later for even better virtualization performance.

Asking $5500 for this. Open to offers.

Will sell individual blades for $950/ea.


If anyone is wondering if I'm making money on these, the answer is a flat out no, at best I recover what I spent. This sounds self serving but it's the honest truth: when I price these together I always use the price I paid per part (so no markup) and I'm always waiting for the absolute best deal I can get. So I've kind of already done the deal searching legwork lol. A lot of it is just lots of waiting on ebay.

I'm available in the SE Houston area for local pick up only. Austin buyers are more than welcome if they want to make the drive. At this time shipping is not an option unless you want to handle every detail of freight shipping (quote, logistics, etc). I don't have pallets, any way to weigh this thing (per Dell specs the maximum weight is 165 lb), and it won't survive UPS or FedEx ground lol. If you can work out freight to the point of where all I have to do is drop it off, you're welcome to that.

Please PM me with any specific questions.
 
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Roelf Zomerman

Active Member
Jan 10, 2019
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well living abroad way tooo far away.. but still had a question on it ..

how loud is this system? The selling point from Dell is that it can be next to your desk.. but with 6 Fans inside and then 4 fans in the back.. I'm a bit in doubt..
 

Bjorn Smith

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Sep 3, 2019
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Its noisy.
Its only silent if you have no blades in it.
I contacted Dell about the same since I had one and blower fans insist on running @ minimum 50% duty cycle so you can forget about having it next to your desk - talk about false marketing.
 

frogtech

Well-Known Member
Jan 4, 2016
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I guess it depends on your ambient temps. Also, the blades -must- be booted into an OS, otherwise the CPU will not go into power save mode. I have seen PWM duty cycles sit comfortably at 30% on the blowers when blades are on.

Btw, the blades have to actually be on for the blowers to ramp up. If just the enclosure is turned on, it's even quieter.