Dell PowerEdge VRTX 12-Bay Chassis - on eBay

[WScott66]

Anyone interested there is a VRTX Chassis listed for 599.95 + 125 Shipping with an initial bid only.
It is the second time the Lister, listed it as it was originally listed for 799.

URL: Dell PowerEdge VRTX Tower Enclosure No HDD, No Blades, PERC8 Quad PSU Server | eBay

The POC is: Melvin,

From the information provided below are the details for the system:

Service Tag DJC0M02
Computer Model PowerEdge VRTX
Shipping Date 5/26/2014
Country United States

Service Start date (GMT time zone) End date (GMT time zone)
ProSupport
May 26, 2014 May 27, 2017
Onsite Service After Remote Diagnosis (Consumer Customer)/ Next Business Day Onsite After Remote Diagnosis (Commercial Customer)
May 27, 2015 May 27, 2017

Happy bidding!

 

[frogtech]

No second shared PERC8 means you will need to get another expander midplane to connect the second shared PERC8 to. Also, no secondary CMC and from what I can tell when looking at the service tag config it does not have the enterprise feature set enabled for the CMC, unfortunately. All that coupled with this being a 3.5" chassis, ultimately, makes it hard to recommend.

 

[Churchill]

No second shared PERC8 means you will need to get another expander midplane to connect the second shared PERC8 to. Also, no secondary CMC and from what I can tell when looking at the service tag config it does not have the enterprise feature set enabled for the CMC, unfortunately. All that coupled with this being a 3.5" chassis, ultimately, makes it hard to recommend.

thanks for the headsup. I've been looking at these for quite awhile as I do love the dell blade chassis.

 

[frogtech]

thanks for the headsup. I've been looking at these for quite awhile as I do love the dell blade chassis.

They're definitely sweet, I would just try to get one fully loaded as much as possible (sans the blades themselves) because the parts for these are really expensive.

 

[WScott66]

Hey all,

I have a VRTX, with the Dual PERC's there are still issues (Even through Active/Active configuration is supported).
Especially if you are looking to use the nods for establishing an ESXi Cluster, I eventual pulled the second PERC (Leaving the Dual Expanders) so that I was getting reasonable I/O performance from the shared storage.

Also remember that the shared storage is "Only" SAS. plugging in a SATA drive will not expose the drive.
You also need to make sure that the blades are configured the same as there is odd behavior seen if they do not.
Also keep in mind that the I/O Module (Switch) is L2 only! the L3 function is extremely limited (Static Routes) and you "Will" need to implement a SDN solution to enable all the functionality you will likely expect. IF you have access to NSX great, otherwise you could use OPNSense or pfSense both are free and very feature rich products. My preference would be OPNSense which has more functions and a richer interface.

With regards to the above listing from Digital, when the chassis didn't sell I reached out and offered to purchase the 10GbE Switch and they did take it out, but I was then willing to purchase the entire unit as long as they didn't want to charge me an exorbitant 250 for shipping when I had already purchased a chassis from further away and paid 125. Not getting a response through eBay I reached out VIA phone and got told were closed, wait till morning, and I waited and they listed the switch and it got sold (About an hour later), which was the real piece I was interested in as the 10GbE switches are rare and expensive. And then after it sold I get a response from Digital? But your closed? You didn't want to talk to me and no your replying?

Needless to say, I gave them a piece of my mind after all that.
I tried to give them added business, and they rubbed it in my face?
Not something I'm going to take sitting down!
I am not putting down Digital, I have done multiple transactions with them and had a exceptional experience, but this last one, was not good!

So, What I would say if you are interested in acquiring a VRTX you want:
(2) CMC's and the (2) PERC/Expanders, but you will likely only use (1) PERC and pull/disable the other as the I/O performance is not good with them both enabled.

 

[frogtech]

The I/O being bad with both of them enabled should have been address in a firmware update I thought? I thought it had something to do with the write through(or write back, forgot) policy not being available when both were installed.

 

[WScott66]

It did and I am at the latest BIOS/Firmware, and have only Dell Certified drives in the chassis.
I was working from someone on the Dell ProServe team and the outcome was to disable/pull the second RAID adapter (Shared PERC).

 

[TLN]

All that coupled with this being a 3.5" chassis, ultimately, makes it hard to recommend.

What's wrong with 3.5" drives? Or it simply comes down to number of drives in the system? (12 vs 25), or I'm missing something?

Wonder, how loud those are? Looks pretty good, especially in tower form.

 

[WScott66]

The issue with the 3.5 is that while you can get larger drives you are loosing larger amounts of storage once you raid it...
You can get 24x1.2TB Drives in the 2.5 for a available capacity of 26.4TB with a parity and a H/S, a loss of 2.4TB.
You can get 12x3TB Drives in the 3.5 for an available capacity of 30.0TB with a parity and a H/S a loss of 6TB.

When you figure you are paying about (Est) .25 a GB that's a loss of 2.5: 600.00 and 3.5: 1,500.00.

 

[WScott66]

With regards to loudness, I have (3) M620 blades in the Tower and it sits next to my desk.
I have conference calls all day long and never have an issue.

The VRTX was specifically developed for Small Office environments where the equipment could sit out on the floor and not cause interference.