need suggestions to repurpose old Dell R920, T320, and T1700

[BakCompat]

Greetings all. I recently received for disposal 4 old Dell servers which are obsolete for the company's use, so rather than dispose of them in a landfill, I'd like to repurpose them if possible, so need a suggestion or two.

#1: Dell T320 desktop server. 1x Xeon E5-1410 v2 w 96gb ECC ram. Originally 2012R2
PERC H710P adapter with 2x Toshiba 300gb and 6x Seagate 1tb 2.5 inch drives (installed in 8x 3.5inch adapters in hot swap caddies). I have already destroyed the RAID arrays on it and flashed the firmware to IT mode so it will be ZFS usable. I have already run dban autonuke on all the disks so they are cleared, but I am thinking of moving my main file server disks from their existing i5-2500k w/16gb ram and an IBM M1015 8port adapter of 6x8tb WD in RAIDZFS-2 array of 32Tb. The cpubenchmark going from 2500k to E5-1410v2 bumps from 4119 to 5715, but more importantly, the ram jumps to a whopping 96Gb. So, it would be killer for ZFS. Last I recall, moving the disks over to a new motherboard wasn't an issue under old TrueNAS Core, but I'm running Scale on it now, and I don't recall the hardware change being an issue, but will need to verify it.

#2: Dell Precision T1700 desktop server. 1x Xeon E3-1270 v3 w/ 32Gb ram. (2 units received, but one won't boot BIOS and gives constant beep error code)
This is just a desktop box for all intents and purposes other than being a Xeon w/32gb. If I can manage to fit 6x2Tb disks (my original FreeNAS 0.7x WD20EARS GREEN model disks) into the Dell case, then it will make a handy little small file server despite the small size of 2Tb disks, and the cpu would be way better than the Athlon II X2 240 in it (1032 vs 7292 cpu benchmark rating).. But, I might not be able to get 6 disks to fit in the chassis. Will have to look into it and see if possible. At least I could make it into something like a storage location for ISOs, Acronis backups, that sort of thing. Originally RAID ZFS-2 for 8tb total, but I'd probably make it ZFS1 going forward for the extra 2tb disk. Any suggestions here are appreciated as to a tertiary server role other than a direct media file server.

#3 Dell PowerEdge R920 4U rackmount server. 4x Xeon E7-4850 v2 (12 core cpu x4 = 48 cores total) w/ 128gb ECC ram (iirc PC3-12800) quad 1100w power supplies.
PERC H730P adapter with 24 2.5 inch SFF hot swap caddies, but only 18 bays populated with 1Tb disks. One of the disks has failed, so I'd likely not replace it, or order a fleabay $20 used disk to replace it. I could move the 6x disks from the T320 plus replace dead unit for a total combined 24x 1Tb disks. It's a MONSTER box. It weighs over a hundred pounds, so I don't think I really want to put it in my garage and pay the electric bill to run a Quad Xeon with 24 disks in it. I would much rather like to get permission to install it at work's POP rack in an AC control room where I don't have to worry about a power bill. It was originally set for a dual boot raid1 virtual disk with the remaining 16 disks in a raid6 array. I have not yet destroyed the virtual disks or dban autonuked the disks in anticipation of usage, and the H730P is still running the Dell raid firmware. What should I do with this thing?

The R920 is a peculiar beast. With 48 Xeon cores, even being 10 years old or so, it still has a lot of computational power. cpubenchmark.net doesn't even have a benchmark of the Xeon 4850v2 cpu to give me a reference of how fast these old chips even are. I could potentially offer it up to work and just install linux or Xen (XCP-ng I think?) and migrate ALL work VMs to this thing and decommission all the other rotgut misfit boxes that are 1U of different makes/models...

Or, I could USE this thing for something interesting. If I populate this box with 24 physical 1Tb disks, it's not a huge amount of storage space combined, but it's still a large number of disks to spread data around, so running VMs on it would be quick in terms of ram/cpu as well as disk I/O. I certainly do NOT intend to spend any money purchasing SSDs to populate 24 caddies! Optimizing this box for free (or cheap) is really my goal. But what to do, what to do? These boxes are designed to run up to a whopping 6TB of RAM in them for massive database loads or similar things, tho it only has 128 gigs, ram kits are not particularly expensive on fleabay. I could add another 128 gigs for under a hundred bucks, or I could replace the dd3 for dd3L ram instead for better overall ram options. I'd be up for upgrading it to 256 or 384 ram just because, but have no real need to go beyond that. Hell, Used Xeons are so cheap on fleabay, I could even look into upgrading existing chips with the best the mobos will support, and they will likely still be under $50 each if so.

So, what are your suggestions for repurposing this R920 4U rack box? Just load all 24 disks into a single raid array and install Xen and then create some VMs for an array of purposes? Load Linux directly and do all KVM stuff? It's such a beefy box, I'm having trouble deciding what to even do with it because it will be underutilized no matter what I come up with. Maybe it should be repurposed as a node on one of the crypto networks for cpu or something like that... Who knows... Please give me some options here.

 

[Chriggel]

The people who gave you these machines left the arrays still configured and the disks unwiped? Wow. Don't use dban by the way, it's legacy as hell. Use nwipe in the Linux of your choice or get ShredOS or SystemRescue, which have nwipe implemented. nwipe is a fork of dwipe, which was the core of dban.

Using the T320 as your NAS sounds somewhat reasonable. Core vs. Scale shouldn't matter, pool migration is a ZFS feature and both run ZFS. You export the pool, move the disks to the new system and import the existing pool. If you want to run it 24/7 though, I'd check the power consumption first. It's old, but a single socket platform, maybe it's not too bad.

Only you know your requirements though, so who are we to tell you what to do with these systems? I wouldn't use the T1700 in any tertiary server role, but that doesn't mean you couldn't or shouldn't. There's no point in listing all the things it could potentially do though. Personally, I'd give it away to someone who needs an office system.

I wouldn't use the R920 either, it's probably only good for your local recycler or as a really effective paperweight. It probably needs a few hundred watts in idle. The iDRAC is no longer supported, so you either don't use it or have a security risk attached to your network. Investing in it any further is a waste, there's a reason you got it for free. These parts on eBay, they're mostly for the poor souls who have to keep such systems running for a usually crappy selection of business related reasons and incompetence. If you seriously suggest using it in any kind of even remotely professional environment and it would be an upgrade over your existing infrastructure, then you have serious problems at that place of work. If you scale this up to replace all the other systems, all you get is a large single point of failure.

95% of a server's carbon footprint is created during operation. Not having to worry about the power bill is so short sighted. It's using the power anyway, so if we're talking about ecological sustainability here, repurposing is good for many things, but not for servers after a certain point. By using a server that's not correctly sized for the job, it only gets more wasteful. In that regard, the best way would be proper recycling of everything that can be recycled and then use a more modern server that's adequately sized for the workload.

 

[Markess]

@Chriggel makes good points. I agree with them!

All of it is old(er), although old is a relative thing. If you're coming from an i5-2500, all of this is going to be newer.

T320 may be the best all around choice. 1356 was an interesting socket. A lot lower power draw than 2011, but you could still get 10c/20t CPUs for it (quick search on Ebay for the "top of the line" E5-2470v2 as low as $22 shipped). That would give you extra core/thread headroom for some VMs and tinkering for use as an All/Most-in-one box. Room for some disks. The hotswap PSUs (if yours has them) were Platinum. 96GB is a nice starting point, although upgrading would require replacement rather than additions, as I assume all the slots are populated already? OTOH, 96GB for free is kinda nice.

The T1700 is a generation newer, but the form factor really limits it.

The R920. Honestly, even if you could put it in a rack somewhere else to get away from the power bill, noise and heat it generates, gotta agree with @Chriggel that its not a good choice for anything that needs to be 24/7. As a novelty, for tinkering, or for learning how to manage resources with a bazillion VMs running it would probably be good...assuming you don't use/want to try anything that only works on newer hardware. Turn it on to play with, then turn it off when you're done. As noted above, the iDRAC is no longer supported which I might be willing to live with at home (either taking the risk or connecting directly). But not at someone's workplace. Plus, given its age, it might be an iDRAC that was stuck on Java. If it isn't/wasn't updatable to HTML, I'd not bother with it at all. Even with tools to make Java continue to work, its problematic and are just a lot of effort.

 

[BakCompat]

The people who gave you these machines left the arrays still configured and the disks unwiped? Wow. Don't use dban by the way, it's legacy as hell. Use nwipe in the Linux of your choice or get ShredOS or SystemRescue, which have nwipe implemented. nwipe is a fork of dwipe, which was the core of dban.

I think ShredOS is on Medicat so I can use that. I had just been used to using dban historically. My existing file server is 6x 8tb WD Red drives in an old mid tower. I'll transplant them over to the T320 since it has nice hot swap caddies and lots of ram. Altho, now that I think about it, this might be a good reason to offload data from it, then get 2 more used Red 8Tb disks, to fully populate all 8 caddies and build it from scratch, then reload all the data on to it.. That would add a bit of space and not require me to build a brand new array using 16Tb or larger disks.

For the R920, I'm hoping to plant it in our POP and use it as a personal internet facing server. It doesn't even have an iDRAC license, since the previous customer had it running only internally. So, I might get a fleabay license if I go that route. Not decided yet. I just can't really think of anything useful to do with 48 cpu cores other than ProxMox or XCP-ng and use it for any sort of VM I could think of.

The T1700 will probably end up replacing my garage computer, which is a Celeron G1610 still running on win7. I'd prefer to load a recent linux distro for it, but it has some proprietary windows apps, so will prolly migrate them to the T1700 with win10. The ole G1610 served it's purpose for what it was, but damn, it's really weak today. The Xeon, despite it's age, is nearly 5x as powerful. Just fine for a box used irregularly.

T320 may be the best all around choice. 1356 was an interesting socket. A lot lower power draw than 2011, but you could still get 10c/20t CPUs for it (quick search on Ebay for the "top of the line" E5-2470v2 as low as $22 shipped). That would give you extra core/thread headroom for some VMs and tinkering for use as an All/Most-in-one box. Room for some disks. The hotswap PSUs (if yours has them) were Platinum. 96GB is a nice starting point, although upgrading would require replacement rather than additions, as I assume all the slots are populated already? OTOH, 96GB for free is kinda nice.

Yeah, I already ordered a 2470v2 for 15 bucks from China. I'll just have to wait for it to arrive. I don't expect it to use it for file serving purposes, but with the extra cores, I could run VMs on that one as well. I'm thinking maybe a wuzah SIEM VM for home to try out. Seems like a neat project. The only thing I really run on TrueNAS is sabnzbd since Dog does all the download automation already...

I'm more at the point of trying to figure out what other VM options are there even out there that would be useful for this very basic home usage. Like I dont even need an SMTP monitor really... but hell, I dunno..