New here.

[alwayslors]

Hello everyone I'm Lor and I'm new here.

I trained as a computer technician and network engineer in the mid 90's when I was just out of college. I have regularly built and maintained home networks since then as the technology has improved but now I'm adding a dedicated server to the system, mostly for file storage, media and I want to add some virtual machines to it.

I currently have an HP Proliant ML350 g5 tower running linux as my server. I upgraded the processor to a xeon x5460 when I got the machine. and it runs 16 gig of ram. I also have a proliant dl585 g5 rackmount with four amd opteron processors and 98gig of ram which I am considering swapping to although it is very noisy for a home server and I would probably need to build some kind of silencing cabinet for.

With the rackmount there is space to add a few extra 2.5inch drives if I mod the case a little. What I'm wondering is if there is any benefit to upgrading the 4 processors in it to quad core 3.1ghz or if it is better to bite the bullet and go for hex core 2.8ghz processors.

Anyone got any opinions?

Thanks LOR

 

[i386]

Anyone got any opinions?

I would not touch any socket 1366 or earlier systems, not evenn for free (I have a s5520hc based system standing in the corner collecting dust).
They are powerhungry, their computinng power can be outperformed by laptops and don't have pcie 3.0/4.0 for nvme ssds or fast networking...

 

[alwayslors]

Thanks for your insight i386 Sadly sometimes beggars can't be choosers though. I'm not entirely sure that the AMD based quad chip system will be any less power hungry anyway. My wife likes the xeon based one because its quiet but there is a problem with the onboard hdd controller which is why I want to change it.

 

[ttabbal]

Shrug.. I still run 2 1366 systems. One is a firewall on OpnSense, one is my main storage/VM server. It gets the job done. They are power hungry, but so is the 10G switch, and the HDDs in the storage box use more than the CPUs. I will say that the single proc firewall can't saturate a 10G link, it maxes out the CPU (single quad core E5620) at about 7.5gbit/sec. I don't really need it to, I don't have enough traffic to need to upgrade it to 10G. It was just an experiment to see if I could route 10G traffic internally. Turns not, nope.

The Storage/VM box is nearly idle most of the time, so I don't have any great need to upgrade. I would like to at some point in the next couple of years just due to the age of the hardware, but I can't complain really. For storage, I run a pair of H200 SAS cards in a Supermicro TQ chassis.

 

[Markess]

Well, you've already got the gear, so advice on what to use instead isn't really what you're looking for.

That said, depending on where you live and how long you have the system up each day, eventually buying a newer (but still used) system could pay for itself in power savings in short order. If that's something you are looking at doing in the not too distant future, you may just want to use one, or both of these systems as is in the mean time, rather than pumping more money into them.

If your wife likes the Xeon better, that's an incentive to keep using that of course. If you're relatively sure that the disk controller is the only issue, you could purchase a used add in RAID/HBA card. If you get something newer than that 2007-2008 vintage (but not so new it doesn't work), you may be able to move it over to a newer used system when you upgrade. That way the money you spend can be applied to an eventual upgrade as well.

On the other hand, the same can't be said for any money you spend on upgrading the Socket F CPUs in the AMD rig. Any money you spend on that server stays with that server.

What CPUs are you using in it now? Again, depending on where you are, the 3.1 GHz Quad Core parts (Opteron 8393 SE) aren't cheap for being so old, probably because they were the fastest part in that family. Going down a notch to the 2.9GHz 8389, they seem to be available in the US on Ebay for under $10 each. Plus, if you anticipate running the server hard for long periods, the 2.9GHz part is a 75w TDP, while the 3.1 GHZ is 105w. So when its running hard it will draw less electricity and make less heat, so might be a bit quieter. Won't make much difference at idle though, I'm sure.

If the HP Quick Specs are to be believed (HP ProLiant DL585 Generation 5 ) that system didn't take 6 Core CPUs. So unless you've got knowledge of people already running 6 Core CPUs successfully, I'd be wary of running any CPUs that aren't on HPs compatibility list.

Welcome to the forums, I hope you enjoy your time here!

 

[alwayslors]

Thanks for the welcome Markess.

I got the information about the hex core opteron from the final bios update for the dl585 g5 which says it enables the support for them so as I understand it is officialy supported just not on the quick specs form.

I'm not likley to run the server heavily, it essentially just works as a mass storage device but I am interested in exploring some vms. I just am not sure how yet and I'm probably not running the best version of linux for that.

I have a spare card to run the hard drives but the connector are different from the backplane, I think the ones on the card are sas 8087 type where as the ones on the backplane are long ones (8484 type I think) and I can't find adaptors or cables that do that.

 

[Serverking]

I trained as a computer technician and network engineer in the mid 90's when I was just out of college. I have regularly built and maintained home networks

You ever think about starting a Youtube channel? You have some 20 years under your belt, you can give back to the homelab/open source community.