I picked up on of the C6100 cloud server chassis as described here and listed here. It arrived today, CPUs and memory coming soon.
I mentioned in the other thread that I plan to see if I can tame it a bit for use in a home lab. The chassis is designed for an aggressive deployment using 15k SAS drives and 90watt Xeon CPUs. In my plan I'll be using "L" series 60 watt Xeons, starting with L5638s and maybe one node with L5640s (if I can source them cheap enough...). I'll be limiting the local disks to SSD and, perhaps, running diskless with PXE and/or iSCSI boot. I have a very fast 40Tb ZFS server node and a 10Gbe network infrastructure so its probably going to work OK.
As is, Dell rates it at 77dba loaded and I've got reliable reports (including Patrick's) that it ranges from 65-77 dba depending on load. Too loud for most home uses - loud enough to be heard through normal household walls (even insulated walls to a garage or basement). I've set a goal for myself to target a 50dba noise profile. I'll probably be happy if I can get to 50dba nominal/light load with it somewhat higher at full tilt (which it will almost never reach).
I've some experience silencing systems. My prior dual-Xeon X5550 workstation hits 35dba at full load - even with 13 spinny disks and 4 SSDs. It runs cool at that noise level and idles at audible but not annoying levels (it has passed the "wife test" - she doesn't complain if its gets left on even though its sits in our family room).
So...here we go! I'll post occasionally as things progress.
I mentioned in the other thread that I plan to see if I can tame it a bit for use in a home lab. The chassis is designed for an aggressive deployment using 15k SAS drives and 90watt Xeon CPUs. In my plan I'll be using "L" series 60 watt Xeons, starting with L5638s and maybe one node with L5640s (if I can source them cheap enough...). I'll be limiting the local disks to SSD and, perhaps, running diskless with PXE and/or iSCSI boot. I have a very fast 40Tb ZFS server node and a 10Gbe network infrastructure so its probably going to work OK.
As is, Dell rates it at 77dba loaded and I've got reliable reports (including Patrick's) that it ranges from 65-77 dba depending on load. Too loud for most home uses - loud enough to be heard through normal household walls (even insulated walls to a garage or basement). I've set a goal for myself to target a 50dba noise profile. I'll probably be happy if I can get to 50dba nominal/light load with it somewhat higher at full tilt (which it will almost never reach).
I've some experience silencing systems. My prior dual-Xeon X5550 workstation hits 35dba at full load - even with 13 spinny disks and 4 SSDs. It runs cool at that noise level and idles at audible but not annoying levels (it has passed the "wife test" - she doesn't complain if its gets left on even though its sits in our family room).
So...here we go! I'll post occasionally as things progress.