(US-Dallas TX) Dell C1100 lots of 5

[Navy_BOFH]

This popped up on my typical searches. They are long in the tooth now by the Xeon E5 standards now - but for $150 for 5 servers with 72GB RAM each... almost worth picking up for just the RAM! Only catch seems to be you need to be able to arrange local pick-up in Dallas TX. Thought I'd pass on the listing for those that are local.

Dell C1100 (CS24-TY) Servers 72GB of RAM | eBay

 

[daviddoran]

The numbers don't add up, the description says they have 30, but the lot says lots of 5, and 10 lots available. They probably input 30 items, rather than 5 lots, so be wary if you buy after the first few lots have sold.

But indeed a good deal for just the ram. And the trays sometimes sell for $5 each, so if you get 16 per lot, that's worth a good amount too.

 

[Samir]

Interesting. Pretty much like an r710 with 72gb of ram for $30.

 

[Navy_BOFH]

Interesting. Pretty much like an r710 with 72gb of ram for $30.

I’ll say now they do have a decent fan whine from them at idle that was more high pitched than an R710 - and the BMC firmware is nowhere near refined as the iDRAC of the era. But I had a few for years that worked perfectly - in fact one is still being used as a streaming server to this day.

 

[Jason Macer]

Has anyone actually bought any of these from this person? I notice one lot has been acquired. I am interested in them, but when i asked for a service tag to see build specs it came back as not found.

Just curious.

 

[markarr]

The C1100 were not sold by dell through normal channels so the service tags don't show up in the system in the same way. I don't have one from this seller but have one from a few years ago and the service tag does not show anything either.

 

[Jason Macer]

@markarr good to know. Out of curiosity, how do they perform? It's going to be slightly less dense than then c6100's I do use, and I'm just wondering if it's worth it. You still have to get rails and power supply, so another $35.00 ... $65.00 for the server ... then hard drives ... Espeically since I'm really wanting to go the route of SSD's in this next deployment.

I'm just curious to hear your opinion on them @markarr

 

[markarr]

They are fairly standard 1u LGA1366 servers. They will be similar to the c6100 in terms of bios and ipmi.

 

[Samir]

You still have to get rails and power supply...

Power supply looks to be included--only the power cord is not.

 

[Jason Macer]

Built in RAID? Or would I need to get an LSI card or something?

 

[markarr]

No built in raid. uses the built in sata ports of the pch on the board.

 

[Navy_BOFH]

There is an LSI SAS mezz card and a 10GBe mezz card for the C1100s as well - they're going for around $60-80 each on eBay these days. But that solves the issue if you need larger drive support than the Intel chip supports, or 10GBe without taking up the only PCIe slot.

In terms of performance, they are on par with the rest of the generation. I ran one with the PCIe slot using a SATA to 2.5" card from (IIRC) Sonnet to boot from SSD, have a cache drive, and then use the 4x 3.5" bays for RAID 10 off the LSI SAS card. Mine was 48GB RAM and dual L5640s and worked just as well as my R710 of the same vintage - minus the BMC quirks that were slightly more annoying than the iDRAC of the era.

I would already be snagging up a lot of these even if just for the RAM - but it is not a feasible trip for me at all.

EDIT:
10GBe mezz card
Dell Dual Port Fibre Channel Host Bus Adapter 10GB Cloudedge C1100 JPYNN | eBay
LSI SAS mezz card
DELL 6GBPS SAS RAID CONTROLLER 85M9R For PowerEdge C1100/C2100/FS12- 617949878982 | eBay

 

[Jason Macer]

@Navy_BOFH, Thanks for the info. I've just got to talk my boss into it. I'd love to get 2 lots of these, maybe 3 honestly.

 

[frogtech]

I dont really see these being worth it in 2020. It's like buying 2900 series at this point.

 

[Jason Macer]

@frogtech for development purposes and internal use. I don't have a problem using 2nd or 3rd generation equipment. You don't need brand new systems for everything that you deploy, especially when processing and storage are processing and storage, and centOS7/8 run on those machines just as well as those Ted Danson fancy new ones.