Saving a few buck

[Peter Nachtwey]

We just bought two Dell servers for a total of $500. One had 2 Xeon CPUs with 8 GB of ram and the other had 2 Xeon CPUs with 4 GB of ram. These came without hard drives though. They were previously owned by a bank and when the warranty ran out they got rid of them. The bank places a premium of reliability and service. Apparently they had a contract that said they could get them fixed in 4 hours or something like that. When the computers were out of warranty they wanted to get rid of them so we picked them up for cheap. They work, we must only buy hard drives. Obviously the bank did not let those go. These computers are now the most power computers we have. They sound like jet engines when running and make a lot of noise but they will do just fine in our server room. The point is that if your company needs some power computers you should check with the banks. Note, while these are extremely powerful computers they are noisy and not really suitable for home use unless you are deaf.

[BobLfoot]

Just a guess Peter, but they probably ran 24x7 for those 4 years so that's 35,000 running hours so far. If I were a betting man I'd replace the CPU and Ventilation fans with aftemarket replacements from some place like Fry's ASAP.

[Peter Nachtwey]

You are probably right about the hours on the machine. Fans are cheap. These sound like they want to fly. There are 5 or 6 fans in each computer. I think there is one for each CPU and two intake and two exhaust. Right now were are trying to find SCSI drives. No one makes big SCSI drives anymore.

[panic mode]

i would say that size of "big" has changed. 147Gb is quite big (some 3000x bigger than my fist HDD). that's about $260 Canadian from Tiger Direct for example: http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/Sea...7&CatId=135 They normally connect few of them into array so capacity, performance and data security increases.

[paulengr]

For cheap that's one thing. If your intention is to turn them into a server farm (virtualized servers), you may want to consider looking at SAN's. They are VERY expensive, so be prepared to pass out when you see the price. EMC is the leader in terms of selling the most outrageously priced stuff. But HP, Dell, IBM, and others sell the same stuff. I liked Cybernetics.com's units when we tested them. Speed-wise, SAN's are an order of magnitude faster than hard drives as long as you have a sufficient number of gigabit Ethernet connections (aka iSCSI). With 2 servers, 2 SAN's, and 2 Xenserver enterprise licenses, we could boot an arbitrary number of "servers", move them around, etc. With the failover functions built into Xenserver and the SAN's, if any one of the 4 components failed, the other automatically booted/took over the functions of the others.

[panic mode]

sooo....when are you kicking it out and buying new stuff?

[Peter Nachtwey]

We have bought a lot of 'new stuff' lately. How about a new building for starters. That includes all the 'new stuff' and new building requires. Actually we had our building built for us. We are going to move in soon before and during Memorial Day weekend. The walk through is next week. We just posted this info on our website but I will spare you the marketing fluff and just post a picture. My office is the right window on the second floor. The building is actually much bigger because only the middle section is shown. There is a west and east wing that aren't shown. I have pictures of the all the phases of construction and the insides but the building isn't done yet. So how is that for 'kicking out and buying new stuff'?

[Mickey]

Wheres the reserved for the president parking sign?

[Peter Nachtwey]

Good point. No one has mentioned that so far. Unfortunately the two best spots will probably need to be sacrificed to the disabled and guest parking spots. We must 'kick out' and buy some parking signs.

[BobLfoot]

Totally Off Topic - Please remember Peter - a fully legal handicap space has both a visible sign at the front 36 to 54 inches off the ground and the logo painted on the pavement. If either of these is missing. obscured or heaven forbid at the wrong height. The ticket for parking in a handicap spot can be fought and won against. More on Topic - Awesome new digs, enjoy and let us know when you post the "virtual office tour video"

[Peter Nachtwey]

One of the engineers at Delta took the blue prints and converted them to Google Sketch Up files. Those files allow a virtual tour but that will need to wait till Monday. I do have pictures that are taken at different phases of construction. http://www.deltamotion.com/peter/NewDelta/ I changed this linkat 090507 19:28:00 I added Google SketchUp files. You should be able to view the pictures with a browser. I have some mp4 files somewhere too. I took them with a Flip Minnow. Those Flip Minnows are neat if only because they are so easy to use. The people that owned the business park where we are now sold the park to some remote investors that obviously paid too much for it. The new remote owners raised our rents by 30%. That was too much and our lease was just up. We extended our lease for a year and a half and decided build our own building. That way we would be ripping our selves off with high rent but at least we would have a building that was built just for us. The decision to build was made before the financial difficulties of the economy. Everyone got to put their input into the design. Some of the employees contributed far more than I did. Most were only interested in their particular area but some had good overall advice. The only limitation was money of course. It is going to be like a palace compared to where we are now. The employees gave me and my partner a gift in appreciation for the better working conditions. I now know what a money pit is. It is the hole at the bottom of the elevator. Edited May 8, 2009 by Peter Nachtwey

[Sleepy Wombat]

Looks fantastic Peter. Kudos to you.

[Peter Nachtwey]

Thanks, everyone seems to think so. I didn't do much beside supply money. Our new building was designed by my business partner. The middle section where the offices are was the part where everyone added their two cents. There were many iterations of layouts for the middle sections which contains the main offices. My only real contribution was insisting that the training room be on the ground floor. Most of the other decisions were presented to me as choices between options and the resulting costs. My business partner and the few employees that were interested deserve the credit for the results.

[TConnolly]

Now we know where to throw the rock. j/k Being the president I guess you get to pick your office. When we moved admin and accounting to a new building two years ago I moved from the cube farm to a fairly large office, but one without any windows. I would give up half the space for a window.

[Ken Moore]

I have a window, but it only produces glare, I could live without, and never have a look back. I would trade my window for more space. LOL

[TimWilborne]

I don't have a private office but it has 6 windows, a fireplace, sofa, conference table, and an adjoining kitchen. I share it with my two kids Getting ready to get a private office, will be much easier to concentrate but I'm still not sure how I feel about it

[TConnolly]

Our office building and manufacturing building are on opposite banks of a small 30' wide river. Its a mirrored glass building, so anyone with a window has a full wall window. There is a nice wide park strip between the building and the river with a jogging trail down the river bank. It is spring. There is a university less than a mile away. There are plenty of distractions on the jogging trail this morning. Edited May 7, 2009 by Alaric

[Peter Nachtwey]

Bob, I changed the link above to a new site where I can now post Google SketchUp files of our building. http://sketchup.google.com/ Now, you can take your virtual tour.