What to do with extra servers?

E

End7

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Sep 27, 2004
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I've got 5 servers at work that I cannot seem to find any production use for. These servers came from acquisitions and were simply not needed after their migration to our network.

All of the machines are at least 2.4ghz Xeon's w/ 1gb memory and no smaller than 36gb 10k drives.

I'm wondering if anybody can toss me some usefully utilities that I might be able to host on one or two of these servers.

As I'm not the only IT support in my building, I was planning on hosting HP WebJet Admin on one (Does not needs its own server but I would host it on this machine if I have no other use for it).

Here is a list of what I've already got:

SCCM 2007, Vulnerability scanning (nCircle IP360), helpdesk system (TrackIT), nagios/MOM, print server (2 actually).

I'd love to fold them but its against policy.

Any ideas are appreciated, thanks!
 
Make a few of them your test boxes.. Play around with Virtualization and alternate OSes and stuff. Just don't run them in your office for crying out loud, the noise.. the noise!!!:eek:
 
requiemnoise said:
You can give me one. :D
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I'd love to, but politics wont let the servers leave the building.

soulman76 said:
Make a few of them your test boxes.. Play around with Virtualization and alternate OSes and stuff. Just don't run them in your office for crying out loud, the noise.. the noise!!!:eek:
Click to expand...

As far as virtualization, I've got a box w/ 32gb memory running hyper-v for that :D
 
As others have stated -- you could fold with them until you find another use.

Or - if you can get more memory in one or more of them, try out VMware and/or any of the other hypervisors out there you wish to try. If you already have experience with virtualization than nevermind but you could still use a free 3i box or two to host little things like WebJetAdmin in a VM with. :)
 
Don't mean to get off topic here, but Angel... did you play CS in Miami? Miami T3 Server?
 
Depending on the needs of the company, and on the assumption they are single core systems, you could always look to set up a small cluster/render farm.

In general with the availability of multicore systems it's not a huge deal any more (and I think that's the reason OpenMosix stopped active dev) but it might be something to play with that could actually have beneifit to the company.

Also - instead of MOM have a look at SCOM (System Center Operations Manager 2007)
 
If you have no need for them, why bother keeping them? At work, any servers we don't have a use for, we put into our warehouse. They are eventually gotten rid of.

I am considering turning one of them into my workstation, as these stupid single core Athlon 64s suck for multitasking and our C2D/dual Xeon workstations are used for production work.
 
Why not donate them to a local High School/College? I work for the DNET lab at my college and we're always needing more equipment for students to use.
 
easy this one really

Backup

we recently had an AD box go out due to bad HDD if we had a backup of it it wouldnt have been an issue. instead it took the morning to rebild the box and basically this meant no reporting for the day

alternitively offload some of the processing to it im sure your IT guys could also use a new server on the test network.
 
Yakyb said:
easy this one really

Backup

we recently had an AD box go out due to bad HDD if we had a backup of it it wouldnt have been an issue. instead it took the morning to rebild the box and basically this meant no reporting for the day

alternitively offload some of the processing to it im sure your IT guys could also use a new server on the test network.
Click to expand...

Production servers should always have a secondary backup and for us, we replace them the same time we replace the primary.

If you're replacing your servers with worse hardware and require the use of those old servers to be used to offload the processing, you have problems in your IT department.

As for your IT department, I feel sorry for you guys. A bad hard drive on your primary AD server and you're out. What? No Raid 5? Raid 0? Raid 0+1? Raid 50? Also, where was your secondary AD server where the information should be replicating on? A little work and you can turn it into your primary, while waiting for your RAID array to rebuild.
 
no it wasnt the primary AD box it was actually AD3 which just so happended that day to be controlling reporting services that day and when it went we had the option of shutting down sql or leaving SSRS off for the day we chose the latter

do all of your production servers have a 1:1 backup

nice to have that budget
 
What about loading one with Linux and Snort for an IDS?

If you have time to experiment maybe play with asterisk or other FOSS projects.
 
nothing.

keep a few around for a just in case or a quick implement server.

Using a DL380 (almost any generation) as a guide, a windows server will pull about 3amps total on 110v power. so let's say it pulls 350w and the price of commerical power (national average) is 10 cents/kwh. Over the period of a year, it will cost $305 per server just to have powered on. Across 5 servers, you'd be wasting 1500 bucks. Depending on what kind of shop you run, then there are license fees to pay for as well as possible maintenance fees.

keep them powered off unless it can be budgeted to keep them online.
 
Store them. If you don't have a use for them, then don't waste power just trying to reason for them to be operational.
 
Yakyb said:
no it wasnt the primary AD box it was actually AD3 which just so happended that day to be controlling reporting services that day and when it went we had the option of shutting down sql or leaving SSRS off for the day we chose the latter

do all of your production servers have a 1:1 backup

nice to have that budget
Click to expand...

All our production servers have a 1:1 backup. Sometimes more. Course our budget comes from American taxpayers.
 
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