AshleyAshes Posted September 29, 2015 Share Posted September 29, 2015 (edited) Call this a rant and rave for bits and bites?At work so far, I've mostly only handled our workstations, which range between 'really new' and 'new enough' or our rendering blades 'new enough'. Last week our main storage server died so I finally got to crawl into the bowls of our servers and machines lieing down so we could rebuild.Our storage server in question? Dual Processor Netburst based Xeon. It doesn't even have a Xeon model number, it predates those, it's just two 'Intel Xeon 2.66ghz', it's that old. The RAID was running off a PCI software RAID card and well, it died. It's in degraded mode now, limping along while we copy the data off it at pathetic speeds. There's a second identical machine in a corner unplugged too. My boss seems affectionate towards these and doesn't like the idea of replaceing them as they were some of the companies earliest workstations when first bought.The new server? I found a dual chip, Xeon E5445 system in the corner, with ECC RAM. MUCH more suitable to a storage server and it's now running a superior ZFS system for us. If the old Xeon server ever finishes it's copy job.Wait, the license server? Pentium D. Not that this machine needs much, but neat. I've never actually SEEN a Pentium D before, only read about it, as the Core architecture made it obsolete pretty fast.In a cardboard box? 8 completed Intel Q6600 kits, CPU, RAM, and Mobo. We dunno what to do with them. We might keep a few to act as servers and give away the rest?I found a couple of AMD boards as well. Newer Phenom 2 stuff. We have a lot of machines in 'sets' but one oddball I found, I had to scrape the thermal paste off the chip to figure out what it was. An AMD 920 it seems, the rest are AMD 945s, so this 920 is a freak I guess?Inside another machine I found eight 2TB WD Black drives. No, they weren't doing anything. They were just sitting in there. I'm spending about 5hrs a pop scanning their sectors for viability right now.On the plus side, the new dual 8-core Xeons should ship soon? Edited September 29, 2015 by AshleyAshes 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ArielMT Posted September 29, 2015 Share Posted September 29, 2015 Ouch, that RAID situation sucks. I hope recovery is going faster than a tape sneakernet. :<If they're well-maintained, those old odds and ends could very well find their way to a museum, but honestly it'd be better to try finding them a home if you don't have any foreseeable need for them.To be honest, I thought you were going to tell us you found an SGI Altix or something insane like that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Irreverent Posted September 29, 2015 Share Posted September 29, 2015 (edited) And this is why I moved my startup to the AWS cloud. Data integrity can be an issue, but hardware currency and depreciation are a thing of the past.Now if you find an old Osborne luggable, a Compaq III or a III Deskpro, give me a shout. I lost a tonne of old hardware to the massive flooding in the GTA last year. Edited September 29, 2015 by Irreverent Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AshleyAshes Posted September 29, 2015 Author Share Posted September 29, 2015 And this is why I moved my startup to the AWS cloud. Data integrity can be an issue, but hardware currency and depreciation are a thing of the past.Now if you find an old Osborne luggable, a Compaq III or a III Deskpro, give me a shout. I lost a tonne of old hardware to the massive flooding in the GTA last year.Well, that doesn't work so well in visual effects, which relies on such very large collections of files going up to the machine to render and back down as finished frames. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Irreverent Posted September 29, 2015 Share Posted September 29, 2015 Well, that doesn't work so well in visual effects, which relies on such very large collections of files going up to the machine to render and back down as finished frames. That surprises me, because AWS has 32-core, 8GPU, 80gb ram virtual instances that you can spin up on demand that are purpose built for 3D rendering and big data manipulation. A lot of animation and architect firms are moving to AWS. Band width is cheep. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AshleyAshes Posted September 29, 2015 Author Share Posted September 29, 2015 That surprises me, because AWS has 32-core, 8GPU, 80gb ram virtual instances that you can spin up on demand that are purpose built for 3D rendering and big data manipulation. A lot of animation and architect firms are moving to AWS. Band width is cheep. There's mixed results and it can really vary by company, it's size, and what it's deploying. In our case, running our own machines works for us. Some other companies have had real issues with the cloud stuff. Others have had great results. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Irreverent Posted September 29, 2015 Share Posted September 29, 2015 Some other companies have had real issues with the cloud stuff. Others have had great results.Pretty fair assessment of Cloud generally. It was a real learning experience when I went completely virtual and hardware free. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AshleyAshes Posted September 29, 2015 Author Share Posted September 29, 2015 Ouch, that RAID situation sucks. I hope recovery is going faster than a tape sneakernet. :<Bout 28MB/s. I guess it really depends on the medium of storage and brand of sneakers used. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Irreverent Posted September 30, 2015 Share Posted September 30, 2015 Bout 28MB/s. I guess it really depends on the medium of storage and brand of sneakers used. Yikes! I think I have an analog watch with higher throughput! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AshleyAshes Posted September 30, 2015 Author Share Posted September 30, 2015 Yikes! I think I have an analog watch with higher throughput! It'll all be on the new machine by morning, we can then double check that it's ALL there and then decommission the old one. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AshleyAshes Posted September 30, 2015 Author Share Posted September 30, 2015 Or maybe it WON'T be done by morning... *stares at the SSH session in Putty* Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AshleyAshes Posted September 30, 2015 Author Share Posted September 30, 2015 (edited) Maybe TOMORROW morning? When do I get to smash this ancient Xeon all Office Space style? STOP HOARDING OUR DATA, I WANT TO BREAK YOU!Guess who just got paid to sit around all day, reading blogs and posting online, while watching Ubuntu via SSH scroll through 750 000 files! Edited September 30, 2015 by AshleyAshes Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Irreverent Posted October 1, 2015 Share Posted October 1, 2015 If you want to take that old RAID out to the Range, I might know a guy...... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AshleyAshes Posted October 1, 2015 Author Share Posted October 1, 2015 I'll take one of those Q6600s, if you don't mind, until I get my funding and get this in:http://i.imgur.com/wZ0cjjt.jpgThen I'll give back the Q6600. Pinky Promise. And for some reason, your site now wishes to auto-insert images I uploaded from other threads into other convos.You're spending too much. https://theserverstore.com/content/dell-poweredge-c6220-2u-server-sff Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AshleyAshes Posted October 1, 2015 Author Share Posted October 1, 2015 I just put Windows 7 Professional on a 16 core Dell server. I'm going to hell for this, right? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AshleyAshes Posted October 1, 2015 Author Share Posted October 1, 2015 Yes, yes you are. Server 2008 Core and Hyper-V w/RemoteFX would be the way I'd go on a system like that. Server 2012 royally screwed up RemoteFX performance, literally halving it across pretty much every benchmark I could throw at it.2008 R2 and Win 7 are the same NT 6.1 kernel anyway. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AshleyAshes Posted October 1, 2015 Author Share Posted October 1, 2015 But Win7 won't do Hyper-V, so you're left with finding other stuff for virtualization (assuming one is going that route.)Though, really, I'd just do Hyper-V core and use RSAT.http://blogs.technet.com/b/schadinio/archive/2010/07/09/installing-hyper-v-manager-on-windows-7.aspxYes it can. Not that we'll be using it. We just want it to run raw power for rendering. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AshleyAshes Posted October 1, 2015 Author Share Posted October 1, 2015 That's just the manager though, not the Hyper-V Host which is a server-edition only component and is the actual component that creates virtual machines. Myeh. Windows 7 is cheap. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AshleyAshes Posted October 1, 2015 Author Share Posted October 1, 2015 Last I checked Hyper-V Server was entirely free. ^.^Do you think that Windows Server 2008 R2 is ALSO free...? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AshleyAshes Posted October 1, 2015 Author Share Posted October 1, 2015 If you want to get technical - yes! 180 day free trial, and you can just keep downloading a new ISO and reinstalling every 6 months, as is the typically-recommended maintenance procedure for any MS operating system anyways. It'll keep your manual backup practices well-honed!I suppose if we want to get fined by the BSA while increasing workload at the same time, yeah. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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