Dell PowerEdge 1600SC ~ what to do w/it?

[craigbert]

Hello All,

I have recently become the proud(?) owner of a Dell PowerEdge 1600SC.
The link to the manuals are here: http://www.dell.com/support/Manuals/...weredge-1600SC

This thing is a BEAST of a file server assuming you have a ton of SCSI drives which I do not. So I am trying to figure out alternatives.
I figure I could put a SATA card in it and then 3 or 4 SATA drives. Can you have multiple SATA cards in the same machine though? Don't want to have to buy the most expensive SATA card upfront, pay that off and THEN start buying drives.

Or is there some other alternative "thing" I could do that I am over looking?

[SteveRiley]

Have you powered that sucker up yet and checked the fan noise? "Real" servers can be real noisemakers, not ideal for the office or family room...

As far as ideas for what to do with it, perhaps you might heat a small room in your house -- I bet the box pumps prodigious amounts of hot air. Or you could install Debian Wheezy and build up a nice home server with SMTP, IMAP, Apache, Roundcube, Davical, and whatever else is useful for you.

Yes, you can install multiple SATA interface cards.

[tek_heretik]

I didn't see any specs in the support manual. Aside from that, my question is why? The 64-bit slots are probably impossible to get card(s) for, that leaves the 32-bit slots, which are gruellingly slow by today's standards, my suggestion is, to save a huge amount of electricity and money on that electricity bill, lol, is plug a killer external drive in one of your 3.0 USB ports. Sounds like a time killing pet project, but honestly, I wouldn't dump too much money in it, you can probably find parts at a used parts store, would be way cheaper just to fart around, so to speak.

[craigbert]

Thanks guys for your input. Very helpful as always!

Yes, I have powered it up and I would not label it as a "stealthy" server to sit in the corner.
A "time killing pet project". Hmm. Had not seen it from that perspective, but I fear you may be right...

[dibl]

If you wanted to make a serious server out of it, I would be tempted to buy a real hardware RAID controller, such as this, and then hook up some 1T SATA 3 drives and stripe them. But I dunno if that platform supports PCI-e, so you might be limited by the bus design.

EDIT: The specs are here -- no PCI-e. But if you can find a 64-bit PCI-X RAID controller, that could get you some very respectable performance. Unfortunately it looks like Debian and *buntu users would have to compile their own driver for that one. They're still available -- here, for example, and not at all pricey.