Took a risk on a server I didn't know anything about and decided to give it a shot. After all, it's blue, came with risers, and it was cheaper to buy than replacing the motherboard in my other dead server.
This is what I picked up:
It's based around the Intel 2600GZ server motherboard platform, which is nice, at least for me - it's the same platform my NAS runs on, so I can compare between the new server and the NAS.
Also, the manuals online for the motherboard are really solid and very helpful. Those are available here: https://www.intel.com/content/dam/support/us/en/documents/motherboards/server/sb/s2600gzgl_tps_r2_4.pdf
It came without PCIe riser cards and the network management module, so I'm not sure how the BMC will work just yet - hoping to find some settings for it in the BIOS once I get it booted up.
Luckily, seems like those aren't too expensive on eBay either.
I’m installing CentOS on it now - only weird issue was that it didn’t detect the my SATA SSDs in the two front left slots - I’m assuming that’s because I didn’t configure anything in the raid setup for them on boot.
I did notice that this server had 10 slots, and looking at the cabling inside I’m assuming that the first 8 slots are SAS and feed into the integrated raid card on the motherboard, and that the two slots on the right are just regular SATA. I put them in those slots and it works!
Noise at idle is what I would say is typical(?) for a 1U server - I can try and get real measurements later. I did notice there was a fan offset setting in the BIOS, but it was set to 0 already, and it didn't seem like we could go negative.
Here's what the BMC reports for power usage - so far the system has only been through a linux installation and such - no full load yet!
Bought 2 risers and the RMM4 module. Even spending the extra $35 on those, it's still cheaper than replacing that other motherboard I was talking about. Definitely this server seems like a great deal for the price.
I'll also mention that the eBay listing said it wouldn't come with rails, but it did.
Looks like the processors boost up to a decent speed just fine, and it looks like the manufacturer has put the model number in everywhere they could - was sort of expecting less
Still haven’t put this thing through any kind of serious load yet, but idling around 86W seems like
Risers and RMM4 should arrive on Thursday and will give us pcie slots and remote kvm. I’m excited!
Risers came and work great!
However, the RMM4 NIC I linked only gives the IPMI/BMC a dedicated ethernet port. still need the $30 RMM4LITE part that plugs into the motherboard to enable iKVM.
