Cheap and Powerful Home Virtual Server - $300 GETS YOU A TON OF POWER!
2024 ж. 12 Мам.
260 509 Рет қаралды
It's time to retire the old virtual host server that 2GuysTek uses for the channel. Rich found that for a modest amount of money you can get AN ABSOLUTE TON OF POWER for $300! Join Rich as he talks about the process, logic, and design concepts that defined the making of the 'BigBoi' virtual server!
Here are some of the parts we used in the build:
T7600s on eBay: ebay.us/qJPI5H
PCIe 4x to M.2 SSD card: amzn.to/2Ha0QGQ
Mini-SAS to SATA cable: amzn.to/2Zg8CZS
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And it only costs $300! If you don't count the $4000 of hardware we already had lying around...
and then you open ebay and for 300 is only mb with cpus or for 400 with one weaker cpu :D
I dont know the electricity cost in the US but in Germany it would cost me a asset. ~ 35 Cent per kWh Edit: So the Internet says 13.19 Cents in the US.
@@shadowmasterlord presne tak ako hovoríš 😂
Dell Precision T7600 16-Core 2x Intel E5-2680 with 64 GB ram - $400 + $55 shipping DELL PRECISION T7600 1300W POWER SUPPLY - $50 + $16 shipping AC Power Supply Cord Cable 4 Dell Precision - $8 + $3 shipping XPG LITE SX6000 Series: 512GB Internal PCIe Gen3x4 (NVMe) - $66 M.2 NVMe SSD to PCIe X4 Adapter - $20 Samsung 860 EVO 500GB 2.5 SATA III - 8 x $85 ($680) Athena Power BP-15827SAC an 1 x 5.25" External Drive Bay to 8 x 2.5" - $65 Cable Matters Internal Mini SAS to SATA Cable - $12 Seagate ST5000DM000 5TB Internal 5900RPM 3.5" HDD Lot of 4 - $275 + $9 shipping Total - $1660..... So 1360 dollars over or 5.5x the ammount presented in this $300 server. The extra 5tb drive can be used for backup of the SSDs and NVMe capacity (4tb with raid 5) while the other three can be in raid 5 (10tb). This only gives you space for one complete backup of of the fast storage and with the other 3 5tb drives in raid 5 you have resiliency but no backups. Total capacity would be about 14tb in this config. This is without a $1,000 1080ti if you want to do rendering. Just the extra hardware is $1,120 aside from the server, assuming you find one with 64gb of ram and 2 xenons 64GB (4 x 16GB) DDR3 PC3-8500R - $86 Intel Xeon E5-2680 2.7GHz 20MB 8-Core 2 x 52 ($104) If you include the NAS shown in video and asssuming you want 5x capacity (70tb) for backups it adds an extra $3,660 Synology 12 bay NAS DiskStation DS2419+ - $1500 Seagate IronWolf 6TB NAS Internal Hard Drive - 12 x 180 ($2,160) Bringing total cost to $5,320 with the parts used. Without power consumption. I understand that this isn't a build video and it's essentially just saying look what I built for the channel but this could have easily been titled "building the "bigboi" virtual server" without the mention of cheap or modest or anything that implies that this is affordable. Yes you can get a ton of power out of a sub $500 server and that is freaking amazing but without storage that power is applied to nothing.
On the west coast of the US where we are it's $.11/kWh
I think everyone else is echoing the same feelings: This video is misleading. It definitely cost more than $300 to build this computer, they're just not including the cost of the parts they "already had lying around".
How is it misleading if $300 gets you a dual Sandy Bridge Xeon machine with 16 GB (upgradeable to 512 GB!) of RAM and a 500 GB HDD? That's what I call a good deal, and plenty for most people.
@@GRBtutorials because you're not factoring in that people probably don't already have that chip, that RAM, etc. You used a lot of parts and supplies that didn't come with the $300 purchase from eBay...
Jeremy Graslie No, they said it was all included in the price. They upgraded the RAM to 64 GB because of their requirements, but 16 GB were included (2:15), and the Xeons were included as well.
Configured 2x 2Tb hdd, 64gb ram and 3gb gpu for $355
I just looked for this exact build. Im seeing a ton of bare bones builds.
I'm new. Haven't seen you before. I like your fast moving pace and have subscribed, Thanks a million . Kudos and muchas gracias !
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for subscribing!
same situation here! looking forward to seeing everything else you guys have!
@@2GuysTek I want to build this out for a Data Science personal work station. What kind of Nvidia graphics cards can I put on this? Preferably two of them, with each one having 12gb ram
@@lutherhill2405 there are a ton of 16x PCIe slots in this chassis, so you could easily throw two RTX Titans into this box and power them without an issue. The PSU is rated at 1300W so even with two giant cards consuming wattage, you'll have a lot of power budget left over!
2GuysTek excellent thanks. I will definitely be building this out over the next year.
Here I was proud of my budget build... $152 for a quad core I5 3.1 ghz Lenovo tower with 16 gb of ram and 500gb hard drive and windows 10.
Still be proud! If it serves its purpose for your needs then that’s great!
That little SSD caddy is so cool
Great quality video, I'd be curious to see it in action with a small tour of your VM's. I've never seen a host running more than 4 at a time, so this would be some quality entertainment! ;)
This is a great idea! Let’s see what we can do in the future! Thanks for the suggestion!
Things like this are perfect I'd love to see more videos working on servers keep it up guys. New sub
please look at other channels to, the make some stuff the wrong way.
@@juri14111996 huh?
@@adamsiek6438 kzhead.info The have great videos about freenas and xcp-ng.
@@juri14111996Oh I am. Not concerned about learning, from the video. I'm in IT with tons of certs. If I was going to set something up I would read the docs. Videos are great, but no one video will cover everything. I'm just was entertained by it.
high-end workstations make for perfect SOHO servers: great performance and reliability, (usually) easily serviceable, and spare parts readily available. and: you don't need hearing protection if it lives in a closet next to your desk. if uptime and redundancy isn't your main concern, you can squeeze a lot of performance out of them for quite little money.
Couldn’t have said it better!
@@IJoeAceJRI ofcourse you can; the hardware surrounding it (in that weight class, mind you) will just go "thanks for all the fish" in a few months - while running, and you depending on it
@@IJoeAceJRI generally, it's not the CPU that burns down, but a power supply, a disk controller fails, stuff like that. neither is a problem if you have hardware redundancy (edit #3, sorry.) of course you could run a server with a 1600 on a decent mobo and you'd be fine. but you couldn't run it with a terabyte of error-correcting RAM and at 100% load, 24/7, for years. "home NAS" vs "business machine, needs to make money"
Hey, yes this is more what I need. The new expensive stuff is easy to get, but your build is awesome! Nice thought.
I lucked out and was given 5 Dell T3600s. Went out found some server RAM on ebay and got these puppies running in a vSAN cluster at home.😎
That’s great! We originally were thinking about using T3600s!
Thanks for the info. I used this as a guide to get my new(used) server off the ground but I went with Unraid. I love the docker approach when a VM is over kill.
That's great to hear! It's really important to us that people get something out of our work, thank you for letting us know the video helped!
Guys, this is awesome video, you put up some great info. Please keep up with videos, you deserve more subs. i've upvoted and subscribed, and im gonna tell my friends.
That’s awesome! This keeps us going!
Nice editing, good content!
Amazing video! You guys are the best! Cannot stop recommending you guys enough! Keep up the awesome work and content!
Can't tell you how helpful this video was. I had a come up on a T7610 from work. Our PACS department was tossing one of these pc's. Came with quad DP card and SAS card with 3x2TB SAS drives. Added another 10c Xeon and 128GB of RAM. Now I am able to run 10 - 15 VM's with no issue.
Awesome! Glad you found the video and that it helped! Consider subscribing!
The potential of upgrading this machine is mind-blowing. Nevertheless you have to get all the other components at barely the cost of the computer, specially a video card if you want to virtualize multiple hosts from 1 machine. Even though still a very big barigain what you found. Thumbs up for that! And how you can fusionate 2 or more computers in one big to be able to do the same thing as one PC that is way powerful?
It's the magic of virtualization! There is just so much power in modern hardware these days that we just don't unlock running one OS on it at a time. A platform like the T7600 is a great place to play with virtualization and fully unlock all of that potential with multiple VMs at a time! Thanks so much for watching and the comment!
I ve been using old tech servers for some time. Its great get something just out of manufacturers warranty but for change, instead of several grand. Plus you can upgrade for cheap too.
I had been doing this with servers for years too, but never seriously considered using workstations till now! This has been such a success that I probably will never go back to server hardware again. Thanks for watching!
@@2GuysTek Ive ironically used servers as workstations.... Fujitsu servers, that I have used all happily run windows 8 and 10. found this out by accident when I booted up a spare drive in mine by accident. Hyper v works very well and the two SAS cards I got for free :) work well. even has a dual screen graphics card and sound. I work as an IT engineer so comming across"old" tech is a work hazard and one I often benefit from. seconhand is great.
I did that with a T5610. 128GB ram. You can boot off NVME if you use Clover on a USB.
Hi, great video by the way. I have the Dell Precision T3600, and its been over a year that its been running 24/7. How long do these refurbished servers last for?
Hi, just found your channel and love the video! I have a few questions about your setup. I believe you mentioned it quickly but did you have to add a discrete graphics card for this setup to work? Can you connect a total of 12 drives? 4 on each SAS and then 4 from the hot swap bays? Are 10TB HDD supported? Thanks again, you got a new subscriber!
Hi Micah, thanks for the comment! We did have to add a discrete GFX card as the chassis didn't come with one when we bought it from eBay - That being said, the card we put in it was very, very low end, just a basic Nvidia 2-port Quattro we had laying around. Regarding the SAS connections, the board has 2x mini-SAS connections which would let you do a total of 8 SAS/SATA connected drives. You can connect those however you'd like, with 4 going to the hot swaps and then 4 more going to a high density 5.25" disk bay like we used. The built-in disk controller only does a software RAID, which isn't supported by ESXi, so if you want to do a proper RAID-5, 6, or 10, get yourself a RAID card for cheap on eBay as well to allow you to build the array of your dreams! We didn't test 10TB disks, only 5TB, but I don't see a reason that they won't be supported - this chassis isn't old enough that it would have a limitations on the disk size. Here's Dell's specs for the platform: www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/sln290764/hardware-specifications-for-the-precision-t7600-desktop-workstation?lang=en
Great job on this build. Why is this channel underrated? It should be famous!
Thanks for watching!
@@2GuysTek You're welcome. :) Hope you'll get more fans coming in.
I added a pair of virtual machine servers. Pretty much identical. Since they are expected to do the major lifting here, I named them Hans and Franz.
Love it! They will *CLAP* pump you up!
Loved your 8x 2.5" bay hack. what's the name of the product? Does it fit to replace CD ROM drive?
The first 2 vms you showed in the beginning, used for file share and storage, what were they? I also have R720 but we're using dropbox for convenience..
We have a Nexcloud instance that we use for transferring and syncing data between Jon and I. It looks, functions, and does everything Dropbox does - but has so many more features and apps to it! We even run a kanban board on it! It's completely free, fully functional, and regularly updated. If you have storage on your R720, and you have a good Internet connection give it a shot!
Great video, super setup, I was wondering since you are booting the server from a stick, doesnt the VM have to be on the same? Do you think I can setup a Proxmox like this?
Thanks for the question! In ESXi you only use the stick to boot the hypervisor and that's all, so think of it as the ESXi boot disk and nothing more. ESXi loads into memory and stops using the USB stick after that initial load. All VMs are stored on 'datastores' which are disks that are connected to the host via SATA or network-attached via iSCSI or NFS. I'm not an expert on Proxmox, but I'm willing to bet it has a similar feature to do the same thing. Typically a hypervisor (a generic name for an OS that just runs virtual machines) is designed to be small, light-weight, and run with the smallest footprint possible to leave as many resources as possible for the VMs it's running.
I did something like this a few months ago. I did not upgrade mine like you guys did. I have so many ideas now.
Awesome! Good luck!
You're a braver man than I, entrusting that much to a random eBay seller. Last time I went for a cheap server, I went for a NewEgg open box deal. It wasn't as good a deal, but at least I had a usable return policy if it was borked... Good show!
Thanks for watching!
love videos like this
Hey guys, really good video, I subscribed😎. It’s interesting you’re also using a Diskstation NAS, they are amazing! I’m sure you know you can also host Vm on those. When I think of VM I’m thinking like having a VM for a Linux distor or Maybe an older version of Windows.. Could you please share what specific VM you’re running?
We're big fans of Synology! In fact, we use it as part of our ESXi datastores via NFS mount for VMs with large disks that don't need to be super fast (just big!) Regarding virtualization on Synology - I've never used it myself, but considering the lower power nature of the Intel Atom C2538 in our DS2415+ we probably wouldn't get much running. To your question about what we're currently running, at this moment we're running 10 VMs. 4 Ubuntu VMs, 2 Windows Server VMs, pfSense, 2x Windows 10 Pro VM, and a vCenter server appliance. All have a variety of different amounts of RAM, disks, and vCPUs associated with them. Thanks for the comment!
nice vid👌 i would have bought a dell r720 (i programmed a software to controll its fans so its not that loud) but hey thats also cool
how did you do it ? does your software work with ESXi ? ... I have a R720 too, but it's loud as hell, I can't use it at home at all
Great video, subbed. I found it because I have similar needs and am looking at a T7610, r720, or r720xd. A few questions: - I imaging your t7600 has ECC memory, is that what you have laying around? Might want to call something like this out. - why did you choose the T700 over the T7610?
You're 100% right on the ECC RAM requirement - That's an important catch, thank you! The R710 server we were running as the primary ESXi host had compatible RAM as they're around the same generation. And to your question about why a T7600 over a T7610? It was just money. At the time there were no 'affordable' T7610s on the market. In some cases they were like $300-500 over the $300 T7600 we found. Unfortunately now it looks like even finding a T7600 at the price we bought ours looks hard to do. I did find one almost identical to the chassis we bought but it was going for $400. ebay.to/31k2AGq I'm hoping prices settle back down here soon. Thanks for the question!
Got an Awesome deal on a Dual Xeon E5-2650 V2 Dell Precision T5610. For total of 16 cores and 32 threads for 70 bucks! The issue was the motherboard sata controller. Easily fixed with using a pcie sata card.
Great Video! Can you tell me what song that is at the end?
straight savage!! Great video guys a lot of good ideas.
Did you guys flash the raid controller? Have a similar setup with the sata to sas wire and i cant seem to get xfs working
I am considering buying one of these for myself. Thanks for the video! Can you make a video recording how the VM’s preform? Make run some bench marks on the VM’s I’d really appreciate it!
We released another video talking about the VMs that we run and what they're used for. We only lightly touch on the performance though: kzhead.info/sun/nNespMZsb4uEeZ8/bejne.html That being said, we'll add this to the list of ideas! There is a lot of interest in how well systems like this perform. Thanks for the comment!
Hi, I love the video it is very informative! I would love to know how much power it uses? I am thinking of building one where I would initially only use it as a NAS server although I am not sure what I should expect to pay for my electrical bill. I love that it is so scalable and I would be interested in running some VM's in the future. I would really appreciate if you could give me a rough estimation of energy consumption for running a NAS, thank you and keep up the grate videos!
This chassis has a 1300W PSU, but we never - even when fully loaded - came close to that consumption. We'd been asked quite a bit over time how much the system used while running and if memory serves it rarely crested 300W of usage. Of course, what you put into it will affect the consumption, so if you toss in a couple high-powered GPUs your mileage will vary. Best of luck and thanks for watching!
I was checking into getting a home server running and really liked the one you reviewed here and hoping you could answer a couple questions please . 1st can this server / work station be updated for high speed newer gen cpus for high specs gaming ? If so which cpus could I get the most out of this system along with any other upgrades that has come about since this video you posted ? I was very curios about the size and running 2 high end gpus I’m assuming this would be a crossfire method that could utilize two gpus on one system ? Crossfire for modern pcs is now obsolete so I’m hoping this is a method that can still support the 2 cpu and 2 gpu approach . I’m concerned about building a server that does not meet my high end needs is why I ask , Great video please let me know your thoughts it will be greatly appreciated . Thank you !
Great questions, here's some answers: 1) The server is upgradeable, but only within its current generation. This is a first generation (v1) E5-26xx Sandy Bridge Xeon and while Intel made the v1 chipsets capable of running v2 CPUs, Dell does not and locks the BIOS to only allow v1 E5-26xx CPUs. That being said, you could always get the best CPU of that generation to throw into this chassis, those would be the Xeon E5-2687W CPUs which are 8-core CPUs - Still pretty fantastic chips and probably pretty affordable. 2) To your GPU question - The workstation has a 1kW PSU in it, so it's capable of running a pretty good variety of GPUs. Keep in mind that Dell says it has 600W-worth of PCIe power for GPUs. I can't speak to whether AMD's crossfire will work or not. Here's a link to Dell's hardware specs for the T7600: www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000139598/hardware-specifications-for-the-precision-t7600-desktop-workstation This is a great system for the price and still is a great performance, though it's getting old by today's standards. I hope this helps! Thanks for the question, consider subscribing, and best of luck! -R
@@2GuysTek Great stuff and thank you so much for sharing your vast amount of knowledge with a incredible fast response . To me that is very rare and speaks highly to your character . I’m subscribed and will be looking forward to watching more of your content . Kind regards , StrokerAce
first-timer; liked very much. Wanted to know more about noise and power consumption? Been looking for a budget vm-server/everything else backup for home lab. Again thanks for the skooling.
When we tested power consumption it came in at ~400W of power. And because this is a workstation, it was designed to sit at a desk in and office, so it's quiet.
I can run 8 VM's on my FX-8350 no problem (~800 processes) the bottle neck is the old boards only support 32gb of ram so this sounds like a great solution! Thanks for posting! Only downside to this is likely no Spectre or Meltdown patching available, but not a big deal since this is likely lan only.
AMD Ryzen™ VR-Ready Premium
Excellent video; very informative.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Great video. Thanks. Will your server run the latest games in 2022 with a decent GPU added? I ask, since the video is now 3 years old, and the server's release date was 2012 as you mentioned. I'm wondering how it copes with Windows 11 Pro on one VM running alongside another VM for gaming? I'd love to find out how it actually performs today?
With a decent GPU it would perform fine as a gaming rig as most of the heavy lifting in gaming is done on the GPU. It would run Win 10 fine, but Microsoft doesn’t support the processors in that box for Windows 11. There are workarounds but YMMV on that.
@@2GuysTek Thanks for responding :) Today, I just purchased an old Dell PowerEdge T320, Intel Xeon E5-2470 v2, 48GB DDR3, H310, 8x 3TB SAS. I'm just waiting for delivery now. Will look at upgrading the GPU as suggested. Maybe, something like an RX 570/580 from Aliexpress, or used on Ebay. I have to ensure compatibility with the box first. I heard there was an issue with having to change a power cable if the GPU is powered from the Dell PSU. I have no idea at this stage.
This is pretty cool. I'm really interested in that optical bay high density ssd caddy. Any links to where someone might be able to track one of those down? Been looking for a while.
Here's a link to a similar product to the one I used. Unfortunately the one I used doesn't seem to be available anymore: ebay.to/2RS2O4C Thanks for watching!
Hi, thank you for your videos, this channel is full of good stuff and a pleasure to watch. I’m the happy owner of a Dell T7610 very much in the same configuration (well except for the ram I’ve got 196 Gb). I was looking for a solution to create three-tiered storage on my machine, but I could not find something like the SSD bay you've used in this build . Would you please be kind enough to share some information about it or a link to the vendor? Keep on with the good work, Kind Regards, Bruno
Hi Bruno, I did some searching to see if I could find the exact one I used in that video. Unfortunately it's no longer available on either Newegg or Amazon in the US. However, I found this one here: amzn.to/2TTWmeM which looks so close to what I used that I wouldn't be surprised if it wasn't built in the same factory in China. It's on the pricey-side, but the density is phenomenal! Best of luck! -R
@@2GuysTek What's the biggest SSD you've been able to throw at the T7600/T7610?
I just picked up a T7610 with Dual 8-Core Xeon e5-2670 CPUs (Total 32 threads), 256GB RAM. 1TB SATA3 7.2k OS Drive and 3 6TB SATA 3 7.2k Drives for my VM data store - pretty rocking system.
Nice video. Thanks for sharing. I like your work, I'll be subscribing! On a side-note: 1:55 512Gbytes over TWELVE slots? That would be 42GB/slot... Something's not right. 2:29 Am I not seeing 16 slots there?
Hi Brian! Thanks for the comment! The T7600 has 16 total DIMMs available in the dual-proc config, here's a link to Dell's specs on the model: www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/sln290764/hardware-specifications-for-the-precision-t7600-desktop-workstation?lang=en Thanks watching!
Great workstation.
So do all the T7600 have the usb connection on the motherboard to boot from?
The T7600 is an excellent machine and extremely expandable. My single XEON example has been beefed up quite a bit with Ebay parts. The parts are absolutely dirt cheap.
first time watched i liked nice choice i use dell optiplex 3010 i wanna build a new one one day i liked and subscribed nice work.
Thank you!
Do you do any passthrough to video cards? I have a t7910 with dual 8 core Xeons. I am looking to set up 2 virtualized desktops using this single system and have concerns about bluetooth and USB compatibility.
Great video!
You didn't show us the operation videos , is it quieter than the old one ?. Great project thi
I want to know that as well ! ... it's a shame you haven't got an answer
Sounds good... until you check your electricity bill. I wonder how much would a more modern server cost with equal computing power, and how would the electricity bill look like.
And here I am, with my Desktop PC with 16Gigs, a FX8350 and a GTX960(4Gb). VMWare workstation with 9 VMs always running. I wish I could have that much RAM :(
Upgrade to am4
My budget is good for brand new servers but we also buy those used Dell workstations to do the desktop stuff. You can build and evaluate pre-deployment VMs with ease and the hardware is almost infallible. It's not just the power you get a desktop built like a server and for the money it's crazy not to buy them.
Exactly!
I have the same host, having issues with ESXI boot after install. what version of ESXI did you install and how did you format the boot drive, also what boot method are you using (legacy/eufi) and any specific “gotchyas” in the bios you ran into?
We used BIOS boot as the boot method, and we targeted an internal USB stick inside. This was v6.5 of ESXi. What is your boot target? That generation of Precision host doesn’t support booting from NVMe, so you need to use a SATA-cabled disk.
@@2GuysTek wow thanks for responding back so quick! I actually got it working today using version 6.5 update 3, from the custom ISO Dell EMC download option in VMware’s site. Was able to copy a license key I had from a 6.7 version host I had so we’re up and running 🙌🙌 . Was hoping to use v7 but it sounds like there’s a lot of jumping through hoops to get that to work on the T7600.
Good idea in general. For fun and testing. For production costs are hidden in electricity to cool the thing etc. You made it look easy but I feel it's not...
I like your hardware and as a Dutchman I love the reuse of existing hardware. I use Ubuntu 21.10, OpenZFS 2.0 and Virtualbox 6.1 to store my virtual machines. My hardware ($349) is modest a Ryzen 3 2200G; 16GB (3000MHz); 512GB SP nvme-SSD (3400/2300MB/s) and from the previous PC a 128GB SP sata-SSD and 2 HDDs 500GB Seagate and 1TB WD Black. I can run 2 modern Windows VMs or 4 Linux VMs at the same time. I also have 3 tier storage in 3 datapools for my VMs: - The 14 most frequently used VMs use the high performance storage with a 2 level storage hierarchy; the L1ARC 4GB memory cache and the nvme-SSD. - The 27 VMs, still receiving updates, are on a 3 level storage hierarchy; the same 4GB L1ARC; 90GB L2ARC (read cache) + 5GB ZIL (sync write cache) on sata-SSD and 2 x 500GB HDD partitions in Raid-0. Here I also store my personal data in a separate dataset, but with copies=2, so all my data is stored on both HDDs, a kind of Raid-1 subset inside Raid-0. - The 29 VMs, that are not receiving updates anymore, are also on a 3 level storage hierarchy; the same 4GB L1ARC; 30GB L2ARC + 3GB ZIL on the same sata-SSD and a 500GB partition at the end of the 1TB HDD. Note that all storage and all caches are lz4 compressed and the compression ratio is ~2.0. My VMs are a mix of distro-hopping and collecting OSes. As collector I have all Windows releases from 1.04 to 11 and the Ubuntu releases 4.10, 5.04; all LTS releases and the development edition for 22.04. As distro-hopper I have Garuda-Linux; Manjaro; Fedora; OpenSUSE; Linux Mint; Xubuntu; etc etc. I have an very cheap backup-server built of leftover parts and I added a new power-supply ($18): - a Pentium 4 HT (1C2T; 3.0GHz); 2GB DDR (400MHz) and 4 HDDs in total 1.21TB (2 x 3.5" IDE 250+320GB and 2 x 2.5" SATA-1 320+320GB) running 32-bits FreeBSD 13.0 on OpenZFS :)
I’m looking for a DL/Machine Learning chassis to put something like a couple of 1080ti into it. Would this workstation be a good option? I’m fine with rack mount options as well. Ideally I’d buy some used server/workstation that can fit large GPU cards, has enough memory capacity and enough CPU PCIe lanes to support cards.
This would be a perfect option for that! In fact, I wouldn't recommend buying a rack mounted server as you'll likely have restrictions that would prevent you from installing two full-length GPUs. Workstations like this one have plenty of GPU length for cards and this system has a 1300W PSU so it has plenty of power budget for 2x 1080Ti cards.
Is there any way to upgrade this Dell system to support ESXi 7 or 8? Also, my PC lacks the TMP module. Can someone advise on a way to install this module for this platform? Thanks a bunch.
Nice!
Dual xeon at $300 is a deal. I checked your ebay link. They’re not those prices at the moment but I’m gonna keep my out. This is a good idea. Smaller footprint and quieter than the dell r700 series
i just found 3 HP Proliant G6 with betwen 144 and 200GB Ram, each Server has dual CPU installed. just no drives. but its fine storage will be in a storage only Server.
How many VMs Ryzen 5950X can run?
@@sirs4878 i'm currently using ryzen 2600 (not X) running proxmox with 64GB ram. i have 5 VMs and 2 LXCs running. CPU resource wise, it's barely hitting 15% usage. though i'm not running anything "heavy". mainly pihole, VOIP server for home, proxy server, docker server. i'll run out of ram before i worry about cpu usage.
Yeah I got an old ProLiant ML110 G7 server that I installed a Xeon chip on and 32GB ram maximum. It sings like a bird as a file server and quiet as a mouse. I'd love to stick 10GbE on it, but will have to wait. Nice server.
You running Linux? Windows? FreeNAS? Thanks for watching!
@@2GuysTek I'm running a domain server in WSE 2019.
I purchased a T7600 and it only has 1 sata power adapter. How did you add a sata power adapter to get 2 for the ssd hard drive box that went in the 5.25 bay?
There should be more SATA connectors available, if not, buy this: amzn.to/35WNAVv
Great content!
Thanks! We hoped it gave you some ideas for your own #homelab!
@@2GuysTek I have 2 x E5-2687W V4 got them from eBay cheap these dual CPU workstations are amazing!
That's great! I always have a chuckle when I read about people who build out these giant #homelabs in their homes with data center gear. I mean, I've been there, but I'm glad I moved away from rack servers to workstations that have a ton of power, don't destroy my power bill, and are practically silent! Thanks for the comment! -R
$300 is still my dream
This is smart....so many tech channels advocate building servers with new parts when there is so much that can be had on secondary markets. Server parts that once cost thousands of dollars can be picked up for a few hundred today. It makes absolutely no sense to run out and buy brand new when gear that has worked for the last decade can be had for pennies on the dollar. Well done.
Thanks for the comment and watching! We think the same thing!
I just built myself a 2011-3 based System with DDR4 and 2 12 core Xeons. I used cheap used parts and it wasn't much more expencive then the pc built in the video.
That's awesome! It's amazing how much power you can get for your money these days! Thanks for watching!
Hi, I saw your video almost 1.5 year later - what would you do differently today? Would you still use the Dell T7600s as your base or would you opt for something different.
Thanks for the question! The T7600 really has been a quality system for our needs. The platform has been entirely reliable since we put this video out. We actually just replaced it recently though, here's the video for that: kzhead.info/sun/pcaNqJRlkZyOen0/bejne.html if you're interested. And to be honest with you, the only reason we upgraded was to continue to stay current with the hardware support from VMware moving forward beyond ESXi 7. We did miss not having a DRAC/iLO/OOB interface for the host. If there was a way to add or install and out-of-band management controller then the system would have been practically perfect. When the decision was made to move to something newer we didn't go with another Precision T-series because the cost was just too high. Sadly the world has caught on to the value of using a workstation as a virtual server and now the prices for what you get are even higher than a rack server with more power (which is why we moved back to a rack server).
So how's the noisy fan at the start of the video. Curious how'd you managed to tone it down?
It quiets down and is no louder than a normal workstation.
300$,, a short googling on various refurb, second hand site will tell the truth...
Which removeable (6) drive bay did you use?
Really curious to see some Hyper-V setup guides. Can you make some
We love recommendations! Thanks for the suggestion!
Where is the part 2....please i would like to these beast run ESXI.
That's a great idea! You're the first to ask, but we'd be happy to do a run through of it's life and workload running ESXi! Thanks for the suggestion!
I know this is an old video but I do have a question. Can that box be turned sideways and put in a rack?
100% yes it can. In fact it actually has rubber feet on the backside if you wanna change the orientation.
@@2GuysTekBecause of space constraints my desk isn't that large. My solution was to rack everything. I have a 25U startech rack in my mancave. So far all that's in it is my media server and my daily driver. I've been wanting to learn linux but didn't want to mess with dual booting. Since the T7600 is dirt cheap and will fit in my rack, Ebay here I come! Next stop Pop!Os.
Guys, don't understand why you bother with proprietary ESXi instead of XCP-NG or unRAID?
The biggest reason is that working with ESXi as part of my #homelab keeps me sharp for working with VMware professionally in my day job. Thanks for watching! -R
@@2GuysTek why not a seperate Storage only Server?
@@juri14111996 we technically have that already with our #Synology NAS. We use NFS datastore mounts from ESXi to volumes hosted on the NAS for VMs with big slow disks. Unfortunately the NAS only has a 4x1Gbit LACP trunk to the network so it's read/write rate isn't anywhere near what we can store on the internal NVMe.
where to get the 8 disk drive bay from???
I second this question...
@@AchwaqKhalid I found it here the links www.ebay.com/itm/293199542565 www.amazon.com/dp/B00TL4US8K/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_u9amFb1DV8AHK
Did u get it from ebay? I built a server for 90 bucks quadcore 16g ram. But i wanna host more vm. But pref it be quiet as i sleep in same room as it for now
Yes, we did source the workstation from ebay, there's a link to the T7600 in the description.
@@2GuysTek u guys have a discord right? Id love some help picking out some server stuff im currently on omv 5. Maybe gonna move to proxmox omv and truenas mix. I wanna host game servers and movies mostly for self and fam
@@TwinTailTerror discord.com/invite/Y9PB9pq Come join us!
@@2GuysTek joined the room but its all locked up have to do all sorta reg stuff might consider changing that as i personally like my privacy where possible =3 if not is cool i tried to friend u but i cant speak post or msg members in the room
If you're running a Plex or Emby VM you may want to install some kind of graphics card and use it as a passthrough for transcoding. This will take a ton of work off of your CPU's and let them take care of the day to day functions of the VM's themselves. Even cards that run on 75w PCIe power will get you a lot of benefit, there. No need to drop in a 2080ti (most server and workstations don't have power provisions for the PCI power that is needed for the bigger cards anyway unless specifically ordered like that) It's good that you were able to pick that thing up for $300. I've got a stack of Dell Poweredge servers under my desk. One of them is a R710 like you guys have. And they are very useful. Although without knowing the specs you're upgrading from in your R710 it's kind of hard to determine if the juice is worth the squeeze. As far as noise. They're in the garage so that's really a problem?
I was under the impression that hardware transcoding in plex on Linux was still broken, is that not the case anymore? I would be more than happy to passthrough a GPU if I knew that had been resolved.
@@2GuysTek Not sure about linux. The people that I know that are doing it are all using windows based installations. Some native, some using passthrough on a hyperviser.
Dang I am loving this 4k60 video. I subscribed just because of it.
Shouldn't use RAID5 or RAID6 for SSD arrays due to excessive parity writing. SSD arrays are much better on RAID10. In general RAID5 is totally antiquated. RAID10 provides the same redundancy with higher speeds with lower wear on SSD's. As data stores get larger single parity cannot be considered reliable, requiring either RAID6 or alternate specialty fire system solutions (ZFS, BTRFS, Unraid, etc.) As an aside, RAID10 also benefits from the mirroring technique of redundancy. Rebuilding (copying) a mirror is much less demanding on a RAID than rebuilding with parity which places higher demands on multiple other drives increasing risk of additional drive failures.
These are great points! The only real downside to RAID10 is the disk cost. In my current config 6x500GB@RAID5 comes out to about 2.5TB, and at RAID10 is 1.5TB. Thanks for the comment!
for all that you did with this server, I think that you might of been better of using Unraid which would of given you better options with VMs, HD setup and expansion, and overall future expandability with an low overhead. I would have also move all the guts from that limiting Dell case to a more robust server case with the overall cost being just a little more. Just a suggestion...
Great recommendations! The decision to use ESXi is driven by a few factors, but one big one is that VMware is considered THE enterprise virtualization platform for business and running this helps me continue to sharpen my professional skills and experiment with #homelab stuff that directly benefits me in my day job as well. Thanks for the recommendations!
@@2GuysTek👍
I'm still proud of my new little rig 8gb of ram and a4 pro 7300b sandisk ultra 2 480gb ssd all for £30
I am not understanding how you got all eight 2.5" drives connected to one SAS connector. If the 3.5" disks are connected to the other SAS connector the cable you have only allows you to connect 4 of the 2.5" SATA drives to the other SAS connector.
Bare minimum, buy another 700 series dell, put a PERC H700 card in to gain support for drives bigger than 2tb and load it with 6 of the biggest drives you can, setup Open media vault as a VM and create some big virtual drives for it in VM ware. Configure them in OMV as SMB shares and then setup a cheap desktop PC with an old quad core i7 and a basic low end gaming GPU (I use a 750ti) and install plex on that and map windows to the OMV file shares to be the home of your plex library. Use that new dell you got for all other stuff but plex needs it’s own dedicated box if you plan to transcode any 4K content. I learned the hard way.
I have the Dell T7600 in the dual 8-core configuration but I've found there are several 10-core and 12 -core CPU's that will also fit in that LGA 2011 socket. Is there a way to tell if those 10 and 12 core CPU's will work in this system? Dell didn't offer those as an option with this system but I think they might work and now they are pretty cheap.
Hi Michael. This is a great question! Officially Dell only supported a few CPUs on the T7600 chassis, I'm sure you've seen this link here: www.dell.com/support/article/en-us/sln290764/hardware-specifications-for-the-precision-t7600-desktop-workstation?lang=en#Processors that lists the officially supported CPUs for the chassis. The E5-2687W was the top of Intel's 2-socket implementation for the 2011 socket on Sandy Bridge. There were reports of Ivy Bridge processors being backward compatible with Sandy Bridge chipsets, and that means there is a possibility the v2 Xeons might run in the T7600. So, is there a possibility this will work? Maybe. You just don't know until you give it a try. If you do successfully get this running in your T7600 you need to pay attention to the TDP of the newer process to make sure the HSF that comes with the chassis is capable of handling the heat. The T7610 chassis (Ivy Bridge) highest-end CPU was the E5-2697 v2 (12-core). This sounds like a great idea for a video... We might just try this :-). Good luck, thanks for the comment, and definitely let us know how this goes for you if you do it! -R
@@2GuysTek Thanks for the response! I think I'm going to roll the dice for $200 and buy a pair of the 10-core CPU's and see if it works. As I recall the TDP for the 10-cores was the same as the 8-cores so that shouldn't be a problem. If I do it, I'll let you know how it turns out!
@@2GuysTek I tried installing the (2) E5-2697 v2 (12-core) into the T7600 and unfortunately if did not work; the system never even entered the hardware check. BUT, I think I know why. I had another LGA2011 system laying around; an HP Z420. I installed one of the E5-2697 in it and it worked just fine. I think the reason it didn't work in the T7600 was that the 2 CPU's were not a match pair so I suspect thats the reason. Unfortunately matched pairs of the E5-2697 are way more expensive that the two individuals (almost double) so I won't be trying that but I think it might work.
That’s really unfortunate. Is your HP a single socket? Did you try both new chips in the Z420? Could you have a bad chip? Either way, thanks for letting us know!
@@2GuysTek The HP Z420 is a single CPU and I only tried one of them. Also do you know of any problem with installing a CPU with a TDP lower than the one you are replacing?
I have the same server bought a few months ago with some projects in mind....using Debian as hypenvisor failed since passthrough was not an option thinking that iommu and vt-x had issues (clearly they didnt) Even in Dell forums they couldnt answer a simple question if supports iommu or not. I ending up usig unraid and everything worked as intended, Dont forget to update the bios to A16 or something. iommu groups are split by default very nice with each component to each own iommu group. Until now I m very satisfied with performance Wattage accoustics !!!! A nice addition would be to have your cpu but instead I have the 2x6 core xeon set PS Be extra carefull when it comes to gpu. Many supported but the width would be a problem closing up that weird left panel. I ended up with an sff x570 to pass it through to a Win 10 vm
All great points! Thanks for the comment! You're right about that goofy door thing. Thankfully we're not running a GPU with that much height either.
Instead of costly VMWare ESXi, why not opt to XCP-ng (formerly Citrix XenServer) or Proxmox VE??? Those are the other viable options aside from ESXi. The choice is up to you whatever hypervisor you want to install.
Those are great options as well! There are a few reasons I went with VMware, one being that working with it in my #homelab helps keep me sharp in my professional work life.
How many electricity power used this system? In a month if system not hard work?
Electrical rates are different in different parts of the world, so this is a tough question to answer. Where we are we're charged .11 cents a kW/hr. This system uses about the same amount of power as a high-powered desktop and as such we don't notice it's power consumption any more than our other desktops. Thanks for the question!
Here's a more concrete answer: At the current run rate, the system is using around 300-400W depending on its workload. The UPS reports that at the current run rate it's consuming around $1/day or $30/mo depending on the number of days in the month. Like I mentioned earlier, here where I live in the US 1kW/hr costs $.11.
Wow, great vid! Underrated channel.
Thanks for watching!
I bought this exact model. For some reason, it becomes unresponsive, is still "on" but no I/O, no display or keyboard... I swapped all the RAM and for a couple of weeks it worked without any issue, now the issue happened again, now the issue happens even after an hour. The reason to swap the ram was a suggestion from a dell forum, which initially worked. If anyone has an Idea, could it be the PSU, it's a 1300W PSU, maybe it's a must that it has to be connected to a UPS or PDU? Or, could it be a damaged dimm slot in the mother board? Let me know any ideas, as I really need this machine to study.
When dealing with issues like this, start simple - if you suspect you have RAM issues, put a single stick in (per CPU), and boot the machine. Does it come up? Is it stable? Increase the RAM additions until you find the bad slot. To your question about the PSU, no you do not need a UPS - for the PSU to fully consume 1300W of power you'd have to have that system under a significant load with internal peripherals (like GPUs) that required that high of wattage. If you do get the system up and running also consider upgrading the BIOS to the last released version. best of luck!
I have this same system but could not for the life of me get more than 4 drives recognized by the on-board SAS controller. I'm also trying to set up pass-through mode so I can properly run ZFS on the drives but it looks like the built-in drive controller does not support this. When using an IT-mode flashed PERC H310, the BIOS would tell me that an unsupported drive controller was installed and would refuse to POST.
It sounds like maybe you have a bad embedded disk controller. By default on our system, the drives were available individually but could also be configured into a software RAID, which is awful of course. All of the channels on the mini-SAS were working for us, but software RAID isn't supported by ESXi and we wanted RAID. In the end, we ended up picking up a PERC H700 for something like $60 on eBay. This gave us the RAID we needed and the performance we expected. We've played with the H310 in the past and it's always been a disappointing card. Good luck!
Also Sandy Bridge is PCI 2.0. Also a 16 core ryzen is more then that old CPU, heck I tested my Ryzen 2700x vs a T7600 with 16 cores and the ryzen was still faster on multi core performance and single core.
Shuffling a couple of sli enabled GPUs or crossfire enabled GPUs and you'll have an ultra gaming pc with ton of storage and streaming But the downside is the psu How to upgrade it?
The system comes with a 1000W PSU, that’s quite a lot of power.
I grabbed an r7 1700 with a b450 Mobo and 32gb of ram, sata cards are cheap and I have 2 m.2 slots on the board. Spent 300 euro for the combo. Might not be as affordable, but it's new, far less power hungry and it's upgradable, can just grab a 16 core and 128gb of ram i need to (b450 mortar).
How many VMs Ryzen 5950X can run?
Quite a few!
and what's the power from the wall? would be nice to know
Do you have a video showing how to install ESXI into the computer
We made a video walking you through step-by-step! kzhead.info/sun/jMyRo7xsonyJZoU/bejne.html
Is it actually quiet ? the power supply seems to have smallish fans which bother me a bit .... thinking about doing the same as I have plenty of RAM laying around, but it has to to quiet so my wife won't be angry ;) .... would be awesome to get an answer to this !
It is as quiet as your typical high performance desktop. The PSU has a standard 120mm fan in it and it doesn’t scream like a rack mounted server’s 60-80mm fans can. Keep in mind that Dell designed these as engineering workstations that sit at people’s desks so they’re not massively noisy.
@@2GuysTek thank you very much, that helped a lot ! .... awesome video, just the right information I needed !!!
Hi , can we install ESXI 8 IN DELL T7190 ?
This is better as a reference. Yes the price is misleading for many people. Many home Lab video people are pushing dell Rxxx solutions or Supermicro motherboards which cost even more. The T7600 will remain an Rxxx alternative as long as they are sold. I'd buy one myself, but I am making due with some low power Quad cores. The T7600 would be nice if I were going full power tower for my VMs. One secret I will be testing is a PCIE NVME adapter which supports and powers an M2 SATA SSD. The SATA SSD requires a SATA data cable to work. The card fits full or low profile cases. It can handle both a Boot NVME drive and a fast SATA SSD for VMs. I plan on using the HDDs in the system for data storage. The card will use the Video card slot in my systems doing VM / container duty. Their aging low power, low thread count processors will need all the help they can get. I believe others will ve able to strtech their old desktop systems as I am. Thanks and god protect and bless you all.