Let's Look At Some Big, Expensive Old Servers!

[@RangieNZ]

You know when someone is talking about something they love, when they can just spit out nearly half an hour of highly technical data, without stumbling/ repeating/ delays, etc. Excellent.

[@BlueRice]

Passion motivate people to learn about things they like. Only if I had passion for school.

[@webserververse5749]

Is actually pretty base level knowledge here. . . Either that or I learned too much without any "formal" education. As tier 1 technical support whom tells people to restart their computer or how to use their email. I own my own server rack, "built" my own servers, host my own web server, built my own website, set up compute clusters, etc. Sadly I never found an opportunity to put any of this "highly technical data" to meaningful use. This knowledge isn't hard to come by; opportunity is.

[@BlueRice]

@@webserververse5749 I agree to some extent. Everyone has different positions in life. Natural born smart but born poor may never get the right education and or influence in life to unleash their potential. Some born average but has better education that maximize their knowledge base on their school. Their environment contribute to strive for success etc.. This could be base level. But it's more precisely which is harder to manufacture because of their technology back then.

[@BlueRice]

To me it's fascinating when he can recalled and remember part of the calculation real time or numbers. So he knows beyond just hardware. It's more than just components assembly. It's like he can debug information real time in his head. Fascinating

[@alexanderstanza]

I was one of the engineers for that DL580 G7. The project code name was Hydrazine, indicating 8 risers at that drawer. Your servers were fully loaded, that’s why you need 4 power supply units (PSUs). If I recall correctly, there was a SKU with only 2 hot swap PSUs. iLO (the light-out module) boots up automatically when the PSUs connected to power supply. The reason why the manageability module has VGA and PS2 because usually these are connected to KVM (or vKVM). And, you point out well about the weight. In fact, during our QA testing there was an accident due to that. That’s why our mechanical engineer pasted that “weight warning” sticker on top of the chassis. Looking at this machine brings back a lot of memory. Nice video.

[@2501bproject]

I was one of your customers in Saudi Arabia! 2TB of RAM fully loaded in 2012 for bioinformatics applications

[@DaxtonAnderson]

>30 minute lunch break >28 minute video That's some true dedication right there!

[@gorillaau]

Daxton Anderson You then head into the office, grabbing a coffee and sugar snack on the way.

[@brukernavn46]

+2 minutes he cut away at 17:45

[@RandoWisLuL]

probably an hour lunch.

[@rebeccarainharrod]

I typically skip breakfast and lunch, just eat dinner. So I don't feel so bad about lunch break videos!

[@JaredConnell]

How is that dedication? It'd be dedication if the video was an hour and your lunch was 30 mins but you stayed out to finish it. But the way you put it, you were just lucky to find a video that matches your lunch break...

[@RavenHawkTech]

I work at Lenovo formally IBM one thing to note is that the Blue and Orange coloring on the handles typically have a meaning: in this server Blue is required to power down the system to remove and Orange is hot swappable

[@StormyHotwolf88]

It that still true for current servers?

StormyHotWolf88 I believe so

[@joeprestera2239]

I used to work with only IBM gear and loved the gear and support! I couldn't stand the original Lenovo servers they started with. It was like the Black & Decker version of power tools... I miss the IBM gear and people.

[@nicokammel]

not only Lenovo/IBM, the blue - cold swap and amber (as it is called with another major company)/orange - hot swappable Btw: I was not amazed by the video since I work with bigger servers for a long time. It is sad the the 8s systems are no more there, which was really cool at this time ... All major vendors build systems with the same specs. You want a 4h/4s system with an assload of RAM and cores? Which one do you want? You can get it from all major vendors. The only two differences are: 1. Raidcontroller features (all build in the same OEM cards with different names and subsets of functions) 2. Remote Access via BMC or higher level (like iDRAC or ILO or Xclarity) 3. Noise (some vendors cool down the servers really silent, others are called HPE ^^) 4. Price Tag

[@retsam1721]

@@joeprestera2239 I always thought their support was horrible and don't get me started with their server designs compared to HP. HP is the best designed servers out there.

[@dreammfyre]

This is how I imagined consumer PCs looking in the future when I was a kid. Everything hot swappable and built like lego blocks you just popped in. But here we are, 20 years later, still using the same ATX standards and cases...

[@FloppydriveMaestro]

Same here. I mean a lot of hardware is hot swappable but its not practical. For instance in my pc the hard drive is hot swappable but to get the hard drive out you have to remove the graphics card so its not ideal lol

[@LasstUnsSpielen]

Hey, no you are completely wrong! We innovated computers a whole lot in recent years by soldering and glueing pc components together so they are unswappable :)

[@soviut]

You saw how much much the HP machine weighed. The more modular you make something, the heavier it tends to get. Not to mention the cost of having hot swappable couplings on everything. The average consumer really doesn't care, or want, to hot swap PC components on a regular basis; Turning off your computer when you get a new hard drive or video card every few years seems pretty reasonable. On server hardware the expense, weight and added design complexity is warranted because in most cases, the machines cannot be allowed shut down. Most consumers, even enthusiasts wouldn't be willing to pay those kind of premiums for a very occasional convenience.

[@soviut]

And we have raspberry pi that are an entire PC on a chip that you can't upgrade at all but are cheap as hell. Swappable parts tend not to be anywhere near as thin, light, cheap or efficient.

[@imbadwrench]

I have always wanted a server tower to put multiple PCs inside of it. Like, a windows PC and a linux pc networked together and using remote access. Of course I went to college and learned how to build token ring networks and i got novell certified so Im really not the go to guy for making wise decisions.

[@Jonathan_O]

Just retired 4 of those machines (but w/ less RAM) for a client. The client still has one left up and running but it’s only a no-critical file server. They were good machines! Built like a tank and heavy as hell !!

[@slowtony2]

Thanks for the tour through some "big" top-end Intel server systems. They may be the last of the breed. As with your replacements, I think the trend is away from putting so much in one box. This also brought back memories. I worked with mid-range dual-CPU HP and Dell rackmount systems in 2002 to 2008. Mainly for database work in an imaging system. People don't realize that we called their location a machine room for a reason. Lots of power, heat and sound (even though it was quieter than when we had an IBM mainframe with 14 inch drives and three-phase motors). These systems were built like tanks for a specific kind of heavy use. They really don't fit in a home environment, starting with their power demands. Then you have the need for an external storage system. We used a fiber Storage Area Network (SAN) back then because the fastest Ethernet we had was 1 Gigabit. They DO look cheap on eBay, but when you put the whole system together with rack and memory and storage and networking it gets pretty expensive -- just like a fixer-upper yacht. When it breaks, it's like paying for parts to fix a Ferrari. I loved working with them though. It was an honor and a great memory.

[@CommentCritic]

Ah yes, finally a machine that can comfortably run Google Chrome.

[@bloodytears4you]

Im enjoying the chrome jokes.

[@WahyuSetiawan-sz4lc]

How did you even remember what is where with that much tab

[@HenryLoenwind]

@@WahyuSetiawan-sz4lc Same way you remember where stuff is in your house. Remembering physical locations is something humans are good at. I can tell you that I have youtube on a tab that's about 1/4 of the screen from the left in the browser window that's halfway down my virtual screens (between the window with the tabs of my devices on the left and the one with my email program on the right). I don't have any idea how I named that bookmark I made 3 days ago. I actually don't even remember what I bookmarked, so how am I to find it again when I need it? But I wrote a little browser extension that can replace the content of a tab with a minimal page that just has the link to the real content and the same title+favicon. Really helps the browser with resource consumption.

[@Nord72]

@@WahyuSetiawan-sz4lc : thats the meaning, when you close it and later reopen it, you dont need to concentrate on remembering the tabs contents.

[@travisnelson9104]

Try running chrome on one of those mini pcs. We have clients that use them and it's a nightmare. Constant crashes. Trying to figure how to make chrome run as barebones as possible.

[@rwdplz1]

I bought several of these when I lived in Silicon Valley from recyclers, and installed them in a 42U server rack with some networking equipment. Frequently the mounting rails cost more than the servers.

[@rocktheworld2k6]

How much to mounting rails generally go for?

[@calaphos]

How much do you pay for power?

[@nigratruo]

I'm curious, how much did you pay for it?

[@NoorquackerInd]

I got a Dell PowerEdge 2950 II with 2 4 core Xeons and 12 GB of ECC with a 750 GB hard drive for free from my friend for $100. Mounting rails _are_ more expensive ;-; I just use a shelf instead

[@danstone_0001]

Yeah, that's true, HP Dl380 G5/6 are like $350.00 and that not even the ball bearing kind. Just the standard one non quick deploy

[@thewhitescatpack8653]

I work in DC / Infrastructure and appreciate your videos. Most people do not know about this type of stuff, especially when you get into chassis and blades. Those are still viable servers for dev / test / qa. :) It's a classic case of Moore's Law :)

[@redsquirrelftw]

IBM stuff is super expensive, but also super well built. Great to work with. It's crazy how companies don't keep hardware for long though. If I paid that kind of money I'd be keeping it for 10+ years or until it fails completely. That is a beast that has more than enough power even by today's standards. I know why they do it (warranty, support etc) but it still seems like such a waste to replace everything so often. I saw the same sort of thing when I worked in IT. The fun part is I sometimes got to bring some of it home though. :D

[@NUCLEARARMAMENT]

Power costs don't matter, because I can buy a 1 MW diesel genset housed in a trailer in perfect working condition for $50,000 to $100,000 and buy No. 2 diesel fuel and generate my own electricity for 10 cents per kWh. If I want to go cheaper I produce my own biofuel and reduce the cost of electricity by 5 to 10 times.

[@alecjahn]

Ah I miss working around things like that. Really gets my brain salivating! Maybe I'll get back in it someday. Cool stuff! Nice machines and thanks for sharing them in depth!

[@DarkVeilGaming]

Love seeing servers! Would really enjoy more videos of this nature, there's something so satisfying about seeing commercial equipment.

[@thetaleteller4692]

Old? Thats still a beefy lot of computing power!

[@MrBillrookard]

Yes it is. The nice thing is you can get that stuff pretty damn cheap. I have a few Xeon servers in my basement - one cost me about $250 for twin hex-core Xeons, chassis, motherboard, fans, heatsinks, and 36GB of ECC RAM. I use it for a storage server and it runs just fine. The HDDs actually cost more than the server did. (about 40TB worth of ZFS storage)

[@Phishsamich]

Its all about maintenance. Old because no warranty. Need 4 hour on mission critical systems.

[@danielh4995]

We have some at work that are newer version of the TOTL single server platform like this that are 4 socket 8core procs 3TB of RAM per server and 4 direct attached storage units totaling about 500TB. While that unit is very impressive and was TOTL in its day the TOTL stuff today is mind boggling

[@geebee123]

I know.....right ! ! !

[@lpseem3770]

1U and 2U Servers from around 5-10 years ago are becoming really cheap, just because they are too small to handle multiple GPU's. Aside from missing a couple of CPU instruction sets (user mainly for AI) they're eating home computers alive while running 24/7 for months.

[@williamfernandez5170]

It’s awesome how we’ve transitioned from this type of configuration to Hyper-Converged type of configuration, still awesome and very pricey/high end IBM. Thanks for posting!

[@pcsproshop8972]

Thank you for the quick tour! Love the server side of things, spent many years at it. Don't want to return, but, still way cool to see what "Used to be" the "Ultimate" solution. BTW: For future reference, "Hot Swap" is specified as, having the ability to remove & replace while the machine is OPERATING (thus the HOT). I believe what you're referring to here is "Tool-Less" replacement components. Super cool tour, would love to see more!!!

[@ytmadpoo]

You really could hot-swap a lot of the components (fans, drives, power supplies). I don't know about the more recent HP servers, but I remember on some older ones you could even hot swap memory. You'd have to configure it for that ahead of time and have a spare bank, but it was possible. The Proliant generations I worked on no longer had that... maybe it was only on the old, clunky Compaq branded Proliants that had that feature. Probably wouldn't make much sense now... if your server has bad RAM, you'd move the workloads off and do offline maintenance. Not worth the hassle and cost of having spare banks of RAM.

[@BrainboxccGames]

When you said 'old', i thought you meant like, 1990s... I still have a server of this era running my dev/test setup in my home. :)

[@philipbrindle867]

Thanks for sharing with us. The build quality of that server is amazing, and no doubt it was pretty expensive too...

[@reggiebenes2916]

That was really interesting. I'm always amazed how well servers are made. I love your normal videos, but that was a cool change of pace.

[@protonjinx]

I still wish that some day I could get my hands on some beefy exotic server hardware to experiment and learn new things.

[@ytmadpoo]

Ebay around and you can get something pretty similar to these... Proliant DL580 (or DL380 if you just want dual socket) for a couple hundred... maybe more if you want drives. They are fun to work on, for sure. Make sure you have enough electricity wherever you plug it in. What the video failed to mention is that these were probably running off 240V and at least a 30A circuit, I'd guess. For the amount of equipment on that cart, there were probably a couple of those and the load was split between the circuits and separate PDUs. And they can be VERY loud. I know the HP servers for sure do a "power on blow out" when you first turn it on. All the fans run at 100% for a few seconds before going to the normal automatic (based on temp) mode. It'll sound like a jet engine taking off. Always a crowd pleaser when I'd have a new one on my desk before taking it to the server room...

[@tarajoe07]

Ebay and watch for something you can drive to and pick up. Deals can be had

[@MatthewHill]

So it's basically half a Threadripper. :-) Still though, I always admired the build quality on those old IBMs. Shame they've been getting out of the hardware business.

[@aldosansan2335]

Nice, this gives me the inspiration to share old vintage machinery, where I work we have servers from back the 90's collecting dust but totally operating machines. :)

[@AnonymousFreakYT]

Oh, yeah, IBM QPI ports... You can connect multiple of those servers together, and they act as a single system. In 2011, having a "16-socket", 128-core system with 8 Terabytes of RAM...

[@late.student]

Got a new job working in a data center and this is a really cool breakdown of some server gear. Thanks for taking the time.

[@tomonabudget]

I'd love to see the lights out interface. I work with company making hardware and my manager insists on using SSH, because he doesn't believe in UI's, yet IBM did that in high end servers 9 years ago.

[@bubba1984]

The clarity of no-BS explanation around this entire video is unbelievable, it is almost as if you sir did not get the memo of what it takes to be in the profession -- which is 100% BS around every simple piece of IT. The few dinosaurs left in this field who are willing to tell the truth is what keeps me in the space of IT to this day. Good work sir!

[@nono_ct200]

Thank you for spending your lunch break for showing us these Servers Sir brilliant service ❤️👍

[@jasona8396]

Found this video pretty fascinating. Never really seen the inside of rackmount servers, didn't know I was interested, but turns out I was. Thanks for the look!

[@nrdesign1991]

The thing is still _crazy_ when compared to consumer machines, especially if compared to consumer tech of 2012

[@tylertc1]

I'm a huge hardware nerd - very good walkthrough! Well done and by all means share whenever you have the chance. Really enjoyed watching.

[@MatthewRulla]

I installed and managed hundreds of these boxes, and as you said, mostly for VM's. But we always used SAN, not NAS. I actually worked for Big Blue at this time but I preferred the HP machines. Coming from a DEC VMX background and getting my administrator feet wet in the early NT4 days of Windows (circa pre-Y2K), these 2011 (ish) boxes were a dream come true toward the end of my (30+yr) IT support carer.

[@samohtw1]

Great presentation. I have been retired from the IT field for 15 years now and really enjoyed your video. Thanks for the memories.

[@ThatGuyInVegas]

The title of the video had me thinking I was going to see older servers, like or HP G4 series or Dell PE cheese grater series, thank you for not taking us back to Compaq Proliant :D Nice video.

[@jonnyo2121]

We still have a couple HP G4s hanging around.

[@bloodytears4you]

I was thinking of the Proliant G series just as i clicked on this. Im happy to see IBM.

[@humanbeing_]

This was A FANTASTIC video. I recently just purchased an HP ProLiant DL380 G6 with only 64GB OF RAM, but 12 x 146GB 10K SAS drives, RAID controller, dual 2.5GHz Xeon CPU'S (I forget the exact versions) *AND* a Cisco SF220-48 48-port 10/100 plus x2 RJ-45 GB / x2 SFP GB managed switch *AND* D-Link DES-1250G 48-Port plus 1000BASE-T x2 RJ-45 / x2 mini-GBIC managed switch... AAAND 12 random mostly dual VGA/DVI or dual DVI/DVI circa 2012 video cards, all for $200!!! So nothing as beastly nor awesome as the ones you showed, but still. For me I'm a one-man show IT & Compliance Consultant, and for that price I just couldn't pass this gear up. Happy to say I've subscribed and turned on notifications for your channel, and plan on (right now) starting to watch your complete back catalogue of content. Again; great video! Cheers, -H.B

[@mashzmash]

Wow, look how clean and dust-free they are after 6 years of service!

[@x3wildcard]

Controlled climate, my dude. All the dust is handled at the environment level.

[@mashzmash]

@@x3wildcard I work in well controlled datacenter climates too, but they're not clean rooms. After 5+ years we usually see at least some basic buildup. Not even enough to warrant cleaning. These look like they just came out of a bath.

[@vipervidsgamingplus5723]

mashzmash these were probably cleaned more recently before decommission

[@scottcol23]

server rooms are "clean Rooms" usually negative updraft HVAC systems that keep everything clean.

[@zerocks88]

you're obviously incredibly intelligent to be able to walk through all this seemingly and presumably without it being scripted and without just stopping to think almost at all for half an hour really enjoy this kind of content, I work with a lot of this stuff but generally not directly with the hardware

[@genericgreensquid6669]

Oh my god dude! 500 gigs of ram. Don't know if you mentioned it, but I hope that those things don't get recycled and go to good hands.

[@dood9245]

Generic Green Squid it's DDR3 server ram. It wouldn't work for modern servers or most consumer boards

[@genericgreensquid6669]

but the rest of the stuff could be useful to someone, I'm sure.

[@chaddoebelin6931]

It's too loud to run at home.

[@dood9245]

Generic Green Squid not likely since there is thousands of hours of wear on all that equipment and hard drives can never be used again because you can't ever completely get rid of the data without destroying them. Any company with money to buy it wouldn't anyway because they need the latest equipment in order to handle network traffic and future expectations. The commercial world doesn't purchase like the consumer one.

[@NickShvelidze]

Tyler Have you watched the video? There are literally no storage drives in there.

[@mlmmt]

That was so cool to watch, its always cool seeing just what is inside some of those larger servers, and all the special stuff that goes with them, wish I had all of that ram...

[@steve101968]

Vmotion still blows my mind. I just refer to it as magic. I've only used Dell and HP and super micro. It's nice to see the quality of those ibm

[@Saghetti]

I actually have a DL580 G7 that I use to run my VMs. It's also retired equipment. It has 128gb of RAM and 40 cores @ 2.4ghz. It was previously used as a mirror database, meaning it has some really fast PCIe SSDs. BTW: I tried and yes, it will run off of 2 power supplies.

[@seanmchughnt]

Dude! Nice showing of a DC server. Work with these everyday. The one you showed is a monster even nowadays.

[@odemata87]

Thank you Colin for this. Really enjoyed this video

[@DarenPage]

I love the engineering that goes into these things.

[@TheLastAnalogJunkie]

Thanks for the inside look at some really killer gear!

[@MichiganPeatMoss]

2011? Old? (here in 2020), Ok, I will concede to feeling old and realize technological cycles continue to turn ever-faster. For "truly old", check out Mr. Carlson's Lab and his vacuum tube equipment. Truly a master of his craft.

[@mbunds]

It KILLS me that I no longer have interest in collecting decommissioned servers, because if I could afford to power them, I could have racks full of cast-off equipment. If I could afford to power them…

[@JeffDeWitt]

I miss working on these things. I do have a few of those memory sticks, they work fine as little flash drives.

[@44Bigs]

3:11 a cool thing with IBM/Lenovo servers is the colour coding of components. Red components, such as the fan assembly, are hot swappable. Blue components, such as the RAM card, are not hot swappable (or at least not without some decommissioning beforehand).

[@holyravioli5795]

Damn i loved these things, so much cooler looking than modern servers.

[@hariranormal5584]

Servers have not changed their looks much according to me, they still look pretty amazing and nicely built

[@0101-s7v]

I bought a 2 year old Dell R805 2u rack server from a liquidator on Ebay. It was a VMWare ESX host and was loaded. $3000 new, paid $800, still under warranty. I powered it up, created my VMs, and put them to work. That was 12 years ago. Still running like a champ.

[@linushyper300]

- Dangit, is Colin playing with the servers again? I lost all my work, again!

[@bertholtappels1081]

This was awesome. Fascinating. Maybe the best content you’ve done so far.

[@JimFortune]

Thanks for donating your lunch hour to the public good.;->

[@rbmwiv]

The IBM, that is a beautiful machine, lots of incredible engineering of many kinds to build that. Truly a work of art.

[@slughead]

You've decommissioned better than I have in production. The extended warranties are killer from IBM.

[@grayrabbit2211]

Same here. Just bought some Dell PowerEdge R720s for my office this year to replace the Dell 2650 and 2950 servers we are running. Our 2650s are from 2004 and have been running continuously since then. Truly remarkable. Almost sad to shut them down.

[@moconnell663]

@@grayrabbit2211 a word on your 2950s, I had a capacitor failure on the motherboard in one of those. Nothing convinces the boss to give up some money to replace 12yo mission critical hardware like a cloud of magic smoke. Luckily that server was able to soldier on with a single CPU and single bank of memory for a few more weeks.

[@grayrabbit2211]

@@moconnell663 I'm old school - there's still a soldering iron and scope on my desk. Still running some 2650s in the rack.

[@tess4647]

I used to like Sun's internal hardware design, but that first IBM box is beautifully setup :)

[@zyxwvutsrqponmlkh]

Classic lga 2011, and you gotta love the prices of the used ddr3 ecc, it's like $1.50/gig. I love dabbling in the higher end workstation hardware because I can buy the scraps off servers like this, you can often times find a 6 year old xeon for 1/10th or 1/20th the original msrp.

[@chrisnyc4688]

I support / work on those IBM x3850 x5 servers. When looking at the rear, the 4 QPI port slots allowed you to connect two 4U racks with 4 QPI cables and you can then configure the "IMM" software to make both racks run the one operating system - 8 sockets and all memory/PCIe cards from both racks. And with a stop, IMM reconfigure and then start, then back to running as 2 independent OS's (leaving the QPI cables in place for a future reconfig).

[@mingchenzhang3113]

You can say those indeed do not compute anymore

[@SummonerArthur]

Mingchen Zhang LMAO

[@TintedBoi21]

Always wanted a server PC for day to day things. Server fans and everything has always entertained me!

[@wildbill23c]

They're built to upgrade, update, repair, etc. Something many of today's computers lack since they've decided to start soldering stuff on the motherboards so the general consumer can't upgrade stuff, forces people to go back to the store and open their wallets again.

[@LudgerPeters]

Well if you buy a normal PC everything is up-gradable. If you buy a laptop or a All-In-One PC then nothing is upgradble.

[@wildbill23c]

Weird, I can upgrade my laptops. Many of the newer ones though everything is soldered on the board as are batteries. Why? To make the consumer buy a new one. My Lenovo Thinkpad T430 I upgraded the processor to an i7 and RAM to 16GB, its running a 512GB SSD rather than its old regular spinning drive. You are somewhat limited to peripheral upgrades but haven't really thought of anything I'd need to change for ports that it doesn't have or that you can't get a USB version. I understand what you are saying to a point though. All In One PC's depending on the system some can be upgraded somewhat, but once again you are kind of limited to available parts in some cases. Now mother boards in laptops and all in one PC's yep you are limited oftentimes by the design of the laptop's case due to port locations.

[@LudgerPeters]

Well the idea with laptops is they are trying to go smaller and smaller. Any Laptop that is not a ultrabook you can still upgrade Ram and HDD. You get some weird non mainstream laptops that take desktop cpus and are still up-gradable, Electronics is one of the more unique brands. But going forward even with my up-gradable parts on my desktop I still have to normally do a complete overhaul when you do the cpu+ram+mother board.

[@wildbill23c]

Very true. Usually when I upgrade its a new machine or new to me, I run them till they die most of the time unless I find a great deal on one somewhere that I can't pass up.

[@compfreak530]

alot of non apple products are still upgradeable. i can upgrade ram, hard drive, and even in some cases the cpu on my dell and lonovo laptops. but apple.... nope just toss it

[@cheetobambito9724]

awesome video! loved learning about a server used back in 2011! Subbed for more old server videos!:D

[@MrKillswitch88]

It is always sad to see stuff like this go to the scrap knowing there still a lot of life left in them.

[@paulstubbs7678]

Considering how much power they suck, going to newer much more efficient hardware is probably environmentally a good idea. - although I'd love the power supplies.

[@buffuniballer]

It's usually cheaper to buy newer, faster enterprise servers that come with a year or two of service than it is to keep a support contract on older gear.A At some point, the parts to service these become more difficult to find. ( I have a customer who insists on still running an late 1990s Sun E10000 on 250MHz procs and SBus cards. They can probably get the same or faster performance using less power if they simply got something from 2010... But finding parts for older servers, my 1990s vintage machine being an extreme example, helps make the case for upgrades to newer, more power and usually more efficient hardware.

[@johnrauner2515]

@@buffuniballer If they are in an air conditioned server room with constant temperature and running 24/7 they will last for years with out any hardware failures. I have 2 servers in my home server room with motherboards from 2007 still going strong and I expect them to still be going in another 10 years. I've worked in the broadcasting industry (radio and television) and equipment in both industries is left running 24/7 so it lasts. 90% of the damage is caused by the thermal shock of turning things on and off.

[@buffuniballer]

@@johnrauner2515 it's more about the odds and costs associated with a failure with some enterprise customers. What you and I can tolerate in our homes (and I have some 1990s Sun gear that still runs) is quite different from what a financial firm or other can tolerate while the markets or open, or other such circumstances. The odds of that 1990s or 2000s era server going down are greater and the difficulty in finding parts is a real concern. Not all enterprise customers are willing to take those risks.

[@buffuniballer]

@@johnrauner2515 the other things is spinning components do fail. Fans and hard drives immediately come to mind. Not to mention that the sub 100g drives of a generation ago are being replaced by multi-terabyte drives. You mentioned (then apparently edited out) broadcast industry. I don't know if the storage requirements of broadcast are increasing, but typical IT storage growth seems exponential, so the drives from the 1990s and early 2000s just don't cut it to store the volume of data collected today. So while I don't disagree with your comments about equipment lasting, there are also very good reasons for enterprise users to upgrade to modern gear. More capability in the same space and lower power consumption come to mind as well as the better availability of repair parts.

[@dj9choco]

very crazy configuration for those servers. i have a pair of ml350 with dual xeon and also vmware... excellent video to explain a bit about the enterprise hardware.

[@brownmanbeaniehead]

Google Chrome ram requirements: 1 terabyte

[@ThisDoesNotCompute]

truth

[@killertruth186]

SkyGamer It sounds like you have more RAM for Chrome?

[@cosmo1494]

One blade server per tab

[@PrinceWesterburg]

Wow, they've really optimised that down XD

[@akeiai]

@@SkyGamer911 nope, not true, based on my experience, edge opens up faster than chrome. But the internet speed is faster with chrome than edge. Chrome has used 2gb almost with 16 tabs. Edge doesn't even get that amount.

[@ferrer985]

I must say I learned a great deal from this vid. Very clear explaination in basic language of relevant information. Nice vid

[@muskaos]

You would need a 20a circuit per box to run them at full tilt. I like old gear, but no way would I get one of those, just too costly in electricity.

[@cgln8760]

you used to be able to pair two of these using a QIC cable and the result was a single system from the OS point of view - massive. We had 10 of these with this configuration connected to a pair of clustered V7000 storage units (Fiber connected), as a pair of Vsphere clusters split between 8km (separate datacentres) of 1GB dark fibre.

[@rahikkala]

Ah, I remember installing and deploying identical models "back in the day". They were monsters back then.

[@tvhistory3397]

Awesome equipment. I just decommissioned a IBM Netfinity 5100 from 2001 last week. It went home with me.

[@tripjet999]

"Next time: We shut down all the servers at Google headquarters."

[@ahweikun]

tripjet999 google: LULZ, heard of data centre redundancy?

[@erkinalp]

_sigh_ *KZbin deletes the parent comment* _sigh_

[@marvk]

Great video Colin, I've enjoyed this! Different from your usual stuff but interesting nonetheless!

[@LEVELMotorsports]

It's funny to see this. When this was purchased everyone was probably booting from either DOM or SD card to boot a hypervisor and then running storage from a SAN. Now, everyone is coming back to having storage inside the box with products like Nutanix or Cisco HyperFlex. We're now seeing multiple 10Gb, 40Gb, and even 100Gb Ethernet uplinks from hyper converged server nodes to the storage fabric and intelligent and redundant distribution of server storage on local disk within the hyper-converged clusters. Tons of cool stuff, but it's all so expensive. Source: I work for one of the US' largest Cisco resellers ;-)

[@raykall]

Interesting stuff man!

[@comput3rman77]

My company just finished migrating off of Cisco blades and an EMC SAN to Nutanix nodes. We installed about $1000000 worth of new hardware to do it.

[@jamesmulroy59]

What's the benefit of separating the CPU from the storage?

[@nbenci9005]

Benefit is the one of having separate nodes for different tasks, lets say hypervisor node will be buffed up with memory capacity and cpu power and space that would been used up by drives is now used up for better part arrangement and cooling. And with storage nodes u don't have to sacrifice much on memory / cpu space and cooling so u can shove in more drives and adequately cool those. I have 2 of IBM's X3650 M3, they have 18 ram slots ( 128gb max capacity ), 2 cpu sockets and 16 drive slots with DOM port inside so one could say those are good servers for overall tasks, both computing and storage, but if one would want to get more processing power, even by cramming in 2 strongest xeons of that era u get limited, where in 1st server from this video u can cram in 4 cpus and shitload of ram.

[@bassman87]

so true. I also work for a Cisco partner. I suspect Cisco went with hyperflex because they feel they lost out during the storage wars. many of the top storage companies got bought up by Cisco's competitors so they feel they need to finally try to compete.

[@mossup-]

This video actually kept me interested the whole time where others hav'nt, I love server stuff, always have since the days of the 386, I just wish i could afford it. Thankyou for this video and your time for making it.

[@pinkipromise]

decomm stuff are cheap. i got an 8 core dell 720 server for $50

[@thespreeman401]

I remember when having a 1mb sip memory chip was considered amazing tech. Yes I am old!

[@wellsilver3972]

Maybe in a year or two a petabyte will be what 1 megabyte was like back then

[@avroarrow29]

comic book guy

[@matthewpalin]

awesome video very informative i learned a few things i didn't know about servers.

[@Browningate]

This most definitely does compute. Quite a lot.

[@NoorquackerInd]

But not anymore ;-; they've been decommissioned

[@LannisterKing]

love you r content man. love servers i have 3 my self 61.5TB's in my colselt with a box fan as exhaust. it keeps my apartment nice and warm

[@origionalwinja]

i absolutely guarantee i would NOT complain one bit if you mailed that thing to me...that would make an epic custom router and nas all in one box!!

[@elusive.firstname.lastname]

That's what I was thinking. This would be perfect but I work for the p.o. and I would hate delivering this. Haha

[@BlackEpyon]

Screw that. Stick a $700 video card and a couple SSDs inside, and this would KILL as a gaming rig!

[@martinkuliza]

@originalwinja i have like 6 servers sitting here if you pay the postage i'll happily mail you one it won't be cheap though, these things are big and heavy you want one

[@elusive.firstname.lastname]

@@martinkuliza what state you in? might be cheaper to drive

[@martinkuliza]

@@elusive.firstname.lastname NSW

[@cageordie]

I worked for a couple of server equipment manufacturers. We used a hydraulic cart, so we jacked the table up to the level of the equipment and then just pulled them out onto the table. Same at the other end, just jack it up to the bench or shelf and shove it off again. Amazon sells them, lift tables. Just thank your luck you never had to mess with an AN/WSC3, and that wasn't the worst thing I ever had to shove in a rack.

[@leonalexander26]

Who gets them If you decommissioned them? Prob. would make a great NAS for your gorgeos gorgeous videos

[@duranium4445]

As far as I know they throw them away. Edit: okay in this they keep them and sell them later

[@wildbill23c]

Most times you probably could find them in the dumpster out behind the business...sometimes they'll collect these things for several months, or years and eventually have an auction and auction stuff like this off in lots, or pallets...you bid on the whole lot or pallet, you get what you get, sometimes some cool stuff, other times you over-bid on scrap LOL.

[@itmkoeln]

Not only would that be overkill for a NAS. If you put them on the Powerbill it is not even too cheap (power consumption)...

[@wildbill23c]

So, it'll work fine for checking my email then LOL.

[@CaptainDangeax]

Nope : no hard drive in any of them.

[@danw1955]

Man, I'm drooling here.🤣 I'm a rack-mount junkie. I have a full size 19in. enclosed rack that I used for radio equipment years ago and I re-purposed it when I started getting into PC repair and web-hosting for a few local businesses. I started out in the early 2000's with a couple of used HP Proliant DL-380 G1 servers and a 2.2KW APC rack-mount UPS-from-hell.😁 Over the years, I've had everything from Sun Ultra-Sparc servers to HP 9000 PA-RISC workstations and servers in that rack. I finally quit messing with web-hosting for others when it wasn't cost effective to do it anymore, but I retained an IBM X-345 server for my gateway server on my shop network up until a few years ago. Nowadays, I have a single MSI micro-tower that easily handles the needs for my gateway, and local addressing, mail, firewall, and anti-virus... all on a 65 watt power supply! I did development work for a few years back in 2011 - 2013 for the Debian HPPA Linux Project and had up to 3 'buildd' servers running 24-7 building packages for the budding distribution, but they were pretty inefficient, and it cost a small fortune to keep them up and running, aside from frequent maintenance and failing memory cards. Fun project though, and it was interesting to see how the developers got Linux to run on machines that were originally designed to run only 64 bit HP-Unix.😉 It's an ongoing project and Linux is now very stable on the old PA-RISC machines. I rebooted one a month or so ago, and reloaded it with the latest version, and it ran much better than it did 6 years or so ago. Unfortunately, we had an almost direct lightning hit here for the first time in 14 years, that took out a bunch of running equipment (including my one remaining HP J-6750 workstation/server)😥

[@PearComputingDevices]

I like HP business class hardware, they make their consumer lines look pretty stupid once you get the quality and such, and IBM... Nobody got fired for going with IBM, but this comes at a cost. I bet that server being a genuine IBM server was about 20k, if not more. We had 1U and IBM tower servers in our company replaced at the time, I bought up the IBM PowerPC powered server. I think it was a 604e, but our company had spent nearly 50k at the time. Our boss warned us over scratching the goods.. lol. But I love it. Nice stuff.

[@BlackEpyon]

I can usually price out a generic server of similar specs for half the cost. But the reliability and customer support may just be worth it, especially if you're a large business that can afford no downtime.

[@Locutus]

Good video. I was very pleasantly surprised by the depth and knowledge of this video.

[@cyberjack]

still pretty fast servers even in 2019 ... i'd gladly still use them

[@MegaMarcusred]

I use the x3850 x5 as a student for SAP HANA dev - realy awesome machine!

[@llothar68]

Can afford the power cost? Must live somewhere in Kentucky or China. The new AMD Epic can be run even in student dorms on student budgets (at least in 8 years when they get their way to EBay and can be bought third hand).

[@joejohnson1213]

To take it one step further the first system (IBM x3850 X5) can have 2 systems connected together through the QPI ports in back to create a system with 8 CPUs. The system he described would then have 16 CPUs , 128 core, 256 threads and 1TB of RAM as a single system.

[@RIAG-g6z]

Don't worry, I won't complain if you send this server to me. Please...

[@danielthunder9876]

You wouldn't want to use it, they sound like 20 hair blowers on at once when powered on.

[@weeknee5118]

And they use power like a bitcoin assic. A hell of a lot. My Sun t5240 with maximum FB RAM uses 750 Watts idle.I think each of the machines in the video is pulling 300 - 400 Watts.

[@coxfuture]

I've got a bunch of those 585s, and trust me, you can have 'em

[@dieguito0512]

r/choosingbeggars

[@ElNeroDiablo]

Found this vid after being referenced from your newer decommissioned server vid, and I gotta say - running that at ~240V 50Hz like at home in the EU/UK/Aus/NZ you get 1975W out of each PSU?! daaang, that's beefy!

[@mentalplayground]

Cool video. Thanks to AMD those core numbers are not that impressive since 2019 but before .. very impressive.

[@bentendo6464]

I got a couple of old IBM 6U servers that were circa 2003 and used them as a coffee table. Pretty awesome hardware!

[@bfgtech48]

I'd love to build a gaming PC in one of these, the chassis looks so cool and retro.

[@TheEulerID]

I used to design a lot of systems with this generation (and earlier kit) and one very good reason to upgrade it to modern stuff is the power consumption. Not just the electricity used by the servers, but the tremendous amount of heat, all of which had to be removed and air conditioning is a huge cost. Then there is the requirement to provide UPS and auxiliary power supplies. When retrofitting an old computer centre which used to contain mainframes, the heat generation went through the rough. Imagine having a row of a dozen 19" racks, so something approaching a hundred servers each pumping out over 1kW. That's just one row in data centre room that might have had 20 or more such rows. In practice, we used to have heat budgets with, perhaps, only 4 kW per rack. Even that is a huge amount. There were tricks that has to be pulled, alternating "hot row, cool row" layouts (you do not want your server pulling in the hot air emitted from another server). SAN storage arrays also produce a huge amount of heat too (not to forget something like a giant EMC or HDS array being incredibly noisy). So all these super high density servers that put massive amounts of computing power into a rack were great in principle, but for very large data centres, especially older ones, the power consumption and heat generation could be crippling. Fortunately the vendors got to understand this and the energy efficiency of modern servers is considerable better.

[@PicaDelphon]

My Question How Much for the Old Used Units, I still run with a Proliant 7000

[@TheFrank1242_Offline]

Nicely done video this would go great for any first or a second-year college computer hardware class. I'm also reminded of a seller’s post for an old server: Runs like a Maytag top load washer, not that efficient, but will never die. xD To anyone new in the computer hardware industry seriously looking into hosting a couple of computers, instead of making a brand-new consumer PC or adding to an old workstation. I would highly suggest going out and buying one of these older servers. They are meant to be reliable, way more cost effective, higher ratings for the time like platinum power supplies. The only thing you're giving up is a bit of speed and power efficiency. Which again back and even today enterprise companies are always looking at those two metrics. So they are leaps ahead of consumer hardware on date of production. Security and Compatibility would be my two recommendations. You will have to look at supported CPU's by VmWare or your hypervisor of choice. Then find out if there are still any lingering security flaws and how to mitigate them in the BIOS or updates or by running the risk of leaving them unpatched and how you want to mitigate your exposure.

[@ryans413]

I'm watching a server video being brought to me a by a server.

Awesome. I love these sever videos. I had got certified cisco CCNA and currently looking for networking jobs in seattle. I currently work at a grocery store for the last 3 or 4 years, I forget, something like that. Working overnight shifts, I don't even know if its monday or friday, I just show up for work. But I love these server videos. I currently own like a IBM 346 or something rack server. I picked it up in an alley way that was next to a garbage can... But the logic board seems to be damaged in the CPU area. Because I turn it on and like random 5 of 8 RAM sticks will fail. I made the mistake and thought it was just bad RAM. At some point of time, the sticks that I took out had got thrown away (not really intentailly). And the next time that I tried to boot the server, there were still really weird random RAM failures with 2 of the sticks that would work sometimes and boot, but then wouldnt work and give the red light error. So I learned from my mistake of RAM fail. Hoping to get a new logic board eventually, or try a DIY repair by heat gun.

[@Kantaros]

IBM didn't sell its entire hardware business: just the personal computer part. They still manufacture servers and z/Systems.

[@x3wildcard]

IBM also still handles support of Think branded devices, at least that's the impression I got from sending my P52 in for service this summer.

[@RavenHawkTech]

IBM sold off the x86 Server division to Lenovo my group went with it lol

[@RavenHawkTech]

There is a certain number of years required for IBM to provide support also there is what is known as Red Code vs Blue Code. Anything specifically IBM has IBM support and code anything fully moved over to Lenovo has Lenovo support and code

[@silasmcgee3647]

Andrea Luciano Damico As a matter of fact they are responsible for some of the server equipment in my school

[@nerdydev]

nope Lenovo does the servers now

[@BOBXFILES2374a]

Server 101! UPS once unloaded 600 pounds worth of Servers for the IT dept. I tried to lift one and boy was it heavy! Now I understand what's inside those bad boys. Thanks a lot!

[@spiral9316]

Omg very cool explanation I want one

[@irrision]

Those IBM X5's support an add-on chassis that connects via the QPI ports on the back (under those covers). You could either connect another chassis with 4 more processors or a chassis completely full of memory slots. This brought the max memory config well into the terabytes. These servers were an oddity in that respect, we ran a couple of them but never had reason to add the second chassis before we retired them.

[@ThisDoesNotCompute]

Yeah, the QPI config supported a maximum of 2TB of RAM, if memory serves. I think the primary use case for that arrangement was for running databases.

[@irrision]

This Does Not Compute, yeah it was a beastly config for the day. Now we're putting in systems with 768GB of memory in a blade. No matter how long I do this I never get over how much things change.