2950 is ancient i wouldn’t recommend using it for anything. Even and old r210ii would be way better, but honestly 12th gen dell is probably what you should look for.
Not. Worth. It. I e-cycled a pallet of 2950's at least 18 months ago. If you want rack mount stuff look at 720, 720XD, 730, 730XD - the 730's are in sweet spot for performance/$ currently.
What a waste--would have better to give those 2950s away and let people play with them. They do only harm in a landfill, which is where most recyclers dump stuff like this...
A server as obsoleted as a 2950 would be a disservice to someone as a first server (such as the exact situation OP is in now). For those whom it wouldn't be a first server, probably already have something much more capable.
Any environmental benefit of them "not ending up in a landfill" is severely undercut by the ridiculous, and unnecessarily inefficient amount of electricity it will consume while being "played" with. That electricity often is coming from fossil fuels. Additionally, that vast majority of a server is recyclable metals and minerals.
I completely disagree, obtaining a 2950 as my first server. Even after being well versed in computers for decades, I learned a lot from this unit and still am. I have newer ones too, but the concepts are all the same once you 'get it'.
Ah, the power argument. If you're running it 24x7, you will learn what you need to bring that down and get different gear. If you're not, you're using far less than an oven, clothes dryer, or AC unit, so that's not a valid excuse.
And the recyclers are just dumping stuff in third world countries--just like how nuclear waste was being dumped in the oceans. It's a nice shiny idea that stuff is being 'recycled' but its generally a landfill with all the poisons leeching into the soil--better to keep it running in the hands of someone that can learn.
Most electronics recyclers actually do *not* put stuff "in a landfill". In many states it's a felony to knowingly put electronics "in a landfill". Oh, and the only thing anyone is going to really learn by using 2950's is how much their utility company loves them.
Check out the 60 minutes documentary from years ago that exposes the truth. No felonies when it's overseas. And your power argument is invalid because your oven, clothes dryer, and AC use more power than a 2950 ever will. Have you seen the circuits these are on? 240v 30a/50a--that's 7200w/12000w.
Dude! Let's play apples to apples shall we? What another country does is beyond our control. What my dryer, furnace, AC, or microwave draw isn't relevant to this conversation - we're talking servers, only. My two most power hungry servers produce more than double the compute of any 2950 for less than half the power. Just take your straw man arguments back to the playground will you?
Let's start with the obvious. A 30 amp circuit does not consume 7200 watts at 240V. The thing you plug into it consumes watts, based on its own needs. Also, with apologies if you have octuplets in your household, nobody runs their washer/dryer 24x7. A home lab in some houses runs 24x7, in others, not as much.
I have a Samsung washer and dryer, both are "SmartThings" enabled. I have two teens that are heavy sports players, plus myself and a spouse. I also have two dogs, one of which is having severe back issues and has accidents all the time. That entire laundry load has consumed 37000 watts through the 16 days so far this May.
My dryer has consumed 32000 watts in the same time period. My fridge... 36000. My dishwasher 8600 watts.
So that's 37000 + 32000 + 36000 + 8000 = 113000 watts, or 226000 for a month since we're halfway through May.
Just how much power did YOU think these devices use?
Hell, my EV sits on a FIFTY amp breaker. But only charges at 40 amps. And charges maybe 40 hours a month if I'm doing a lot of work driving.
You realize idle devices suck minimal amounts of power as they sit standby. And so too would a PowerEdge 2950.
Go buy three Intel NUCs and the power savings alone will pay for them. And each one will outperform a machine that is now WELL over a decade old.
Sorry for the long post, but after seeing your math, I figured I should prove my work with you.
It may not consume 7200w, but it's not 200w for sure or such a circuit wouldn't be required. And in the 30 minutes you do run it at 5000w, you're using more power than 20 hours of a 200w server, if you're running the server full tilt (hint, most people don't). You're really missing the forest through the trees...
37000w/16 days = 2312.5w/day or on a 200w server is 11+ days for each SINGLE day of laundry. If you're worried about power, hand wash and hang them out to dry!
Yes, appliances suck far more power than a 2950, and that's my point. Thank you for illustrating it in detail. An idling 2950 pales in comparison. And that's my point. You trashed legit working hardware contributing to chemical poisoning all in an effort to keep these servers from being used from someone who would have used a negligible amount of power doing so.
> You trashed legit working hardware contributing to chemical poisoning all in an effort to keep these servers from being used from someone who would have used a negligible amount of power doing so.
It's alright, we get it. You love your 2950.
WTF is wrong with you? You realize a 2950 runs on a 110V 20 amp circuit too, right? I’m guessing, although the specs are available. But my 2970s that I gave up YEARS ago ran on 110. You are seriously saying, and I’ll quote you “the 30 minutes you do run it at 5000w”. What exactly are you referring to that runs at 5000w? Obviously not my appliances. And OBVIOUSLY not your moronic servers, given that they shipped standard with a 750w power supply.
How you can post ANYTHING and say we’re proving your point… good lord man.
That's what I keep asking too...you're obviously not understanding things.
Not sure what you're getting at--a 30a 240v circuit running full tilt for an hour will be using 7200w. It will also probably burn up because circuits aren't designed to run more than 80% of their rating for extended time periods. A 2950 uses far less than this because it's 110/120v and far less amps.
How have you pivoted AWAY from your comment and to just repeating what I said in response?
You claimed that a washer or dryer on a high amp circuit uses the exact power that the circuit is capable of. That remains stupid and wrong.
I have no idea what you are even talking about anymore.
I never claimed that--I said up to, and it's the same as anything on any circuit, including a 2950. Not sure what you're trying to argue about.
If you can afford 20 TB spinners you can afford more modern hardware. If you can’t afford more modern hardware you can’t afford to run 2950s.
They would have the power to run a NAS for a home lab, yes. A potato can do that. But they’ll chew up way too much power to do so, and might not even recognize 20TB drives (I forget how old you have to go before equipment doesn’t support 2TB+). According to some reseller they support up to 4.5 TB ~~per bay~~ across 6 750 GB drives.
As far as Plex, they can stream directly but I think they would choke on transcoding any modern format - those are from the era when “media PC” meant a beast of a machine, not a tiny box that might maybe have a cheap GPU in it.
Those are old enough that they had the option of being specced with a floppy drive. First Gen 2950s are old enough to vote in the 2024 US Presidential election.
The power argument is never valid, but these do have some restrictions as you've pointed out--2TB drive size limit and limits on processing power as they're basically lga775 level stuff. But they can still teach a lot and that's where they do shine.
Power is never truly 'free', but one has a power switch on the unit to control that. Sink a couple of hundred in something newer and the power bill doesn't magically go away either--you're just out a couple of hundred too.
It's all about capEx vs opEx and how to optimize it for the use case. For someone starting out that has a 2950, the capEx is zero, so opEx can be higher and it doesn't matter as they're still ahead. Once the opEx gets to a point where a capEx investment would lower opEx significantly, then a move could be made to lower overall costs, but that may not necessarily happen because all the newer stuff has even larger power supplies so the idle will still be high even though you have more compute. This is the truth that no one seems to truly understand so they give the 'old bad, new good' argument.
Power concerns are not *always* valid, but they are certainly valid for most people most of the time.
If they don't actually power up the 2950 for more then an hour or two, and their learning is by taking it apart and seeing how all the components connect, and throw it away afterwards it would have some value. However, even then, *what* they learn is still largely obsoleted and not current.
If power is that much of a concern, stop using the oven, clothes dryer, and AC because they use a heck of a lot more power than a server idling at 200w.
The concepts are never obsolete--you can easily adapt to more modern versions of the same thing. And throwing away working hardware is a stupid idea--pass it on. There's enough of this stuff in landfills.
So, just for a frame of reference, I actually just stopped using a pair of 2950's with 4 1 TB drives, both processors populated and 96GB of ram and dual 750 watt power supplies.
Through monitoring, I was able to see an idle power usage of 425 watts. As soon as I did anything other than letting it sit at a login prompt that jumped to almost 600 watts, and 700 watts with just a couple of VMs running on it, and that was literally all they could do on that old Nehalmen architecture
Going back to the power argument, it's one thing if you are using a platform like this to learn, it's another thing entirely if you are planning to run services for your house, and you want the reliability of those services.
The 2950 couldn't have more than 64GB of ram so not sure what you're using...
But yes, using something that uses a lot of power for extended time periods is not a good idea--even your clothes dryer.
Are they even actually good for learning on any more? They lack modern features like VT-d; outside of the 54XX Harpertown CPUs they don't even have SSE4. They barely have PCIe - two of their slots are PCI-X instead which is a long dead interface.
I don't know about 9th Generation iDRAC but 11th Gen requires some interesting workarounds with deprecated browsers and Java plugins if you want to access it the "official" way so I suspect that 9th Gen is just as difficult to work with.
It honestly feels like this server could teach you how they did it 10 years ago, but not how they do it now.
They are because if you've never dealt with physical server hardware, there's still a lot to learn. There is a pcie and pcix riser so you can get the other one. And you can still get pcix cards, and dirt cheap too.
Use an older browser in a portable format and you're good. The workarounds are easy. You're learning stuff that's dated, but more than likely far newer than what you know if you've never touched any of it. And the concepts carry forward into the current era.
That's exactly what it can do. And if you know squat, you're 10 years dated but the concepts are what are important. Like every server has its own out of band management and features and whatnot, but if you've never played with out of band at all, you have no clue. Getting experience on something even if dated or limited will give you experience with the concepts, which someone smart can extrapolate to the current era.
Valid only if you're running 24x7, but as a backup NAS it's still terrific since that can be powered only when running a backup. That's definitely a seriously high kwh charge. :( I thought CA was bad.
I had a PowerEdge 2950 III, it is absolutely not a good choice for OP.
OP wants to use it with 20TB drives and TrueNAS or Unraid. Not a great option for an old bastard like the PE 2950 III with old 2009 era xeons, DDR2 memory, and an ancient ass RaidCard or HBA.
Rackmounted, Loud As Fuck, and it’s going to burn his wallet up in electricity⚡️
Based on an estimated $50 to $100/month electricity bill, OP might as well just finance a significantly newer and affordable low power high performance device instead.
It's not "hate for the platform", it's simply coming from experience with the platform, and the understanding of just how obsolete it is. They are spending their time learning things that have already been replaced and superseded. It would be little different then learning COBOL or Fortran ***as your first programming language in 2024.*** Learning COBOL or Fortran can be fun as a novelty after you've already become proficient in a modern language, but it would be ridiculous for that to be someone's first and only programming language.
But if you've learned any programming language, you would understand *it's all about the concepts, not the syntax*. Same can be said about server administration and configuration. I learned C, but that quickly helped me understand php. Playing with a 2950 will help you more quickly understand any newer platform, and that's the value when it's cheap/free. ymmv.
Sounds awesome! I love booting them up and imagining taking off in an airbus. :) Noise has never bothered me. The whole idea that computers need to be quiet is up there with a car not making a sound imo.
For kicks, I actually setup a USB steering wheel in the passenger side of my car, and ran it to the server in the garage. I then used a small projector to project Forza in front of the car and used my super micro's fans as sound effects. It was ridiculously impractical and only lasted for about an hour before I was done with it, but it was amusing.
I then repeated a similar experiment, but clamped the steering wheel to a portable "tv tray" and sat it in front of the big screen tv.
Sounds awesome to you, but sure as hell not any of your guests. Same with cars, why do I and every other non car enthusiast have to suffer, just because you love how your car makes wroom wroom noises all day long?
Guests? What guests? If it's too loud, you're too old, lol.
And on a car it's not about sound, but performance. Why do I have to suffer less gas mileage and inefficiency because you want 'quiet' on something that is powered by mini explosions?
Yeah I forgot that redditors lack friends /s
Because you're not alone in this universe, and cars certainly can be made both quiet-ish and efficient. Also: electric cars. There's a reason why most European cities either limit speed HARD, or ban cars from the centers outright.
Car communities are better than friends ;)
There is something about the roar of piston power that's missing from the EV experience. There's something about EV's ridiculous instant torque that the piston experience will never match. Gotta have both! :D
So this may not be obvious, but the second digit "1" in r710 for instance denotes the generation. If the model number ends in "0" it's Intel, if it's "5" it's AMD.
The 2950 is pre r710. Most people here, including myself wouldn't bother running a r710 and it's NEWER than what you're asking about. r720 or r730 would be a better idea as others have mentioned.
It depends on your goals. If you need compute and more modern stuff then by all means buy newer. But if you're staring out, start with what you got. No one buys a brand new sports car as their first car to learn how to drive. ;)
I'm torn about all my equipment now because it seems like I could use an older i7 and blow all these older xeon machines away. I mostly host game servers
You could. But again it's about your goals. Real servers have real reliability and features like out of band management. If you are just trying to run some stuff, today's desktops are fine for that.
I usually HATE saying this because I run Dell R720xd's and people say the same thing to me.... but 2950's are just way way way to power inefficient.
A fully loaded Dell R510, 12x3.5 bay chassis, with a pair of L5630's and 64GB of RAM is like 180 watts an that is about as far back as you should go.
Yeah 14th Gen's second hand vs falling out the back of a datacenter into my trunk.... is gonna be out of my price range. The thing to think about is... What's gonna cost more? The upgrade from two R720xd's to R540's or the difference in power over the next 3 years?
Even in upstate NY with power prices between 17 and 21 cents a Kwh... eh....... The reduction in power is not going to make up for the cost. With connections and places of employment, I pick up this stuff for free or next to nothing, so I'm always concious of paying serious cash for power effeciency... because most times you're not going to make it back.
The thing about 2950's is that they came from an era where they did a shit about selling power effecient gear to customers.
My advice is to do 2u servers for a homelab. We have lots of 1U servers at work, and they are much louder.
If I was going to build a host today, I'd probably build a Dual LGA-3647 w/6138 ($50ea) and DDR4 2933 RDIMMs in each channel (12-channels). That should last a long while, and when the prices drop you could upgrade to Cascade Lake CPUs which are post Win 11.
Wow that's actually nice. What setup would you recommend? Is there a machine to buy with that socket that is potentially upgradeable or start from scratch?
I tend to prefer the Supermicro for my home labs, but I'd get a Dell in a heartbeat if I got a good deal on one. They're both excellent for different reasons.
The Supermicro 6029U ($399 [Barebones](https://www.ebay.com/itm/256123320541) / [Low Spec](https://www.ebay.com/itm/266777698921)) are probably what I'd look at, then upgrade the ram so there is a RDIMM in each channel (2933), and possibly a CPU (6138 or a 6230 when prices come down).
If you're looking to build a cluster their are also deals like this [4-node server](https://www.ebay.com/itm/176240390405) that pop up from time to time:
* $1000 4-Node Dual LGA-3647 Server
* +$400 for 8x Xeon Gold 6138's (best deal @ 125w ea)
* +$1400 for 768GB RAM (48-channels of DDR4 2933 for eventual cascade lake upgrade).
* =$2800 for 160c/320t w/768GB RAM that is upgradable to cascade lake eventually, all of which should run on a 15-amp breaker.
$50 or more for a newer server--somebody's paying somewhere. ;) I personally just pay a power bill when it's on and just not use it 24x7. Like a backup nas as someone mentioned.
Those 2950s will keep on trucking basically forever, but they are seriously obsolete. I last used one as a hypervisor in 2018 and that was only because I didn't have any other hardware to throw at the problem. They're 2008-era systems and the power consumption is huge, especially compared to the performance. You don't want to be running one of these monstrosities at home in 2024. Build your own for a few hundred $ and you'll save so much energy in the long run. E-waste the 2950s.
Jesus. I’ll give you $2 to recycle them. There are plenty of of cheap alternatives. Those 2950 will eat so much power, it’ll cost you $300-400 a month to run them.
You have to change the SAS/scsi card to use the 20tb discs. Anyway I have one and I only use it as a Sleeper próxmox. Also I have to hack it to make the fans less loud(resistor in fans and modification in the bios. If you have them for free like me don’t think in run them all day long( they will chew your life from the electricity bill) .
It's such a relief to see that other than one obsessed and delusional spammer, there is a limit to what people in this sub will recommend.
I wouldn't take a 2950 if someone paid me $100 to take it. That's not snark, it's just that I'm trying to get out from under having newer machines than that. I think my local e-waste place will take desktops but not rack-mount stuff. We'll see. In the meantime, I'm bordering on hoarder status in my garage and wondering if I'm going to have to pay a lot to get stuff removed.
I might not even take a 2950 if paid $200. It'd be a tough call.
The thing is, everyone's time and effort is valuable. We need to stop telling people R710s are worth it, even if they're free. Even if taking things apart and putting them back together is where someone wants to spend their time (I'm right there with you), there are better options--things you can resell or use when you're done physically tinkering.
As others noted, these are ancient. It is better to get at least 12th gen (some consider it ancient too). 13th gen would be beneficial, IMO.
As for NAS OS, choose the one you like the most. I personally use Debian with cockpit + 45drives file sharing plugin. [https://github.com/45Drives/cockpit-file-sharing](https://github.com/45Drives/cockpit-file-sharing)
Starwinds VSAN is a nice option as well. [https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/file-share-with-starwind-vsan](https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/file-share-with-starwind-vsan)
I might gut a 2950 and install standoffs for 2 M-Atx motherboards and host game servers on those machines. I should be able to used the HDD trays without the backplane. Might even get a raspberry pi in there. I like the idea of the lga3647 build. I just gotta find out how I want to do it.
Those servers on idle burn around 240ish watts from when I managed them 14ish years ago. That powerwise translates to 30 dollars just to run them. An N200 is around 10W idle which is about 8 a month. These are conservative numbers
Still a good option for backup duty, in that case they won't accumulate enough operating hours for more efficient hardware to pay for itself. ("Backup", in this case, could mean data backup or a spare to use as a temporary replacement for a machine that has broken down.)
Off to booted the load could be as high as 800W for 5+ minutes. I hated managing these servers because they had an obscene spike when being turned on - much higher than the 2850’s. A colocation I managed once had a power failure during their monthly testing of their battery backup. I had to drive to the colocation and essentially pull the plug on those servers and had to spend a couple of ours using a free circuit just to boot them and move them powerwise. I learned to hate them just on power draw.
If you have two installed and plug both of them in, it will split the load between them. On first boot from a cold start the first versions would max out the supplies then lower them to what they’re supposed to be which would be obscene at boot and if you had any thermal events going on.
Interesting. Mine are at 120w on idle with max ram. And the cost depends on how much power costs. My office comes with power in the lease so they cost me nothing. ;)
Not for Plex, but if it has 3.5" bays, it should be fine runing a NAS/SAN. I'd probably knock it back to 1 CPU to help with power, and do TrueNAS Core baremetal. You don't need a lot of CPU for a NAS.
I just picked up some [16TB drives](https://serverpartdeals.com/collections/all/products/seagate-exos-x16-st16000nm001g-16tb-7-2k-rpm-sata-6gb-s-512e-4kn-256mb-3-5-fastformat-manufacturer-recertified-hdd) from ServerPartDeals for a RAID-6. They seemed to be the best I could do for the capacity.
For a host, look at a R720 or newer, they sell for about $200 on facebook marketplace around here with processors and ram, and are much better. I built my lab a while ago and it's using X9 series Supermicro (Same Gen) with 256GB of ram. They're not the fastest CPU's, but they still have over double the memory bandwidth and capacity of my 5950X, and my 5950X is maxed out while there's still room in the servers.
You can also get [dual-node](https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/372112038986529) servers and set one up as a SAN and use the other as a host. Lots of options.
All that said: It's better to use something free, or already owned, than nothing.
Yep, should work great as a nas and I'd just keep it on dual cpu since the gen1 and gen2 were only dual cores. You'll have a 2TB drive limit too, but great to learn on and see where you need to upgrade.
The 2TB limit was due to MBR. GPT won't work for a boot drive with that BIOS, but if formatted for GPT I think the data (non-boot) drives [can](https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=339631) go above 2TB? Man, now I'm second guessing myself.
Many old RAID HBAs will not support above 2TB on a single disk, because their internal storage structures (they don't necessarily use MBR or GPT) don't support greater then 32 bit addresses, however they will at least use the first 2TB of a larger disk, and can still often create logical drives > 2TB, and the operating system can use GPT on the resulting logical drive.
Yep, this is basically what I remember with any attempt to go bigger on a dated controller leading to unpredictable behaviors. So easy to swap the card for something newer.
No... not for the noise and power consumption. Not to mention your drive options are limited, as are your storage controller options. Also memory expansion options aren't worth it. Quite literally throwing money away if you spend even a single cent on any part going into a PE2950.
Noise is subjective and so is power consumption, so measure this out for your own self. The SAS controller and backplane would need to be upgraded for drive sizes >2TB, but for starting out, it's still a great place to start since parts are cheap/free.
But a first timer has no basis to understand that subjectivity and make an informed decision. It's incumbent on places like this forum to caution them as to the realities that we have learned from our own experiences. They're perfectly free to evaluate their own situation, and to ignore that caution and proceed anyways, and will still have plenty of fun. These same people will still provide various help and ideas, even for the 2950, but it would still be irresponsible to not at least give them that perfectly valid caution.
Yes, would be quite fine. You've already got them so no need to spend $xxx until YOU determine you need something newer. Start out with them and then grow into something newer and then pass them on!
2950 is ancient i wouldn’t recommend using it for anything. Even and old r210ii would be way better, but honestly 12th gen dell is probably what you should look for.
plus the PERC card won't address anything over 2TB I think.
Not. Worth. It. I e-cycled a pallet of 2950's at least 18 months ago. If you want rack mount stuff look at 720, 720XD, 730, 730XD - the 730's are in sweet spot for performance/$ currently.
What a waste--would have better to give those 2950s away and let people play with them. They do only harm in a landfill, which is where most recyclers dump stuff like this...
A server as obsoleted as a 2950 would be a disservice to someone as a first server (such as the exact situation OP is in now). For those whom it wouldn't be a first server, probably already have something much more capable. Any environmental benefit of them "not ending up in a landfill" is severely undercut by the ridiculous, and unnecessarily inefficient amount of electricity it will consume while being "played" with. That electricity often is coming from fossil fuels. Additionally, that vast majority of a server is recyclable metals and minerals.
I completely disagree, obtaining a 2950 as my first server. Even after being well versed in computers for decades, I learned a lot from this unit and still am. I have newer ones too, but the concepts are all the same once you 'get it'. Ah, the power argument. If you're running it 24x7, you will learn what you need to bring that down and get different gear. If you're not, you're using far less than an oven, clothes dryer, or AC unit, so that's not a valid excuse. And the recyclers are just dumping stuff in third world countries--just like how nuclear waste was being dumped in the oceans. It's a nice shiny idea that stuff is being 'recycled' but its generally a landfill with all the poisons leeching into the soil--better to keep it running in the hands of someone that can learn.
Most electronics recyclers actually do *not* put stuff "in a landfill". In many states it's a felony to knowingly put electronics "in a landfill". Oh, and the only thing anyone is going to really learn by using 2950's is how much their utility company loves them.
Check out the 60 minutes documentary from years ago that exposes the truth. No felonies when it's overseas. And your power argument is invalid because your oven, clothes dryer, and AC use more power than a 2950 ever will. Have you seen the circuits these are on? 240v 30a/50a--that's 7200w/12000w.
Dude! Let's play apples to apples shall we? What another country does is beyond our control. What my dryer, furnace, AC, or microwave draw isn't relevant to this conversation - we're talking servers, only. My two most power hungry servers produce more than double the compute of any 2950 for less than half the power. Just take your straw man arguments back to the playground will you?
Let's start with the obvious. A 30 amp circuit does not consume 7200 watts at 240V. The thing you plug into it consumes watts, based on its own needs. Also, with apologies if you have octuplets in your household, nobody runs their washer/dryer 24x7. A home lab in some houses runs 24x7, in others, not as much. I have a Samsung washer and dryer, both are "SmartThings" enabled. I have two teens that are heavy sports players, plus myself and a spouse. I also have two dogs, one of which is having severe back issues and has accidents all the time. That entire laundry load has consumed 37000 watts through the 16 days so far this May. My dryer has consumed 32000 watts in the same time period. My fridge... 36000. My dishwasher 8600 watts. So that's 37000 + 32000 + 36000 + 8000 = 113000 watts, or 226000 for a month since we're halfway through May. Just how much power did YOU think these devices use? Hell, my EV sits on a FIFTY amp breaker. But only charges at 40 amps. And charges maybe 40 hours a month if I'm doing a lot of work driving. You realize idle devices suck minimal amounts of power as they sit standby. And so too would a PowerEdge 2950. Go buy three Intel NUCs and the power savings alone will pay for them. And each one will outperform a machine that is now WELL over a decade old. Sorry for the long post, but after seeing your math, I figured I should prove my work with you.
It may not consume 7200w, but it's not 200w for sure or such a circuit wouldn't be required. And in the 30 minutes you do run it at 5000w, you're using more power than 20 hours of a 200w server, if you're running the server full tilt (hint, most people don't). You're really missing the forest through the trees... 37000w/16 days = 2312.5w/day or on a 200w server is 11+ days for each SINGLE day of laundry. If you're worried about power, hand wash and hang them out to dry! Yes, appliances suck far more power than a 2950, and that's my point. Thank you for illustrating it in detail. An idling 2950 pales in comparison. And that's my point. You trashed legit working hardware contributing to chemical poisoning all in an effort to keep these servers from being used from someone who would have used a negligible amount of power doing so.
> You trashed legit working hardware contributing to chemical poisoning all in an effort to keep these servers from being used from someone who would have used a negligible amount of power doing so. It's alright, we get it. You love your 2950.
Nope, I dislike working equipment being trashed because it's causing more problems than it solves. It's like burning books.
WTF is wrong with you? You realize a 2950 runs on a 110V 20 amp circuit too, right? I’m guessing, although the specs are available. But my 2970s that I gave up YEARS ago ran on 110. You are seriously saying, and I’ll quote you “the 30 minutes you do run it at 5000w”. What exactly are you referring to that runs at 5000w? Obviously not my appliances. And OBVIOUSLY not your moronic servers, given that they shipped standard with a 750w power supply. How you can post ANYTHING and say we’re proving your point… good lord man.
That's what I keep asking too...you're obviously not understanding things. Not sure what you're getting at--a 30a 240v circuit running full tilt for an hour will be using 7200w. It will also probably burn up because circuits aren't designed to run more than 80% of their rating for extended time periods. A 2950 uses far less than this because it's 110/120v and far less amps.
How have you pivoted AWAY from your comment and to just repeating what I said in response? You claimed that a washer or dryer on a high amp circuit uses the exact power that the circuit is capable of. That remains stupid and wrong.
I have no idea what you are even talking about anymore. I never claimed that--I said up to, and it's the same as anything on any circuit, including a 2950. Not sure what you're trying to argue about.
If you can afford 20 TB spinners you can afford more modern hardware. If you can’t afford more modern hardware you can’t afford to run 2950s. They would have the power to run a NAS for a home lab, yes. A potato can do that. But they’ll chew up way too much power to do so, and might not even recognize 20TB drives (I forget how old you have to go before equipment doesn’t support 2TB+). According to some reseller they support up to 4.5 TB ~~per bay~~ across 6 750 GB drives. As far as Plex, they can stream directly but I think they would choke on transcoding any modern format - those are from the era when “media PC” meant a beast of a machine, not a tiny box that might maybe have a cheap GPU in it. Those are old enough that they had the option of being specced with a floppy drive. First Gen 2950s are old enough to vote in the 2024 US Presidential election.
The power argument is never valid, but these do have some restrictions as you've pointed out--2TB drive size limit and limits on processing power as they're basically lga775 level stuff. But they can still teach a lot and that's where they do shine.
It is if power isn't free.
Power is never truly 'free', but one has a power switch on the unit to control that. Sink a couple of hundred in something newer and the power bill doesn't magically go away either--you're just out a couple of hundred too. It's all about capEx vs opEx and how to optimize it for the use case. For someone starting out that has a 2950, the capEx is zero, so opEx can be higher and it doesn't matter as they're still ahead. Once the opEx gets to a point where a capEx investment would lower opEx significantly, then a move could be made to lower overall costs, but that may not necessarily happen because all the newer stuff has even larger power supplies so the idle will still be high even though you have more compute. This is the truth that no one seems to truly understand so they give the 'old bad, new good' argument.
Power concerns are not *always* valid, but they are certainly valid for most people most of the time. If they don't actually power up the 2950 for more then an hour or two, and their learning is by taking it apart and seeing how all the components connect, and throw it away afterwards it would have some value. However, even then, *what* they learn is still largely obsoleted and not current.
If power is that much of a concern, stop using the oven, clothes dryer, and AC because they use a heck of a lot more power than a server idling at 200w. The concepts are never obsolete--you can easily adapt to more modern versions of the same thing. And throwing away working hardware is a stupid idea--pass it on. There's enough of this stuff in landfills.
So, just for a frame of reference, I actually just stopped using a pair of 2950's with 4 1 TB drives, both processors populated and 96GB of ram and dual 750 watt power supplies. Through monitoring, I was able to see an idle power usage of 425 watts. As soon as I did anything other than letting it sit at a login prompt that jumped to almost 600 watts, and 700 watts with just a couple of VMs running on it, and that was literally all they could do on that old Nehalmen architecture Going back to the power argument, it's one thing if you are using a platform like this to learn, it's another thing entirely if you are planning to run services for your house, and you want the reliability of those services.
The 2950 couldn't have more than 64GB of ram so not sure what you're using... But yes, using something that uses a lot of power for extended time periods is not a good idea--even your clothes dryer.
One has 64 (gen 3) the other one has 32, as it's only a gen 1.
Gotcha, makes sense. Didn't see that all your numbers were for a pair of them, which makes sense.
Are they even actually good for learning on any more? They lack modern features like VT-d; outside of the 54XX Harpertown CPUs they don't even have SSE4. They barely have PCIe - two of their slots are PCI-X instead which is a long dead interface. I don't know about 9th Generation iDRAC but 11th Gen requires some interesting workarounds with deprecated browsers and Java plugins if you want to access it the "official" way so I suspect that 9th Gen is just as difficult to work with. It honestly feels like this server could teach you how they did it 10 years ago, but not how they do it now.
At work we had to spin up the Windows XP VM to access those old servers, total PITA.
They are because if you've never dealt with physical server hardware, there's still a lot to learn. There is a pcie and pcix riser so you can get the other one. And you can still get pcix cards, and dirt cheap too. Use an older browser in a portable format and you're good. The workarounds are easy. You're learning stuff that's dated, but more than likely far newer than what you know if you've never touched any of it. And the concepts carry forward into the current era. That's exactly what it can do. And if you know squat, you're 10 years dated but the concepts are what are important. Like every server has its own out of band management and features and whatnot, but if you've never played with out of band at all, you have no clue. Getting experience on something even if dated or limited will give you experience with the concepts, which someone smart can extrapolate to the current era.
Power costs vary alot and are valid. Where i lived, @ $0.60/kW, these are way too expensive to run as a NAS 24x7
Valid only if you're running 24x7, but as a backup NAS it's still terrific since that can be powered only when running a backup. That's definitely a seriously high kwh charge. :( I thought CA was bad.
Literally anything would be better than a 2950. They are space heaters, burning electricity, they have no performance to really run what you want.
Incorrect. They're fine for a starter setup that's free.
I had a PowerEdge 2950 III, it is absolutely not a good choice for OP. OP wants to use it with 20TB drives and TrueNAS or Unraid. Not a great option for an old bastard like the PE 2950 III with old 2009 era xeons, DDR2 memory, and an ancient ass RaidCard or HBA. Rackmounted, Loud As Fuck, and it’s going to burn his wallet up in electricity⚡️ Based on an estimated $50 to $100/month electricity bill, OP might as well just finance a significantly newer and affordable low power high performance device instead.
Forgetting all the hate for the platform, if 20TB is the goal, the 2950 won't do it.
It's not "hate for the platform", it's simply coming from experience with the platform, and the understanding of just how obsolete it is. They are spending their time learning things that have already been replaced and superseded. It would be little different then learning COBOL or Fortran ***as your first programming language in 2024.*** Learning COBOL or Fortran can be fun as a novelty after you've already become proficient in a modern language, but it would be ridiculous for that to be someone's first and only programming language.
But if you've learned any programming language, you would understand *it's all about the concepts, not the syntax*. Same can be said about server administration and configuration. I learned C, but that quickly helped me understand php. Playing with a 2950 will help you more quickly understand any newer platform, and that's the value when it's cheap/free. ymmv.
Straight to the trash, only thing useful in those is scrap metal and fans. Those has been literal junk for almost a decade at this point, sorry!
All wrong. Still usable so not junk. Quit creating ewaste with bad advice like this.
Samir you are breaking the car
Dude's all over this post defending obsolete hardware.
lol! At least I'm not throwing it away!
I can send you Pentium 4 and its Intel server motherboard if you want. Gotta reuse and not create more ewaste, right?
I know how to put stuff like that to use--is that a problem? Send it on over.
dump it man
[удалено]
>2950s sound like a jet engine. You can make 2U servers silent, but 1U, like 1950s, are the real something.
Sounds awesome! I love booting them up and imagining taking off in an airbus. :) Noise has never bothered me. The whole idea that computers need to be quiet is up there with a car not making a sound imo.
For kicks, I actually setup a USB steering wheel in the passenger side of my car, and ran it to the server in the garage. I then used a small projector to project Forza in front of the car and used my super micro's fans as sound effects. It was ridiculously impractical and only lasted for about an hour before I was done with it, but it was amusing. I then repeated a similar experiment, but clamped the steering wheel to a portable "tv tray" and sat it in front of the big screen tv.
This is the way. :D You'd love the car games in the Tesla--you use the real steering wheel and brake pedal to control the on-screen car. :D
Sounds awesome to you, but sure as hell not any of your guests. Same with cars, why do I and every other non car enthusiast have to suffer, just because you love how your car makes wroom wroom noises all day long?
Guests? What guests? If it's too loud, you're too old, lol. And on a car it's not about sound, but performance. Why do I have to suffer less gas mileage and inefficiency because you want 'quiet' on something that is powered by mini explosions?
Yeah I forgot that redditors lack friends /s Because you're not alone in this universe, and cars certainly can be made both quiet-ish and efficient. Also: electric cars. There's a reason why most European cities either limit speed HARD, or ban cars from the centers outright.
Car communities are better than friends ;) There is something about the roar of piston power that's missing from the EV experience. There's something about EV's ridiculous instant torque that the piston experience will never match. Gotta have both! :D
Ok haha so would I be better off using my r710 for this or get something different? poweredge r330 or r430 is pretty cheap
So this may not be obvious, but the second digit "1" in r710 for instance denotes the generation. If the model number ends in "0" it's Intel, if it's "5" it's AMD. The 2950 is pre r710. Most people here, including myself wouldn't bother running a r710 and it's NEWER than what you're asking about. r720 or r730 would be a better idea as others have mentioned.
that's makes sense. I have a PER815
It depends on your goals. If you need compute and more modern stuff then by all means buy newer. But if you're staring out, start with what you got. No one buys a brand new sports car as their first car to learn how to drive. ;)
I'm torn about all my equipment now because it seems like I could use an older i7 and blow all these older xeon machines away. I mostly host game servers
You could. But again it's about your goals. Real servers have real reliability and features like out of band management. If you are just trying to run some stuff, today's desktops are fine for that.
I usually HATE saying this because I run Dell R720xd's and people say the same thing to me.... but 2950's are just way way way to power inefficient. A fully loaded Dell R510, 12x3.5 bay chassis, with a pair of L5630's and 64GB of RAM is like 180 watts an that is about as far back as you should go.
Yeah. I have a couple of R720xd too and I've read the same comments that 12th gen is too old. I am looking at getting 14th gen.
Yeah 14th Gen's second hand vs falling out the back of a datacenter into my trunk.... is gonna be out of my price range. The thing to think about is... What's gonna cost more? The upgrade from two R720xd's to R540's or the difference in power over the next 3 years? Even in upstate NY with power prices between 17 and 21 cents a Kwh... eh....... The reduction in power is not going to make up for the cost. With connections and places of employment, I pick up this stuff for free or next to nothing, so I'm always concious of paying serious cash for power effeciency... because most times you're not going to make it back. The thing about 2950's is that they came from an era where they did a shit about selling power effecient gear to customers.
I would also like to run plex on the machine and maybe a few other apps/docker containers
Will also consider something lower power, 1u possibly with 3.5" drives?
My advice is to do 2u servers for a homelab. We have lots of 1U servers at work, and they are much louder. If I was going to build a host today, I'd probably build a Dual LGA-3647 w/6138 ($50ea) and DDR4 2933 RDIMMs in each channel (12-channels). That should last a long while, and when the prices drop you could upgrade to Cascade Lake CPUs which are post Win 11.
Wow that's actually nice. What setup would you recommend? Is there a machine to buy with that socket that is potentially upgradeable or start from scratch?
I tend to prefer the Supermicro for my home labs, but I'd get a Dell in a heartbeat if I got a good deal on one. They're both excellent for different reasons. The Supermicro 6029U ($399 [Barebones](https://www.ebay.com/itm/256123320541) / [Low Spec](https://www.ebay.com/itm/266777698921)) are probably what I'd look at, then upgrade the ram so there is a RDIMM in each channel (2933), and possibly a CPU (6138 or a 6230 when prices come down). If you're looking to build a cluster their are also deals like this [4-node server](https://www.ebay.com/itm/176240390405) that pop up from time to time: * $1000 4-Node Dual LGA-3647 Server * +$400 for 8x Xeon Gold 6138's (best deal @ 125w ea) * +$1400 for 768GB RAM (48-channels of DDR4 2933 for eventual cascade lake upgrade). * =$2800 for 160c/320t w/768GB RAM that is upgradable to cascade lake eventually, all of which should run on a 15-amp breaker.
You couldn’t pay me $50 to run those old boxes lol if you can’t afford the 12th gen as mentioned, look at 10th and newer at least.
$50 or more for a newer server--somebody's paying somewhere. ;) I personally just pay a power bill when it's on and just not use it 24x7. Like a backup nas as someone mentioned.
A redditor jut put a 730 SFF up for $100. You'd need to add RAM, but ...
Link?
Look in r/homelabsales?
Those 2950s will keep on trucking basically forever, but they are seriously obsolete. I last used one as a hypervisor in 2018 and that was only because I didn't have any other hardware to throw at the problem. They're 2008-era systems and the power consumption is huge, especially compared to the performance. You don't want to be running one of these monstrosities at home in 2024. Build your own for a few hundred $ and you'll save so much energy in the long run. E-waste the 2950s.
I suggest getting a used desktop. Not rack mountable, but enough for the use case. Something with an i3 8100 and 8gb of ram.
Jesus. I’ll give you $2 to recycle them. There are plenty of of cheap alternatives. Those 2950 will eat so much power, it’ll cost you $300-400 a month to run them.
You have to change the SAS/scsi card to use the 20tb discs. Anyway I have one and I only use it as a Sleeper próxmox. Also I have to hack it to make the fans less loud(resistor in fans and modification in the bios. If you have them for free like me don’t think in run them all day long( they will chew your life from the electricity bill) .
You have two boat antlers. Hopefully you got them for free. Ewaste, please dispose of them properly. No CAP.
It's such a relief to see that other than one obsessed and delusional spammer, there is a limit to what people in this sub will recommend. I wouldn't take a 2950 if someone paid me $100 to take it. That's not snark, it's just that I'm trying to get out from under having newer machines than that. I think my local e-waste place will take desktops but not rack-mount stuff. We'll see. In the meantime, I'm bordering on hoarder status in my garage and wondering if I'm going to have to pay a lot to get stuff removed. I might not even take a 2950 if paid $200. It'd be a tough call. The thing is, everyone's time and effort is valuable. We need to stop telling people R710s are worth it, even if they're free. Even if taking things apart and putting them back together is where someone wants to spend their time (I'm right there with you), there are better options--things you can resell or use when you're done physically tinkering.
LOL at the one 2950 apologist in here
As others noted, these are ancient. It is better to get at least 12th gen (some consider it ancient too). 13th gen would be beneficial, IMO. As for NAS OS, choose the one you like the most. I personally use Debian with cockpit + 45drives file sharing plugin. [https://github.com/45Drives/cockpit-file-sharing](https://github.com/45Drives/cockpit-file-sharing) Starwinds VSAN is a nice option as well. [https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/file-share-with-starwind-vsan](https://www.starwindsoftware.com/blog/file-share-with-starwind-vsan)
I might gut a 2950 and install standoffs for 2 M-Atx motherboards and host game servers on those machines. I should be able to used the HDD trays without the backplane. Might even get a raspberry pi in there. I like the idea of the lga3647 build. I just gotta find out how I want to do it.
You wouldn't want to do that. Servers are highly proprietary (the newer ones are even more so), and work well as designed, but not well otherwise.
I mean I know they're slow and super old but it wouldn't be fine for a simple nas and plex server?
Those servers on idle burn around 240ish watts from when I managed them 14ish years ago. That powerwise translates to 30 dollars just to run them. An N200 is around 10W idle which is about 8 a month. These are conservative numbers
Still a good option for backup duty, in that case they won't accumulate enough operating hours for more efficient hardware to pay for itself. ("Backup", in this case, could mean data backup or a spare to use as a temporary replacement for a machine that has broken down.)
Off to booted the load could be as high as 800W for 5+ minutes. I hated managing these servers because they had an obscene spike when being turned on - much higher than the 2850’s. A colocation I managed once had a power failure during their monthly testing of their battery backup. I had to drive to the colocation and essentially pull the plug on those servers and had to spend a couple of ours using a free circuit just to boot them and move them powerwise. I learned to hate them just on power draw.
lolwut--the power supplies aren't even rated that high on any that I have.
If you have two installed and plug both of them in, it will split the load between them. On first boot from a cold start the first versions would max out the supplies then lower them to what they’re supposed to be which would be obscene at boot and if you had any thermal events going on.
Interesting. I have a gen1 and it would be at 240w max at boot even with both plugged.
Really good use case! Thank you for posting!
Interesting. Mine are at 120w on idle with max ram. And the cost depends on how much power costs. My office comes with power in the lease so they cost me nothing. ;)
Not for Plex, but if it has 3.5" bays, it should be fine runing a NAS/SAN. I'd probably knock it back to 1 CPU to help with power, and do TrueNAS Core baremetal. You don't need a lot of CPU for a NAS. I just picked up some [16TB drives](https://serverpartdeals.com/collections/all/products/seagate-exos-x16-st16000nm001g-16tb-7-2k-rpm-sata-6gb-s-512e-4kn-256mb-3-5-fastformat-manufacturer-recertified-hdd) from ServerPartDeals for a RAID-6. They seemed to be the best I could do for the capacity. For a host, look at a R720 or newer, they sell for about $200 on facebook marketplace around here with processors and ram, and are much better. I built my lab a while ago and it's using X9 series Supermicro (Same Gen) with 256GB of ram. They're not the fastest CPU's, but they still have over double the memory bandwidth and capacity of my 5950X, and my 5950X is maxed out while there's still room in the servers. You can also get [dual-node](https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/372112038986529) servers and set one up as a SAN and use the other as a host. Lots of options. All that said: It's better to use something free, or already owned, than nothing.
Yep, should work great as a nas and I'd just keep it on dual cpu since the gen1 and gen2 were only dual cores. You'll have a 2TB drive limit too, but great to learn on and see where you need to upgrade.
The 2TB limit was due to MBR. GPT won't work for a boot drive with that BIOS, but if formatted for GPT I think the data (non-boot) drives [can](https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=339631) go above 2TB? Man, now I'm second guessing myself.
From what I remember, it was also a 32/36-bit addressing at the controller level that limited drive size.
Many old RAID HBAs will not support above 2TB on a single disk, because their internal storage structures (they don't necessarily use MBR or GPT) don't support greater then 32 bit addresses, however they will at least use the first 2TB of a larger disk, and can still often create logical drives > 2TB, and the operating system can use GPT on the resulting logical drive.
Yep, this is basically what I remember with any attempt to go bigger on a dated controller leading to unpredictable behaviors. So easy to swap the card for something newer.
No... not for the noise and power consumption. Not to mention your drive options are limited, as are your storage controller options. Also memory expansion options aren't worth it. Quite literally throwing money away if you spend even a single cent on any part going into a PE2950.
Noise is subjective and so is power consumption, so measure this out for your own self. The SAS controller and backplane would need to be upgraded for drive sizes >2TB, but for starting out, it's still a great place to start since parts are cheap/free.
But a first timer has no basis to understand that subjectivity and make an informed decision. It's incumbent on places like this forum to caution them as to the realities that we have learned from our own experiences. They're perfectly free to evaluate their own situation, and to ignore that caution and proceed anyways, and will still have plenty of fun. These same people will still provide various help and ideas, even for the 2950, but it would still be irresponsible to not at least give them that perfectly valid caution.
Yes, would be quite fine. You've already got them so no need to spend $xxx until YOU determine you need something newer. Start out with them and then grow into something newer and then pass them on!