| HOW I SETUP A MULTI-USE ENTERPRISE SERVER IN MY APARTMENT The Tale of the T610 |
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So it was an afternoon at work and I had my belgian colleague pal in my office, talking tech. While we were talking, I mentioned how I wish I had more access to Server equipment to teach myself about Server hardware and administration at home, and he said "Well, I have an old server in my garage I can give you". Thinking nothing of it, I said "sure", and then went about my usual business of carrying out I.T. Duties.
The computer showed up at work unnanounced with a sticker on top stating "For CreepingNet to take home" on top of it. Looking up the Service Tag, it was a 2014 Dell T610 Tower Server, with dual 2.60 INtel Xeon CPU, and about 16GB of Registered memory in it. It had 2 NICs, a VGA connector, no video card, and what basically was 4 1TB Spindle HDDs in it. This was one serious beast. I dug into my memory bag and found some more compatible Registered memory an old Microsoftie gave me - allowing me the full capacity of RAM that this old server was capable of. Finding a suitable O/S for the server was a bit of a challenge. I was not about to pay Microsoft big $$$$ for a stupid "Windows Server" license, I was not about to pirate either, as I'm kinda' done with Microsoft, and expect with their recent behaviors with Windows 10, Edge, and a lot of dark motions within their software in general, to put their company on the path to being relegated to I.T. History books. So of course, I'd use Linux. I tried Ubuntu, including a core install, I also tried some other "Server" releases, but found happiness with CentOS. See, when I learn a new O/S, I usually want the most user-friendly, GUI driven thing to start with, and then work my way up from there. Now let's talk HARDWARE for a minute....Server Hardware - The T610 at a Glance Servers, for the most part, are similar to your average laptop, or desktop computer for the most part. THey have data storage, memory, a CPU, RAM, graphics, even a sound card built in these days. But it's once you get past all the regular "this is a PC" things that it starts to look less like a regular PC, and something all it's own. For starters, the T610 has TWO Ethernet Ports. One port is the actual network port used for communication with the network and the internet, the other is a "Management" port known as an IDRAC - Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller - and what the IDRAC does, is allows remote administration of the Server at the hardware level. Basically, it allows you to administrate, deploy, and monitor a Server remotely. Most Servers run in a way known as "Headless" - basically put, there's no monitor, keyboard, or mouse on it, it's just a "humming box" that does "computer things" autonomously with some minor attention from the Network and Systems Administrators. HP Has their own name for it, but since this is my first server, and it's a Dell, I'll call it what DELL calls it. This machine does not have one, but TWO CPUs - both 2.60GHz XEON Processors, each with their own group of six DDR3 Memory Slots, that require a special type of Server Memory also known as "REgistered Memory" - also known as "Buffered Memory" - which is designed to allow the computer to remain stable with a higher number of memory modules than usual, as Servers need LOTS of RAM. The T610 is sort of an entry-enterprise, high-end small business server - sort of sitting between the rackmount stuff you'll find in a server closet at a Fortune 500 company like where I work, and one of those old ginormous 486 Tower PCs from the 90's that are sort of like the granddaddy of this machine - like the old Compaq SystemPro 486 towers from the early 1990's (which Sierra OnLine used for their early internet-based gaming service, per Al Lowe, the creatoer of Leisure Suit Larry). The RAM is split between the 2 CPUs and maxxed out at 96GB. That's what taking peoples "Trash" helps with ;). |
