my local library has recently upgraded their network, got fiber, and replaced most of their hardware. they are auctioning off some of their old tek including 3 dell servers (i think they are 11th gen but idk anything else about them), a ton of touch screen monitors, several towers, and misc other things. i know very little about servers and have never even seen one, but from what i read they sound pretty cool. what i would like to know is what can you do with a server (please go all out and tell me the things "normal people" would never do as well)? and should i buy it, and what would be a good price for X processing power, ram, sata ports, hard drives, ect...? and is their anything else i should look for at the auction? the auction is the 18th. thankyou for your help. (also i have never used the forums before so idk if i posted this in the right place)
If they are the pentium 4-gen xeons or newer, then they are probably worth something, if they are pentium three or older, then no. The biggest problem that I can see with pricing things like this is possible issues with hardware. If you have a processor go out, sourcing one for a pentium three gen one is really tricky because the supply is limited by how many are still functional now. And DDR is some really expensive RAM to find with ECC. DDR2 is somewhat less so, but still really pricey.
The one issue you'll have with servers is noise and heat, they are seriously loud as balls in a blender. If you don't have a basement or somewhere to put it into then you might not want to even get one, I have mine in a closet but it's still piss loud. But yeah. If you can get any good deals on them pick them up.
Yeah, having so many HDD running at once can make them excruciatingly loud, especially if they happen to be SCSI drives, since those usually spin at something akin to 10,000-15,000 RPM. Which is really cool because it gives you really low seek times and really fast continuous transfer speeds, but it makes them so noisy. I had a server set up in a highschool tech class and it was only running four SCSI drives, but it still managed to sound like a helicopter. It did manage to install a heavily modified (not by me, because I don't have that kind of skill or patience) version of Windows XP in about 7 minutes. Despite the fact that it was running a whopping total of 2 GB of DDR ram clocked at 400 MHz and two Pentium 3s at, I think it was 900 MHz. Absolutely astounding, that.
@mndless i know the guy who runs the librarys and he has million$+ budget so i'm pretty sure the server is worth something and the server is less then a year old so it probably wont die on me. and @ captainpip noise isnt a problem. i do wood/metal work with power tools that can reach 11,000rpm and are definetly louder then the server. what i need to know is what can this do better then a pc/ what can it do that a pc can't. and what is good or not hardwarewise and what is a good price for whatever(i dont know much about which processors is better then the other) so i know if it's a good price and roughly what it can do before i decide to buy it. i might be able to get the specs before the 18th and if i do i'll post it.
p.s.linux as OS?
Linux or a pirated copy of Windows Server is what you'll most likely use. They're good for.. well.. hosting servers. Apache, Video Game Servers, FTP, NAS, anything you really want to do with it.
Or you can turn it into a really bonkers firewall that runs Emulations to test the security of any files that you download. Which is really crazy and cpu intensive, so that is where the 6 and 8 core xeons really come into their own. Umm, other than that, yeah. FTP is always a good option, if you have a domain name registered, you can host with that as your domain server. Umm, you could actually use it as a cloud server if you knew what to do, and just use any computer as an access terminal... There are quite a few things you can do with a server, most of which I have absolutely no experience with doing, so I would have to look up so much stuff to advise you beyond giving you vague things to find on wikipedia.
Also, I should remind you (because everyone seems to forget these things) just because someone has money to spend does not necessarily mean that they will spend it wisely.
Secondly, most high-speed power tools recommend the use of hearing protection devices, such as noise cancelling headphones, or earplugs.
Thirdly, servers are within that iffy realm of being a PC and not a PC. Most dual processor servers cannot run standard installations of windows, and although windows server does give you a user interface like standard windows, it is fundamentally different in its intentions as an operating system. Some distro's of Linux are far better suited for making a server act like a standard PC, but I can't really imagine why you would want it to. Most of the work done on a server can be done remotely by SSH-ing into it (I am not an IT student or professional and I do NOT know how to use SSH, this is what I've observed my IT student friends doing with their servers.)
If you can get a dual CPU xeon socket 771 or newer system with some included HDD then I would say be willing to spend about... $500 for one. At the least. It really depends, the newer you get the more expensive they become at a rather eponential rate. A new blade server with two socket 2011 xeons will set you back around 5 grand before you add any drives to it. They are very, very expensive. Just the rack-mountable chassis is usually around $300, with a single power supply module costing around $120, and they usually have several for redundancy. Socket 1366 powered servers have far more potential, because the CPU's are still being sold on the open market instead of just through ebay and Amazon's used market. That, and you almost always have DDR3 support through them, and that makes memory upgrades really inexpensive, comparatively. But any thoughts of upgrades also depends on what you intend on doing with it. You can run an FTP server very well off of dual pentium 3s, because it really isn't very intensive if you don't have that many people accessing it simultaneously.
p.s. Linux is an excellent OS, Ubuntu doesn't give you quite as in-dept of control if you don't know what you are doing, but it is very easy to use. They have a server version.