What to do with workstation donated to me?

Hardware Hub
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I got an old Puget system from a client. What does the community think I should do with it?

Specs:
CPU: i7-7820X
RAM: 128GB DDR4
Boot Disk: 2TB Samsung NVMe
Storage Drives: 4 x 8TB WD NAS drives.

No OS - Will be wiping the drive but it does have a W10 Pro license.

I’ve already got 2 Dell R640’s, Dell Percision with a Xeon, HP with a Xeon and 2 old Thinkpad P series also with a Xeon. The R640’s are a xcp-ng cluster, the Percision/HP are both TrueNAS-Core servers and the Thinkpads run ESXi. So I don’t think I have a need for an additional hypervisor.

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No idea how much data you have, but perhaps an off-site backup target?

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3

Backup target is a good idea, or you could always ask around at a local school or makerspace to see if they could use it for something.

4

Why not pile it up into the cluster?

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Whish I was that lucky … all I seem to get is tech that is not much better that e-waste!

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I’ve got a Synology rack station in my brothers house. I pay for his internet so past that he doesn’t care lol

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7

I run an MSP so the situation is a little different :smiley:

8

That might be the way to go. I can get a 3rd host in the xcp-ng cluster. True HA for my homelab lol

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I forgot to mention I have a rackserver that does this. It replicates with a rackserver at my brothers house but also gives him access to some things outside of the VPN.

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True that!

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Friend of mine works for a large legal office. When the lawyers have a 32" screen and a 34" model comes out, he’s told to ‘get rid of that piece of junk’ and replace with the new one, even if 18 months old. PC’s / laptops updated every two years.

He has a six station 10GB LAN Gaming setup you would not believe. Cost him nothing but the gas to bring it home. Yeah, I hate him too. :slight_smile:

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The best think I’ve got thus far is an Alienware laptop from 2022. Used it for a while but now it’s my wife’s who only plays minecraft and some Sim’s type games.

Way overkill for what she needs with an i9 and 3080 and an oversized 17" screen.

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God dam!!

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Just remember to put her lappie on her own vlan. :stuck_out_tongue:

I like overkill. Overkill lets me sleep at night. Having ample spare storage and virtual hosts gives me a lot more options in my work day. I used to work for a charity where a 4 GB VM RAM increase needed to be juggled like flaming torches. Today, I have just over 5TB of RAM to dish out on ESX. Night and day.

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If u don’t know what to do with it - donate it further to math class / local university / institutions.

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My wife already has her own VLAN with associated wireless network. I have an additional SSID for Guests, IoT and my stuff.

I’ve got maybe 1TB of RAM across all of my hosts.

18

What’s the motherboard?

There are 28 PCIe lanes in the i7-7820X. It’s not Xeon or threadripper pro, but more than a Core cpu which might open up some functionality dependent on the motherboard.

What PCIe cards you got lying around/been donated? A few NICSs or GPUs? PCIe 3.0 in the the cpu, and going to end up with PCIe bifurcation if want to get a few PCIe cards in, so never going to be fast, but maybe a playground for a multi GPUs deep learning/ML box or some high speed managed network switch?

Nice problem to have anyway :slight_smile:

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I would suggest something like GhostBSD org/download easy FreeBSD setup, or use a TrueNAS or a NextCloud install on the GhostBSD. GhostBSD gives you an easy 10 minute install with MATE 1.26 or XFCE 4.18 desktop. From there you can play with many different JAILS and Bhyve to create several different webservers from one computer. t me/GhostBSD Telegram Group. Have fun with 192GB of dram memory to make speedy dram disks, have space to compile, make money with serveral virtual webservers.
Fred

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While I haven’t heard of GhostBSD I’ve been using FreeBSD for well over a decade. Might take a look but don’t think I will dedicate hardware to it.

I added this to my xcp-ng cluster and am using it for Security Onion and wazuh VM’s. I was able to allocate more local storage rather than having it located on the SAN. We will see how it performs, I put some intel 10 gig nics in the system a few days ago and designated them some uplinks on the firewall.

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