Nice New Server!

So, Microsoft is threatening to release a new version of Windows Home Server (I use it for automated backups of the predominant Windows client machines in the home) that is 64-bit only.
VMware ESXi 3.5 only supports 32 bit guests and the Dell PowerEdge 1600SC as nice (and quiet!) as it is only supports 32 bit hardware.

What's a guy to do?

Go and buy another server of course!

So after some researching, it seems that the Dell Poweredge 840 fits my bill:
1. Not too noisy
2. Will take at least Core2 processors
3. At least 4GB RAM
4. At least space for 4x HDD
5. 64 bit capable
6. Run VMware ESXi 4.0

After obtaining one on Ebay (and paying as much again for shipping, wow!) it was time to get some upgrades.

The unit was supplied with a double core Pentium 4 3.4GHz chip, which unfortunately didn't support virtual hardware extensions. Replacing that with the Intel Xeon X3230 gives it the fastest and "quaddiest" CPU that the machine can handle (again, limitations of the 1,066MHz bus...).

The next thing was to organise a DRAC4/P remote management card. I have found the one that was in the PE1600SC to be useful at times, although it didn't seem to be able to handle Linux once booted (I'm guessing I was missing the appropriate driver).
This was a bit of a mis-adventure, as I purchased a card without the obligatory cable - I couldn't even configure it from the BIOS! A few weeks later my bacon was saved in the form of buy another card with the cable, for the same price as the initial card and now it works fantastically.
I had trouble getting the DRAC interface to accept VMware ESXi ISO so just gave up and put the disk in manually.

The next revelation was that the supplied Dell PERC5/iR was actually a hardware RAID card, although it only supports RAID0 and RAID1. At the moment this will suffice (I have a 2TB drive in there at the moment... getting the second one soon) but I'm keeping an eye out for a PERC6/i to allow hardware RAID5 for the next upgrade.

In addition, this unit came with 4GB of RAM with an upper limit of 8GB. It's going to be a bit squeezy once I run up a MythTV server, but with the doubling of available RAM, it should suffice for now.

The server is extremely quiet... when it's cool! When the mercury rises, it can get significantly more noisy than the PE1600SC it's replacing.

Good thing it sits on a shelf in the laundry!