About
Reviews (5)
Dec 22, 2016
Just what the doctor ordered
This is the OEM cooler for an Apple Xserve 2009 model. NOT THE 2008. Though both the 2008 and 2009 were Intel, they have different coolers (with different mounting screw locations, so they are not interchangeable). Make sure you're getting the right one!
That being said, this sink works just fine. The OEM sinks like this have a built-in temperature probe, and you definitely want this on a server with even the slightest importance.
Oct 27, 2016
Old tech with a new life
2 of 2 found this helpful A great platform for modest numbers of virtual machines. Xserves 2,1 and 3,1 are supported by ESXi 6 (as long as you have the non-RAID controller and use an aftermarket network card for driver support reasons), and you can legally run OSX VMs on it because it's Apple hardware. You can get 96gb memory kits cheap, and with SSDs in the drive bays it's a pretty quick machine.
What's not to like?
Oct 19, 2016
Great inexpensive upgrade for an old Dell R610
Dell R610s and similar older servers are appearing in large numbers at low prices. These servers still have a lot of life left in them, particularly if you give them plenty of memory and use 2.5" SSDs. If you are using them as virtualization servers, more cores is always best, and replacing low-spec processors like the E5503s with a pair of the Intel Xeon X5650/60/70/80/90 six-core processors, you can squeeze quite a few VMs onto one of those R610s.
Formula: cheapest R610 you can find with an H700 RAID controller + 2 X56xx processors + 96gb or 192gb memory + 4-6 1tb consumer SSDs in a RAID6 + free edition of VMware ESXi 6 = crunchy VM goodness. I'm getting 40 Windows VMs + half a dozen fairly grunty Linux servers onto one of these beasts for under 1500 dollars.
Such a deal.