Another mass build and some hardware thoughts

Actually that could very well be a winner. I hadn't even looked at Silverstone. Most of its products would be well out of my price range.

Thanks for suggestions all.
 
Mercutio said:
I finally got the go-ahead to do new classroom systems. My older machines are nearly six now.
Surprisingly, the C2D E6300s I bought all that time ago are still perfectly adequate for everything that happens in our classrooms. At the time, I felt like I might have over-specified just for buying something that wasn't a Celeron, but the Celerons of 2006 were single-core slugs that I'm sure would never have lasted this long.

I only had to pull seven motherboards out of those machines during the six year span.
I had to replace five Antec PSUs. All of the ones that died are an unusual size and shape that was only found on the first generation Antec NSK3800 chassis. Not even one of the full size ATX PSUs used by the second generation version failed.

My problem is that hard drives are starting to die. They're failing to restore or requiring long disk checks after frequent crashes. The work I have to do in order to put a system back after a drive replacement is expensive and time consuming, since no one makes an automated deployment system that can handle triple-boot Windows installs.

So I need to figure out what I'm going to do for my next set of machines. I have a budget of about $550 per computer for hardware.

I know the people I work with would rather have all in one machines, but that's not going to happen.
ITX? I could probably swing that if I wanted. I'm not sure if I want to bother. I'd prefer that the computers be quiet or silent, and those aren't traits I associate with ITX-size traditional PSUs.
I'm tempted to ditch DVD drives, but some of our classes actually do use them, and technically some of my off-site classrooms are used for other sorts of instruction as well. I might be able to get away with USB optical drives but I'm afraid they'd get stolen.
SSD? Maybe? I know I'm going to need at least 160GB drives for these computers.

Would I be better off just using laptops? This is an idea I'm considering as well. They would be quiet, portable and certainly perform well enough at this point, but of course there are security and reliability concerns, particularly with inexpensive models.

The plan for these machines is to dual boot Windows 7 (and probably Windows 8, eventually) and to run VMs for XP and Vista - both of which are still necessary for our course offerings. Because of that, I suspect I'm going to be interested in extra CPU cores and RAM. I don't have a firm handle on whether or not I can get away with using VMware Player for my environment; I might need to use VirtualBox instead. I really want to get away from multiboot configurations, but I'm not sure I can get away from it.
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Does your class require a physical machine in front of each student? What I'm getting at is why couldn't you build a single ESX server to host all the student machines and provide hardware thin clients to access the VMs via RDC, PCoIP, etc? Then you can create templates for each OS type you need and just power off and power on the different OSs as you need them. No need for complicated multi-boot situations. No need to manage VMware player or VirtualBox on each system. Backups happen from the central location. If budget allows, build a second ESX setup in case one or requires maintenance.
 
Handruin said:
Does your class require a physical machine in front of each student? What I'm getting at is why couldn't you build a single ESX server to host all the student machines and provide hardware thin clients to access the VMs via RDC, PCoIP, etc? Then you can create templates for each OS type you need and just power off and power on the different OSs as you need them. No need for complicated multi-boot situations. No need to manage VMware player or VirtualBox on each system. Backups happen from the central location. If budget allows, build a second ESX setup in case one or requires maintenance.
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Do you get paid on commission? :scratch:

:p
 
I'd love to do some kind of thin client system. It would make my life a zillion times easier. But no, it's not happening. Too much of our training works from the assumption that everyone has a local machine where they can store data and make individual, persistent changes.

Plus my boss doesn't even really understand the difference between say 3G and 802.11. I'd be explaining virtualized hardware three times a week from now to 2014.
 
Mercutio said:
I get sales calls from VMware sales once or twice a week, even though I've never paid for anything but VMware worstation and my IT budget doesn't even make a blip on their radar.
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Interesting. I've bought many of their products, and even have current service contracts, and I haven't even gotten an e-mail much less a call.
 
"Yeah, sure, Mr. VMware guy. I'd love to help you, but David is the one with the real purchase authority. You're gonna have to talk to him..."
 
I receive IT solicitations every day, mostly be e-mail. Much of the time I have no idea what they are all about. Today I made the mistake of answering my offset phone and some guy started blathering on about something system. I kept asking if it was a solicitation or sales pitch, but could not get a straight answer.
 
Mercutio said:
I'd love to do some kind of thin client system. It would make my life a zillion times easier. But no, it's not happening. Too much of our training works from the assumption that everyone has a local machine where they can store data and make individual, persistent changes.

Plus my boss doesn't even really understand the difference between say 3G and 802.11. I'd be explaining virtualized hardware three times a week from now to 2014.
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I know this is a stretch, but some companies like CDW actually do a try and buy for a couple months with their hardware. Maybe with a few phone calls you might get a setup to your specs and demo it to your boss to prove the concept. I know, wishful thinking. Too bad you can't teach him the difference between, you know...stuff, and stuff.
 
Handruin said:
Too bad you can't teach him the difference between, you know...stuff, and stuff.
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It's kind of a PHB thing. I start talking about techie things and she tunes it out because she can't be bothered to be interested by any of it and oh hey her kids are sending her text messages and did she hear that Vickie at her country club said bitchy things about Jennifer?

So she'll ask me a question and then realize that she doesn't care about the answer once the explanation involves more than two sentences and/or acronyms.
 
Mercutio said:
The whole setup runs to a total of ~$580.

Anyway, I have at this point taught 122 kids to put these things together. I have 31 more kids to do. I'm thinking that 150 systems is a good number,...
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This time you advanced 550$ each, but are we still talking about ~150 systems?
 
So that's a 44000$ budget. Let's trim down the cost of each box as they'll only be terminals:



That's a complete, low-noise, 350$ system. All the components have superior reliability (I've sold many of those Asus P8H61-I motherboards and NONE have ever needed an RMA). The SSD isn't quite as large as you wanted, but most of the data will be stored on the centralized servers, built with the 16000$ you have left. You asked for 160GB on each machine, that means the servers will need to have 12.8TB of data storage capacity.

I assume that you have a rack and all the network wiring has already been passed.



Ok, I bust the budget by ~335$ and there's only 12.2TB of storage on the main server instead of 12.8TB. If you could extend that to 749$ over the 44000$ budget, you could get 8x 16GB DDR3 Kingston RAM (KVR16R11D4K4/64) instead of the 1333MHz kits I've included above. I expect you'll have mass purchase discounts anyway, so it should fit. On paper, the 16 cores and 32 threads of the dual socket Xeon server shouldn't suffice to feed 80 VM, but I doubt all your classes are occupied at once and that all the students are doing heavy-load tasks at once. So it should be capable to keep up. I left the OS out of it since I assume you'll take one from the Technet account you surely have (or ESXi, Xen Server or else).

Configuring the entire thing will be your job. There are 4 gigabit ports on the server you'll have to share thru the VM. An Intel i350T4 PCI-E network card cost ~350$ if you need more. Good luck.
 
There's a further budgetary allocation for spare parts. I'll probably wind up with about 50 grand all told, pending approval of the customers for which we maintain off-site classrooms.

Considering the amount of shit I got for wanting to have clients without CD burners, I'm not even going to try to make the case for thin clients.
 
Another possibility, giving him a lot more computing power, would be to leave the Intel R2224GZ4GCSAS and replace it with 3 R1208GZ4GC. It would give him enough space for the 24x 512GB Plextor SSD and triple the amount of gigabit network ports. Putting 2 Xeon E5-2680 and a 64GB DDR3 1600Mhz Kingston kit into each, it would bump the server price by 8500$ compared to the single 2U server I prosed above. The entire setup redundancy would also be improved.
 
In the end, it doesn't matter, because any setup that does not work EXACTLY LIKE an dedicated individual workstation is going to be rejected, no matter how well it works.
 
CougTek said:
CD burners are for retards. There are tools to make bootable USB sticks for all operating systems.
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Apparently it's SOP when teaching rooms full of secretaries and mid-level managers Microsoft Office to save the files they make in class on CDs that they can take with them when they leave.
I already suggested putting that crap on the web instead, but it's one of those things where we can't actually assume that anyone in our classes knows how or can to get to things that are online.
 
Those HP thin clients, with Atom processors, start at 430$. I wouldn't pay more than 250$ for such a limited computer, but that's just me.
 
Howell said:
You make up the difference in price per terminal and ease and flexibility of management.
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I'm not really arguing with anyone. I'd far rather have flash drives. The problem is that I know full well the other people in my office won't change what they're doing or willing to do in classes if they think it might somehow create a different environment than what a typical home or office user would have to deal with.
 
Any attempt to push a centralised server solution is vain then? Sorry we can't sell them the salad for you. It's sad, because it would be awesome. And it would make a sale point for your managers. They could then brag they have a modern setup, something that isn't true if you spend all the budget on individual machines. I know the president of our company often bring investors/potential big customers to the servers' room where all the rackmounts are. I suspect that it's why my proposal of replacing their 75 servers with a 6 blade servers setup didn't pass ; it would look much less impressive during the company tour.
 
CougTek said:
I know the president of our company often bring investors/potential big customers to the servers' room where all the rackmounts are. I suspect that it's why my proposal of replacing their 75 servers with a 6 blade servers setup didn't pass ; it would look much less impressive during the company tour.
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Interesting. My boss loved me going to VMs; 5 racks in the server room and 3 of them empty. He takes people in there and literally stands in one of the empty racks to make the point of how energy efficient we are.
 
Well, we don't pay electricity as it is included in the rent. I advocate that less heat would be generated, giving us more time to react in case of a failure of the cooling system, but so far I haven't found an open ear.
 
Or if your core business is not IT, then consider ditching all of the servers and half the IT staff. Then pay a company to do that as an outside service and manage the service provider. :)
 
CougTek said:
Any attempt to push a centralised server solution is vain then?
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The people I work with have a very different perspective on this stuff. They want the facilities to most closely resemble what people are going to use at home and/or at work. I'm having to expend all my efforts at the moment justifying the use of VMs for older versions of Windows so that I don't have to configure a four-way multiboot system (what everyone else wants) as it is.
 
I have the regret to announce you that you're working with retards. All of them. Look somwhere else and move on. Apply for mining companies (not coal). Pays well.
 
CougTek said:
I advocate that less heat would be generated, giving us more time to react in case of a failure of the cooling system, but so far I haven't found an open ear.
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Thermal mass is your friend. I have the walls of the server room filled with steel racks full of old towers (nothing flammable). Once they are all chilled to the 65F (18C) I keep the room at, they can absorb the heat of the servers for hours with just a fan running.
 
CougTek said:
I have the regret to announce you that you're working with retards. All of them. Look somwhere else and move on. Apply for mining companies (not coal). Pays well.
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Why? If executive management requests that something be done, then it may be Merc's duty to mention another option. But if that is rejected then one proceeds to execute plans and meet the objectives.
 
Because a four-way multiboot on every damn 80 systems is a management Hell compared to VMs. The management should be able to understand that. It means less downtime. Less time wasted by your tech guy doing avoidable monkey tasks every time a system is toasted. More time for your IT guy to improve your installations elsewhere. Put that on years and it's a lot more job done by the same employee and therefore, a shitload of money saved.

Is it that hard to get? Typical managers : pencil pushers and shit heads.
 
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