[Liverpool] Cheap server boxes from Dell

[Sebastian Arcus]

For anybody who might be in the market for a cheap server machine the 
basic Dell PowerEdge T20 is down to £129.96:

http://www.ebuyer.com/738065-dell-poweredge-t20-pentium-g3220-3ghz-4gb-ram-500gb-hdd-mini-tower-t20-3692

This includes 4GB of RAM and 500GB hdd - so I would say it's quite a 
bargain. As it comes without an OS it would be perfect for a little 
Linux install. This is the basic model, with the Pentium G3220 cpu - 
which should still be able to do quite a lot of work under Linux. The 
next one up with the Xeon E3-1225V3 cpu is £239.98 after cashback - 
which I would say is damn good value as well.

I've installed recently the Xeon version at a client, and it drives 5 
Windows 7 VM's on 32GB of RAM (upgraded) comfortably - I'm hoping to 
push it to about 10 VM's on light loads. Overall it's a nicely capable 
machine and surprisingly un-crippled, with several PCI-e slots, one PCI 
slot and 4 RAM slots. The only annoying thing I found is the power 
supply motherboard connector - which is not the standard 24pin one, but 
some crazy 8 pin Dell proprietary job. However, after some googling, it 
seems that adapters are available out there to plug a standard PSU if 
necessary.

And no - I don't have shares in Dell - I just thought it might make a 
nice Christmas present for a Linux qeek out there! :-)

Happy festive season to everyone!