New Work Server - Dell T640

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EvilAlchemist

2[H]4U
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Jan 11, 2008
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Arrived yesterday, new Dell T640 Server for work. Had a lot of fun getting it unboxed and starting initial setup.

Specs:
2x Intel Xeon Silver 4215R (3.2G, 8C/16T)
12x 8GB RDIMM
4x 960GB SSD SAS MU in RAID 10
(8 Drive Chassis For Future Drives)
Boss Card with 2x 256GB NVME in Raid 1
Server 2019 OS

Will run my city's SQL server as well as OBS for live streams.


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So your entire cities "SQL Server" will be running on a single server......? And if it goes down? I presume it will be virtualized and you will have frequent backups done of the SQL DB and / or VM's running on it. not just running bare boned windows with SQL and then running OBS...?
 
MrGuvernment said:
So your entire cities "SQL Server" will be running on a single server......? And if it goes down? I presume it will be virtualized and you will have frequent backups done of the SQL DB and / or VM's running on it. not just running bare boned windows with SQL and then running OBS...?
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You forgot RDP protocol open to the internet

I like to give people the benefit of the doubt

I'm more interested in the city's database, what wonders it must hold
 
MrGuvernment said:
So your entire cities "SQL Server" will be running on a single server......? And if it goes down? I presume it will be virtualized and you will have frequent backups done of the SQL DB and / or VM's running on it. not just running bare boned windows with SQL and then running OBS...?
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No VMs. Just SQL on server 2019.

Yes, there are backups but sadly, only one server. It's a small city so the demand on the server is not that high and can't afford a fail over server. The one it is replacing should have been replaced like 4 years ago
 
ChRoNo16 said:
So now I have to know, whats it replacing?
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I don't remember all the specs since I am not in front of it. Its a xeon 4 core v3 something on a supermicro board, 16gb ram, and 2 raid arrays in raid 1 with WD 7200 black drives. Those drives are so slow and definitely should not be in that type of configuration.

blackmomba said:
Always surprised by organizations that still opt for MSSQL with all the open source options available today. Must be a lot in licencing too?
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The software is by an outside company that has many moduels for different things. It can do a lot depending on which things you buy. So yeah, the cost of that is high but does not come out of my budget.

You have a point and there are always other options for things. There's alternate things for Microsoft , Adobe, and others but I think it's one of those things they want a name behind it and not use open source.
 
blackmomba said:
Always surprised by organizations that still opt for MSSQL with all the open source options available today. Must be a lot in licencing too?
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Conversion for many apps that require MSSQL is not always easy and can often cost a small fortune to redo, if custom, or require more licensing costs from the vendor to get a different version.

EvilAlchemist One of those you have to make due with what you can get right. I have lived through those years of getting CPU's off ebay and such to upgrade quad core xeons to 6 cores cause the company did not want to spend money on anything new.....

One day, sadly for you, but maybe good, something major will happen and that will allow justification for a proper redundant set up.

I would suggest then not running OSB or any "freeware" streaming stuff from it, you need it to be as stable as possible. You could use the free version of ESXi on it.....assuming you have a second windows server license. (No, if done right SQL performance will not suffer either incase someone thinks that)
 
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Thanks for the tip on OBS. I agree stability is a key factor and important in this setup.

As far as backups, we do have 3 going every day: network, off-site physical media, and cloud so hopefully that is enough. I would love a redundant but you are right, time will tell.

The issue I'm encountering is if there's more than one meeting going on my workstation cannot handle all the video recording / rendering and network traffic associated with it. I have been looking at running that in a VM but that is unsupported officially. I am sure another solution is out there, just have to do some more homework. If not, getting another work station is not out of the question, just have to work towards that goal.
 
What is it that streams or encodes that you need? Is this a live stream or something? Or just using like teams meetings?

OBS can be run in a VM, any software that says it is not supported virtualized is full of it, unless it specifically uses hardware USB keys or something, which can be passed through anyways most times if the USB controller supports pass through.
 
Not trying to be a dick, but there are probably cheaper, and more importantly redundant ways to get done what you wanted.
 
EvilAlchemist said:
....................................

As far as backups, we do have 3 going every day: network, off-site physical media, and cloud so hopefully that is enough. I would love a redundant but you are right, time will tell.

.......................................
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I meant to ask on this, when was the last time you did a full restore from your backups? If you have never done a full restore, then you do not have backups, as you can not validate if they are good or not.

This bit me in the butt many many years back in my early IT days. I had an paid app backing up our MySQL databases, twice a day, they always alerted me they were successful. Then one day, our single server crashed and burned. I figured no problem, restore from backups..

Every single back up from the time I started using the app - corrupted, could not import them. Vendor told us it was a bug in one of their earlier versions, and they had released a fix, but they didnt bother to email customers telling them this.....
 
OFaceSIG said:
Not trying to be a dick, but there are probably cheaper, and more importantly redundant ways to get done what you wanted.
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That might be true if we were not locked in on the software we use. As it stands, over 50% is licensing fees to Microsoft. They know businesses have to and will pay for it. And no, not "being a dick" at all. I agree there are ways for others but not in my specific situation.
 
MrGuvernment said:
What is it that streams or encodes that you need? Is this a live stream or something? Or just using like teams meetings?

OBS can be run in a VM, any software that says it is not supported virtualized is full of it, unless it specifically uses hardware USB keys or something, which can be passed through anyways most times if the USB controller supports pass through.
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One good note on this aspect, got a 2nd Dell 5070 ordered today to help with the streaming / recording issue so think I am now covered there.
 
Why is that 4 pin connector in your 2nd pic not connected to anything? (bottom right near the RAM)
 
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