Hey all,

As stated, I have somehow acquired an entire DL380 G9 for $150 CAD in basically never-used condition and both Xeons present (There is aesthetic marks on the chassis, but actually 0 dust inside. It’s also lacking RAM).

I messed around with a couple of these things in college, but it’s been a bit since I dealt with the hardware side of servers and setting one up from bottom floor, so I just had a few questions if anyone wants to offer advice.

There is only a single 8 drive bay installed on it currently, and it does not have all of its caddies. What is your go-to place to source drive caddies or additional bays if needed? I’d also be interested in hearing recommendations on suppliers of 2.5" spinning drives, RAM, and power cables.

Back in college we used to put ESXi on these things, but after looking it up I can see that there is no longer a free edition. Is Proxmox the de-facto solution for bare metal hypervisors theses days? Either way, if anyone has any videos covering the process for installation on this hardware, I would appreciate it (though I can probably sus it out with enough time as well).

Finally, server racks are absurdly expensive of course. Any suggestions on DIY’s for a rack would be appreciated.

Glad to answer any additional questions if needed - thanks for your time.

  • Fuzzypyro@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    12 hours ago

    Personally I did something similar here. You could likely find a rack for free if you look at to colos, data centers or schools. I got a 60u full enclosed rack from the colo I kept my servers at. The big problem was space. People look to get rid of them because they are such a burden in space.

    Good stuff getting a gen9. I got a gen8 before I realized that there were firmware limitations particularly with a lack of support for gpt. I instead needed a really hacky workaround with mbr in order to run my name ssd as the boot drive at full capacity.

    Also I like to drop this tool occasionally for any new homelabbers.

    https://www.labgopher.com/