FedEx; not so great either. (but hooray on crazy fast shipping time) - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: XOIIO
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2016, 06:32:11 am
content: So, I ordered an hp proliant dl380 g6, to replace my g4, as it should be lower power, can support 8 sas/sata hard drives, and that can upgrade to 16 with a second hard drive cage and raid controller.It's also a big upgrade, my old server had two dual core xeons running at 3.2 ghz, this one, while the two xeons run at 2.93ghz, they have an extra two cores apiece. My old server also had 6gb of ram, and this baby has 72 (which is really good because I'm using about 70% of the 6 gigs I have available lol, may as well turn on the AMP function and have half the capacity but it basically acts as a raid for the ram, in case a stick goes bad or something).It should also use less power than my current one since it uses physically smaller drives as well as newer processors and updated hardware.I ordered it on the 28th, and while I was relaxing tonight at 11:20pm or so, I decided to check if it had a tracking number, and at first I thought it was some sort of cruel april fools joke, it showed as being delivered, with no signature required.So, blah blah blah, make a call my parent that lives in the house where it was shipped, I figured that it was taken in by the tennant, since that had happened once before, but nope, after a quick check, they found it here.Sitting barely hidden behind the recycling bin outside the gate, since 9am, in -10 minimum weather (was about -10 all day, much colder in the morning and evening).So, took it home, and it was shipped excellently, they used sealed air, the self expanding foam packing which is fucking awesome, but unfortunately the thing has a bunch of condensation. While I don't have any hard drive caddies for it yet, I was looking forward to booting it up and playing around in the BIOS at least, and maybe seeing if windows could be installed to the on board sd card slot, but sadly that will have to wait.I'll be sitting it inside my server room which is a good +30, with a fan over it if I can fit it, for at least 12 hours, we use that room to dry jackets from time to time and it does a good job.I am pretty miffed about it being sat outside though, where anyone could get it, at least it didn't snow/sleet/rain today like it did a day or two ago. It did get here ridiculously fast though, which is good because hey, it got here fast, but bad because I'll be stuck for 2-3 weeks without being able to use it.Couple pictures for anyone who likes a bit of server porn, and a full album here.http://imgur.com/a/SnVbN.Also, do you guys think 12 hours is enough for a bit of surface condensation, or would you leave it longer? I won't really be able to use it properly for a while so while it would really, really suck to deny myself of hearing that baby fire up for the first time in this country, it's not the worst thing in the world to wait an extra day or two.

author: Armxnian
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2016, 07:06:11 am
content: Why not build your own if it's for a server located at your house?Check the moisture level on the surface of the motherboard. Components these days are fairly resilient. I used to have a computer running with a watercooling leak that I was too lazy to fix because I would have to reassemble everything. Worked fine for months with water dripping everywhere.As for FedEx, I find UPS to be a bit more professional. For example in updating tracking information like in your case. I have a Dell Ultrasharp on the way. It was in Tennessee at 4:01pm and in the Vegas sorting facility at 5:00pm. How is that even physically possible. Did they transport it using an F-15?

author: XOIIO
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2016, 07:14:50 am
content: Quote from: Armxnian on April 02, 2016, 07:06:11 amI considered that, but I just love server specific hardware, and for these sorts of specs, to build it would cost a lot more. I also wouldn't be able to find a solution that would be nearly as neat and simple to add in storage as things go on, basically just adding in a terabyte or two whenever I need it. Unfortunately the p410i controller doesn't support JBOD mode so I'll have to actually make a single disk raid each time I ad a drive in, far from ideal, and I won't be able to hot swap them in or ad them on the fly, I'll need a reboot, but it will still work. I could also get another controller to to replace the on board one, I'd need to for a second set of drives anyways but I'll also need a PCI riser, so it's going to be a bit before I do that.Moisture isn't bad, it's the sort of thing where you wipe your hand and you can clearly see where you wiped surface moisture away, especially on the metal, the board seems a bit better. If a computer can run with actual notable amounts of liquid on the board itself though, that makes me feel better about starting this thing up after a good 12 hour drying period. I lost an analog oscilloscope that way (or at least that seems to be the cause, could be something else because it was sat frozen for ages).All in all I probably could make a much more power efficient machine for network storage but I also want it to have some grunt and I think this baby will have grunt. Yes a modern i5 or i7 is probably better than this, but it would also cost a lot more, plus I couldn't find any rack mount cases that would allow for 16 drives to be mounted in. Over time I'll be able to take this from 0-8tb, then to 18 tb, then ad the second drive cage for another 8 tb, then 16tb as I need it. if I had the money I'd probably populate all 16 spaces with 2tb drives, raid the sets of 8 together, and then use the second set as a backup of the first.This is the tracking steps it went through, it actually left the facility at 2 am one day, not sure if that's when the truck left or if they actually put it on a that time, but that certainly contributes to it. It was estimated to get here between April 8th and 10th.8:54 am Delivered ****, SKSignature Service not requested.6:43 am On FedEx vehicle for delivery ****, SK6:25 am At local FedEx facility ****, SK3/31/2016 - Thursday8:59 pm Departed FedEx location WINNIPEG, MB5:14 pm Arrived at FedEx location WINNIPEG, MB5:14 pm International shipment release WINNIPEG, MB12:33 pm Departed FedEx location GRAND FORKS, ND10:30 am Arrived at FedEx location GRAND FORKS, ND1:42 am Departed FedEx location SAINT PAUL, MN3/30/2016 - Wednesday5:12 pm Arrived at FedEx location SAINT PAUL, MN3/29/2016 - Tuesday6:45 pm Arrived at FedEx location ROMEOVILLE, IL5:15 pm Picked up ROMEOVILLE, IL2:36 pm Shipment information sent to FedEx

author: Armxnian
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2016, 08:02:28 am
content: I've ran a $1000 graphics card with big water bubbles on the back PCB. But not all hardware is the same, and it also depends on where the moisture is. Just let it dry a bit. 2-3 weeks seems overkill though imo unless everything was literally drenched with water. Consider the fact that there is moisture in the air, and that electronics are rated to run in certain humidity levels. In the end, I wouldn't risk it unless you know HP will send you a new one if you fry it on power up.Don't put too much trust in FedEx tracking updates. As I said, it didn't make sense that my shipment traveled a 4-5 hour trip by airplane in less than an hour. Especially because it was most likely on a truck.

author: XOIIO
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2016, 12:02:43 pm
content: Holy shit...Holy shit...Ok, so this thing has two xeon x5570s, which are quad cores, now the dual core xeons I have had two cores each, so I figured each of these would have four cores, making this an 8 core server.Thing is, each of those cores has hyperthreading... which means each acts as two logical cores.This bloody thing has 16 friggin cores in it! 16! I can't put it any other way... fucking hell. It can also have a turbo frequency of 3.3333ghz max, which would be a bit higher than my old one.God damn I'm in love, the sound this thing makes starting up is just pure porn, my old servo sounded nice and grunty but this thing is like a proper jet engine spooling up, and then one after that, or a turbo or something.

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2016, 03:34:26 pm
content: It looks like you could add a GPU and turn it into a workstation. It also looks like, for testing at least, you could just plug SSDs directly into the slots, with bits of cardboard or something to shim them up to the right level.

author: rrinker
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2016, 05:50:25 pm
content: With that much RAM and CPU, run a hypervisor and run all your other stuff on it as VMs.

author: XOIIO
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: April 02, 2016, 10:17:58 pm
content: Quote from: NiHaoMike on April 02, 2016, 03:34:26 pmYup, though it's a single height gpu, I'll probably put one in at some point just for the heck of it, I need a pci riser though but I've got a 512mb gpu kicking around that I could toss in then.Quote from: rrinker on April 02, 2016, 05:50:25 pmYeah, it has an onboard SD card to install the virtualization utility on it, I'm sort of wondering if I should just do a straight install or do multiple virtual machines. This has stuff that it will need to run every time on start up but I'm sure that it can save the state to a disk.Could always just run a vm from inside windows too, if the other option is too much of a hassle.Don't have any ssd's or really any spare laptop hard drives kicking around for now, have to get some more work to buy one to start out, so the wait for the caddies isn't as bad as if I had everything else set up.I'm also considering an m.2 pci card so that I can have all 8 trays for storage only, but that's a ways off.