Donated workstation

[sinjin]

Our school received a donation of some older workstations, and I'm wondering if one of them might make a good BI server. I read over the wiki but don't see much info regarding the type of workstations I have, so looking for some advice from the community.

As far as I can tell, the 'best' of the donated workstations is a 7 yr old Dell PowerEdge T610 with two Xeon E5620 quad-core CPUs @ 2.4GHz, 32GB RAM, and an integrated RAID controller. It's not up and running at the moment, but the link to the original config is here...

Support for PowerEdge T610 | System configuration | Dell US

Is it worth bringing this guy back to life for BI? I'm running 24 hikvision IP cams @ 1080p at the moment on a 4 yr old i7/Win10 system that really can't keep up with 12 cameras on continuous recording and the others on motion (despite following the recommendations from the wiki).

Thanks in advance for the input.

 

[tangent]

Xeon processors don't have hardware acceleration for video.
Based on benchmarks for the CPUs, the 4 year old i7 is more powerful than 2x Xeon.
Old computers also use a lot more electricity, often enough to pay for a newer computer inside of 3 years.

Figure out what the bottleneck in the current system is. CPU? RAM? Storage? Network?
How many hard drives are in the current system?
What bit rate, codec, and frame rate are you running each camera at? Try reducing to 10-15 fps.

 

[fenderman]

Our school received a donation of some older workstations, and I'm wondering if one of them might make a good BI server. I read over the wiki but don't see much info regarding the type of workstations I have, so looking for some advice from the community.

As far as I can tell, the 'best' of the donated workstations is a 7 yr old Dell PowerEdge T610 with two Xeon E5620 quad-core CPUs @ 2.4GHz, 32GB RAM, and an integrated RAID controller. It's not up and running at the moment, but the link to the original config is here...

Support for PowerEdge T610 | System configuration | Dell US

Is it worth bringing this guy back to life for BI? I'm running 24 hikvision IP cams @ 1080p at the moment on a 4 yr old i7/Win10 system that really can't keep up with 12 cameras on continuous recording and the others on motion (despite following the recommendations from the wiki).

Thanks in advance for the input.

that system belongs in the trash...can be outperformed by an i5-3570...using a fraction of the power.
what exact model i7 are you using? i7 is a meaningless term.

 

[tangent]

honestly the best thing you can probably do with these donated systems is sell them and buy something better. I realize that may not actually be possible

 

[sinjin]

that system belongs in the trash...can be outperformed by an i5-3570...using a fraction of the power.
what exact model i7 are you using? i7 is a meaningless term.

Sorry... it's an i7-3770S.

I made some further BI tweaks and have it running below 80% CPU while running as a service (just published data via BIUpdateHelper). I guess that "S" at the end of the CPU model is my main issue. My motherboard can take any 3rd gen i7... worth it to spend money on it, or pursue a different rig altogether?

 

[fenderman]

Sorry... it's an i7-3770S.

I made some further BI tweaks and have it running below 80% CPU while running as a service (just published data via BIUpdateHelper). I guess that "S" at the end of the CPU model is my main issue. My motherboard can take any 3rd gen i7... worth it to spend money on it, or pursue a different rig altogether?

not worth upgrading it..

 

[crw030]

Xeon processors don't have hardware acceleration for video.....

@tangent according to ark this CPU has QuickSync, maybe its not the same thing? Intel® Product Specification Comparison

@sinjin even if I happen to be right, @fenderman and @tangent are both giving you good advice, that CPU is from 2012, and although there might be someone interested in buying parts of those systems on eBay, it isn't the right system for you if you get to pay the electric bill. The reduction in electricity alone will eventually pay for a new system.

Just eyeballing that config, you might not have to be patience to wait, but that same model system with different configurations is selling on eBay for $300-$400, and parting it out might even bring more if you were willing to do that. Then you'd be $300+ cash towards a significantly newer system with more of the bells & whistles that would matter for a BI system (i.e. PERC Controller in that system is much more business-oriented than consumer). I would sell those parts AS-IS but "pulled from a working system" as it sounds like it is operational as-is or sell the whole system as "used but operational" and give them a screenshot showing you had it booted up. I'd also wipe those disks before I sold it, just in case the donor left remnants of something important on them.