Repurposing a Dell Poweredge 2900 Server

[TylerDurden1985]

So my dad was going to junk a poweredge 2900, he just upgraded his business server and didn't need it anymore, so I grabbed it lol.

It has 2 xeon quad core processors at 2.5ghz (so 8 cores total), and it has 4gb of RAM which I'm willing to upgrade if necessary, as well as many open slots for more hard drives (it currently has 2 250gb hard drives in RAID but I'd probably just use them individually since I don't need all the redundant backups). It also has a redundant power supply which I'll likely just disable since I don't need it for a business. Also my internet connection is 30mbps download, 6.5 mbps upload

Anyway, I want to repurpose this as either a gaming dedicated server or as a home media server or something like that. I was thinking of dual booting it with windows 7 and windows server 2008 (I know windows 7 pro can recognize dual socket systems).

So my questions are:

does anyone have suggestions for repurposing this?

Is there any way to make a dedicated gaming server take advantage of 8 cores?

What about an HTPC/Media Server?

What is the benefit to using windows server as opposed to windows 7?

Thanks for the help, I want to do SOMETHING with this thing, I don't want to scrap it!

 

[jameseboy]

For a media server, it would work great. Windows server versions have extra stuff built in for server based applications as well as web based ones. It also doesnt have the pretty ui that windows 7 has.

For gaming server, Im sure it would be okay to use for lanning on, but i dont think your connection will do too well for large numbers of player over the web, but maybe will do 4-8 players for stuff like left 4 dead.

Linux server editions would also be worth while looking into.
Also, if you cant come up with anything else for it, have a look at folding on it, im sure it would produce a good score

 

[TylerDurden1985]

thanks for the suggestions. I know my internet connection probably limits me a bit in terms of players. I know for something like minecraft I can host about 16-18 on even my desktop, but I don't think I could do something like a 64 player shooter lol

If I dual-boot it with windows 7, I'll probably just stick to dedicated gaming servers for smaller games like counterstrike, team fortress 2, killing floor, etc.

For gaming servers like that, how much ram should I be looking at?


As for media servers:

is the 4gb RAM enough for HD streaming?

If I put my blu-rays on a large hard drive as an ISO on the media server, can I stream ISOs with it or would I have to somehow convert them to other formats?

What sort of internet connection would I need to stream a blu-ray? That could be fun, having my entire blu-ray library on a server for me to watch anywhere.

Thanks again for the help!

 

[jameseboy]

look up a program called make mkv, Its great for ripping dvds, blurays ect for streaming. Iso's are image files, not good for streaming. And to stream it anywhere, your gonna need a damn good and reliable line. Im not sure what you would need. and for gaming servers, your 4gb of ram will do fine. I remember back when source came out, most gaming servers were rocking 1gb of ram :L