Dell PowerEdge SC440

I got my Dell PowerEdge SC440 on Tuesday and I’ve been busy all week installing software on it and redoing my entire home network.

The hardware itself looks very well built, it weighs about 40 lbs.  The inside looks very neat.  There are 4 SATA ports but there are only 2 hard drive trays so if you need to use more than 2 hard drives you’ll need to use the CD-ROM trays.  I ordered mine with just 1 hard drive and I bought an additional 1TB SATA drive from newegg.com (around $120).  Installing the hard drive was pretty straightforward, just make sure you get a 36 in. (3 ft.) SATA cable if you want to run the cable the proper way.  This server is also very quiet.

The first thing I did with it was install VMware ESXi (VMware ESX Server 3i, 3.5.0, 110271).  It installed with no problems, it found my onboard NIC and onboard SATA controller.

I’m currently running 4 virtual machines on it (2 Windows 2003 Server, 1 Fedora Core 9, and 1 FreeBSD) and it’s running great with plenty of resources left for more VMs :).

More pics:

PowerEdge SC440 starting at $199!

I just ordered one of these last night, looks like a pretty good server for a very good price.

I’m planning on installing VMware ESXi on here and this will pretty much replace my current server at home (which is over 4 years old so this will be a pretty big upgrade for me) which I’m using as a Domain Controller/DNS/DHCP/Print Server/Apache Web Server/File Server/Mail Server.

You won’t see this model in the VMware ESXi HCL but according to some posts in the VMware Forums it should work fine.

Here are the specs for my order which came out to $388:

PowerEdge SC440

• Dual Core Intel Xeon 3040, 2MB Cache, 1.86GHz (+$100)
• 4GB DDR2 667MHz (4×1GB) RAM (+$69)
• No OS
• Onboard SATA Controller (4 connectors)
• 1 x 160GB 7200 RPM SATA 3Gbps 3.5in Hard Drive(+$20)
• 48x CD-ROM Drive
• Comes with 1Yr Basic Hardware Warranty

This deal expires tonight.

SuperSpeed USB 3.0 Connectors Unveiled

Reg Hardware posted some pictures and diagrams of the connectors for the upcoming version of the Universal Serial Bus (USB) shown at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES 2008) in Las Vegas. USB 3.0, also known as ‘SuperSpeed’ USB, will be able to transfer data at speeds of up 4.8Gb/s, ten times faster than the current Hi-Speed USB 2.0 standard (480Mb/s).

USB 3.0 will be backwards-compatible with both USB 1.1 and USB 2.0. It is expected to be released later this year.

How to install a backup SonicWALL PRO 230 firewall

We had to do this last January and this was supposed to be a job that shouldn’t take more than an hour to complete but it took us a few hours due to the lack of documentation (our biggest issue was how to reset the firewall to factory defaults because no one knew the password for it, the person who originally configured the second firewall left a while back). SonicWALL no longer supports this product and it took us quite a bit of googling to finally find the information we needed. I made sure I documented everything we did and now I’m sharing it with you guys.

Prerequisites

• (2) SonicWALL PRO 230
• (3) Switches for the WAN/DMZ/LAN ports
• (6) CAT5 Cables for connecting the 2 firewalls to the switches
• (2) Static LAN IP addresses
• A backup of the Primary firewall’s settings
• Make sure that the Backup Firewall has not been previously configured for use (go to Tools->Restore Factory Default Settings). Also set the Password to password using the Password tab in the General section. ** If you cannot login to the backup firewall you will need to reset it to factory defaults by reloading the firmware. **

Resetting the SonicWALL PRO 230 to factory defaults by reloading the firmware (the following steps might also work with other models)

1. Turn off the firewall and unplug the power cord.
2. Use a paperclip to push the small button in front of the firewall and hold it for 15 seconds.
3. While the button is still pushed down, plug the power cord back in and turn on the firewall.
4. Wait another 15 seconds and release the button.
5. Turn off the firewall. The firmware should now be corrupted at this point.
6. Get a crossover cable and plug in one end into the LAN port of the firewall and the other end to your laptop/computer.
7. Change your laptop/computer’s IP Address to 192.168.168.200.
8. Open a web browser and go to http://192.168.168.168.
9. You should see a page asking you to upload the firmware for the SonicWALL (you can get it from SonicWALL’s website by logging in to your account). Upload the file (.bin) and the firewall will restart. Once it is back up it should now be back to factory defaults with an admin password of password.

Required Steps

1. Make sure both firewalls are off.
2. Connect both firewalls to the network.
3. Turn on the Primary Firewall and wait for diagnostics to complete.
4. Log in to the Primary Firewall (let’s pretend this IP is 192.168.0.1).
5. Click High Availability on the left
   1. High Availability Status (Primary SonicWALL):
      1. LAN IP Address: eg. 192.168.0.2 (make sure this is different from the IP you’re logged in to right now (ie. 192.168.0.1))
   2. High Availability Settings (Backup SonicWALL)
      1. Serial Number:
      2. LAN IP Adress: eg. 192.168.0.3
      3. Check Preempt Mode (to allow the Primary to take over when it comes back up)
      4. Heartbeat Interval: 5 seconds (lowest is 3)
      5. Failover Trigger Level: 3 missed heartbeats (Backup will take over if 2 heartbeats are missed)
      6. Active SonicWALL Detection Time: 0 seconds
6. Click Update.
7. Turn on the Backup Firewall (the Primary Firewall will detect its presence and synchronizes the settings).
8. Check the Primary Firewall log for a High Availability confirmation message.
9. Log in to the Backup Firewall (192.168.0.3) to confirm that it is the backup.

Testing the Configuration

• Turn off Primary and see if the Backup picks up.
• Turn Primary back on and see if it will take over.
• Make a note on how long it took to pick up and also check for network interruptions (it should pick up instantly).

Notes

• If everything is working, the Primary will be in active mode, and the backup will be in idle mode.
• When the Primary goes down, the backup will switch to active mode.
• When the backup takes over, it will have all the settings of the Primary including the Network settings so there is no need to change anything.
• The IP 192.168.0.1 will still be accessible to access the firewall that is currently active.