There is an old Fujitsu PRIMERGY TX150 S7 server at my company.
The SPEC :
CPU : XEON X3430 (4 cores 4 threads)
Memory : 4GB
Storage : HDD RAID1 500GB
Change this to below
CPU : XEON X3470 (4 cores 8 threads )
Memory : 16GB
Storage : SSD RAID1 1TB
The image below shows the side panel of the server open. The design is such that each unit can be removed by moving the green part without the need to remove screws, making the work very easy.
CPU fan and cooler; the CPU fan is designed to cool the memory and even the Raid card too. This is also easy to remove, just be careful with the power cable of the fan.
Remove the Raid card since it is in the way when removing the CPU cooler.
The CPU cooler removed.
The below is XEON X3470 I bought at an internet auction, I wanted to buy X3480 but I had to pay for it myself. It was sent to me wrapped in aluminum foil. The price was 20 USD.
CPU replacement, checked, no problem.
Next up was memory. The memory ended up being 8GB instead of 16GB. The spec sheet says it supports “4GB DDR3 1333 UDIMMs” I don’t know what UDIMMs are, but since they are not server RDIMMs, maybe they work with PC memory! I was happy and bought 4 new 4GB DDR3 1333 for PC for about 40 USD. It did not work. I don’t even use 4GB DDR3 1333 for PCs anymore, so when they didn’t work, they were decided to be garbage. It was a waste.
I ran out of money to buy a new one, so I bought a “4GB x 4 ECC Registered DDR3 1066” at an internet auction again for about 15 USD. I didn’t take a picture, but it didn’t work either, and was determined to be garbage again. I don’t know if the memory is bad or if it is compatible with the server, so I gave the seller the highest rating anyway.
Off topic, I inserted this memory one by one to check it works and made the mistake of pulling out the memory without turning off the power. Suddenly the power supply dropped, and I thought something had short-circuited, but it booted up again, I was relieved.
I was having trouble, so I looked for a memory with the same model number as the one currently attached and bought “2GB x 2 ECC Registered DDR3 1066” for 3 USD, including shipping fee. It worked without any problem. I was worried about the seller’s profit. Naturally, the seller was given the highest rating.
Since there were two slots left over, I wanted to add two more if possible to increase the capacity to 12GB, but since the specification says “UDIMM x 4, 1066 RDIMM x 4 or 1333 RDIMM x 6 can be installed,” I gave up thinking that only four cards would fit. At this point, I’ve opened the server case four times with two occurrences of waiting for the auction to arrive, and I’m sweating and cutting myself all over the place, so “It’s enogh”.
I forgot to take pictures from here on out, so I’ll just use text.
if you remove the front panel of this server and pull the handle of the HDD mounter, you can easily pull out the HDD. Great, but it only supports 3.5″. I tried to use a 2.5″ to 3.5″ conversion mounter, but it didn’t work.
Anyway, I inserted a 2.5-inch SSD into the SATA socket. So I taped the case that contained the discarded memory to the bottom of the SSD to make it taller, which solved the hanging in midair problem. That’s good enough for now.
The miscalculation was that I wanted to use hardware Raid1, but apparently the Raid card can only be controlled from Windows or Redhat. I had no choice but to use software Raid when I installed Ubuntu. 500GB 10 year old HDD seems to be running hardware Raid, so I mounted it as a backup storage.
The server was transformed into an AD server with Ubuntu + samba 4. Now working great. Thanks to Ubuntu.