FS: VM Hosts / Private Cloud - 3x Dell T7400 with 180+ VM's $27k obo

W

WinstonTJ

I have THREE (3) Dell Precision T7500 Workstations for sale.

This is a homogeneous High-Availability cluster that was being used by an 85-person sell-side desk & asset-management firm (24/7 shop).

Asking $27,000 OBO

Each of the T7400 machines are identical with the following specs:

- 2x Xeon x5460 Quad-Core CPUs @ 3.16ghz (all are SLANP step)
- Dual memory risers for 128GB DDR2 ECC RAM
- LSI Logic 8-port RAID adapter with BBU (battery backup)
- 7x Seagate 500gb HDD in RAID6 for total of 2.5TB per machine
- 3x Intel Pro 1000 MT quad-port PCIX server adapters
- 1x Intel Pro 1000 PT dual-port PCIe x8 Server Adapter

All THREE machines in a High-Availability Cluster provide:

24 physical CPU cores @ 3.16ghz
384 GB of DDR2 ECC RAM
7.5TB of RAID6 storage
12gigabit ports for up to 10G network throughput
2.0gbit/sec NAS & file server access
Dedicated management NICs


Spares/extras:
Vista COA stickers still on machines
3x - NVIDIA Quardo FX570 video cards (one per machine)
6x - 4GB DDR2 ECC sticks (two extra matching sticks per machine)
4x - matching firmware Seagate 500gb HDD
2x - Dell 1000W Power Supplies
1x - LSI RAID card
1x - Memory Riser Board
1x - Dell OEM Motherboard
Various extra HDD fans, memory cooling fans, CPU fans, etc.

SOFTWARE:
VMware ESXi 5.0 Enterprise Plus + vCenter Server with vMotion and vSphere DRS

Each of the 3 hosts contains:

1x Windows Server 2008 Standard (64bit)
1x Windows Server 2008 Standard (thin install) (64bit)
1x Windows Server 2008 Standard (32-bit)
1x Windows Server 2k3 RC2 x64
1x Windows Server 2k3 RC2 x86

FreeNAS 64-bit

50 Windows 7 Professional 64-bit
10 Windows 7 Professional 32-bit
10 XP Pro 32-bit
10 XP Pro 64-bit

5 Ubuntu 10.04 (lucid lynx) Server 64-bit
5 Ubuntu 11.04 (natty narwhal) Desktop 64-bit

Each Windows OS has Office 2007 Pro
Each XP & Server 2003 OS has Adobe 6.0 Pro
Each W7 OS has Adobe 9.0 Pro


That's a total of 180 W7 VMs. MSDN will be required.

Hosts will be reverted back to initial snapshots and a new MSDN Volume-License will need to be provided.

Project conversion timeline puts these out of service mid to late January 2012 but that could be pushed up sooner. This is an ideal setup for a small office or prop-group for up to 75 people (including Admin & Office/Management Staff). I don't know that this would be appropriate to support any more than 45-50 traders max.

A desk with older, outdated machines would be perfect for a solution like this - or a desk looking to upgrade to Thin Client local desktops.

A much smaller group or hedge fund could also purchase this in place of buying & setting up a server room with rack mounts. This is a very capable Private Cloud that will satisfy requirements like Bloomberg, Thomson and many proprietary OMS & trading solutions.

Willing to work on the price a bunch more if MSDN will credit back some volume licenses to me due to your existing arrangements with them. (if you are willing to burn your extras vs. me walk from them. Talk to your MSDN rep)
 
Quote from WinstonTJ:

That's a total of 180 W7 VMs. MSDN will be required.

Hosts will be reverted back to initial snapshots and a new MSDN Volume-License will need to be provided.

Project conversion timeline puts these out of service mid to late January 2012 but that could be pushed up sooner. This is an ideal setup for a small office or prop-group for up to 75 people (including Admin & Office/Management Staff). I don't know that this would be appropriate to support any more than 45-50 traders max.
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Isn't using MSDN licenses for anything other than software design, development or testing a violation?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/cc150618.aspx
 
You would get MSDN subscription included in an Volume License Agreement.

It all depends, this was built before MSFT had a "Cloud" or "thin client" instance subscription solution. It could be sold "as is" with no keys, etc. and then the buyer could pay for current Virtual OS instances (cheap but a pain to manage) OR since the licenses are all paid for as full desktop/server installs and the W7 instances are NOT at VL pricing you'd have to talk to MSFT about ownership transfer but it really depends on the buyer's needs as well as me being able to leverage resources.

The new buyer could have VL Agreement + MSDN and have unused VL that could be shifted around, etc.

The new buyer could also just buy the hardware as-is and pay a small one-time transfer fee.

The new buyer could also arrange (between MSFT & I) to have all of the software images destroyed and deal with everything on their own.

FWIW, if you try and activate over 25 or so consecutive licenses using a MSDN number they shut you down or you have to call your rep and explain yourself. With MSFT you always have to ask permission first rather than try and beg for forgiveness later.

As I said, when this was built it was before they had sorted out volume licensing for virtual OS so this is a unique circumstance where essentially each instance is its own OEM license key (which we integrated into my VLA for tracking purposes. The OEM license policy allows you to upgrade, change, replace, etc. your machine and hardware so it is technically transferable but on a limited basis.

Quote from GTS:

Isn't using MSDN licenses for anything other than software design, development or testing a violation?

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/subscriptions/cc150618.aspx
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In most cases, MSDN subscriptions come with “perpetual” use rights—the ability to continue using the software after the subscription has expired, even though the ability to download software and product keys ends when the subscription expires. An expired subscriber can only use software that was available during the subscription term for the subscription level purchased; software released after subscription expiration cannot be used. MSDN subscriptions offered through retail channels and most Volume Licensing programs (Enterprise Agreement, Select, Select Plus, Open Value, Open, etc.) come with perpetual use rights unless otherwise specified. Certain "subscription" Volume Licensing programs (Enterprise Agreement Subscription, Open Value Subscription, Open Subscription, Campus Agreement, etc.) as well as subscriptions offered through the Microsoft Partner Network do not have perpetual use rights, so it is necessary to renew the subscription or program membership in order to continue using the software. If you sell or transfer a subscription to another party, any perpetual use rights are transferred to the new party so you would need to purchase a new subscription in order to continue using the software.




You can't just bang in a MSDN number and activate 180 W7 instances... they would kill the number before the 30th one hit the internet.

Also - there is a possibility that a buyer could just lease the system as-is and have no licensing concerns at all.

Anyone who is going to buy (or sell) something like this isn't going to mess around. At $130 per W7 x64 Pro license the 180 VMs cost almost as much as I'm asking for the whole thing.

Add in the Office 2007 licenses + antivirus and I'm pretty sure close to $50k of software theft is a felony. This is 100% above-board.
 
Quote from WinstonTJ:

To be clear i did say VL + msdn
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Actually you said "MSDN Volume-License" and you kept repeating how the new owner would need their own MSDN licenses and made it pretty clear you are using MSDN licenses currently.

I don't see how MSDN can have any place in the production environment you are describing, they are for development only. Or maybe its changed since the last time I used it (as a developer)
 
If you want to send me a PM or email about this I'm happy to discuss more offline about the specifics.

Ultimately the buyer and I (with guidance from MSFT) will have to decide how to deal with the licensing.

Are you interested in the item for sale or do you just keep posting about MSDN to try and prove a point or de-rail the thread?

Quote from GTS:

Actually you said "MSDN Volume-License" and you kept repeating how the new owner would need their own MSDN licenses and made it pretty clear you are using MSDN licenses currently.

I don't see how MSDN can have any place in the production environment you are describing, they are for development only. Or maybe its changed since the last time I used it (as a developer)
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I don't know why you are even mentioning software, you are selling hardware and any sysadmin worth his salt would completely wipe and re-install everything from scratch so its a moot issue.
 
Well, VMware ESXi 5.0 Enterprise Plus is worth a lot, too, if it's the licensed version and not an eval. Several thousand dollars per server.
 
Quote from loufah:

Well, VMware ESXi 5.0 Enterprise Plus is worth a lot, too, if it's the licensed version and not an eval. Several thousand dollars per server.
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GTS is pretty spot-on.

Most of it will need to be taken over by the new owner.

If someone were to buy just the "bare ****l" then this whole thing isn't worth much more than $16k max. If you want to assume ESXi 5.0 Ent + that will be 100% on the end-user.

The ONLY wiggle room in this is that MSFT has been very lienient with the W7 licenses not requiring them to be converted to Enterprise and because of this they can be transferred - this is ONLY the case because the system was built prior to volume license being available so this was 100% retail licenses and/or converted DP W7 images.

You can legally own the licensed copies of W7 that reside on the system and simply revert back to the initial snapshots taken upon initial setup.

I think the only ESX free/eval you can get is ESX4 not ESXi5. But I could be wrong - for this you'll need at a minimum ESXi 5 Enterprise but Ent Plus is recommended so you can maintain full fail-over and high availability.
 
I would be willing to pay $ 100 plus shipping for one of your used computers. I think this is a very fair price. Plus I will throw in one used Maxim magazine. This magazine when new sold for good money. Now used its probably worth $ 10,000.
 
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