Questions about Dell T5500 workstation before purchase.

Yes. It has enough power to be used as an experimental/test/lab server, but I wouldn't ever consider running anything "in production" on a single system, let alone one not designed for that kind of "pressure".

1. This "workstation" is basically server hardware designed and validated to run CLIENT operating systems, for reasons of performance (drafting, design, rendering, number-crunching, etc.).  It is not designed to act like a server and Server OS's, while they will "probably" work ok on it, were not designed to run on these workstations.  Workstations lack much of the redundancy (redundant memory, power, drives, etc.), performance, and management features of an actual server.

2. Yes, it and its processors support VT.  It is NOT certified by VMware, but will "probably" work fine as a VMware server - much of the hardware (except perhaps the video and/or onboard RAID (if Intel)) should be found separately or as part of other server systems on the HCL.  RHEL 5/6 is the only "officially" supported Linux distro for this machine (by Dell), but again, that doesn't meant that other distros won't work.

3. Yes.

4. I don't have one, but it is "probably" much quieter ... 1) it is a tower which has more room for larger, quieter, more efficient fans, and 2) it is a "desktop" so it is designed to be located at one's desk and not in a server room/rack where noise is generally a small consideration.

Dear Dell Community,

Thank you very much for your quick reply.

You said this is a workstation, not performed the same as a real server. What I want to do is to set up a kind of Cloud Computing IAAS (Infrastructure As A Service) Lab environment to experiment some Cloud Computing features, e.g. virtualisation, scalability, redundancy, high availability, elasticity, hadoop, contextualization, private & public Cloud etc. It doesn't aim to be a real production environment, so do you think this workstation can meet the needs?

Thanks & regards,
Q.D.S.

Dear Dell Community,

Thank you very much for your quick reply.

I have already had one real server, the rack mounted powerful one, and 3 less powerful desktop PCs supporting VT. This Dell workstation will be a lot powerful than the 3 VT-enabled desktops, even though not a real server, so not alone one under the "pressure".

Apart from this workstation, can you recommend other Dell workstation/desktop like PCs that can work the same as a real server?

Best regards,
Q.D.S.

I would never consider anything besides a Precision (T5000 or T7000 series) for this type of use.  Consumer models (Inspiron, XPS, Alienware) and other business models (OptiPlex and Vostro) would be completely unsuitable for the heavy load the Precision and servers are designed for.

The T5500 is discontinued, so you can't buy one "new" or from Dell, but you could look for one second-hand.

Otherwise, you could do a T5600 with a similar configuration for "around" $2,200.  The T5610 is also available, and it has all the latest tech, but the price will be around $800-1000 more than the T5600.

Dear Dell Community,

How much roughly for a brand new of this Dell Precision T5500 workstation with this configuration, if buy from Dell?

Thanks,
Q.D.S.

Dear Dell Community,

The workstation has two SATA hard drives at the moment. I disabled the RAID and installed Ubuntu 12.04 and VMware ESXi 5.0.0 on each hard drive and they work fine.

By the way, the BIOS version is A03. Do I need to upgrade the BIOS? How to do this?

Thanks kindly,
Q.D.S.

I would update the BIOS ... the latest is A16.

I'm not exactly sure what you are asking/trying to do:

RAID 0/1?

"Some hardware/system support the OS without RAID, but may not support OS with RAID."

?

dear dell community,

to make it simple, if enable RAID in BIOS, can install VMware ESXi 5.0.0 or Ubuntu 12.04 onto two hard drives configured as RAID?

Thanks

dear dell community,

i haven't configured RAID before, but i believe it should be easy to do. at the moment i don't want to reinstall the VMware ESXi and Ubuntu just for RAID, but I just want to know whether this workstation can support Ubuntu 12.04 or VMware ESXi 5.0.0 when it is configured as RAID.

at the moment, i don't want to know how to do, just want to know whether or not it can do. i just want to know whether this Dell workstation can do what i expect.

thanks.

The T5500 is not a server and is not on VMware's HCL, but there is no reason that ESXi or Ubuntu should not work, in RAID or not ... they will just have to be installed on separate partitions on the same disk.

Dear Dell Support,

I want to install "Evaluation: Windows 8.1 Enterprise 64 bit" (http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/evalcenter/hh699156.aspx?ocid=wc-tn-wctc) to this Dell Precision T5500 workstation to experiment Microsoft Cloud Computing systems, e.g. Microsoft Windows Azure and Microsoft Hyper-V etc.

In page http://technet.microsoft.com/en-US/windows/dn140267.aspx?ocid=wc-tn-eval, there is hardware requirement for the computer system to install "Windows 8.1 Enterprise 64 bit OS". Can you help to check whether or not this Dell machine meets the hardware requirement for "Windows 8.1 Enterprise 64 bit OS" installation to experiment the above mentions Microsoft Cloud Computing systems?

Thank you very much for your help.

I did this on 2010 machine just bought from ebay using old 2005 hard drive.

It works fine.

Will work better when I replace HHD with new SSD