On Thu, May 2, 2013 at 7:41 PM, Olwe Bottorff <galanolwe at yahoo.com> wrote: > > I just got a used server on Ebay (Dell PowerEdge 2950 II Server Dual Quad Core 2.33GHz SAS SATA - PERC 5i - 16GB)* and am pretty much a total beginner. The hard drives are only 80gb, but there's 6 in a PERC RAID. Q: I'm just wanting to experiment, so, is there a way to yank five of them and just use one hard drive? I'd probably want to upgrade to more space eventually, too. Also, what version of Linux would be a good match? They mention RedHat, but could I just use Ubuntu Server as well? The Dell 2950 is old enough that any modern distro should run just fine. The 2950s are nice servers, the CPUs should support VT and as I recall there is a decent version of DRAC included (onboard if not on its own riser card). As for the drives, when the server boots up you should have the option to hit Ctrl-R toenter the RAID config utility. >From here you can create your logical volumes (remember that the OS will see the logical volumes, not the disks) and you can carve it up to your liking. Good luck! Brian