What to do with these old machines?

[arturokamakazi]

Hello, I have some old computer hardware which still works but have no idea what to do with them. So I thought why not ask around. Here is what I have:

• (1) hp xw8600 workstation two cpu x5420 32GB ddr2 RAM. I can't use vmware workstation 14 or above and vmware esxi 6.5 and above because the processor is old and no longer supported.
• (3) hp proliant dl160 1u blades 1 cpu 5300 16GB ddr2 and four 300GB 15K rpm disks on each one. Because HP split enterprise from desktop, I can't download new firmware to update bios because HPE now requires you to have a warranty support contract which I'm not doing for old crap like this. I can install centos 7 but have to install the raid drivers for the p400 card first using DVD. Can't boot from USB because bios is old and doesn't support it.
• (1) Dell PowerEdge 860 with 1GB DDR2 ram and a one dual core intel pentium D 3.60GHz processor. I thought of buying a xeon x3020 processor and four 2GB ddr2 sticks and turn it into a pfsense or sophos utm router/firewall since it has four nics total.

I was thinking of installing proxmox on the hp xw8600 and add the dl160 blades as hosts for any type of testing, but I just don't know if its worth it considering the hardware is old by today's standards. Any thoughts?

 

[Phillip Corcoran]

Donate to a third-world country (via a charitable organisation, search with Google) where kids & their parents can't afford even basic IT stuff --- they'll be delighted and it's a worthy cause so you can feel proud of yourself.

 

[jsmithepa]

I don't know even third world can use old computers, I mean the first time they try to get on the web, all they gonna see is "Your browser is no longer supported blah-blah."