IBM System x3650 M2 Restoration: Part 1

Restoring an IBM System x3650 M2 enterprise server from 2010.

Rack stuff

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Music by Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio

[balloth]

As a former mechanic, the dirt remind me the kind of dirt that you can find in automobile workshop, a mix of dust (from brake pad etc) and old grease/oil sludge.

[maxvideodrome]

This is a server from "CDK" (formerly ADP). DMS = Dealer Management System. They are often found at car dealerships in North America. Past few years they have moved 'serverless' now relying on SD-WAN. I encounter these all the time. As far as the IBM 3650m2 - it was a solid machine. I still have one running at my office, we will decommission it. The IP address on the front of the server is likely not reachable via the Internet. CDK (ADP) used a Cisco WAN to extend that IP address out to the dealership. Controls printers and communication to/from the CDK data center.

[varekb]

My first thought with this is smoke damage. While this server obviously wasn’t burning, I wonder if something near it caught fire and had to be extinguished. That might explain the minor moisture damage and soot (maybe?) inside. Enjoying the restoration and looking forward to part 2.

[Connor-Pilling]

Ahhh this is perfect love this older server hardware as a 23 year old in a data center

[k-a]

My hands started drying up uncomfortably while I was watching you clean the thing with IPA and contact cleaner. Wear gloves my man!
Awesome job, regardless of the hand-drying horrors haha :)

[juanpablomartinezmahecha]

i still have one of these on service for a customer, the CISCO MCS 7800 / IBM X3650 M2, the cisco label one, what a realible machine

[annihilatorg]

100% car dealership server for ADP's dealer management service (DMS). That exhaust dust gets everywhere and sticks. They spun off the DMS under their subsidiary, CDK.

[POVwithRC]

I appreciate you courting old-age cancer for our entertainment today. Your workshop is now a superfund candidate.

[jdebultra]

Neat. ADP sold a lot of these to Dealerships. They provided their software to service and body shop, estimate software for certified dealers. Incredible estimating software.

[orune]

This is the server I use for my home NAS, the main difference being its branded by Cisco. Happy to see you restoring it, it's a nice piece of hardware.

[HyperMuffin]

The fact you didn't wear gloves really proves there is a thin line between madness and bravery

[LeeZhiWei]

AHHH, I love this! When I was working, (part time) when I was 12, the company was using X3650 M4's for their file servers, and even Active Directory :P on Server 2012 R2, in 2018... It's a small company but janky... They got a Synology iSCSI with only 1 PSU running, which was like damn... Great video btw. Awesome job.

[Frankfurtdabezzzt]

Loving the content. As a former techie that now rarely gets to touch the hardware part of the environment, this really is the stuff.

[ConnerWithAnE_]

The excitement I am feeling, unmatched, new clabretro video, let’s go

[whette_fahrtz]

For that gunk I probably would've chanced an "Adrian's Digital Basement" style wash with dish soap, water, and a very soft bristled brush for that mainboard, then an IPA dunk for drying. Yikes! Either way, nice cleanup job, that's a big board with a lot of things to go wrong.I think the theories of a datacenter fire are likely true, either that or a long stay in a stack in a humid environment with a lot of other crap in the air (my first thought was also that that grime looks a lot like auto shop/garage grime).

Very happy to have this channel recommended to me by the YT algo (it gets it right every once in a while!). Excellent mix of expertise, curiosities, and that liitle bit of jank that every good homelab should have.

[willross]

Hey, me again... So what you have here is a server that ran a DMS, dealer management system. I am not sure what the product was called when ADP owned it, but nowadays the division was sold off to a company called CDK Global, and the new iteration of the software is called Drive. I haven't watched the video yet but it will be running a heavily customized version of CentOS (or maybe RHEL) I believe. This was absolutely located in a dealership of some kind, I am intimately familiar with the software. The software manages the entire dealership from service department, to part sales and inventory, HR and payroll...all text menu (green screen) driven. There is almost certainly data on those drives. I actually work for a dealership (as IT) and one of the first things we did during my employment was migrate away from this CDK drive into a platform called Excede. The dealership had migrated away from autonet years prior in favor of SD-WAN. Autonet was really just T1. I still have a working instance of drive running if you wanted a closer look, but its not very exciting stuff.

[simon]

Man, I love enterprise gear! Everything is so thought through and modular.

[semi_silent]

That server looks like it was though a fire. The grime is soot and smoke residue and the water damage is from sprinklers. That would be my guess at least.

[wesley]

I love the industrial design of servers

[JMassengill]

That looks like 1000 people smoked a pack of smokes near that server. ACK. Great video