Thanks for reaching out, Dr. Manweiler, and great question. Unfortunately, OS Support and options for COAX DVR cards are very minimal. That said, there are several analog camera to IP camera converters on the market. A couple of caveats to keep in mind: some of the universal ones don’t work as well across all models, and if you can find one specifically made by the manufacturer of the analog camera you already have, go with that. Also, these converters can be expensive – you may have to do a cost-benefit analysis to see if the cost of the converters exceeds the cost of just buying a new round of digital cameras. I would start with a Google search, “convert analog camera to IP camera.” A couple of product options and literature look like a good place to start. Thanks again, and we hope this helps!

— TechMike

Hi Michael. Thanks for the comment below and the feedback on the storage needed. If you increase the drives on our build to 1 TB, as you suggest, that will give you a total of 10 TB (for only an additional $5 per drive as of this writing). You could even add 2TB SAS drives – although the price is a big jump. If more storage is required, we have the R720, R730 servers with 8 to 12 3.5" drive bays where we can install 4TB, 6TB, 8TB and 10TB drives. The WD storage calculator is a great tool. Thanks for sharing.
As for WD Purple Drives, yes, they are specifically designed for surveillance storage. We don’t usually get them in our refurbishing pipeline, so we recommended SAS (Enterprise) drives as they are built for very high read & write thresholds. (PS, our return rate on hard drives is <1%). Thanks again for this comment – feedback like this helps us make our blog an excellent resource for our customers!

— TechMike

Hey Angelo,

The low profile heatinks are really intended for use with the 4x mid bay drive cage. They won’t really help to get more air back to the rear flexbay SSDs. Just make sure the air flow is not blocked in the front or back of the server. The chassis fans will provide cooling to the entire chassis. You could try removing the air shroud and monitor the CPU and SSD temperatures to see if that makes any difference. However, we prefer keeping the servers as Dell engineered them.

— TechMike

Hi Bob. Thanks for the comment. We read the guidance on VMWare’s site, and it looks like, just as you said, future versions of ESXi will lose the SD media boot functionality. Thanks for the heads-up and sharing your YouTube channel – it looks like a wealth of info. We’ve subscribed! Thanks again!

— TechMike

Hi Marc. Thank you for asking! No, it is not possible to change just the front drive bays. You would need to swap the entire chassis.

— TechMike

Hi Jason. Thanks for your question! R720s and R730s have different power supplies and backplanes, so installing an R730 motherboard into an R720 chassis probably would not work. That being said, we have not found a reason to attempt a swap like this, since the form factors of the servers are almost identical.

— TechMike

Hi Jared,

Usually Dell and HP servers and parts are proprietary to their chassis.

Even if you find a chassis that is large enough to hold the motherboard, to 100% secure your motherboard in your system, the chassis would have to be from one of the manufacturers.

Parts lists can be found on Dell and HP websites and searching for a server of the same model.

— TechMike

Hi Jared. Thanks for reaching out. The PE M905 is a Blade server. From our experience with Blade servers, the system board is a different design with different dimensions from rack server boards. It would almost certainly not fit. Sorry!

— TechMike

Thanks for your comment below, Paul. We couldn’t agree more on reading up on the pros and cons of having your own home server/homelab. (P.S., see our blog post which covers this in some detail, “Advantages, and Some Considerations, for Using a Home Server.”). As for your T710, I don’t think we could help as 11th Gen Dells are pretty much out of the secondary market now. That said, you would be able to use that RAM in a 12th Gen server if you’re looking to reuse some of the parts. Thanks for inquiring nonetheless!

— TechMike

That’s a good question below, Clyde, and great food for thought. We think it’s pretty safe for a couple of reasons. Server fans are capable of running extremely fast, usually around 10,000 RPM. We don’t think the air from the canister is causing them to blow much faster than that. Also, what seems to be most effective is not a direct shot on the fan but instead blowing around the corners and seams of the fan chassis – that’s where most of the dust has accumulated (P.S., for really dirty fan blades, you can also use a Q-Tip). As for the fans turning in a different direction from what they usually do, that shouldn’t cause any structural damage to the fan since they are mechanically capable of spinning in either direction. Thanks again for the query! Good stuff!

— TechMike

Hi Richard. Thanks for the comment below. The blower is an electronic compressed air duster. You can use any compressed air canister; we use the rechargeable electronic ones in our warehouse due to the volume of prepping and cleaning our techs perform. As for the rectangular vac, you can use any handheld vac with a slim nozzle, like a Dustbuster. The idea is to capture dust in hard-to-reach places and dust blown into the air, so it doesn’t settle back into the machine. Hope that helps!

— TechMike

Hi Tommy. Thank you so much for the kind words! We’re so glad we could help you out.

— TechMike

Thanks for the positive comments below, guys. Much appreciated!

— TechMike

Hi Joanne. Thanks for the comment below. It’s me. Hope all is well. Need a vacation to visit sometime!

— TechMike

Thanks for sharing below, Mike. Good to hear that the 10K and 15K SAS platter drives worked well and could be an alternative to SSDs. 400 movies/70K songs is quite a collection!

— TechMike

Hi Mike. Thanks for your question below. The frame of the chassis is the limitation. The R630 has a version that could take one half-height slot and one full-height/full-width slot. From what you describe, it sounds like your R630 chassis is the version that ONLY takes the half-height cards. The good news is that we can often accommodate customers who have specific riser needs when buying PCIe cards from us. Drop us a line at info@techmikeny.com.

— TechMike