4 GB, no disks (got some spare from an old work server), dual 3.2GHz processors.  £130 for all three including P&P.  Sweet.

May have to shine them up and pass them off as mirrors to the girlfriend to avoid a diplomatic incident between Britain and the Czech Republic

The missing power supply modules arrived, but they didn’t come with in the enclosing rack full of monitoring electronics they live in.  Cheapest on eBay is £650!  All I need is 48 Volts and plenty of Amps.  Time to find a standalong power supply nearby.

And I got one!  Went to Caterham to pick it up.  It’s a quality piece of German kit, ex-telecomms, £60, and nice and quiet.  Game on.

After a bit of traditional bit of British-Bodgery, I hacked some meaty cables from the bus bar that came with the blade enclosure.  Frighteningly thick and chunky, like they’d use  in a Texan prison.

While waiting for the PSU to arrive, I wanted to choose an operating system.  Had to be Linux because it’s free and also one project I’m interested in, Hadoop, is for Linux only.

I looked into RedHat Enterprise (RHEL), but that looked like it costs to get updates and patches.  While looking I came across Centos, which is a free RHEL.  Downloaded the disk images all ready.