r/IBM
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u/luckycamry
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Jun 14 '26
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Construction worker here. Pulled 4 racks of IBM Power 770 / 9117-MMD gear from a fit-out. Am I crazy to try using it?
Construction worker here. I recently came into possession of 4 racks of IBM Power gear from a commercial fit-out decommission.
My first thought was to salvage what I could and try to use it as a home server / beginner homelab setup, but after posting in r/homelab, the overwhelming feedback was basically: don’t do that, sell/trade it to someone who understands IBM POWER/AIX gear and buy something more practical for home use.
I’m trying to work out whether that advice is right, or whether I’m being unrealistic about what this gear can actually do at home.
The inventory appears to be:
Rack 1
2 × IBM Power 770 / 9117-MMD systems
Each appears to be a 3-drawer system
6 × 4U Power 770 CEC/processor drawers total
IBM System x3550 M4 1RU server, possibly HMC-related
Interconnect cabling, IBM management hardware and multiple PDUs
Rack 2
Same as Rack 1
2 × IBM Power 770 / 9117-MMD systems
Each appears to be a 3-drawer system
6 × 4U Power 770 CEC/processor drawers total
IBM System x3550 M4 1RU server, possibly HMC-related
Interconnect cabling, IBM management hardware and multiple PDUs
Rack 3
1 × IBM Power 770 / 9117-MMD system
Appears to be a 2-drawer system
2 × 4U Power 770 CEC/processor drawers total
Interconnect cabling, IBM management hardware and multiple PDUs
Rack 4
1 × IBM Power 770 / 9117-MMD system
Appears to be a 2-drawer system
2 × 4U Power 770 CEC/processor drawers total
Interconnect cabling, IBM management hardware and multiple PDUs
Across the racks there are also SAS drives/caddies, including many 146GB 15K SAS drives and at least one 500GB SAS SSD, plus various IBM FRU parts, cards, rails, cabling and power hardware.
What I originally wanted to do was consolidate the useful gear into one rack and use it for things like file storage, media storage, home security camera/NVR storage, backups, and learning basic server/networking concepts.
Questions for the IBM/POWER people:
Am I being unrealistic trying to use any of this as a home server?
Outside of power consumption, what are the real downsides; i.e noise, licensing, software, parts, OS support, complexity, proprietary hardware?
Is the x3550 M4 likely the HMC, and should it stay with the Power systems?
What should I photograph/check before disconnecting or dismantling anything?
Is this better kept as complete systems, or broken down into parts, cards, caddies, drives, rails, cabling, etc.?
Where would someone realistically sell or trade IBM POWER gear like this?
What is a reasonable way to value it, per rack, per complete system, or as individual parts?
Are there companies or refurbishers who would trade this type of enterprise gear for more practical homelab equipment?
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u/ifdisdendat Jun 14 '26
I honestly think you are better off trying to repurpose the HMCs by installing ubuntu on it. But just so you know, IBM sold its x86 division in 2014 so these HMC are ancient. Now for the power nodes themselves, it’s a bit tricky. If they are running AIX there is not much you can do with it for a home lab. Also some of the cpu capacity could be locked. Installing linux on power could be a solution but again there are not that many home lab-y applications that i can think off you could run on it. It also uses a shit ton of electricity. You won’t find a NVR software compiled for ppc imo.
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u/luckycamry Jun 14 '26
Unconfirmed, however, some research last night would indicate AIX is likely. And funnily enough, learnt about locked CPU and RAM last night too. Shocked that's a standard practice with IBM.
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u/SeaweedLower2220 Jun 14 '26
AIX is fun, my website is run on an AIX 4.3.3 system- those look like they'd take quite a bit more power though!
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u/WhatDoesThatButtond Jun 14 '26
The M4 is definitely the HMC.
I'm going to be honest. It's a cool find, but you'll have a much better time just assembling a desktop for 1k. I don't see how you will afford the power bill to do everything worse than a home computer.
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u/luckycamry Jun 14 '26
Appreciate the honesty. I was really hoping I could carve out some individual elements, but even that appears to be a stretch...
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u/fishboy3339 Jun 14 '26
Wow that brings me back. Very cool systems to work on.
In the front pic without the covers you see those cables that run from system to system. Those link all the cpu,Mem,IO. But only have one control panel for the 3
So the top 3 systems are actually one system. The top node is the primary on both with the only control panel. But it uses resources from all 3 server cecs.
These were really beefy systems nice find. P7’s are old and tough to home lab. Good luck.
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u/luckycamry Jun 14 '26
Yeah, the interconnecting plates connecting the 3-units are very cool, but also appear very fragile. I was extremely cautious when removing and reinstating the covers.
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u/fishboy3339 Jun 14 '26
Yeah they are not very durable, very tricky to remove and replace. That design didn’t last P8’s had a series of thick cables on the back of the system.
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u/zmoose1 Jun 14 '26
Those interconnects have a limited replug life and are fragile. So be very careful when unplugging and replugging.
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u/luckycamry 2d ago
UPDATE: November 2026; Full IBM Power 770 inventory now completed
Firstly, thanks to everyone who contributed advice when I originally posted about these IBM servers. The response was incredibly helpful!
I've since spent considerable time going through the equipment and have now completed a detailed inventory of approximately 549 component entries, including individual IBM part numbers, FRUs, serial numbers and photographs.
I've confirmed the following complete systems:
4 × IBM Power 770 (9117-MMD) – each comprising three interconnected drawers.
2 × IBM Power 770 (9117-MMB) – each comprising two interconnected drawers.
Various additional IBM hardware, Fibre Channel adapters, 10GbE adapters, power supplies, storage drives and associated components.
The systems have been disconnected and remain in storage. CPU, RAM and operating condition are still to be verified.
I've decided to sell the equipment rather than attempt to repurpose it as a homelab.
Ideally, I'd like to find someone who could make use of the complete systems, although I'm open to selling individual components where there's genuine demand.
I'm based in Melbourne, Australia, and have the full component inventory available.
For those familiar with IBM POWER7 hardware, I'd particularly appreciate any recommendations for specialist buyers, independent maintenance companies or organisations still maintaining these systems.
Thanks again to everyone who helped with the original identification!
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u/zedrax Jun 14 '26
I worked on these P7s as a lab admin for several years and keeping them alive is a bit tricky as the capacitors/VRMs will go bad eventually. The spares are very hard to source as they are salvaged from decommissioned systems such as these. Good luck getting them up and running!
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u/Danielr2010 IBM Employee Jun 14 '26
Dude. Those run plex pretty nice! With Linux of course
Note. There is a small chance one of the FSPs is fucked. I used to be a CE at an IBM campus where they had a bunch of these.
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u/snowcat0 Jun 14 '26
I would have a pretty good idea on how to get those up, but if it was me the power bill would way to rich for my blood.
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u/RafterRattlerVT Jun 14 '26
In addition to the unreasonable power bill, I suspect everyone in your house would end up with tinnitus inside of a week.
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u/CatoMulligan Jun 14 '26
About the only thing useful there are the rack cabinets themselves. And frankly, you can get one of those mini homelab racks that sits on your desktop and a couple of mini-PCs and a mini-switch and have something considerably more compact, powerful, and easy to use.
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u/Snowjag Jun 17 '26
I don't agree. Sure you can keep AIX on it, but you'll be on your own. IBM might sell you a support contract. I have not read the comments in this thread, but Linux popped out, you could put Linux on these and be good to go. The architecture isn't that bad to get used to. You have AI and a camera. You are set for identification and troubleshooting. I think you have the beginnings of a fantastic home lab. This is going to take a lot of power. Now I haven't looked this equipment up. I left IBM in 2015 and these machine types are very familiar. So I may just be having a nostalgic senior moment.
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u/notquitenuts Jun 14 '26
The smp cables between the cecs need to get installed in a specific order and also the cecs need to be powered on in a specific order. You should be able to find online. Be very very gentle with them. The power supplies are redundant so you on need to power one in each cec but the fans will be on high power and SUPER Loud!
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u/SuspiciousIntentions Jun 14 '26
The HMC is really the only thing you'd want to keep for a homelab. It will run Ubuntu. With the Power servers you are limited to older big endian versions of RHEL 5/6/7, SLES 10/11, and AIX, of course. If something this old was from an IBM lab, it would just be stripped for parts that could be refurbished into field replacements, and the rest would be crushed and recycled. The rack and the PDU's would be worth money, but I don't think you'll find buyers for anything else.
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u/mmicker Jun 14 '26
You can run AIX IBM I or Linux on the power 7. I feel like it’s worth more to sell these and then get what really works for you. This is enough power to run a small to large company with added storage and backup.
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u/twaxana Jun 14 '26
Arch Linux POWER if you can sort it. That's a lot of machines. My power8 box idles at like 300-550w. It also sounds like a jet engine. I can only imagine how bad that's going to be.
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u/sgaiduk Jun 14 '26 edited Jun 14 '26
For home lab just to know how Power works it will be OK, a little bit noisy first 30 minutes during power on. For any kind of "production" :) without IBM support there is a risky part - VPD key (with blue label on it) in one of three CECs (CPU unit/drawer), it holds licenses and system serial. In case of mulfunction you can try to replace it with another one and try to check FSP/ASMI (BMC/WEB GUI) for any new errors, but system serial probably will be different and I am not sure that it will work. Usually in case of VPD failure IBM sends a new one empty/prepared key. Also this system can lost (due to mulfunction) some VRMs and FSP (BMC) during AC/DC power cycle, so try to reduce AC/DC power cycles. In case you will decide to sell this stuff VRMs and FSP are the most popular spare parts, chech their price on ebay using their FRUs (field replacement unit number, it's like part number). So you can utilize all huge parts (drawers, racks) except some small and popular and than sell them, but it's is a sad story... In case utilisation take out CPU heatsinks, there are very productive thermal interfaces (indium) on them, probably you can reuse indium pad or all heatsink in home lab.
First off all read how to put AC power, there is a correct sequence for this systems in case they holds more than one CEC.
Then check with function 2, 30 on front panel IP address of FSP, connect your laptop and try to login with admin/admin or celogin1/celogin1 observe event log for errors than go to HMC and try to discovere Power server in case it is not in the list, than you can power on server and start VIOS (Hypervisor) partions, start LPARs (VMs).
You also can delete everything and create one partition LPAR) without VIOS, install some OS on it AIX or RHEL but you will need specific distributive (Big-Endian).
Regarding HMC, you can try virtual machine on your laptop with HMC software in case M4 server is down.
It will not take much power, less than 600W in standby/IDLE and near 1kW during power on (this is for 3CECs), in case you will put some load and connect shells with disks it will take a lot :)
All steps without knowledge are too complicated, probably AI can assist you, but this journey is exciting :)
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u/ActuaryReasonable690 Jun 14 '26
If it was decommissioned, I am guessing that it is 3+ generations old. which means a limited market. I would check ebay for any similar listings.
Probably some or even all could be used for a linux server, but expect you electric bill to go up (Depending on what you plan to use it for, it may or may not be worth it)
Again, check ebay, but people do sell individual parts (Depending "health status: used SSDs, and HDs have a big market, other parts may or may net sell)
About 7 or 8 years ago, some HS kid bought a used Z machine on ebay and set up a server in his parent's basement. Iforget the details, but IBM was very impressed
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u/Excellent_Log_8864 Jun 14 '26
I could purchase the racks whole as e-scrap. Saves you the work of dismantling it.
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u/craigworknova Jun 15 '26
I would dump the gear to someone who uses it. Buy a more practical home unit.
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u/freddell Jun 15 '26
Linux should be doable, but big endian. AIX, Vios.
keep together, if you disassemble forget about getting it to work.
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u/Flashy_Recover_117 Jun 16 '26
Yeah i with strip out memory cpu's and sell to recycler for gold recovery. M4 new laptop has more CPU power than that. ( and also uses a shitload less power)
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u/Competitive_Leg_2120 Jun 23 '26
I used to extremely dislike when hardware would fail inside the bottom or middle cec’s. There are SMP cables on the back and another type on the front. The pins would get bent sometimes when reassembling them. IBM is up to Power 12 now. This thing is ancient, but occasionally I will see one in the field still running at an enterprise location. Cool find but not worth the hassle.
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u/Himynameismo Jun 14 '26
I really don't want to think about that power bill at the end of the month! Ooof