Dell C2100 Server for VM storage

[cyberjock]

Everyone else already answered.. but what they said is correct. :)

 

[depasseg]

How much power does a chassis like that use? Two(!) 1200 Watt PSUs.

And you would use this simply as an enclosure for the additional drives, right? How does one make the connection from the "main" machine to this enclosure? Or do you relocate the existing motherboard to this chassis?

Depends on the # of drives, but a 12 drive system would be in the ~120-150 watt range at idle.

The SC846 is a server, so they come with a motherboard and cpus (of varying performance and capacity). Some of them are barebones, so you would need to add your own.

 

[NeuroPsyche]

Hello everyone,

My IT department is looking to purchase the Dell PowerEdge C2100 seen here: http://www.deepdiscountservers.com/dell-poweredge-c2100-fs12-ty-lff-12-port.html

The purpose would be to use this server mainly for storage for our VM cluster. We currently have 3 host ESXi servers and would like to use this new C2100 as a SAN for those 3 ESXi host servers.

We wanted to get advice and ask if this is possible with this hardware:
Processor: Intel Xeon X5650 2.66GHz 12MB L3 Cache LGA 1366 95W Hex-Core BX80614X5650
RAM: 48 GB DDR3 1066 ECC
12 Hard Drives with 2 TB each

We we're also told that we should NOT use a hardware based raid but instead use a software based Raid Z2.
Would we encounter any problems using this box as a SAN for our VM host servers? Any other recommendations for our build?

Thank you all for your time and assistance!

Best,
Steven

If you didn't already buy these I'd really think twice about it.
The FS12-ty series that are on ebay are mostly 'custom built' systems that cannot be flashed, cannot be updated, and there is no bios for them.
The perc or H7## cards have special firmware that match that of the bios on the EMC controller and motherboard. You can't even take a plane-jane H700 controller or perc card and put in these if your controller goes bad.

Dell will not even talk to you once you give them the tag number.
I know you probably think ... hey, anything can get support and there's tons of stuff for the C2100 units... But, in actuality the ads you see on ebay are lies, they're CS2100 units. They leave out the S for 'storage' Cloud Storage.
There's C2100 units and then their is CS2100 units (which are the FS12-ty units)

 

[devilkin1911]

If you didn't already buy these I'd really think twice about it.
The FS12-ty series that are on ebay are mostly 'custom built' systems that cannot be flashed, cannot be updated, and there is no bios for them.
The perc or H7## cards have special firmware that match that of the bios on the EMC controller and motherboard. You can't even take a plane-jane H700 controller or perc card and put in these if your controller goes bad.

Dell will not even talk to you once you give them the tag number.
I know you probably think ... hey, anything can get support and there's tons of stuff for the C2100 units... But, in actuality the ads you see on ebay are lies, they're CS2100 units. They leave out the S for 'storage' Cloud Storage.
There's C2100 units and then their is CS2100 units (which are the FS12-ty units)

I guess I got lucky, ordered my C2100 server last year (my C2100 FN box is 1 year old now!) and it wasnt a CS2100. I got mine with an H200 card which I had to update the firmware on (wasnt recognizing the 3TB disks I was installing). I didn't realize it at the time but the version used was not the correct one:

"WARNING: Firmware version 7 does not match driver version 16 for /dev/mps0"

I never got that warning until I upgraded to 9.3, I'm too afraid of bricking my system as I dont have the time to recover it, waiting till I can get another FreeNAS server and migrate over, THEN fix the firmware issues. It has been working flawlessly over the last year so I say "if it aint broke, dont fix it"

In any event, it works out very well for my vmware needs. My configuration is as followed:

RAIDZ2: 6x 3TB Seagate NAS drives (unknown on the model) - General storage, media storage
striped-mirror: 4x 1TB drives - iSCSI storage
24GB memory
L5520 @ 2.27GHz (go for the L56XX processors for low power/heat, the L55XX is not good for that)
Intel Pro/1000 quad port

I service up the iSCSI to 1 ESXi home lab over 3 MPIO connections on separate, segregated dumb switches, working on seeing if I can set it up as shared storage to my second ESXi server.
Speeds are roughly 170MB/sec random QD32 and sequential, random sits at about 14MB/sec.

(on a different note, sorry for the necro post!)

 

[Ericloewe]

"WARNING: Firmware version 7 does not match driver version 16 for /dev/mps0"

I never got that warning until I upgraded to 9.3, I'm too afraid of bricking my system as I dont have the time to recover it, waiting till I can get another FreeNAS server and migrate over, THEN fix the firmware issues. It has been working flawlessly over the last year so I say "if it aint broke, dont fix it"

P7... Sounds like Dell's custom firmware (or positively ANCIENT LSI firmware - which would probably not work well at all). You should crossflash the card to LSI SAS 9211 IT mode, to be able to track the correct firmware for FreeNAS' driver (P16 for 9.2.1.something and 9.3, P20 for 9.3.1).

 

[Mirfster]

Just to add to this thread, I use/love the C2100. I have four (4) of them and one is currently running FreeNas (see this thread: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/design-review.38692/#post-237359). Only issue I saw was when there was a Perc H700 and the H200 Mezz card in there together it would cause actual system memory loss/errors. However, since I don't need the H700 for FreeNas, that is not an issue; I just removed it.

Systems are super quite (as long as you use an older BMC firmware < 1.8... I use 1.7.x or lower). As far as system BIOS, there is one that can be obtained and works fine. It is BIOS C99Q3B23 or S99Q3B16...

As far as DeepDiscountServers, yes they are the same ones I purchase from on EBay and I have never had any issues with their systems. No, I am not affiliated or work for them either.

 

[sactobob]

Late to this post, but it seems everyone is mostly posting here regarding the Dell FS12-TY C2100 (not the one that stacks the drives vertical, this is 4 hard drives across, 3 down. I feel comfortable with this platform, but just to re-iterate what others have said, dump the H700 like it's the plague. Very bad for FreeNAS, doesn't work at all, I was able to reproduce seg-faults just by removing a drive. Configuring an H700 with Raid0 drives is a recipe for disaster. Use the H200, flash it first following my step-by-step tutorial here: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/how-to-flashing-a-dell-h200-with-a-dell-r610.32919/

I did this on an R610, when my C2100 arrives I'll have another H200 to test with and flash. If the C2100 won't take it I can use my spare desktop used in those instructions. My configuration will be 2x8gb usb for OS, 8x3tb in a stripe/mirror (12tb usable) and 3x512gb Samsung SSD pro in Raidz1 (1tb usable), 64gb ECC mem and 2x5630 CPUs. I will use the stripe/mirror for hot replication backups and SSDs for NFS mounts and some live VM images. Previously I ran FreeNAS on a Dell R610 for about 72 hours running disk i/o and build worlds and saw good performance. No hiccups after going to H200. I'll work the C2100 for a week or so before putting into use and will post some stats/experience when done.

Like the OP and others, I also get all my hardware from Deep Discount Servers on Ebay. They have a great inventory, ship quickly and are nice to deal with. Do yourself a favor and get spares as well. I typically go with extra mem, 2 extra power supplies (I've found PSes are the most likely fail point), and a spare chassis with CPUs. I hate moving CPUS from chassis to chassis and spending an extra $500 for a duplicate server (If you're going used), is definitely a good investment.

Let me also give a sales pitch for a backup application. I currently have 3 VM nodes (Essentials) and 2 HyperV nodes. I searched and tried several packages, you can spend some nutty cash here if you want, but I certainly can't afford that. I initially tried one that was $99 a node and $49 for the backup server called Cloud Backo. They have very good support, but when running this and inspecting the data this software creates 1000s (and I mean 1000s) of tiny 10mb files per VM, the format is completely useless and you must restore the VM using their software. Speed was not all that great, it did support compression and CBT (not for Free ESXI). I determined though it was not the backup software for me. <salesmodeon>I ended up finding a package called VMExplorer by Trilead. The software/license is $790 and gives you unlimited nodes for both ESXI/HyperV. It has a VM agent that supports server to server backups and replication. You can also backup to anything the backup server sees, local and remote HDs. Local backups and replications can also be incremental, it also uses CBT. What I like about the backups is in looking at the data files they are pretty much the same VM images/files for the VM copied (after snapshot) to the local HD. IE, you can copy these files over to a VM store and spin up a VM from them. They also have an explorer that you can double-click on the hd image and browse through the files (Some unix platforms not supported) and restore single files. You can also opt to put the backup files in compressed form (gz) understanding you lose the ease of file-by-file backup. However, I've unziped the images to a new directory and they can then be browsed again. The images on a server-to-server backup can be used to create a new VM direct, Replication does that too putting a (replicated) tag in front of the VM name. I can't say enough about this package, it definitely is worth looking at if you have a mix of ESXI/HyperV servers. Even just for ESXI is very cost effective compared to some of the others. The reports html/email as well as general GUI are very polished.</salesmodeoff>