Dell PowerEdge R710 used as a NAS?

[Cpluse2]

So i finally made to jump with the R710. Received a LSI 9223-8i. At this time I'm looking for the instruction on how to flash this part. But my main question is there a way to disable the Perc 6i Raid Controller with Battery or do have to manually remove it myself. If anyone can post the link on how to flash the LSI 9223 i that would be greatful. At this I'm back racking my step to look for it again. The fun begins. After i get all that done i will do the hardware & software burn in.

 

[pwnerman]

So i finally made to jump with the R710. Received a LSI 9223-8i. At this time I'm looking for the instruction on how to flash this part. But my main question is there a way to disable the Perc 6i Raid Controller with Battery or do have to manually remove it myself. If anyone can post the link on how to flash the LSI 9223 i that would be greatful. At this I'm back racking my step to look for it again. The fun begins. After i get all that done i will do the hardware & software burn in.

you need to physically remove the Perc 6/i from the system. The card you bought will not work in the same slot. You will have to use one of the others. You will also need cables to attach to the card and then to the two connections on the backplane.

As for flashing that card I honestly don't know. You might be better off asking elsewhere for that

 

[Cpluse2]

Lol ya after working with it and taking out the Perc card. i realized it was not the same ports. The cable should be here today. And was able to get the card flashed. I got 6 2tb hard drive. Once i build the dev i will upgrade the drive to 4tb as time goes on. I only have 3x 4tb at this time. This is why i didn't start with them and used the 6x 2tb drive. You been a big help...

If you think of anything that might help or i should look for please let me know. Also wrote down the SN to the car drives also like you said in your post.

 

[pwnerman]

Lol ya after working with it and taking out the Perc card. i realized it was not the same ports. The cable should be here today. And was able to get the card flashed. I got 6 2tb hard drive. Once i build the dev i will upgrade the drive to 4tb as time goes on. I only have 3x 4tb at this time. This is why i didn't start with them and used the 6x 2tb drive. You been a big help...

If you think of anything that might help or i should look for please let me know. Also wrote down the SN to the car drives also like you said in your post.

you did buy two cables to connect to the card and backplane correct? Did you see the ones I linked too? They were on sale for like 5 bucks a pop not more then a few days ago. Also just make sure you don't screw up your system when creating your vdev. Read this powerpoint carefully to fully understand.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzHapVfrocfwblFvMVdvQ2ZqTGM/view

 

[Cpluse2]

You are correct. I purchased 4 of them because they were just $5. I plan on getting another R710 so it was perfect.

Ya i going to create a couple dev and vol with the wizard until i feel i got the hang of it before putting live data.

Edit: It alive it alive. Everything is booting up nice. So far so good all the drive are showing up and Freenas is loading. Thank you again for all the help. I will come back to up date in a few days.

 

[ViciousXUSMC]

Do these standard SFF-8087 cables work on both the 2.5" and 3.5" chasis?
From my reading on other forums/sites the 3.5" chasis takes some kind of 90 degree LFF connection two different ones one reversed from the other.

Just looking to confirm before I buy standard cables and end up out of luck.

 

[pwnerman]

Do these standard SFF-8087 cables work on both the 2.5" and 3.5" chasis?
From my reading on other forums/sites the 3.5" chasis takes some kind of 90 degree LFF connection two different ones one reversed from the other.

Just looking to confirm before I buy standard cables and end up out of luck.

These cables will work in both systems. https://www.monoprice.com/product?c_id=102&cp_id=10254&cs_id=1025410&p_id=8189&seq=1&format=2

While they aren't right angle (was not able to find any long enough for anywhere but the dedicated slot) they work perfectly in the 3.5in version of the R710. (Personally Tested) Even with the connectors standing straight up the lid goes on quite easily without much if any pressure put on the cable. I don't personally own the 2.5in model but looking at pictures online the connectors are horizontal instead of vertical which would not be an issue. I mean it won't be as clean as the right angle ones but the cable can just bend a little and you will be fine.

Also don't know what you mean by reversed from one another. You just plug one end of the cable into any of the 2 backplane ports and then run it to the card. Then you do the same thing for the other. It doesn't matter which one you connect to which but I matched them up A/B just because.

 

[ViciousXUSMC]

These cables will work in both systems. https://www.monoprice.com/product?c_id=102&cp_id=10254&cs_id=1025410&p_id=8189&seq=1&format=2

While they aren't right angle (was not able to find any long enough for anywhere but the dedicated slot) they work perfectly in the 3.5in version of the R710. (Personally Tested) Even with the connectors standing straight up the lid goes on quite easily without much if any pressure put on the cable. I don't personally own the 2.5in model but looking at pictures online the connectors are horizontal instead of vertical which would not be an issue. I mean it won't be as clean as the right angle ones but the cable can just bend a little and you will be fine.

Also don't know what you mean by reversed from one another. You just plug one end of the cable into any of the 2 backplane ports and then run it to the card. Then you do the same thing for the other. It doesn't matter which one you connect to which but I matched them up A/B just because.

Perfect! That is what I needed then.

Have them ordered, and now just to see about flashing that H200 ...

 

[pwnerman]

Perfect! That is what I needed then.

Have them ordered, and now just to see about flashing that H200 ...

look back in this thread. I have written a good deal about it and provide links to a great tutorial that I myself can confirm works perfectly.

 

[ViciousXUSMC]

Also looking back, thanks for all the advice & feedback.
My server is up and working perfectly.

I was able to flash that H200 using an old Super Micro I had around because the R710 would not work with the flashing software, those monoprice cables worked perfectly.

If I was to go back in time, the only thing I might do differently is put esxi as my hypervisor and virtuliazed FreeNAS because I use the server for IP Camera NVR, Home Assistant, Plex, Transmission, etc. The the stuff that runs as a jail works great, but the stuff that needs a VM just does not work as well as if I had a VM under esxi, also I would love being able to snapshot and do things like that to protect the system in case of say a failed upgrade.

Final setup was Dell R710
64GB RAM
2x L5630
H200 flashed to LSI IT Mode
6x WD 8TB Red in RaidZ2

With only 1 Power Supply it runs just at 200w doing all that work 24/7 under 100w if I shut down services and let it idle.
The 2nd power supply adds another 40w or so if I have it plugged in.

My math shows that for what I paid and what this server does it would take over 7 years before it would have been cheaper to build a low power server from new instead of buying a used R710. Also the R710 won me over because it was the one server I was able to find IPMI commands to control the fans, its so quiet it sits on my desk next to me and I can do voice over recordings with no issues, its no louder than my desktop and all temps stay great.

 

[pwnerman]

Also looking back, thanks for all the advice & feedback.
My server is up and working perfectly.

I was able to flash that H200 using an old Super Micro I had around because the R710 would not work with the flashing software, those monoprice cables worked perfectly.

If I was to go back in time, the only thing I might do differently is put esxi as my hypervisor and virtulized freenas because I use the server for IP Camera NVR, Home Assistant, Plex, Transmission, etc. The the stuff that runs as a jail works great, but the stuff that needs a VM just does not work as well as if I had a VM under esxi, also I would love being able to snapshot and do things like that to protect the system incase of say a failed upgrade.

Final setup was Dell R710
64GB RAM
2x L5630
H200 flashed to LSI IT Mode
6x WD 8TB Red in RaidZ2

With only 1 Power Supply it runs just at 200w doing all that work 24/7 under 100w if I shut down services and let it idle.
The 2nd power supply adds another 40w or so if I have it plugged in.

My math shows that for what I paid and what this server does it would take over 7 years before it would have been cheaper to build a low power server from new instead of buying a used R710. Also the R710 won me over because it was the one server I was able to find IPMI commands to control the fans, its so quiet it sits on my desk next to me and I can do voice over recordings with no issues, its no louder than my desktop and all temps stay great.

Well you could always get another R710 and transition all your VMs over to a hypervisor. Also Just a note but I found out using Plex for instance is a bad idea in FreeNAS particularly when it comes to transcodes. All those reads and writes happening at once really kills the performance of spinning discs. They just don't have the IOPS for it. So I'm currently building another R710 myself which I will transition Plex and all my other future VMs too. I plan on doing NVR in the future as well.

Also could you point me to these IPMI commands to control the fans you speak of? Thanks

 

[ViciousXUSMC]

I just could not justify another server up 24/7 in terms of costs (purchase & power)
As for the IPMI this should technically work using IPMITools on a remote server but I never got it working from a remote host (probably authentication related) but it works great on the local host, and so happens FreeNAS has IMPITools built in already so its a win win.

Never got around to setting up PLINK so I can execute from my workstation desktop with ease, instead I just created a scripts folder on my NAS with these commands so I can easily exicute them, including I have a CRON job setup to run this at initialization so if the server reboots it will automatically get the fan speed applied soon as the OS loads.

Set Normal Automatic Fan Behavior Back:

Code:

#!/bin/sh
/usr/local/bin/ipmitool raw 0x30 0x30 0x01 0x01

My Normal Fan Speed Setting:

Code:

#!/bin/sh
/usr/local/bin/ipmitool raw 0x30 0x30 0x01 0x00
/usr/local/bin/ipmitool raw 0x30 0x30 0x02 0xff 0x10

A Higher fan speed setting I used to use for Scrubs but I don't anymore my normal speed keeps things cool:

Code:

#!/bin/sh
/usr/local/bin/ipmitool raw 0x30 0x30 0x01 0x00
/usr/local/bin/ipmitool raw 0x30 0x30 0x02 0xff 0x17

I had good temps with lower fan speeds too, but the way they made noise I found it easier on the ears with a nice HUM rather than the noise they made when moving really slow.

Basically the first line enables manual control, and the 2nd line sets the speed.
The values have max limits, 0x00 would be the lowest, fans barely move.
0x46 is the highest value and its full on max jet mode.

You can execute directly from putty one line at a time.

As for NVR a Win10 VM with 2 CPUs (manually given 4 cores per cpu by modifying some files I forgot off hand) is near 100% cpu load in the VM but Freenas has tons of cpu left so it just is not good at giving me the power I need in VM's.

My home assistant and ubiqiti stuff running in a Ubuntu VM runs fine, but they do not need much in the way of resources.

I was not aware of any issues on jails, they work fine for me (atleast the ones I built myself, the pre-built plug-ins would give me trouble and tend to crash at random)