Greetings from NE Ohio / Western PA

[Chris Moore]

PS. If you want to go with that system, be sure they ship you the correct drive trays to install six 3.5" drives. Often times the referb systems will either have blanks or nothing at all for the drive bays without drives and you might want to have them keep those 300GB drives unless you have some other purpose for them.

 

[Tom2112]

Thanks! The RAID controller was my first concern too. There seem to be a TON of these Dell PowerEdge R710s out there. If I use my driveless-budget-limit of about $600, I can get a system with a LOT more RAM and install ESXi and virtualize my web and Plex servers... That's a very tempting idea.

 

[Tom2112]

PS. If you want to go with that system, be sure they ship you the correct drive trays to install six 3.5" drives. Often times the referb systems will either have blanks or nothing at all for the drive bays without drives and you might want to have them keep those 300GB drives unless you have some other purpose for them.

Yes, as I look through that vendor's auctions, I see a lot of different variations on that same server. I might just shoot them an email and tell them what I want and see what they can offer with the most CPU/RAM and without drives but including trays.

 

[Tom2112]

Chris, since you seem very familiar with these servers, I have to ask: is there an internal bay for an OS drive, or do I have to loose one of the front bays to for an OS drive? If you don't happen to know - no big deal. Just figured I'd ask before I do dig up the specs on that server's internals.

 

[Chris Moore]

It has an internal USB port where you can put a USB stick and use that as a boot drive, but I don't suggest doing that. I would recomend getting an adapter that would allow you to replace the CD/DVD drive with a tray that you can put a SSD in. It would be much better to get a small retail SSD and use that for your boot drive. They are tremendously more reliable than a USB stick but the speed is pretty much not an issue. Once you have installed FreeNAS on the SSD, you can use the GUI to move the 'system data set' over to the boot drive. It would normally be on the storage array, but I like to keep it on my boot-pool. FreeNAS boots from a ZFS pool and when they provide a new version of the OS, it makes a snapshot of the old one so you can roll back to the previous instance easily if something doesn't work properly in the new release. Because of the snapshots, having extra room on the boot drive is a good feature.
Something like this:
https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817986024

 

[Tom2112]

Yes, I'm with you on the USB boot drives. I know a lot of people use them, but I just don't trust them. I'd rather spend $45 on a SSD and not have to worry about it. I didn't even know those drive caddys existed! That's an excellent option, especially for $11. ;)

The eBay seller got back to me and they can offer that same server with no drives, two Xeon X5650 2.6GHz 6-Core and 64GB for $500 plus shipping. So for less than I would spend on commercial grade hardware, I can get a pretty nice server. I really appreciate your help with this. I wouldn't have even considered used hardware otherwise.

One other question: I asked them if they could include the H310 controller card instead of the one that came with the server, and they said that the H310 was only for a later generation of that server. But they could include the H200, which I would have to flash into IT mode myself. Are you familiar with that card?

 

[Chris Moore]

One other question: I asked them if they could include the H310 controller card instead of the one that came with the server, and they said that the H310 was only for a later generation of that server. But they could include the H200, which I would have to flash into IT mode myself. Are you familiar with that card?

The H200 is a very similar card. Looks a little different, but it takes the same firmware and the update process is the same.
It uses an LSI chipset and there is a good guide here on the forum for how to update it:

Detailed newcomers' guide to crossflashing LSI 9211 HBA and variants
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...o-crossflashing-lsi-9211-hba-and-variants.54/

The latest firmware I am aware of is the version: 20.00.07.00. The company has changed hands a couple times since these cards were made, but the firmware is still available on the web although the links may have changed. The company that owns the tech is Boradcom now.

If you want to be able to remote manage the server, be sure they get you the iDRAC that supports remote console and virtual media.

 

[Redcoat]

If you want to be able to remote manage the server, be sure they get you the iDRAC that supports remote console and virtual media.

It needs to have this card https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-K869T...-Enterprise-R410-R510-R610-R710-/201659179273

 

[Tom2112]

I've been shopping around on eBay, and found this gem for a good price:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Premium-HP...AM-12-Trays-/182600597927?hash=item2a83d801a7
It's an HP ProLiant Dl180 G6 with 2 Xeon X5650 CPUs, 48GB RAM, 12 HDD bays with trays, redundant power supplies, and a raid controller that will need replaced.
What do you think? With 12 bays, I'll need a card that supports 12 or 16 drives... or two 8 drive cards...

 

[Chris Moore]

I've been shopping around on eBay, and found this gem for a good price:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Premium-HP...AM-12-Trays-/182600597927?hash=item2a83d801a7
It's an HP ProLiant Dl180 G6 with 2 Xeon X5650 CPUs, 48GB RAM, 12 HDD bays with trays, redundant power supplies, and a raid controller that will need replaced.
What do you think? With 12 bays, I'll need a card that supports 12 or 16 drives... or two 8 drive cards...

You pointed it out, but for anyone else that comes along, this:
RAID Controller: HP P.410 Smart Array RAID Controller 512MB Cache With Battery Back-Up
Is a hardware RAID controller and FreeNAS doesn't like them. Hopefully (but I don't know) it is an expansion card that can be removed.

The rest looks fine. You might want to ask the seller about that RAID controller to see if it can be removed. I don't like integrated controllers but it might be able to be disabled in the BIOS and put a card in one of the PCIe slots.
Most likely, the hard drive backplane has a SAS expander built in because I imagine the RAID controller was only 8 ports (pretty common) but you would need to ask. Even if there was no SAS expander built into the backplane, an adapter card like this could be added:

IBM 46M0997 ServeRAID Expansion Adapter 16-Port SAS Expander
https://www.ebay.com/itm/IBM-46M0997-ServeRAID-Expansion-Adapter-16-Port-SAS-Expander-/172519142938