Hardware upgrade from Dell T20

[IceBoosteR]

Hi folks,

I am really, really ill now, but due to this, I found the time to write this blogpost/article/thread. I haven't found time for this since ~3 month ...
If I forget something, it's because I am tired and sick. Where is my coffee? :D

So lets get started. What did I have recently for a FreeNAS solution? Basicly, I have a Dell T20 with 4 times 4 TB WD RED hard drives, so about 10,4TB of storage which I can use. But this was not enough anymore. With all the family phots, my dozens of RAW photo footage and some good quality (just kidding), self made videos for Youtube, it was time for an upgrade.
The hardware in my Dell T20 is good, so there was no need to go with new RAM or a new Mobo. The Dell mainboard is suitable for 24/7, the Xeon E3-1225v3 and 24GB of DDR3 RAM are more as sufficient for a home NAS.

But I needed more space, which is future proof, so no upgrade needed in the next 3+ years.

I started with 6 new 4TB WD RED drives. My plan was to destroy the old RAIDZ-1 and go with 10x4TB in RAIDZ-2. But later more about hte actual journey.
Next thing, the SAS-HBA which has been the IBM ServeRAID M1015, which needs to be crossflashed to an LSI SAS9211-8i, so IT-mode.
Next big part (take it literally), the new case, the Nanoxia Deep Silence Rev. 6b which was the only case which fits my needs. It is looking amazing, has enough place for drives (13 @stock) and enough space for more components and even more hard drives, if you want so. It has even got a Fan Control and 5 Fans @stock, for the good cooling of the system and the HDD of course. Notice here, my old case had no HDD fan.
It is also possible to place that case everywhere you like to, as it is not a Rackmounted chassis.
The next part was a new PSU, I have choosen the Sesonic Focus Plus Platinum with 650 watts.
Some more parts: 2 additional 14mm fans, SAS->SATA Break-out-Cables, a special Dell to ATX power cable, a lot of glue and a 500GB Samsung 850 Evo

The journy starts with crossflashing the IBM ServeRAID M1015 to IT-mode. I used my testing PC, as it has UEFI support, which is making the whole procedure a lot easier. So I crossflashed the LSI card to the latest version of 20.00.07.0

Looks spetecular? No not really :D Wait for the next pictures.

Next step, mount the SAS HBA in the existing FreeNAS system/configuration and plug in the one SSD. This SSD should hold the jails and the ZVOLs for my ESXi hosts, as those spiining drives are to slow (access times) for multiple OS running. Copying over all the files now. In the background I made a full backup of my data on my Backup System.

Ha, and now the funny part begins xD

I destroyed now my pool and all the config and EVERYTHING! Yay, starting with a whole new FreeNAS config and made the step to FreeNAS 11.0 also. I was feeling bad at this time, all data lost, I was remembered at the bad Coral times again.

Confirmed issue with rekey in GUI. Value from the 'password' field was dropped for the rekey operation. That should be fixed in next builds - thanks for mentioning it!

But back to the cool stuff now!

This is the new case for my hardware:

As you can see there is a loooot of space. I even bought two more fans, which are placed on the bracket between the big HDD cage, and the smaller one on the left hand side, for the best airflow for all drives to keep them cool so they will live longer ;)

In the next step I need to remove the hardware from my "old" (1 year old) Dell T20. The Dell Mainbaord has propriatery plugs all over the place. More of that later. Then I placed it into the new case.

Here you can see the difference in size with mainbaord, fans, HDD cage and PSU installed:

I removed everything from that Dell PC, because of all the propriatery plugs. Removing the Dell 5 pin fan, the on/off switch, chassis intodusion header, ...
Mainboard all alone:

And the empty tower:

Next in the next posting.

 

[IceBoosteR]

Normally, if you have isntalled your mainbaord, you would connect the on/off switch, the reset button, front USB and audio jacks to the mainboard, as there is a standard. But not with this Dell. I don't wanted to start in trial and error and destroy something, so I re-used everything from the Dell. The mainboard is even complaining if one thing is missing at boot (like the 80mm fan from the back of the T20). I glued the chassis intruducion header somewehre in the case, so this contact is always pressed, and no message appears. The front USB is glued to one of the 5,25" bays on a plastic HDD mount, I put in my two boot USB-sticks so they do not disturb me at the back of the server later. I also glued the on/off switch there, so I can easily access the switch if I open the front door as I removed one of the 5,25" bay covers.

I even needed to put the 80mm fan somewhere, otherwise the message at boot needs to be skipped with F1. Above you can the see mounting. It was hard to find a useful place, as the 5 pin cable is very short. The both top fans are not spinning, if I do not open the fancy holes for the "Active Air Chimney":

Cool feature ;)

After that the normal stuff begins. Putting hard drives in, put all power cables in, make a goo cable management aaaaand the special ATX -> Dell 8 Pin:

This is before, and after:

After finishing the hardware part, I reinstalled the FreeNAS software, made the HDD burnin-test. After that I created the RAIDZ-2, configured all the things and imported the SSD pool. After that I started the pull of all files from the backup. Everything worked fine ;)

After one week one of the older 4TB drives died slowly, to I had to RMA that drive. Glad that I was on RAIDZ-2 now.

The server is now running smoothly, is very quiet and cool (HDD ~22 to 26 degrees) and also power efficient. I need 110 watts @ full load, 59 watts @idle and 66 watts when disk heads are not in parking position.
If you are asking yourself, why I do not put all 10 drives in the bays on the right hand side, this is easily answered: Those two bays which are left does not getting enough air from the fans, so there were getting hotter (30+ degrees). So they have moved to the left side^^

Hopefully you enjoyed this little upgrade post. @joeschmuck I promised to get this done someday ;)

Cheers,
IceBoosteR

 

[Lappen]

Hello

I'm about to upgrade to a bigger server and thinking about use T20 hardware.
But i don't under stand what the " ATX -> Dell 8 Pin" kabel is?

 

[garm]

The Dell Mobo isnt ATX compliant so you need an adapter

 

[Lappen]

The Dell Mobo isnt ATX compliant so you need an adapter

Aha power for the motherboard.

 

[Lappen]

More questions :)

Is T20 motherboard miniATX or regular ATX?

 

[garm]

Non standard miniATX, most of the screw holes lined up though in my Define Mini S