HP ProLiant ML10 Gen9

[5star]

W

I manage several storage servers for the place I work and in them I have a variety of drives including HGST, WD Red, Red Pro, Seagate Constellation, and at home I have Seagate Barracuda drives. Of them all, I like the Seagate Barracuda 4TB drives best, the 5400 RPM model, because they don't get as hot as some of the others.

Wow... that's pretty high recommendation. I thought I had a 5900RPM model, but either way, I don't have experience with all that many drives and I never thought of Seagate as a top-tier drive. So that's really confidence inspiring.

 

[Chris Moore]

5900RPM

My mistake, I just took a look at my spare to verify, it is 5900 RPM.

 

[gpsguy]

... I never thought of Seagate as a top-tier drive..

I used to manage a number of servers with 15 k Seagate Cheetah's. They were great!

 

[Chris Moore]

I never thought of Seagate as a top-tier drive

The Seagate Constellation drives are more data-center grade but they get hotter. I have a server at work that is getting close to end of life and has still got 10 of the original drives running that are approaching 6 years old. In my home NAS, only a few months ago, I replaced a six drives that were over 5 years with newer drives. I like to replace the drives when they get up there in age because the likelihood to fail rate goes up.

 

[5star]

Alright! The system came in today, but there were a few surprises.
1. The power data for the DVD drive is a combo for power and data data and it is not compatible with the SSD connection (looks like the power portion is shorter) so I can't use that for the OS drive. I'm going to have to get a SATA power splitter.
2. I went ahead and put the OS SSD into a usb enclosure and tried hooking it up. When I power it on, the settings doesn't see it because the drive is setup for the x58 system (non-uefi) and I think that because it's a legacy install it's not recognizing it as a boot device. I want to tread very carefully as I have already built out the system just the way I want it with Jails, reporting, etc. Since it's not ready to just work out of the box, I was wondering if I could just make a new install USB and expect to install over the top of the SSD as an upgrade to the current one, or will it only wipe the drive and start from scratch?

 

[danb35]

I was wondering if I could just make a new install USB and expect to install over the top of the SSD as an upgrade

Yes, this is a possibility. The installer will detect the existing installation and ask if you want to upgrade it.

 

[5star]

Yes, this is a possibility. The installer will detect the existing installation and ask if you want to upgrade it.

thanks so much! I'm going through the process and I'm not sure if I'm clear on whether I should choose to format the boot device or install in new boot environment. It seems that formatting the boot device just removes old versions of FreeNAS but not my settings. Am I leaning the right way?

 

[danb35]

I don't remember being asked that question, so I can't say for sure. Be sure you have a saved copy of your config file.

 

[5star]

I don't remember being asked that question, so I can't say for sure. Be sure you have a saved copy of your config file.

OK got it. And yes, to switch the boot type of the disk it was required that I "Formatted Boot Device" within the upgrade path and it preserved all of the settings, jails, etc. It looks great! I changed the IP address and it looks perfect... except for 1 thing.

All of the drives are quite hot. It looks like they are running from 39-42 degrees. I assume I would want to install a fan on the front of the machine, but the weird part is that it looks like you can only install a fan over the lowest drive. It doesn't appear that there is any way to blow air over the majority of the drives in this machine. Is there something else I should be looking at?

 

[Chris Moore]

OK got it. And yes, to switch the boot type of the disk it was required that I "Formatted Boot Device" within the upgrade path and it preserved all of the settings, jails, etc. It looks great! I changed the IP address and it looks perfect... except for 1 thing.

All of the drives are quite hot. It looks like they are running from 39-42 degrees. I assume I would want to install a fan on the front of the machine, but the weird part is that it looks like you can only install a fan over the lowest drive. It doesn't appear that there is any way to blow air over the majority of the drives in this machine. Is there something else I should be looking at?

I have a Dell Optiplex chassis that has really bad air flow from the factory, the drives were running around 45-47c. I rigged a way to add these slim fans to push more air into the case and got the temps down in the mid 30s.
https://www.directron.com/ec8015hh12bp.html
I used a fan controller so I could set the speed manually and ended up running them full speed all the time. They make a little noise, but it isn't so bad.

 

[5star]

Ok I finished my build and I'm happy. A couple notes of what I actually needed:
1. ML10 - $169: http://track.flexlinkspro.com/a.ashx?foid=1092646.2702673&foc=1&fot=9999&fos=1&url=http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=5038747

2. 16GB ECC RAM (for a total of 20GB) $195: https://aax-us-east.amazon-adsystem...=Rz09KYMQaYa2nCyLZMG06Q&slotNum=0&tag=ozlp-20

3. Sata Power Splitter (for a 5th drive + I powered my fans off of it) $7: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0086OGN9E/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

4. 2 Really thin fans (bought 2 for the front of the case) $7 x 2: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005C31GIA/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

5. SATA power to fan headers $12: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0711CR7HV/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Total $397

Obviously you'll need to supply the HDDs in addition, but this system is working for 5 drives... 1 SSD FreeNAS drive, 4x4TB HDDs. And I'm pretty happy.

Originally I installed everything without the fans, but the drives were pretty hot. The SSD was about 50 deg, and the HDDs were around 45 degrees give or take. I wasn't wanting to leave it like that, so that's why I got the fans. (thanks @Chris Moore )

I did need to get a little agro. I had to mark where the fans were going to be behind the front plastic grill, and then I had to dremel off a few crisscross pieces of plastic to provide enough clearance behind the black plastic grill and the steel case. I also had to dremel out some steel case between the HDDs and the fans so air could get past... The case is built unlike any case I've ever owned. It seems unnecessarily complex and intentionally built with bad airflow. I'm sure there was a good reason, but I removed the metal honeycomb pieces that unscrew with a torx and I cut out the lower portion in front of the 3 lowest HDDs with the dremel. Then I hot glued the new case fans into the front plastic grill and connected them with the SATA to fan header cord. Now the temps are really nice. Although I guess the SSD is just going to run hot...

SSD is 40, HDDs 32-35 degrees.

I think I'm going to run with this and I think I got a pretty great deal. It puts out much less heat than my i7, and it's way more compact of a machine, and best of all... it meets the needs of FreeNAS with room to grow for sure.

I do still have 1 question though...

I know the RAM should all be ECC. The packing slip says it for the 16GB stick, and the HP specs say that it is ECC 4GB. I just thought it odd that I didn't see any thing on the packaging, or on the RAM sticks themselves that it's ECC RAM. And I looked around BIOS briefly without seeing anything. And in the FreeNAS System information it doesn't designate. Is there somewhere I can look to just confirm that I'm good? Or do you just have to trust? I'm sure it's fine, but I'd like to be sure.

 

[Chris Moore]

Usually, an ECC memory module will have 9 chips where a non-ECC module will have 8. The ninth chip is for the parity data that is how (similar to RAID) the ECC system is able to detect and correct for a single bit error.

 

[ChriZ]

You bought the KTH-PL421E/16G, right? AFAIK (don't quote me on that):

KTH -->HP (OTOH, KTD --> DELL)
PL421E --> ProLiant (OTOH, PE421E --> PowerEdge)
PL421E --> ECC

So we have:
KTH-PL421E/16G --> HP ProLiant ECC Ram 16GB (e.g. for HPE Proliant ML10)
KTD-PE421E/16G --> Dell PowerEdge ECC Ram 16GB (e.g for Dell PoweredgeT30)

 

[5star]

View attachment 21008 Usually, an ECC memory module will have 9 chips where a non-ECC module will have 8. The ninth chip is for the parity data that is how (similar to RAID) the ECC system is able to detect and correct for a single bit error.

I just counted 9 chips on each stick and that works for me!

You bought the KTH-PL421E/16G, right? AFAIK (don't quote me on that):

KTH -->HP (OTOH, KTD --> DELL)
PL421E --> ProLiant (OTOH, PE421E --> PowerEdge)
PL421E --> ECC

So we have:
KTH-PL421E/16G --> HP ProLiant ECC Ram 16GB (e.g. for HPE Proliant ML10)
KTD-PE421E/16G --> Dell PowerEdge ECC Ram 16GB (e.g for Dell PoweredgeT30)

That's great info too. Yes, I did buy the KTH-PL421E/16G and that's awesome to know. I saw that the packing slip and invoice said ECC, so when I was scouring the RAM or system information for confirmation that the stick was right I just kept looking for ECC. This post is awesome to help understand what the model name stands for, yet I still find it odd that "ECC" is never explicitly said on there. But now that you post this... it is. It's just in the nomenclature that you have to understand.

 

[gpsguy]

IIRC, the HP docs say only ECC RAM is supported.