HexOS

[ShadowLeRawr]

Dear LTT Community,

I’m not sure if you can help, but I figured I’d ask anyway.

I currently have a Dell PowerEdge 2900 that used to run TrueNAS Scale. I recently tried installing HexOS to take advantage of its simplified GUI, but I’m running into issues.
My SO has the upgraded version of the PE as i have the older version of what they have.
I "think" it may be the raid card or just how old the system is.

Could it be that my system is just too old, or should I consider retiring this server and upgrading to a newer one? For context, this PowerEdge was previously used as a local CCTV server.

Thanks in advance!

https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/product/poweredge-2900/docs

Attached is the RAID CARD

[Electronics Wizardy]

If you can get a newer server, I would. Those raid cards aren't made for ZFS or software raid as they don't have a HBA mode. The're also huge power hogs and use ~250w at idle and new system would likely pay for its self with a year or two with power savings.

[ShadowLeRawr]

19 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

If you can get a newer server, I would. Those raid cards aren't made for ZFS or software raid as they don't have a HBA mode. The're also huge power hogs and use ~250w at idle and new system would likely pay for its self with a year or two with power savings.

Any suggestions something under $1k USD

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, ShadowLeRawr said:

Any suggestions something under $1k USD

Is there specific features you want?

 

I'd build your own system.  Should be lots of options for that budget.

[ShadowLeRawr]

18 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Is there specific features you want?

 

I'd build your own system.  Should be lots of options for that budget.

Probably will build my own system
don't need anything fancy so i can save on a graphics card and just use onboard HDMI
just need an MB, Ram, and a crap ton of drives Sata or SSD, and a Processor

 

[Needfuldoer]

On 12/10/2024 at 1:28 AM, ShadowLeRawr said:

Could it be that my system is just too old, or should I consider retiring this server and upgrading to a newer one?

Absolutely. I would've called the 2900 an obsolete relic a decade ago. It gets absolutely trounced by an even remotely modern desktop platform. On paper, a pair of the best LGA2011 processors will barely keep up with an N100 in multithreaded tasks (and the N100 is substantially faster per thread). That's 300 watts of ancient Xeons to nip at a 6 watt Alder Lake CPU's heels. (And that figure doesn't count the power all those DDR2 FBDIMMs draw.)

 

Any newer server you build will start paying for itself in power savings. The old 2900s guzzle only a little less power than their NetBurst predecessors.

 

8 hours ago, ShadowLeRawr said:

Any suggestions something under $1k USD

If you want to stick with the PowerEdge family, R730s are a price-performance sweet spot right now. That will get you DDR4 and up to 22 cores per socket. Spend a little more and you can get up to 14th gen (Rx40), which opens up even denser processors.

 

You could also go back to 12th gen (Sandy Bridge / Ivy Bridge). They're dirt-cheap and reasonably power efficient, but have fewer maximum cores per socket and take less dense DDR3.

 

My home server is going to be a 12-bay R540 soon, with a single 20 core, 40 thread processor and 192 GB of RAM, and it cost a bit less than that.

 

You can find first-gen EPYC PowerEdge servers for around a grand, but I'd avoid those because they won't take second-gen EPYC processors.