Storage Server/NAS help

[Flight1sim]

I'm planning on buying an HP DL380 G6 server, specifically this one http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Proliant-DL380-G6-Server-2x-L5530-Quad-Core-2-4GHz-32GB-P410-1PS-with-8-Trays-/171955262735?hash=item280955150f:g:QXUAAOSw5VFWHqP8

 

It has dual L5530 xeons and 32GB of DDR3

 

I plan on buying 4 2TB HGST enterprise drives (or 5 to join the 10TB+ club)

 

 

 

1. is there an internal sata port for SSD's not in the 8 HDD slots? Or will I have to use one of them

2. How many PCIE slots/riser cards come with the server? From what I know it doesn't come with risers?

3. should I buy an MSATA to PCIE adapter for using one of my Msata ssd's on it?

4. Is there anything I should know in terms of buying a server like this? 

[TJStamp]

the power consumption of the g6 proliant range is insane, hope someone else is paying the power bills, does save on heating in the winter though

[Flight1sim]

the power consumption of the g6 proliant range is insane, hope someone else is paying the power bills, does save on heating in the winter though

heh it'd be my parents

[TJStamp]

hunting through my spares pile I've only got G7's and G9's handy so can't be completely sure. The G6 series is end of life and out of warrantee, which makes them pretty cheap to buy at least.

 

All the DL380 ranges use onboard SAS headers instead of SATA ports so trying to internally mount any drives would be a challenge, from memory I'm pretty sure the G6 has 2 LSI SAS controllers onboard, both connected to the drive bays via backplane. To add any more storage then you would need another storage controller card as the max onboard is 8 drives.

 

Incidentally you can take out the plastic blanks at the front and add another 8x 2.5" drive bays if you add more internal storage controllers DL380s make great storage servers or VMWare Host machines

 

EDIT: just saw second question, all our 380's have included PCI-e risers out of the box, there are several kinds though, that ebay link claims to be the full spec riser "Riser Board with 6x PCIe (4-x4) (2-x4)"

[Flight1sim]

hunting through my spares pile I've only got G7's and G9's handy so can't be completely sure. The G6 series is end of life and out of warrantee, which makes them pretty cheap to buy at least.

 

All the DL380 ranges use onboard SAS headers instead of SATA ports so trying to internally mount any drives would be a challenge, from memory I'm pretty sure the G6 has 2 LSI SAS controllers onboard, both connected to the drive bays via backplane. To add any more storage then you would need another storage controller card as the max onboard is 8 drives.

 

Incidentally you can take out the plastic blanks at the front and add another 8x 2.5" drive bays if you add more internal storage controllers DL380s make great storage servers or VMWare Host machines

 

EDIT: just saw second question, all our 380's have included PCI-e risers out of the box, there are several kinds though, that ebay link claims to be the full spec riser "Riser Board with 6x PCIe (4-x4) (2-x4)"

What do you mean by plastic blanks? I cant seem to find it online. 

All I know it comes with 2 bays of 4 drives each?

 

Thanks for your help so far, it's really hard to get information online

[Blake]

I'm planning on buying an HP DL380 G6 server, specifically this one http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Proliant-DL380-G6-Server-2x-L5530-Quad-Core-2-4GHz-32GB-P410-1PS-with-8-Trays-/171955262735?hash=item280955150f:g:QXUAAOSw5VFWHqP8

 

It has dual L5530 xeons and 32GB of DDR3

 

I plan on buying 4 2TB HGST enterprise drives (or 5 to join the 10TB+ club)

 

 

 

1. is there an internal sata port for SSD's not in the 8 HDD slots? Or will I have to use one of them

2. How many PCIE slots/riser cards come with the server? From what I know it doesn't come with risers?

3. should I buy an MSATA to PCIE adapter for using one of my Msata ssd's on it?

4. Is there anything I should know in terms of buying a server like this? 

1. There is one behind the PSUs (looking from the back), however that is for the ODD (optional), you will need an adapter, and you will need to mount it either with tape or in the ODD slot.

2. None (unless the seller throws them in).

3. You will need one, this system was around along time before msata was a thing, just make sure it's not too tall for a 2U rack. You will not be able to boot from the mSATA Drives.

4.

SFF = 2.5" drives, LFF = 3.25" Drives. Thats right your going to need small drives. you can get it with 6x LFF trays. You can also get a 2nd internal cage for 12x LFF or 16x SFF. SFF is normally better as the drives are all 10/15k. Better seek times, but that wont matter for your use case.

you will have 8 cores total with a 120w TDP across both of them, them fans are going to be loud.

look here: http://www8.hp.com/h20195/v2/GetPDF.aspx/c04282582.pdf

[Blake]

What do you mean by plastic blanks? I cant seem to find it online. 

All I know it comes with 2 bays of 4 drives each?

 

Thanks for your help so far, it's really hard to get information online

Plastic Blanks: when you buy these servers new, they have 0 trays, you need to purchase the trays and the HDDs (normally HDDs from HP will have the tray with them). you cannot mount a HDD (safely) without a tray. The tray also has the blinking I/O led on it. If you want to use your own HDD you need to buy some trays to mount them.

[Flight1sim]

Plastic Blanks: when you buy these servers new, they have 0 trays, you need to purchase the trays and the HDDs (normally HDDs from HP will have the tray with them). you cannot mount a HDD (safely) without a tray. The tray also has the blinking I/O led on it. If you want to use your own HDD you need to buy some trays to mount them.

I am aware of that, I was referring to the fact that the server can take a 2nd bank of hdds

[michrech]

For question #1, why are you looking for an internal SATA port?  Depending on what OS you plan to use with this system, you likely wouldn't install directly to a hard disk.  If your plan is to use this as a virtualization server, it's likely the host OS would install to either a USB stick or SD card (the HP has an internal SD slot).  

 

 

I'm planning on buying an HP DL380 G6 server, specifically this one http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Proliant-DL380-G6-Server-2x-L5530-Quad-Core-2-4GHz-32GB-P410-1PS-with-8-Trays-/171955262735?hash=item280955150f:g:QXUAAOSw5VFWHqP8

 

It has dual L5530 xeons and 32GB of DDR3

 

I plan on buying 4 2TB HGST enterprise drives (or 5 to join the 10TB+ club)

 

 

 

1. is there an internal sata port for SSD's not in the 8 HDD slots? Or will I have to use one of them

2. How many PCIE slots/riser cards come with the server? From what I know it doesn't come with risers?

3. should I buy an MSATA to PCIE adapter for using one of my Msata ssd's on it?

4. Is there anything I should know in terms of buying a server like this? 

[braneopbru]

I'm planning on buying an HP DL380 G6 server, specifically this one http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-Proliant-DL380-G6-Server-2x-L5530-Quad-Core-2-4GHz-32GB-P410-1PS-with-8-Trays-/171955262735?hash=item280955150f:g:QXUAAOSw5VFWHqP8

 

It has dual L5530 xeons and 32GB of DDR3

 

I plan on buying 4 2TB HGST enterprise drives (or 5 to join the 10TB+ club)

 

 

 

1. is there an internal sata port for SSD's not in the 8 HDD slots? Or will I have to use one of them

2. How many PCIE slots/riser cards come with the server? From what I know it doesn't come with risers?

3. should I buy an MSATA to PCIE adapter for using one of my Msata ssd's on it?

4. Is there anything I should know in terms of buying a server like this? 

This this is a TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE choice for a home server.

 

It'll suck down insane amounts of power.

 

It'll make a shit ton of noise. Like, I don't think you can even imagine how much noise actually comes out of that thing. Take a blow-dryer and go plug it in wherever you plan on putting this thing. Now imagine that blow-dryer running 24/7. That is literally how loud those things are.

 

You are also stuck using 2.5" drives. So you're going to pay through the nose for drives. Speaking of which, not sure where you got the idea that you'd be using 2TB HGST drives, since the largest capacity 2.5" drive that HGST makes is a 1.8TB. That drive is $700, BTW.

[braneopbru]

Plastic Blanks: when you buy these servers new, they have 0 trays, you need to purchase the trays and the HDDs (normally HDDs from HP will have the tray with them). you cannot mount a HDD (safely) without a tray. The tray also has the blinking I/O led on it. If you want to use your own HDD you need to buy some trays to mount them.

No.

 

Trays and blanks are two separate things. If you have a tray installed with no hard drive in it, you must use a blank to maintain proper airflow over the installed drives. A blank is just a piece of hard drive shaped plastic that screws into a drive tray. If you install a tray with no drive and no blank all the air flows through the empty tray and will not flow over the installed drives and allow them to overheat.

 

The description says that the server includes 8 trays and 8 blanks.

 

The activity LED is also not on the tray, it's on the backplane. There is a light pipe on the tray that brings the light of the LED up to the front. Usually.

[Flight1sim]

This this is a TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE choice for a home server.

 

It'll suck down insane amounts of power.

 

It'll make a shit ton of noise. Like, I don't think you can even imagine how much noise actually comes out of that thing. Take a blow-dryer and go plug it in wherever you plan on putting this thing. Now imagine that blow-dryer running 24/7. That is literally how loud those things are.

 

You are also stuck using 2.5" drives. So you're going to pay through the nose for drives. Speaking of which, not sure where you got the idea that you'd be using 2TB HGST drives, since the largest capacity 2.5" drive that HGST makes is a 1.8TB. That drive is $700, BTW.

Lol yeah I changed my plans and decided to get a Dell C2100 instead. It uses standard 3.5" drives. Also I want to have an internal ssd for Windows server 2012, the C2100 has internal SATA

[braneopbru]

Lol yeah I changed my plans and decided to get a Dell C2100 instead. It uses standard 3.5" drives. Also I want to have an internal ssd for Windows server 2012, the C2100 has internal SATA

Still a shitty choice. Still LOUD. Still power hungry.

 

Check the specs "up to 12 drives" is right next to "optional LSI 2008 SAS mezzanine card" which means that you're probably going to have to spend more money to get all the drives working.

 

Basically ANY rackmount server is going to be a bad choice for home use. You're much better off just building something from scratch.

[Blake]

No.

 

Trays and blanks are two separate things. If you have a tray installed with no hard drive in it, you must use a blank to maintain proper airflow over the installed drives. A blank is just a piece of hard drive shaped plastic that screws into a drive tray. If you install a tray with no drive and no blank all the air flows through the empty tray and will not flow over the installed drives and allow them to overheat.

 

The description says that the server includes 8 trays and 8 blanks.

 

The activity LED is also not on the tray, it's on the backplane. There is a light pipe on the tray that brings the light of the LED up to the front. Usually.

1. Reading comprehension. you need to work on it. I basically said the same thing. and your other posts basically say the same.

2. It depends on the server as to the location of the Status LED. on this server they are actually on the left hand side, just above the serial connector. which, is NOT the back plain. I know most of HP's new stuff has a single HDD Status LED off to the side with the power/network LEDs and the rest are on each tray, nothing to do with the back plain. Unless you are referring to where the signal comes from for the LED. yes some use light pipes, but... actually most HP stuff doesn't have 'light pipes'.

3. nothing wrong with a rack mounted Server for home use. it just needs to be 4U so you can use big slow fans or be in the basement or somewhere the noise wont matter. 120w TDP isn't too big a deal, and depending on the use case, might be preferred over a low powered unit (i.e. if he was to virtualise a couple of VMs then a low powered system would be a disadvantage). sure it would be better to get a newer cpu. but not with the total package comes to ~250 + HDDs, which is pretty good.

[Flight1sim]

1. Reading comprehension. you need to work on it. I basically said the same thing. and your other posts basically say the same.

2. It depends on the server as to the location of the Status LED. on this server they are actually on the left hand side, just above the serial connector. which, is NOT the back plain. I know most of HP's new stuff has a single HDD Status LED off to the side with the power/network LEDs and the rest are on each tray, nothing to do with the back plain. Unless you are referring to where the signal comes from for the LED. yes some use light pipes, but... actually most HP stuff doesn't have 'light pipes'.

3. nothing wrong with a rack mounted Server for home use. it just needs to be 4U so you can use big slow fans or be in the basement or somewhere the noise wont matter. 120w TDP isn't too big a deal, and depending on the use case, might be preferred over a low powered unit (i.e. if he was to virtualise a couple of VMs then a low powered system would be a disadvantage). sure it would be better to get a newer cpu. but not with the total package comes to ~250 + HDDs, which is pretty good.

Any cheap 4U 3.5" HDD recommendations? For under $350

[Blake]

Any cheap 4U 3.5" HDD recommendations? For under $350

Just get WD or HGST Consumer drives.

Pick how much storage you want total, and the type or redundancy you are after and work from there.

Lets say I want 4TB with 2 drive failure tolerance I might pick up 6x WD Blue 1TB drives, and configure in RAID5 with a hotspare, or just go RAID 6. (that'd be ~450 AUD).

Or 

I want 4TB total with 0 redundancy. might go for 1x4TB drive for ~209.

 

Then you need to consider Read/write speeds, desired IO and disk loads. the 6 drives will have much higher Read/Write, IO and be able to distribute the load across more drives (so they should last longer, should is the keyword here).

 

My file server is very different then your build, it's just a HP microserver gen7, with 4x6TB Reds in RAID 5. Great reads (~1GBps) but terrible writes (about 25MBps). but it doesn't need fantastic writes. Also, I am planning on adding another HDD and upgrading to RAID 6 so that i'd actually be able to re-build the array in a disk failure (as disk size increases you run the risk of another disk failing before you can re-build the array).

[Flight1sim]

Just get WD or HGST Consumer drives.

Pick how much storage you want total, and the type or redundancy you are after and work from there.

Lets say I want 4TB with 2 drive failure tolerance I might pick up 6x WD Blue 1TB drives, and configure in RAID5 with a hotspare, or just go RAID 6. (that'd be ~450 AUD).

Or 

I want 4TB total with 0 redundancy. might go for 1x4TB drive for ~209.

 

Then you need to consider Read/write speeds, desired IO and disk loads. the 6 drives will have much higher Read/Write, IO and be able to distribute the load across more drives (so they should last longer, should is the keyword here).

 

My file server is very different then your build, it's just a HP microserver gen7, with 4x6TB Reds in RAID 5. Great reads (~1GBps) but terrible writes (about 25MBps). but it doesn't need fantastic writes. Also, I am planning on adding another HDD and upgrading to RAID 6 so that i'd actually be able to re-build the array in a disk failure (as disk size increases you run the risk of another disk failing before you can re-build the array).

oh sorry i meant 4U server

The R900 from dell seems to be good but I can't seem to find the controller it uses on ebay, theres one I saw for CHEAP with 4 6-Core xeons and 128gb ram. But it has no controller

[Blake]

 

oh sorry i meant 4U server

The R900 from dell seems to be good but I can't seem to find the controller it uses on ebay, theres one I saw for CHEAP with 4 6-Core xeons and 128gb ram. But it has no controller

 

I was referring to a make your own, the 4U case just lets you use almost full height cpu coolers and large 120mm fans, which don't need to spin at 90billion RPM to cool the system.

 

Dell, HP, Fujitsu they are all fine.

[braneopbru]

 

 

 

I was referring to a make your own, the 4U case just lets you use almost full height cpu coolers and large 120mm fans, which don't need to spin at 90billion RPM to cool the system.

 

Dell, HP, Fujitsu they are all fine.

 

Do you specifically need a rack mountable case? You can get tower/pedestal server cases for the same or cheaper that will probably give you more placement flexibility (unless you have a rack already).

 

Look at this that I put together quickly.

 

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/Zk2bJx

 

This is the reason that I was telling you that buying an old server is a bad idea. You can get a brand new board, with warranty, running something like an i3 for very low power usage and noise. But you still have to option to upgrade to a quad core/HT 3.7GHz xeon if you need the extra power. I just threw in a random power supply. That case has 5 internal 3.5" and another 4 5.25" bays that you could use for more 3.5" drives.

 

New, power efficient,  server grade stuff for little more than what you'd pay for an old, used, noisy, power hog of a rackmount unit.

[michrech]

The R900 is loud, even at idle (though not as loud as the HP's, from what I have heard).  I had two of them.  The controller that was in the R900's I had was either a PERC 5 or 6 (I forget), and there are a ton of both (in the I and E varieties) on eBay -- if you can't find them, your eBay Search-Fu is *severely* lacking.

 

If you have a few extra bucks, the Dell R710 is an excellent choice for a home server.  It has a option for 6 3.5" drives or 8 2.5" (I have the 2.5" version), and it's quite quiet, even under a moderate load.  According to the vSphere client, mine is usually in the 200w range at idle.

 

 

oh sorry i meant 4U server

The R900 from dell seems to be good but I can't seem to find the controller it uses on ebay, theres one I saw for CHEAP with 4 6-Core xeons and 128gb ram. But it has no controller

[michrech]

Also, if you don't require a rack mount server, and don't mind the hardware being a couple generations behind, look at the HP Z800.  Dual Xeon (socket 1366), 12 DDR3 slots, four internal 3.5" HDD bays + three 5.25" bays (you can insert a 4-in-3 3.5" hot-swap mount in here).  They have options for an 850w (I think) and 1100w power supply (mine came with the later).  It's also quieter than any of the rack mount Dells I've had, save for the R710...