Upgrade drives or second server?

[Psittac]

I have an R710 6 bay with 6x toshiba p300 3tb drives in raid5

it has 2x x5670 hex core 2.93ghz cpu's and 64gb of ram and 240g ssd for OS

 

Right now all that I am doing is a plex server and the raid array is almost full.  I want to add a wsus and game caching proxy plus I want to run a vm for filesharing and on top of that I would like to do what ever neat thing I can think of.  I have a good router/firewall, wifi ap, and taggable switch so won't need a server to do any of that.

 

Would it be best to buy another R710 6bay (maybe 8bay) with dual x5670's or upgrade to 6tb drives in my current server? transferring from one raid to another is a non-issue as two of my friends have servers that can hold my array for a rebuild.

 

All in it's looking like the two options will be about the same price

 

edit: My overall goal is to host lan parties with vlan tagged ethernet port's.  I will be moving to business isp so static ip and 24/7 sharing with the unlimited data cap.  Right now I host at most 4 plex users most of the time it's only one at a time.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Id just get a external sas enclosure and an external sas card. That way you can add mor drvies for cheaper and don't need to maange a second system.

 

Look at something like a sa120 from lenovo.

[Psittac]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Look at something like a sa120 from lenovo.

I can get another R710 for about that price with no drives or ram from servermonkey.  I guess the biggest downside is power consumption and added cost of a good raid card drive caddies and ram.  I'll have to think about it, not entirely sure what I'm doing here but I'll look at the numbers and think about it.

 

edit: I guess another option is get the drives to upgrade my server then take the toshiba's out and put them in that sa120.  One reason I'm leaning towards the drives is they are base line consumer grade and I'm worried about drives starting to fail.  I'm thinking drive replacement will be needed at some point, whether that's now and turn current drives into jbod or later when they start failing I'm not sure.  Oh I know, get enterprise 3tb hdd's and jbod the toshiba's now.  Then I'll have double the space and only put important stuff on the raid.

[Psittac]

YESSSS!

 

https://www.servermonkey.com/refurbished-dell-equallogic-ps6000e-8tb-16x-500gb-sata.html

[Electronics Wizardy]

7 minutes ago, Psittac said:

YESSSS!

 

https://www.servermonkey.com/refurbished-dell-equallogic-ps6000e-8tb-16x-500gb-sata.html

so this is a iscsi scan it seems, so your getting gbe speeds.

 

Also thats gonna be pretty power hungry.

 

Also hunt on ebay its a good amount cheaper than server monkey.

 

this is cheap and will work, but 2tb drive limit https://www.servermonkey.com/refurbished-dell-powervault-md1000-configure-to-order.html

[Psittac]

1 hour ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

so this is a iscsi scan it seems, so your getting gbe speeds.

 

Also thats gonna be pretty power hungry.

 

Also hunt on ebay its a good amount cheaper than server monkey.

dunno about that, looking at a dell powervault with 8x 2tb drives dual psu bezel and raid card for $630

 

edit: 15x2tb storage for under $1k, just doesn't have rails which are $25

 

edit: what can you tell me about this? What else will it need after having everything packaged that's available (except vmware etc)

https://www.servermonkey.com/refurbished-dell-powervault-md1000-configure-to-order.html

[Razor Blade]

If power isn't a concern then an external enclosure would be fine. Keep in mind you'll need an HBA PCIe and SFF 8088 cable to hook it to your existing R710.

 

 

If it were me? I would go for the higher capacity drives.

[Psittac]

I'm at a point where I don't even remember what my goal was to start.  I've learned that I can easily run wsus on the server I have and I could probably even run a VM on it and the program for my family business.  The real issue comes down to storage space as I only have 3tb remaining and that will fill rather easily with the business isp as there is no data cap.

 

So I guess I will say thank you for all of the input, it will help me once I've decided how long to wait to build fund's vs raiding what's in my saving's account.  I really like that powervault but coming up with $1k at once isn't easy, my current rig was purchased a part at a time over 6-9 month's+.  30tb of storage sounds amazingly tempting lol.

 

Also, I put an edit in my earlier post.  Could you guy's let me know what else I would need for that powervault? I'm assuming it needs some kind of pcie slot on my r710.  Also what do you think of the dell raid cards?  I was told they are crap when building my r710 so I bought one seperate.

[Psittac]

2 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

so this is a iscsi scan it seems, so your getting gbe speeds.

 

Also thats gonna be pretty power hungry.

 

Also hunt on ebay its a good amount cheaper than server monkey.

 

this is cheap and will work, but 2tb drive limit https://www.servermonkey.com/refurbished-dell-powervault-md1000-configure-to-order.html

I don't know what iscsi scan is but I don't have any hardware over gigabit, 10g is just so amazingly expensive

 

I'm not entirely turned off by the power hungry aspect, For the past 7+ years I have always budgeted for extra electricity consumption.  Most of that time was for fish tanks but currently I only have a couple small tanks compared to what I used to have.

 

I glanced on ebay and was not a fan of what I saw, I guess a big reason for that is I'm not fluent in server equipment, terms or brands.  Also there is something to be said about being able to go to one website and have everything laid out simply.  And I'm kind of fond of servermonkey, they were excellent with my r710 and I would like to be a repeat customer.

 

And last I didn't see your recommendation, after your post I talked about that exact unit, which is the one I will more than likely get if I don't go with another r710.  The problem with that unit is I think I need to buy all of it at the same time to get the special on the 2tb drives AND get the drive caddies.  I wrote them an e-mail asking if I could lock down the drives and the caddies as if I bought it all at the same time but only bought the unit with 3 or 4 drives and everything but vmware and rails.

[Razor Blade]

Some things to consider... much of the older Dell powervaults may run at 3GB/s which is fine for archiving a lot of data but pulling the data won't take advantage of faster drives. Also drive compatibility is something you would need to research (if you were planning on running SSDs or something like a hybrid drive).

 

To hook a drive shelf to your R710, you'll need an HBA with external SFF8088 ports such as a DELL 7RJDT and an SFF 8088 cable. However that card was really more for something like the newer powervault MD series storage units (which I believe are 6GB/s units). Not sure about compatibility with older powervault units.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 hours ago, Psittac said:

I don't know what iscsi scan is but I don't have any hardware over gigabit, 10g is just so amazingly expensive

 

I'm not entirely turned off by the power hungry aspect, For the past 7+ years I have always budgeted for extra electricity consumption.  Most of that time was for fish tanks but currently I only have a couple small tanks compared to what I used to have.

 

I glanced on ebay and was not a fan of what I saw, I guess a big reason for that is I'm not fluent in server equipment, terms or brands.  Also there is something to be said about being able to go to one website and have everything laid out simply.  And I'm kind of fond of servermonkey, they were excellent with my r710 and I would like to be a repeat customer.

 

And last I didn't see your recommendation, after your post I talked about that exact unit, which is the one I will more than likely get if I don't go with another r710.  The problem with that unit is I think I need to buy all of it at the same time to get the special on the 2tb drives AND get the drive caddies.  I wrote them an e-mail asking if I could lock down the drives and the caddies as if I bought it all at the same time but only bought the unit with 3 or 4 drives and everything but vmware and rails.

if you want more drives in anouther server get something like a hp dl 180 g6 or a dell c2100 or r510. Those hold 12 drives instead of 6, and have the same cpu's.

 

 

[Psittac]

found this on CL, thought's? price $550

 

Selling a perfect condition, recently decommissioned Dell R510 Server
Unit is in perfect condition with no flaws.

All firmware updated to latest as of posting.
Ready to be someones new file or media server

Specs:
Dell R510 12bay LFF w/Flex bay
iDrac6 Enterprise
Intel Xeon x5650 6core/12thread 2.66-3.06GHz
32gb DDR3 ECC Low Voltage
Intel 2x1gb Network adapter
Perc H700i Hardware Raid 512mb w/bbu
12x 3.5" Hot Swap Caddies
12x1tb 7200rpm Sata HDD
2x750w Power supplies
Dell Bezel

NO OS keys or licenses included
Can install any OS upon request

Cash or CC with valid ID only

 

edit: How hard is it to find a heatsink for this? it has dual socket but only one populated.

edit again: not sure if dual 750w will run 12 drives and dual sockets, this spec sheet say's it will.....

[Razor Blade]

Heatsink for R510 can be found on eBay for about $20 each.

Yes the 750W PSU will power 12 HDDs with dual CPUs. The R510 only supports up to 95W TDP processors and 4 DIMMs per CPU (8 total).

[dalekphalm]

You can find the older model Dell MD1000 DAS for under $200 (Canadian). It holds 15 3.5” drives, but is limited to SAS 3GB/s. You’d want to verify that the built in controller supports large format drives (official specs cap at 2TB per drive). 

[Psittac]

2 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

You can find the older model Dell MD1000 DAS for under $200 (Canadian). It holds 15 3.5” drives, but is limited to SAS 3GB/s. You’d want to verify that the built in controller supports large format drives (official specs cap at 2TB per drive). 

Well the MD1000 posted here is only $50usd it's the drives that makes it $1k usd but that's for 30tb.  I found a local R510 with 12x 1tb drives for $550, half the price less than half the storage but has a cpu and ram.  Which one would you go with?

 

edit: I might be leaning towards the r510 because depending on what I do in the future I might run out of cpu horsepower.  Plus I'd like a dedicated VM machine so I could leave my r710 as is and run a vm box on the r510

[AbsoluteFool]

On 25.8.2018 at 11:49 PM, Psittac said:

I have an R710 6 bay with 6x toshiba p300 3tb drives in raid5

it has 2x x5670 hex core 2.93ghz cpu's and 64gb of ram and 240g ssd for OS

 

Right now all that I am doing is a plex server and the raid array is almost full.  I want to add a wsus and game caching proxy plus I want to run a vm for filesharing and on top of that I would like to do what ever neat thing I can think of.  I have a good router/firewall, wifi ap, and taggable switch so won't need a server to do any of that.

 

Would it be best to buy another R710 6bay (maybe 8bay) with dual x5670's or upgrade to 6tb drives in my current server? transferring from one raid to another is a non-issue as two of my friends have servers that can hold my array for a rebuild.

 

All in it's looking like the two options will be about the same price

 

edit: My overall goal is to host lan parties with vlan tagged ethernet port's.  I will be moving to business isp so static ip and 24/7 sharing with the unlimited data cap.  Right now I host at most 4 plex users most of the time it's only one at a time.

Personally i'd go for a second server. Not because you can't re-arrange the server you have now. But with all these new features you would want to use a hypervisor to make management easier. PFsense also works great as a VM. 

 

Honestly i think you will make it worse for yourself by adding a disk shelf. Not because disk shelfs are bad. But because you already have "dedicated" that server to run plex. When you just add and add it'll just turn into a headace, compared to getting a second server.