Dell T3400

[rcp]

Hi I am looking to use a Dell T3400 as an unRAID server. I have 5 x 1TB Samsung drives and 2 x WD 250GB drives, all SATA.  Would unRAID support it? Specs of the PC are;

 

Intel C2D 1.8GHz E4300

Intel X38 Chipset

4GB RAM (I know this is overkill but want to use the server for web, mysql, etc. as well as unRAID)

Broadcom 5754 Gigabit Ethernet controller

 

Also if I needed to migrate the unRAID server with the data to another PC, what is the procedure for this? Can I just plug the USB stick into another PC and let unRAID detect the new motherboard, chipset etc. with data intact?

 

Thanks in advance.

[RobJ]

The Intel X38 should be fine, but no guarantee on the Broadcomm BCM5754 as I can find no instances of any unRAID users with one.  Surprisingly, there was not one Broadcom listed on the Hardware Compatibility page, so I added one myself that had a successful report.  There is Broadcom support in unRAID (see this), so yours is *probably* supported.

 

The main problem I see with this case is lack of space for drives, at least according to published specs, and possibly a lack of SATA ports.  Some of the drive ports it has are SAS, not SATA, which are not supported in unRAID, although one of the experts here may have a way to use them.  I have no experience with SAS.

 

Also if I needed to migrate the unRAID server with the data to another PC, what is the procedure for this? Can I just plug the USB stick into another PC and let unRAID detect the new motherboard, chipset etc. with data intact?

 

This is one of the great features of unRAID.  Just pull the drives and flash, install in another machine, boot and check the drive assignments, and start the array.  A parity check is recommended, to ensure a perfect migration.

[rcp]

Thanks RobJ.

 

I am surprised by no Broadcom users yet, I can be the first Its in alot of our servers (Dell).

 

Yes the case is crap (Dell BTX). However it has two internal 3.5" bays. Two 5.25" bays which I was intending to convert using a 3 in 2 caddy. It also has two 'flex' 3.5" bays. This could give a total of 7 disks. However I am thinking of leaving this machine alone and building one from afresh, using only the spare memory I have (2GB) and disks.

 

Looking at the Antec 900 or 1200 cases, Celeron 420, 2GB ram, 450W Silverstone PSU, those Samsung drives and possibly an Intel PRO/1000 card. Does unRAID support NIC teaming? Not that I need the throughput but you never know what it might need to be used for in the future.

 

I will try the free version of unRAID and test it on the Dell T3400. I will report back my findings so others can use it in the future if they find a motherboard with similar 'Dell madness' specs I did run some benchmarks on the Samsung disks using the Intel RAID controller and it was exceeding 100MB/s reads. I have looked hard for a BTX case suitable for this but cannot find any.

 

I like the migration, much easier than Windows or Linux

 

Thanks again, will update soon.

 

Oh I will try unRAID in an old Dell 450 workstation also if it supports booting from USB. I tried a Dell Optiplex 270 (Pentium 4 2.26GHz, 1GB RAM, on board video and NIC) works fine. I set up two 40GB IDE drives, network came up no problem with shares accessible to domain PCs.