Dell T30 / HP ML10 Gen 9


Cakey

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Hey folks,

 

My bodged together NAS finally gave up to ghost last night (raspberry pi running OMV with a usb hard drive, I know I know...). No big drama as all the data is of course backed up but it does now mean that the TV is no longer being served with media files. Last night my wife had to physically locate the actual Mamma Mia disk. I was not popular.

 

Under strict instructions from the boss to 'fix it' I have decided to look at something a little more professional for my file serving needs. I was going to build a low spec xeon machine myself but then I saw the following which look like a great fit for my use case.

 

PowerEdge T30

Gen 9 Microserver

 

Both of these options are available fro around £350, come with 4 available bays, 8GB of ram and, best of all, a V5 1225. To this I would add:

 

240GB SSD for cache thingy drive

3 x 6TB Ironwolf drives (1 parity 2 storage, 12TB or so of space)

1 x USB drive for unRaid install (a good one, not a cheapo one)

1 x 6 drive unRaid license

 

What it needs to be able to do (I know unRaid meets these needs, just listing them):

  • I need this machine to hold media files to be served to 1 kodi box (we are a 1 TV house)
  • It needs space to hold my photos (50MB per picture)
  • It needs to survive the failure of 1 hard drive without a loss of data
  • I need to be able to access shares from elsewhere on the local network (it will NOT be externally facing)
  • It needs to run a PLEX server
  • It needs to be able to transcode and stream 1 1080p file to my wifes phone via plex server, so that she can watch stuff in bed (this will be a massive win, meaning the system will gain the holy of holies, Wife Approval.)

 

What it wont be doing

  • It wont be used for VMs, I have many Pis to play with if so inclined (I think Im down to 4 after giving a couple away, must buy more!)
  • It wont be doing automated backups of other machines on the LAN or of parts of its self to the cloud
  • It wont be serving files to myself or other users outside of the LAN

 

What I wish it could do but cant afford / am too tight to buy

  • IPMI, I would rather not custom build a box with this and instead go to Rome for a long weekend and live without it :)

 

As far as what I need the server to do, I only have around 3TB of files currently, so 12TB of storage will give my wife the opportunity to buy many more dreadful films and me to take many more terrible photos before we need to add another disk. From passmark scores it looks like a 1225 can handle a 1080p transcode and is probably a bit overkill. The server its self will be sitting under the stairs with my router so Im not fussed if its a bit on the noisy side. It will be available to the Kodi box via ethernet/switch and to the bedroom and my gaming/lightroom pc via wifi.

 

Based on all of this I'm wondering if you fellow nerds good folks could help me with a couple of questions. Apologies that my google-fu hasn't found the answers this morning but as I said, the boss is cracking the whip!

 

Questions

  • Does the above usage sound reasonable, do the server boxes I linked look like they will be up to the job and last for a couple of years or more?
  • When installing unRaid does it run from the USB or does it get installed to one of the SATA disks by default. What do most users do, leave it running from the USB or get it moved to the cache drive (if using one). This is the thing that is bugging me the most about the process, it doesn't seem normal to me to be running an OS from a USB?
  • Any recommendation on USB size? I was just going to grab a 32GB Sandisk
  • Im guessing that the £70 or so that a 240GB cache drive costs is a good investment.
  • Does everyone just leave their unRaid box on 24/7 and allow it to spin down the HDDs as it sees fit, or do you turn it off when you know no one will be in the house for 12 hours (ie weekdays when at work)

 

Sorry this turned into a bit of a long post. Ive always been interested in having a proper home server, but had thought that our usage would never justify the cost. Having seen these Xeon server boxes and having the old solution finally fail I am excited!

 

Thanks for reading

 

Cakey

 

Edit: I should have posted this in the General Help section, apparently Im an idiot. Ill see if I can get a mod to move - sorry everyone!

 

 

 

Edited by Cakey
posted in wrong section
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4 hours ago, Cakey said:
  • Does the above usage sound reasonable, do the server boxes I linked look like they will be up to the job and last for a couple of years or more?
  • When installing unRaid does it run from the USB or does it get installed to one of the SATA disks by default. What do most users do, leave it running from the USB or get it moved to the cache drive (if using one). This is the thing that is bugging me the most about the process, it doesn't seem normal to me to be running an OS from a USB?
  • Any recommendation on USB size? I was just going to grab a 32GB Sandisk
  • Im guessing that the £70 or so that a 240GB cache drive costs is a good investment.
  • Does everyone just leave their unRaid box on 24/7 and allow it to spin down the HDDs as it sees fit, or do you turn it off when you know no one will be in the house for 12 hours (ie weekdays when at work)

I'll leave it to those with experience to the specific boxes you listed for the first question.

 

Unraid loads from the USB, but runs in RAM. It doesn't technically get "installed" anywhere. After the boot process is done, only config and state changes are normally written to the flash drive, everything is running from the RAMDisk created at boot.

 

USB drives can be a little finicky, so searching the forums for specific models known to work would be advised. I'd recommend smaller if you can find it, as there really isn't much it's used for. My main do everything 13 drive multiple VM multiple docker pro box is only using 1.7GB on the flash drive. 4GB is plenty, but may be hard to find a quality new drive that small.

 

SSD cache drives are very much recommended, especially for plex metadata, it speeds up the browsing and processing appreciably.

 

I leave all my active machines running and spun down, my backup machines typically only run when needed. The small bit of power that is used by a spun down box is a welcome addition to the climate during winter, and not too onerous in summer. Computers, after all, are small space heaters with a healthy dose of air cleaner mixed in. Dust removal keeps the heater portion of the computer functioning properly. :-)

 

If you want to get the attention of the mods, click on the "report this post" button that appears when you hover your mouse at the top right of your post. Explain yourself in the report, and they will take care of you.

Edited by jonathanm
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My suggestion (If you don't want to put one together yourself) is to look for a system without an OS included.  The CPU type you are looking for a basic dual core CPU (If Intel, Pentium or i3) with a passmark close to 4000. (That gives you about 2000 per core.  Which is about minimum of Plex transcoding  of 1080 streams.)   There are usually a few PC vendors who will supply these systems for the Linux geeks.  You can look at my signature for an upend system that easily meets your requirements.  The MB, CPU and RAM were about $250.00 early in 2017.  You could save a bit by going down to a Pentium.  

 

USB drives should be from a brand name vendor), less than 32GB,  USB2 and plugged into a UBS2 port on the Computer.  (USB3 Drives and USB3 ports have given problems when used with certain MB.  It is best to avoid USB3 usage for your unRAID boot drive.  unRAID uses that USB drive so little that no one has ever detected any slowdown due to UBS2.)

 

I personally would try to avoid the generic no-name PS.  You really want one that is rated about 400W  and has a single 12V rail.  (unRAID will spin up all of the drives simultaneously and the single rail is more capable of meeting the peak starting current when this occurs.) 

Edited by Frank1940
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  • 1 year later...

Cakey-

 

I know that this is an old thread, so I'm not sure if you already pulled the trigger on a machine. I'm guessing that you already did, but just in case...I'll throw in my $0.02...

 

I recently picked up the exact same Dell PowerEdge T30 off of eBay. While the machine seemed pretty solid initially, I am having a heck of a time keeping the drive temps down to what I think they should be. I currently have unRaid installed, and have one WD 10TB drive that I'm copying data over to from my current server. With just the single 10TB drive in the case, I'm looking at drive temps pushing 118 deg F when copying files across the network. I've put a few PCs together in my time, and I can't believe the lack of case fans on this Dell box. It has two fans (80 mm) in the case. One is on the back of the case, and the other is acting as a CPU cooler. I'm currently in the process of trying to add additional fans to help keep the drive temps to a more comfortable level.

Edited by propman07
no fan on power supply, corrected post
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  • 2 months later...
On 8/2/2019 at 7:46 PM, propman07 said:

Cakey-

 

I know that this is an old thread, so I'm not sure if you already pulled the trigger on a machine. I'm guessing that you already did, but just in case...I'll throw in my $0.02...

 

I recently picked up the exact same Dell PowerEdge T30 off of eBay. While the machine seemed pretty solid initially, I am having a heck of a time keeping the drive temps down to what I think they should be. I currently have unRaid installed, and have one WD 10TB drive that I'm copying data over to from my current server. With just the single 10TB drive in the case, I'm looking at drive temps pushing 118 deg F when copying files across the network. I've put a few PCs together in my time, and I can't believe the lack of case fans on this Dell box. It has two fans (80 mm) in the case. One is on the back of the case, and the other is acting as a CPU cooler. I'm currently in the process of trying to add additional fans to help keep the drive temps to a more comfortable level.

 

Did you ever get around to adding additional fans and if so, could you run me through how you did it? I tried ziptying a 120mm fan to the front of the metal cage but I can't put the plastic front case back on then (cuz there's some conical plastic thing that juts out of it and gets in the way of the fan). Would love to hear how you cooled your drives as I'm having the same issue right now.

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I did find a solution to cooling the drives in the T30 case....but that was to ditch the case, and go with a DIY build.

 

I did order a slim line 120mm fan from Amazon that I was able to get to fit in the front of the case, and it allowed me to put the plastic trim piece on the front of the case back on . Here is a link to the fan that I ordered. Noctua NF-A12x15 PWM, Premium Quiet Slim Fan, 4-Pin (120mm, Brown)

 

Because the vent holes in the front of the metal case (between where the drives are and where the fan is located) were small, the fan didn't help drop the drive temperatures too much in my situation. I also added a 80mm fan inside of the case, mounted to the left of the drive trays. That fan did not help either.

 

I'm not sure if the high drive temperatures I was experiencing was due to the fact that the drives themselves ran on the warm side. I shucked them from a pair of WD Element Desktop External drives. According to youtube, these are white label WD Red drives...but I don't know how hot those drives run either.

 

I was also looking at adding a case fan directly in line with the drive cage on the T30....only problem was that there was a large support piece on the door that would have been in the way of cutting a hole for an external case fan.

 

In the end, I opted to sell the T30 on eBay for about half of what I bought it for....but at least I got something for it. The tower that I put together now has 3 of the 10TB drives in it, and the highest temperature that any of them has got to is 96 deg F....and that was during a parity check. I forgot to mention that in both situations, the T30 or the new tower were on the floor in the office at my house. Temperature in that room (during the summer) peaks at 82 deg F before the AC kicks on.

 

Good luck, and post back if you find a better cooling solution.

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When looking for a fan to reducing heating issues, avoid any fan that advertises 'Quiet' as an attribute.  You want the fan to be able to move a large volume of air against a high static pressure and those are never quiet.  Sure, some of these will make more noise than others but none of them will be truly quiet-- only less noisy!  

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That's the exact predicament I find myself in, propman07. The support piece from the front plastic trim gets in the way of the fan if you try to line it in front of the drive case. I put a 80mm fan on the inside to the left of the drive case and that has helped bring down temperatures for one of my two SAS drives. (one idles at 40degrees while the other at 44, peaks are 43 & 48 respectively) Another thing this 80mm fan has helped to cool is my nvme m2 drive which now sits comfy at around 37-39). I'm going to try adding another 80mm fan to the front and try to align it so it doesn't block the support piece.

 

As for my other SAS drive on the top cage, I've no idea how to cool it as the T30 cannot accommodate a fan there. For anyone else who might stumble across this post while trying to cool their T30 drives, my advice would be to use SATA NAS drives in the T30 as they tend to run cooler than their SAS counterparts. I have a RED sitting in the top cage as well and the temperatures on that are great even during a parity check.

 

tl;dr: its hard to add fans to the T30, use SATA if you can.

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