Homelab Upgrade

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

Got an H700 Raid controller for one of my R710's. I'll be replacing a Perc 6/i for more SSD performance. Anyone else got any upgrades in the works?

 

[Bryce W]

Not sure if I'd call it a homelab, but the location I just moved into has a network rack that was fairly un-utilized. The people who were here before were fairly non-techie. Just mostly tidying it up.

Added in short RJ-45 cables (was a waterfall of colored 1-2m network cables before)
Added in a 1RU brush panel

Waiting on shipping for these, but:
Adding in a 1RU PDU
Adding in a 1RU shelf for the modem/router

 

[Markverhyden]

I spent some money last year upgrading one of my R710's, maxing out the RAM as well as replacing the iDRAC 6 Express with an Enterprise. The other one, my production, only had 4 x 300gb SAS. So when it had a meltdown I pimped it out with more RAM and 8 x 600GB SAS. My daughter's wedding put the kibosh to anymore last year. I've still got an R710 w/ 6 3.5" SATA which I'll be looking a replacing, but keeping it for another FreeNAS server. The thing is so slow to boot up, literally like 3-4 minutes to complete. Once it's up it's not too bad.

 

[fencepost]

I've considered things like that, but being in a condo I don't really have a place (or the desire for power bills) to set up any jet engines in my home workspace. Been there, done that, saw the power bill drop noticeably when I shut down the machine - and it didn't even have a bunch of drives in it.

Frankly if I'm running a maxed-out or even significantly equipped R710, it'd better be in production either providing services for customers or at a customer site even if they are a few years old at this point.

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

I've considered things like that, but being in a condo I don't really have a place (or the desire for power bills) to set up any jet engines in my home workspace. Been there, done that, saw the power bill drop noticeably when I shut down the machine - and it didn't even have a bunch of drives in it.

Frankly if I'm running a maxed-out or even significantly equipped R710, it'd better be in production either providing services for customers or at a customer site even if they are a few years old at this point.

One of the two R710's is production with 72 GB of RAM and 3 SSD's. I also have an R410 providing an NFS store for the production box. I'd like to replace that R410 with a 2TB SSD in the R710. I have a home R710 with a custom FreeNAS box tied to it, but it doesn't get used as much as it used to.

 

[Bryce W]

I've considered things like that, but being in a condo I don't really have a place (or the desire for power bills) to set up any jet engines in my home workspace. Been there, done that, saw the power bill drop noticeably when I shut down the machine - and it didn't even have a bunch of drives in it.

They make sense for learning about stuff which is great for this line of work, or in a business environment doing something production related. But I am mostly the same as you. Power costs are prohibitive in Australia and getting worse, so I dont run much.
The only thing that’s on 24/7 is my Synology which is running backups and the UniFi controller. My model runs about 33w idle and 50w on heavy usage. The UniFi controller adds some load so it sits somewhere inbetween most of the time.

 

[Markverhyden]

I've considered things like that, but being in a condo I don't really have a place (or the desire for power bills) to set up any jet engines in my home workspace. Been there, done that, saw the power bill drop noticeably when I shut down the machine - and it didn't even have a bunch of drives in it.

Frankly if I'm running a maxed-out or even significantly equipped R710, it'd better be in production either providing services for customers or at a customer site even if they are a few years old at this point.

Those older machines do gobble electrons. But if it's a lab you only run it when needed. I've got 3 but only one is in production running 24/365. The other 2 probably clock 30 hours total per month.

Personally I've been giving some thought to blades. Several months ago I ran a warranty call for a new HP blade. The PoC told me that they were moving everything to blades. One reason is that power consumption was 30%+ less. So I could get a small chassis and replace everything. Not made of money though so it may be a while finding cheap low cost stuff on eBay.

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

Those older machines do gobble electrons. But if it's a lab you only run it when needed. I've got 3 but only one is in production running 24/365. The other 2 probably clock 30 hours total per month.

Personally I've been giving some thought to blades. Several months ago I ran a warranty call for a new HP blade. The PoC told me that they were moving everything to blades. One reason is that power consumption was 30%+ less. So I could get a small chassis and replace everything. Not made of money though so it may be a while finding cheap low cost stuff on eBay.

Interesting, my experience with blades is they require a big blade chassis, which by them selves draw quite a bit of power. Maybe their are smaller chassis than I am used to. I always thought the concept was pretty cool that you could fit so many physical servers in a blade chassis.

 

[Markverhyden]

Interesting, my experience with blades is they require a big blade chassis, which by them selves draw quite a bit of power. Maybe their are smaller chassis than I am used to. I always thought the concept was pretty cool that you could fit so many physical servers in a blade chassis.

I could swear I've seen a 4 unit chassis somewhere, which is along the lines of what I was thinking about. But I just looked around and the smallest I saw 10. So maybe it won't happen. They also have these sophisticated tools for using and managing them and I'm not sure even the basic ones are free.

 

[Slaters Kustum Machines]

I could swear I've seen a 4 unit chassis somewhere, which is along the lines of what I was thinking about. But I just looked around and the smallest I saw 10. So maybe it won't happen. They also have these sophisticated tools for using and managing them and I'm not sure even the basic ones are free.

I found a DIY setup: http://www.buildablade.com/bb-itx84.htm also turns out Dell's VRTX line is "small chassis" configurations: https://www.ebay.com/itm/DELL-POWER...515900?hash=item213960093c:g:LU4AAOSw3HxajEm3

 

[Markverhyden]

I found a DIY setup: http://www.buildablade.com/bb-itx84.htm also turns out Dell's VRTX line is "small chassis" configurations: https://www.ebay.com/itm/DELL-POWER...515900?hash=item213960093c:g:LU4AAOSw3HxajEm3

Thanks. I'll look into both. One important thing in this blade stuff is the chassis firmware for management. Otherwise they're little more than mini itx stand alone servers. One good thing is I've got plenty of SAS drives which I can pull from the R710's when I retire them.