rudeer_poke

joined 10 months ago
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1
Stuff to put into homelab rack (alien.top)
 

I am a bit bothered about my rack being (more than) half-empty and I am always wondering what else could I put in it, so I am interested in your ideas for installation.

What I already have:

  • 2 servers with 3U in total, at the moment I don't need more
  • shelf for ISP router and OPNsense mini PC router
  • switch (OFC)
  • patch panel
  • cable passtrough brush thing (not sure how it is called)
  • a pull out shelf for placing my notebook on it when configuring stuff
  • 2 regular shelves that I keep some cables and tools on

What I am missing/planning to get to fill in some of the missing 20Us:

  • rack UPS - currently have a tower one with a perfectly sufficient capacity, but of course i'd like a rackable one much more, just looking for a good deal
  • KVM console - i don't strictly need it (my servers have IPMI), but seems as a nice addition. unfortunately even fairly ancient ones look expensive, often missing proprietaty cables, etc.
  • ....what else? staff like ventilation units does not look useful for me.
R430 picky about drives? in c/[email protected]
[–] [email protected] 1 points 10 months ago

OK, drives are reformatted, but it went kinda interesting:

- the Dell did not recognize the drives at all, so was unable to format them. Apparently it needs a RAID card in full IT mode and my PERC H330 in HBA mode was not sufficient. I did not want to mess around with flashing the PERC, so my plan was to put them into my other server with a LSI9211 in IT mode.

- the other server has 3.5 caddies, but I had a 3.5->2.5 adaptor I ordered from ebay a few years ago for my old Gen7 Microserver. The adaptor has some kind of PCB, so the disk is not directly attached to the server, but trough the adaptor.

- at this moment i realized that the EMC drives are SAS, but the adaptor is SATA, so it probably wont work, but i gave it a try regardless. The disks fit it, as the internal port on the adaptor did not have the center piece SATA drives normally have between the data and power port, but neither had any connectors between them.

- much to my surprise, the server recognized the disks and was able to format them using sg_format to 512b, and putting them back to the dell they are recognized without any issues.

​

As for the old 80GB HDD, its not recognized by the other server as well - not showing up among the devices. not sure why, since it works flawlessly when connected to my desktop.

the other remaining mystery is that front connector on the EMC SAS drives. any idea what is that for?

1
R430 picky about drives? (alien.top)
 

I have a recently acquired DELL R430 curently with a single Intel DC3520 SSD. I wanted to add some additional disks, but none of them are detected by the operating system. The server has a Perc H330 in HBA mode.

  • An old Seagate 80 GB laptop drive that works when connected to my desktop - top light on caddy is on (same as with the current intel SSD), i can hear the disk spinning up, but not detected in the HBA settings.
  • Two Samsung SAS SSDs drives from ebay (MZ-ILS1T6N, EMC P/N: 118000301) - are detected by the Perc but with some strange values - note the (0KB) in the title. on the caddy both lights are on

Am I missing something or are these drives simply not compatible with the R430?

​

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https://preview.redd.it/a1ayfy63x50c1.png?width=1051&format=png&auto=webp&s=c59204709a8bb2f03ce6c341c191c96a40f63cca

https://preview.redd.it/1dwvver4v50c1.png?width=1065&format=png&auto=webp&s=9ace0a9827a86c4882b908b100b1246e51369b92

The SAS drives have some strange connector on the front - any idea what is that? (i suspect some proprietary EMC caddy connector?)

https://preview.redd.it/fdde37ixv50c1.jpg?width=1599&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=aa522dfe229bba516e285dc713de48381b8a4d58

​

0
10G Ethernet seems to be expensive. What am I missing? (alien.top)
 

Last time I asked around on 2.5G ethernet I was told to skip it and go to 10 Gigs straight as its "cheaper" and better than 2.5G. So I started to investigate and I am baffled by the costs. Let me break it down:

Quality 10G switch Mikrotik CRS305-1G-4S+IN ~150 $ (this seems reasonable)

10G SFP+ RJ45 modules - these are starting from 50$ on ebay from china which seems excessive, given i would need at least 4 of them.

10G NIC -Intel X540 T2 for around 40 $ if I want to go with RJ45. X520 with SFP+ connector can be had for 30$ but does not seem to worth it, given then price of SFP+ modules.

So I am somewhere around 430 $ for connecting my NAS and desktop PC via 10Gig. Compared to that, I can upgrade to 2.5G only for approx. 80 $

I could partially go with fiber instead of copper, pushing down the SFP+ module costs to 15$, but i still need at least one RJ45 module to run to my home PC. Also I am concerned fiber will bring some additional complexities that I am not prepared for (have zero experience with it).