**Dell PowerEdge T20 Mini Tower Server - Owner Thread**

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Yeah I did find that. 35w sounds ok, although there will be about 25-30w of disks in it so it'll probably end up higher. Debating what disks to get, either WD red 6/8tb or maybe those new Seagate 10tb. Will probably go for the 6's as a balance of rebuild time vs cost. Unbuffered ecc ram is unfortunately uncommon so will be about £120 for 32gb. Then there's choosing a storage controller - I may get another m1015 although somewhere i do have a spare 9750-4i, but it does run hot.
 
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For now decided to keep my existing disks (4x3TB Reds and 2x2.5" boot disks). I did buy another new M1015 and an NC360T dual port Gigabit NIC.

Ordered 32GB of RAM of Crucial RAM and just waiting on a couple of cables (mini-sas to sata breakout, sata power splitter, and a couple of sata data cables) and I should be good to go.

Then, as long as the hardware all is supported out the box, I have the pleasure of upgrading from Solaris 11.0 to 11.3, or maybe waiting for 12.0 to come out in the next few months (will probably do this).

Everyone likes photos:

xK6xq2F.jpg
 
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Where are you guys finding these great deals?

I'm looking to get one for my degree project, but also to act as a file/media store with some VM's after I've completed my project.

If I was to want say 4x3+TB WD-Reds, 2xSSD boot, 32GB RAM, and fast LAN; would I need a RAID adapter card? and added NIC?
 
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Mine is now up and running with a fresh install of Solaris 11.3. I shifted the drives from my old N54L and imported & upgraded the zpool. All fine (apart from a slight issue with zones and vbox, but that's irrelevant).
 
Caporegime
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Got it today. :)

Used this ESXi 6.0 Update 2 and works a treat

Managed to get DSM 5.2-5967 installed to test on the hard drive that it comes with while I wait for the new SSD.



Any ideas how I can get my stuff or migrate from a baremetal Xpenology on my N54L to a new VM Xpenology?
 
Caporegime
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Should I be able to passthrough a hard drive with a pexsat32 with just the standard 4GB of ram installed?

I can see it as a passthrough device and enable it but when trying to start the VM with it added I keep getting errors about memory allocation and reservation. I've recreated the VM with 512MB, 1GB & 2GB of ram but keep getting it. :confused:
 
Caporegime
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Well I've just had 8gb delivered, put that in and now the VM loads with pass-through... but the hdd doesn't show in Xpenology. I can only assume that controller isn't compatible with it. :(

ov_sjo could you send me a trust message with where you got the M1015 from? I've seen a few on eBay from Hong Kong.
 
Caporegime
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Ordered a Syba / IOCrest SI-PEX40064 as that chip Marvell 88SE9215 is supported in DSM for pass-through, so will give it a go tonight when it arrives.

Only really need it for pass-through as I can use the motherboard ports to run a drive from for ESXi.
 
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Ordered another T20 xeon today. Will be a dedicated plex box running FreebSD. Along with it are two Samsung 850 Evo 250gb SSDs which will be mirrored for plex.

I'm still going to keep Solaris on the other one (32gb) as primarily a file server. I bought a couple of Intel X520-DA2 cards from eBay and some twinax/dac cables so I can have 10 GbE between the two servers and 10 GbE from the solaris box to my network (via my CCR1009).
 
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Next!

Dpu64dB.jpg


Just need to get a couple of SATA power cables as the OEM ones don't accommodate two SSDs side by side (unless you use the cable for the bottom drives up top too). Conveniently found not only the 4GB DIMM left over from my first T20 (intention was to add this for 8 GB), but I found another two identical modules (albeit branded HP) in the drawer so i'll end up with 16 GB in this box. Might do a bit more than Plex with it now, so may as well hook up the two 1 TB HDD's too (from the two T20's).

That's the Intel X520-DA2 in the PCI-e slot. Slightly annoying PCI-e config on these servers, the blue socket is PCI-e v3 16x but the black one is PCI-e v2 4x only. Not an issue in this box but is in my original server which has an M1015 HBA in it which wants an 8x slot. 4x PCI-e can do 2GB/sec in each direction so should be more than the four WD reds could ever sustain so i'll move the M1015 into the black slot on my Solaris box and install the second X520-DA2 into the blue one. Should be fine, fingers crossed.
 
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Soldato
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18 Oct 2002
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Whats the best price people are seeing for the xeon models at the moment?

Think I might chop my Dual Xeon L5640 Dell T5500 Workstation in for one of these.... Seem to be superb value
 
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