DL180 Gen6 with a jumble of HDs, possible or not bother?

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I have a heap of sata drives which are begging to go into a box. I really don't want to spread them around my current PCS, so am looking at getting a refubished HP ProLiant DL180 G6 with no drives.
The specs say it comes with a HP Smart Array P410 256MB BBWC, it's not obvious to me if this will allow me to access all the drives.
Some of the drives are the same size, would it be possible to have different raid groups as well as some single drives? I simply failed to google this information :(
 
Soldato
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This isn't something that immediately comes across as a good idea.

How many drives and how big?

How will they be used? Are you basically wanting a NAS?
 
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If noise is a concern don't do it. The dl180 being a 1u machine is actually really quite loud. Far to loud to have anywhere but behind a closed door imo.

Other than that though they are decent if not getting a bit long in the tooth now.
 
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I believe that they're 2U, but they still won't be quiet. No way near as bad as the older stuff that used to howl, but still not great for home use.

They're a really awkward shape if you haven't got a rack.

G6 is old. Anything from that generation is going to use more power than I'd like for a 24/7 home server.

There may be firmware issues with non-HP drives. Possibly not, but worth checking.
 
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Essentially yes, a NAS is what I'm after. a refurbished DL180 can be had for £100 you see, and I have drives sat here not being used. It doesn't need to be a bullet-proof system.
The drives come in a few size-flavours, 2TB, 1TB, 160GB (I had previously raided 6 of those for a pretty fast 960GB array :) )
I won't actually need huge speed for this as I'm only on Gbit Ethernet anyway.

Noise isn't a problem, I'll put it in the dining room :D

The other option is to buy a DS380 case, which unfortunatly isn't available on OC:
https://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=452
and populate it with some bits. I have a a game server which I can rob for parts, but I would have to use windows 7 for compatibility reasons (so it would still be the game server as well, keeping the OS that's on the SSD).
I'm a bit green on SAS/JBOD controllers though...

Edit: Damn, the mobo won't fit that case, so that'd be another cost....
 
Soldato
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Throw those 160GB drives in the bin. They're not worth the hassle for the power they'll use and the drive slots they'll occupy.

BTW 6 160GB drives in RAID 0 is an accident waiting to happen.
 
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Well, in that case I might have to have a rethink. Data loss isn't a great concern, just an irritation. power consumption isn't that much either compared to all the other stuff running :)
 
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I have a license for server 2016 which isn't in use, so I don't have to use freenas. One of the attractions of using some sort of plugin card was to increase the number of sata drives I can connect. The OS drive doesn't necessarily have to go via the card either, that could have a direct connection as I won't be swapping it about, then let the OS deal with the card connected drives if necessary/appropriate. I also want something with a backplane, I'm sick of fiddling about with sata data and power cables every time I want to change something.
 
Don
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I have a license for server 2016 which isn't in use, so I don't have to use freenas.

A DL160 G6 isn't supported by HP under 2016. Whilst installing it is fine (and indeed I've done so on a couple of similar aged G6 and G7 servers), you will have to modify some of the .inf files within the HP installers for e.g. the Smartarray management software, and event notifier (e.g. so you get alerts when a drive has failed) in order to even install them.

Aside from
I have a heap of sata drives which are begging to go into a box. I really don't want to spread them around my current PCS,
what is the point of this NAS?
Is it important data you are planning on storing (seems unlikely if you are starting with ancient 160GB drives)? How much data?
Don't forget that if it is important data, then a NAS isn't necessarily a backup - you may still want a USB external drive or cloud account to back everything up to as well.

I also want something with a backplane, I'm sick of fiddling about with sata data and power cables every time I want to change something.
Backplane/Hot Swap is something that's nice to have, but not essential in the home. The less drives you have (i.e. by dumping the smaller drives and sticking e.g. to only the 2TB ones), the less cabling you will need (and also likely better reliability).
 
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Don’t do it. It’s a DinoServ, it’s ancient, power hungry, loud and hot, you do not want this in your life. Alternatively if you hate your ears, want to heat a room really inneficiently and absolutely hate whoever pays the power bill, or have some sort of ancient IT fettish, then it’s a perfect idea.
 
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Well, the larger drives are currently in my PCs, the plan was to move them out and have extra physical space available to add more to the box as required. The 160GB drives would just have been for fun :D (they haven't had much use, few hundred hours each and were free!)
Buying a new NAS/DAS seems quite expensive for what they are, if you consider the cost per bay to access a drive, it's insane. So for the moment, I guess I'll just wait for another solution to present itself....
Which might be this case:
https://www.silverstonetek.com/product.php?pid=709&area=en
It's different to the previous case I posted a link to, this will take the ATX motherboard I have in mind.
I guess all I'd need is a 4 port sata card to go with it?
 
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I've been in the same boat looking at old servers and in the end I've just bought a second hand Fujitsu TX100 S3 to replace my gen7 HP Microserver. Its not rackmountable.

It can take 4 drives as standard, plus it has 2 3.5in bays and 2 5.25in bays to add more drives if you need to and has a comparatively less power hungry xeon 1220 which is still plenty for a NAS.
About a hundred quid. No hotswap mind you, but how often are you really going to need that?

I would however bin small drives (under 2TB) in favour of less bigger ones and boot the OS off USB or SSD.
 
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Why on earth would anyone go through this for 160GB drives that by your own admission are unimportant? The power usage alone will be circa £500/yr or in other words you would be better off paying for something more efficient at the start.
 
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Why is everyone so hung up on those small drives? They aren't relevant. FYI, £70 a year to run all 8 24/7 at max power usage (which they won't be), not that I was actually planning to, they were just for fun because I have them sat here.
All I want is a cheap box I can add drives to, the DL180 seemed like a reasonable choice, but I do concede there are issues with it.
Still waiting for a suggestion that doesn't cost £30 a bay.... (or more, lots more....)
No comments on the silverstone case idea so far either :(
 
Soldato
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If you want to run an old server despite the downsides then go for it.

If that is what you want to do then I'd go for a tower model rather than a rackmount. They'll at least stand up on their own and should be quieter due to the bigger slower fans. I've still got a ML350-G6 at a customer site running some legacy software and it is fairly quiet. Watch the drive bays because a lot of them will be configured to take 2.5" drives rather than 3.5".

What do you want to know about the Silverstone?
 
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I have a rack which is partly why I don't mind having a rack case... The downsides I can see are potentially noise, the age of the kit (in case it dies as opposed to power consumption), getting the SAS card to play nice (probably top of the list). Upsides are cost (£100 + £3 for each caddy is what I'm looking at), it's rack mountable (for me that's a plus!), number of bays (12 should be enough!)

I'm weighing this against the Silverstone case, which can be had for £100 new. 8 bays plus a few internal (I'd use that area for the OS drive). The motherboard I have to put in it only has 6 sata ports, one of which would be for the OS, so I am considering a 4 port sata card. I'm a little unsure which card to go for though, last time I bought anything similar was an I-will raid card (IDE!)
I have seen people enquire about new sata backplanes for the case because they've broken them, I'm not sure if that's due to ham-fistedness or they are prone to falling apart.
Price and being new are major upsides. Downsides are that the motherboard will have to come out of the rack case it's in, leaving more space in the rack :( It's also a bit of an upside since it's not yet another PC in the house...

I took a look at the ML350 it seems to have the came controller as the DL180. I couldn't find it as cheap either :(

So, I guess what I need to ask is, would you (or anyone, tho clearly people do) go for the Silverstone case and a sata card (and which one?)?
 
Soldato
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Why not try looking at this differently? You think £100 is an OK hardware budget and cost of powering the server as an ongoing isn't important to you. Obviously depending on the spec of the server in question and what you pay for power this will vary, but here are some numbers:

http://i.imgur.com/Ly13Zvt.png

That's from an actual DL180 G6 at idle, your spec may differ, but it's 209w/hr average according to onboard iLO, using my own power figure (based on my usage inc standing charge courtesy of my Loop) I have 14.33p/kwh, that's gives us just under 3p/hr, 72p/day, £262/yr. so your Y1 cost is £362 + caddies (can take up to 12 from memory?) so let's round it to £400 in Y1. HP lock down updates on commercial stuff which is problematic, they also go into crisis mode with non HP cards installed, fans to max etc. which exacerbates the noise/power issue.

With £400 to spend you could easily buy a few 6-8TB drives and power them, as you mention you have multiple other PC's/servers you could virtualise your 2k16 install and for bugger all extra power have very similar end results with way more storage. If you prefer to go with a physical build, then a consumer x99 set-up is likely to set you back £240ish (2630L/x99 board/8GB/Antec 900/H310 HBA, 3 x 4in3 backplanes), that's 12 bays plus spare SATA for SSD's for VM's/cache and the option of a 13th drive mounted in the base for 20/bay based on 12. Those numbers are based on what I personally paid a few months back. I had a PSU/GPU and SAS to SATA cables, but either way it's a very capable virtual environment and file server with 8c/16t. Looking at the idle power consumption (can't remember if this was before or after fitting the HBA) it was approx 50w or less measured at the socket, put another way it's less than 1/4 of the DL180, it's also quiet enough that it could - and did - live in the lounge, heat output is also minimal. In my example (and remember I had a PSU/GPU) i'm roughly £100 better off in year one with a vastly more capable system and by year two it's getting on for £300 total saving just on idle numbers, if you intend on actually using it for anything, then the savings at load are even bigger (x99 load was circa 100w) and the performance vs anything you'll find in a DL180 G6 is huge.

This probably isn't what you want to hear, but at least think about it, it's madness to pay £400 in Y1 and a combined £662 in Y2 just to access a few 160GB drives, thats plus the power for the drives and plus the workload of actually doing anything else on the box.
 
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