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

Liamcrane: I can only offer any infor for point 3: I've got a T20 running with unRAID. I created the file store in unRAID, with a Plex docker (it's similar to a VM, but it works on an application level, rather than an OS level, you're best off googling it) which works well for me.


Has anyone tried transferring the T20 into a rack?

If it's possible, I'm tempted to build a small rack with the T20, a UPS & a switch in 1 unit.
 
[RB] said:
Oddly, I was in the reverse situation :D

Had the NC360T turn up but was still waiting on the extra RAM.

4 sticks of the 8GB RAM arrived yesterday so went to the trouble of fitting it and the dual port NIC, which replaced an existing single port Intel NIC, last night. Working great!
Click to expand...

Hi RB,

I'm looking at buying a couple of T20's but struggling to find a dual port NIC to put in it that should definitely work.

I came across your post about the HP NC360T and just wondered if you can tell me which slot you put it in on the T20 and whether you had to do anything in the BIOS to get it working ?

I'm looking at putting ESXi 6.5 on them if I get them and was orginally looking at the Intel Pro 1000 / PT Dual Port NIC but there seems to be posts around saying that it doesn't work because it's a PCIe 1.0a card.

Thanks,


Nick
 
Nick Page said:
Hi RB,

I'm looking at buying a couple of T20's but struggling to find a dual port NIC to put in it that should definitely work.

I came across your post about the HP NC360T and just wondered if you can tell me which slot you put it in on the T20 and whether you had to do anything in the BIOS to get it working ?

I'm looking at putting ESXi 6.5 on them if I get them and was orginally looking at the Intel Pro 1000 / PT Dual Port NIC but there seems to be posts around saying that it doesn't work because it's a PCIe 1.0a card.

Thanks,


Nick
Click to expand...

Hi Nick,

It's in the bottom PCIe slot as I have the HBA card in the top x16 one.

I'll be honest, I have absolutely no idea on the Intel firmware version/ year of manufacture on the NC360T etc... but it's been working great since installation, no tweaks needed it just appeared in ESXI once installed / booted. Think it was only about £12 from Ebay so definitely a good buy!.

Cheers
 
[RB] said:
Hi Nick,

It's in the bottom PCIe slot as I have the HBA card in the top x16 one.

I'll be honest, I have absolutely no idea on the Intel firmware version/ year of manufacture on the NC360T etc... but it's been working great since installation, no tweaks needed it just appeared in ESXI once installed / booted. Think it was only about £12 from Ebay so definitely a good buy!.

Cheers
Click to expand...

Hi RB,

Thanks for replying back and I've taken the plunge now and picked up a pair of T20's from Ebay and also a couple of NC360T's for £11,99 each.

Just waiting for the servers to arrive at some point today and then it's major migration time for me !

I'll post up whether or not the cards work in the T20 with ESXi 6.5 in case others are looking for the same info as me.

Thanks,


Nick
 
Nick Page said:
Hi RB,

Thanks for replying back and I've taken the plunge now and picked up a pair of T20's from Ebay and also a couple of NC360T's for £11,99 each.

Just waiting for the servers to arrive at some point today and then it's major migration time for me !

I'll post up whether or not the cards work in the T20 with ESXi 6.5 in case others are looking for the same info as me.

Thanks,


Nick
Click to expand...


This is how it's displayed in ESXI 6.5:

ESXI65_NC360T.PNG
 
[RB] said:
This is how it's displayed in ESXI 6.5:
Click to expand...

Hi RB,

Thanks for posting up a pic from ESXi 6.5 and just to let everyone knoiw that the HP NC360T nics are working a treat in my PowerEdge T20 servers.

I put them in the bottom slots as you said. installed ESXi 6.5 on to an internal Samsung EVO 850 250GB SSD, and they both came up and recognised the cards without issue.

Thanks,


Nick
 
Ok, so i'm out my depth in terms of what is a quality PCI-e Sata/SAS card I should be looking out for. I've seen a Dell UCS-61 (JW065) for very cheap with a cable, but i've read it's rubbish because it has no cache etc...

I just want to not buy a lemon, don't care for new obviously, just enough to maybe plug up to 8 sata drives in and cope with general stuff, I can't see me taxing things much, but I have loads of drives which I want to just bunch together and run into the ground in some kind of flexible raid solution until they die or I actually put something of real size into it in the future.

So many brands, chips and options, what am I looking for...?

//Edit: Take that back an IBM serveraid M1015 is on its way cheap, and looks perfect once crossflashed
 
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liamcrane said:
Really tempted to get one of the T20's to run along side my synology nas which will be mainly used for backups. Im looking at putting in 3x3tb wd drives and running esxi as the base perhaps of a small ssd. I have just a couple of questions if i may...

1. Would it be worth considering the T30 over the T20 now?

2. I want to create one large volume from my 9tb not sure on raid yet, was looking a stable bit drive pool. How would i go about doing this through esxi?

3. I want to use a linux server to host my plex server, i currently have all my media stored on the nas but want to move it to the new server. What would be the best way for plex to access the media? Create one big VM that could hold the server and media files or just create a data store and have the plex server point to that?

Thanks all
Click to expand...

Unraid with a plex docker is perfect for hosting media. I run this on the Dell T20
 
Looks like the T30 has cashback available from today:
PowerEdge T30 30-0241 203-93797 PET3001 £90.00 07/08/2017 – 03/11/2017
PowerEdge T30 30-0265 203-93798 PET3002 £90.00 07/08/2017 – 03/11/2017
PowerEdge T30 30-0265 203-93798 PET3002 £90.00 07/08/2017 – 03/11/2017

AFAIK it's basically the same as the T20, but a v3->v5 xeon and 4gb DDR3->8gb DDR4.
 
beavis said:
Looks like the T30 has cashback available from today:
PowerEdge T30 30-0241 203-93797 PET3001 £90.00 07/08/2017 – 03/11/2017
PowerEdge T30 30-0265 203-93798 PET3002 £90.00 07/08/2017 – 03/11/2017
PowerEdge T30 30-0265 203-93798 PET3002 £90.00 07/08/2017 – 03/11/2017

AFAIK it's basically the same as the T20, but a v3->v5 xeon and 4gb DDR3->8gb DDR4.
Click to expand...

Excellent - look forward to this hitting the online shops...
 
I'm considering taking the plunge and going for a T30 to replace a HP N40L, although have some questions/concerns:

  • I've made some changes to the Microserver to accommodate 7 HDD's, is this something that is easily achievable with the T20/30? - This is what's put me off going for a Gen8 Microserver. I'll want to install in total 8 drives (6x3.5", 2x2.5")
  • Is cooling really an issue with these?
  • What's the power usage like?
This would be running WHS2011 as it's what I'm currently running on the N40L, this hosts a Logiteh Media, Plex & File sharing. With this change I'd be looking to do away with a separate Dell I5 running W10 with BlueIris CCTV and make an all in one solution.
 
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Might have to look at the T30 if there is cash back on them again. I can't seem to see it though on the esxi compatibility list but I'm assuming people use it and it's ok? Anyone have any good recommendations for a hardware raid card to go along side one of these for say 4x3tb reds?
 
I've seen them for £400 minus £90 cashback. Not bad at all if you consider the CPU and RAM are worth that alone.

I don't own one, but have build a bunch of T20s.
1. you'll struggle to get more than 4x3.5" disks in them, there is enough physical space so it is possible with some DIY skills.
2. stock no, they are very quiet. As you start adding hardware it is something you should address, the disks get hardly any airflow at all.
3. depends what you put in it and how hard you push it, but the idle power is around 30W.

For RAID5/6 I would take a look for a 2nd hand HP P410 with a battery and some cache.
If you just want JBOD then Dell H200/H300 and flash it with LSI firmware.
 
Thanks, Something I'm considering, I've seen a few guides around adding another 2 3.5" drives so I might look at getting one and seeing what can be done. One of the guides had a couple of additional fans added inside the case on the back of the lower drive cage(s). Noise isn't too much of a concern - I just had a slight concern around them being as loud as an enterprise server. Very tempted to just buy one, see how it goes and if it's not as expected/required then it can easily be sold on.

Trouble is the N40l is starting to show its age (and I want a bit of a fun project!).
 
Well I bit the bullet and went for a T20 with Xeon 3.2, 8GB (all WHS 2011 can use so little point in increasing). I modded the case slightly to accommodate 8 drives - 2x1TB in the top two bays one for CCTV storage and the other for server backup, then a 120GB SSD for OS & 500GB 2.5" client computer backup drive, and then in the bottom 4 bays I've got 4x6TB WD Red drives (using virtual RAID with Drive Bender - used it in the past and it worked well, and I've got a licence so may as well use it). I managed to get hold of a Dell drive bay and pot rivet it onto the lower two bays, and added a 4x6Gb/s PCIe card for the Reds.

I'm monitoring temps, but the case temps are very good especially with the recent warm temperatures, but if temps get warmer than I'd like I'll add more fans - 3 days running and it doesn't seem to be a problem. And it's incredibly quiet!

BAyA2Pm.jpg

xjwtjcZ.jpg
 
Decided to finally move to Rancher/RancherOS on my T20.

Absolutely glad I did, Provides me with a nice web GUI to manage all my docker containers and easy management to upgrade containers without hassle.
 
Just a quick dump of info for anyone else, info I've found with my T20 running Vmware ESXi.

Marvel SATA AHCI card's need extra drivers to work correctly.. and you MUST disable VT-d in the BIOS else your cards wont show up. - https://www.v-front.de/2013/11/how-to-make-your-unsupported-sata-ahci.html

Putty;

esxcli software acceptance set --level=CommunitySupported
esxcli network firewall ruleset set -e true -r httpClient
esxcli software vib install -d http://vibsdepot.v-front.de -n sata-xahci

Once you've disabled VT-d however, you will lose RDM ability, thus unable to use built in Raw Device Mapping for Disks. So instead, you can use putty\vmkfstools to RDM straight to a vmdk file, which you can then attach to your VM's..

For instance;
vmkfstools -z /vmfs/devices/disks/t10.ATA_____WDC_WD60EFRX2D68L0BN1_________________________WD2DWX11D37PEDV6 /vmfs/volumes/DSSSD500PRI/Disks/WD6RED2.vmdk

where;

vmkfstools -z FULLDISKPATH DATASTORELOCATION\NAME.VMDK

And lastly, on vSphere 6.5, i've found Disks over 1tb to report a lesser capacity in Disk Management once passed through to a VM, took me a little while to figure it out, but seemingly assigning them to a NVMe Controller instead of the default LSI Logic SAS seems to allow them to report, and thus work correctly.

Hope this helps someone!
 
Looks like I am getting a second hand server that I built a few years back, So I might turn my T20 into a pfsense box potentially as the other box is better spec'd even if it is 2years ago.
 
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