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

[#Chri5#]

If I were you and desperate for the Xeon I'd say look at the TS-140 instead, £225 odd after cashback right now.

HP are offering £100 cashback on the ML10 Tower, so that's £225+VAT as well

 

[Etheco]

I did install ESXi 6 and went flawlessly here is the Dell iso http://www.dell.com/support/home/us/en/19/Drivers/DriversDetails?driverId=HJFY8

Have decided i won't really use ESXi as i know i want to use CoreOS as the base so just reinstalled that to the SSD and i can then just start up dockers as and when i want from that

Ended up using mdadm for the Software Raid and placed it to Raid 5 that took around 5hours

 

[Dandle]

Anyone use or know of a sata controller card i can use for 1 more sata port that will be compatible with esxi 6?

 

[-TA-]

I think you should try out ESXi, then you can try out the various Linux flavours till you find one that suits.
Virtualisation particularly lends itself to this as you can take a snapshot before you try anything that might brick your server, and just roll back if it all goes pearshaped.

Sadly I haven't really go time to try out different builds etc

Just needs to be a file server with 3/4 x 3tb WD Red drives with some form of RAID/protection that can mapped as networked drives on 2 PC's and a laptop all running windows, and then just run crashplan!

Can easily plug a screen on as needed as one will be sat next to me!

 

[Little_Crow]

I've only really tried Ubuntu, and I really couldn't recommend the desktop edition as it comes bundled with office productivity apps that are pretty redundant on a server.

You could go with the server edition, but you'd need to look up how to install a GUI. If you're completely unfamiliar with Linux it'll be a very steep learning curve without one.

I'd still recommend ESXi to run it on though, virtualisation gives a great deal of flexibility that you won't get with a base metal Linux install.

 

[NickTheBiz]

I've not played with mine really since purchase. Will DL that ESXi 6 ISO and have a fiddle. Cheers for the link.

If someone can clarify my memory question on page 1 I'd appreciate it too!

 

[rickjames]

I don't see any reason why it shouldn't, but you can always run a test in the BIOS and see?

My desk will be arriving this evening so I can actually use the thing...

 

[Etheco]

Mine is now all setup with CoreOS and currently 7 VMs booted onto it and its pretty speedy and currently have no issues.

There is defiantly a design flaw with the drive bays and supplied cables though, as the top bay is mounted upside down so the power cables then have to be forced up-side-down which was a pain but had to mount the SSD just without screwing it in to reach.

I ended up just going software raid with mdadm in the end and got it all sorted with my 3x2tb red drives and has been working a treat so far.

Overall great little system, Looks tidy and plenty of USB ports on the front, Sadly no USB port inside on the motherboard.

 

[Dandle]

I've not played with mine really since purchase. Will DL that ESXi 6 ISO and have a fiddle. Cheers for the link.

If someone can clarify my memory question on page 1 I'd appreciate it too!

Depends if its buffered or unbuffered ram. The T20 needs unbuffered.

Got mine up and running with ESXI and only one VM of windows 8 at the minute. Its much much faster than the N54L at pretty much everything, i'm very pleased with the upgrade. Got to see how much i'll get for the N54L now.

 

[Dandle]

Anyone have a T20 with a PCIE sata card working. The four sata ports aren't enough and I need to add a couple more. The card will need to be compatible with ESXI 6.0 though.

 

[-TA-]

^Thinking about the future, so will I!

 

[Terrier_Jimlad]

Just finished building a T20 for a work colleague today. Upgraded the RAM to 8GB and slapped in 4 x 4TB WD Reds as she has lots of films/tv shows/photos/music she wants to sit on Plex and also a small bit of dumping area for backups and CCTV. OS is Server 2012 sat on a 240GB Kingston SSD with a Blu-Ray slim-line so she can rip some remaining discs and burn the odd stuff - managed to come in quite a bit under the budget

Just testing the performance of a few different RAID configs as I dont really fancy RAID5 on 7,200 disks - will most likely trash Server 2012 on the SSD and pop ESXi on and run it within there, not sure yet - colleague is in no rush for it so got plenty of time to try different scenarios

Anyone have a T20 with a PCIE sata card working. The four sata ports aren't enough and I need to add a couple more. The card will need to be compatible with ESXI 6.0 though.

Yup, got the SSD housing the OS (Server 2012) and blu-ray drive sat on a PCI-E SATA3 (6GB) card just purely for SATA expansion, won't be using RAID etc, card is bootable and easily visible in BIOS. It's a PEXSAT32 card which is a Marvell 91xx Storage Controller - seems to be working a treat so far!

 

[Sider]

I have recently purchased one of these and I love it so far. I have Xpenology all set up which is has plex running and basically functions as a media server and NAS all in one. I installed Xpenology as a virtual machine handled by ESXI 6.0. When i originally purchased the T20 it comes with a 500gig HDD which is where I installed ESXI and Xpenology.

Now I told myself when I was setting it up that I would just have a play and not get carried away, once I was happy with it was going to invest in an SSD and some large drives for storage. Unfortunately I got very carried away and got everything set up just the way I want it.

My question is this. Is there a simple way I can migrate my Xpenology VM from the 500gig hard drive to an SSD?

 

[Dandle]

Yup, got the SSD housing the OS (Server 2012) and blu-ray drive sat on a PCI-E SATA3 (6GB) card just purely for SATA expansion, won't be using RAID etc, card is bootable and easily visible in BIOS. It's a PEXSAT32 card which is a Marvell 91xx Storage Controller - seems to be working a treat so far!

Looks like would be perfect for me. Thanks for the information.

My question is this. Is there a simple way I can migrate my Xpenology VM from the 500gig hard drive to an SSD?

Yes it dead easy. With the VM powered down remote in to ESXI and copy the VM from the datastore to somewhere else (i used my main pc as a target. Put the SSD in install ESXI and then paste the VM back to the new datastore. When it asks say you moved it and as long as the settings are right (copy them before moving the VM) it will boot up exactly the same. Theres loads of demos on youtube to help.

 

[DIABLO]

Finally some pics of a persons build!

 

[#Chri5#]

Back on promo...

• Intel Xeon E3-1225 v3 3.2GHz (3.6GHz boost) Quad-Core CPU
• 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3 ECC Unbuffered Memory
• 1TB 7,200rpm Internal LFF SATA HDD (4 bays)
• Gigabit Ethernet
• 290W Power Supply
• 1 Year NBD On-Site Manufacturer Warranty

£317 inc VAT, then £110 cash back. HP Microserver has £55 cashback but that's only a Celeron CPU (final price £109)

 

[Cob]

Back on promo...

• Intel Xeon E3-1225 v3 3.2GHz (3.6GHz boost) Quad-Core CPU
• 4GB (1 x 4GB) DDR3 ECC Unbuffered Memory
• 1TB 7,200rpm Internal LFF SATA HDD (4 bays)
• Gigabit Ethernet
• 290W Power Supply
• 1 Year NBD On-Site Manufacturer Warranty

£317 inc VAT, then £110 cash back. HP Microserver has £55 cashback but that's only a Celeron CPU (final price £109)

Do you mean excluding VAT?

 

[#Chri5#]

Nope:

 

[Cob]

Nope:

Found it. Cheers.

 

[Little_Crow]

£100 for the Celeron version was good, but not enough of an improvement over my N40L to get me interested.

Need to check whether my existing memory and HP P420 RAID card can be transferred without any fuss, but I think I may have to pull the trigger on this.