Mr. Slumber
Contributor
- Joined
- Mar 10, 2019
- Messages
- 182
Hello,
been reading this forum for quiet some time and now I thought it's time to give a little back to the community, so I wanted to share my impressions with the Dell servers mentioned above so that anyone who's got some questionmarks about building his/hers FreeNAS on these kind of machines maybe gets some little pieces of information. And ok, these are just my experiences so maybe someone else with much deeper IT wisdom may experienced something completely different... ;)
Dell R320 config:
Intel Xeon E5-2430L 2 GHz 6 cores, 32GB registered ECC DDR3 RAM (2x 16GB DIMM), Dell PERC H310 Mini Mono SAS Raid controller, IDRAC 7 Enterprise, Dell 350 Watt Hot swap power supply, 4x 10TB Seagate Exos X10 ST 100000NM0086, 2x Sandisk Cruzer Fit 32GB USB 2.0 as boot device,
impression: ok, it worked in a way but because of the PERC H310 Mini Mono which I did not risk to flash to IT mode there was no chance of getting the SMART data out of the machine/HDDs which (for me) was too risky so I stopped using the R320 as a FreeNAS machine. I did manage to attach every single HDD to the PERC H310 Mini Mono in "non-raid mode" but as far as I understood this, to get everything to work 100% the HDDs should have been attached in "HBA mode" and this is (to my knowledge) only possible when you flash the PERC H 310 Mini Mono to "IT mode". I haven't heard of anyone who successfully managed this with the "Mini Mono" butmaybe it's possible EDIT: NO, it'll brick your Mini Mono! But afterwards surely the Dell R320 will complain that the PERC H 310 Mini is missing and will not fully boot, so: don't try to flash the PERC H310 Mini Mono to IT mode!
Just my 2 cents.
Dell R230 config:
Intel Xeon E3-1220v5, 24GB ECC RAM, Dell PERC H330, IDRAC 8 express, 4x 10TB Seagate Exos X10 ST 100000NM0086, 2x Sandisk Cruzer Fit 32GB USB 2.0 as boot device,
impression: works just great, loving it! The PERC H330 is capable of being switched to "HBA mode" (deep down in the config menu of the PERC H330) and that really did the trick for me. Running Freenas 11.1 on it and it survived a lot of (load-) testing including unplugging it randomly on purpose (don't try this @home you have been warned!)
Hope this is helping in a way if you've been searching for some info on these Dell machines.
Best regards
been reading this forum for quiet some time and now I thought it's time to give a little back to the community, so I wanted to share my impressions with the Dell servers mentioned above so that anyone who's got some questionmarks about building his/hers FreeNAS on these kind of machines maybe gets some little pieces of information. And ok, these are just my experiences so maybe someone else with much deeper IT wisdom may experienced something completely different... ;)
Dell R320 config:
Intel Xeon E5-2430L 2 GHz 6 cores, 32GB registered ECC DDR3 RAM (2x 16GB DIMM), Dell PERC H310 Mini Mono SAS Raid controller, IDRAC 7 Enterprise, Dell 350 Watt Hot swap power supply, 4x 10TB Seagate Exos X10 ST 100000NM0086, 2x Sandisk Cruzer Fit 32GB USB 2.0 as boot device,
impression: ok, it worked in a way but because of the PERC H310 Mini Mono which I did not risk to flash to IT mode there was no chance of getting the SMART data out of the machine/HDDs which (for me) was too risky so I stopped using the R320 as a FreeNAS machine. I did manage to attach every single HDD to the PERC H310 Mini Mono in "non-raid mode" but as far as I understood this, to get everything to work 100% the HDDs should have been attached in "HBA mode" and this is (to my knowledge) only possible when you flash the PERC H 310 Mini Mono to "IT mode". I haven't heard of anyone who successfully managed this with the "Mini Mono" but
Just my 2 cents.
Dell R230 config:
Intel Xeon E3-1220v5, 24GB ECC RAM, Dell PERC H330, IDRAC 8 express, 4x 10TB Seagate Exos X10 ST 100000NM0086, 2x Sandisk Cruzer Fit 32GB USB 2.0 as boot device,
impression: works just great, loving it! The PERC H330 is capable of being switched to "HBA mode" (deep down in the config menu of the PERC H330) and that really did the trick for me. Running Freenas 11.1 on it and it survived a lot of (load-) testing including unplugging it randomly on purpose (don't try this @home you have been warned!)
Hope this is helping in a way if you've been searching for some info on these Dell machines.
Best regards
Last edited: