HP Proliant DL360e Gen 8 (8xSFF SAS)

[SliMat]

Hi All

 

OK, I thought I would see what people think about my new build...

 

I have some free space in our datacenter so decided to put a DL360 G8 into service so I can host a few virtual servers - nothing critical... Exchange, Owncloud, Fileserver etc.

 

Anyway - I am on a budget but have already got a DL360e G8 with dual Xeon E5-2430 CPUs and 32Gb RAM with B320i controller. I was going to use ESXi on a couple of 128Gb SSDs in RAID 1 and then have a bunch of 2.5" SAS disks on a RAID 5 for data.

 

BUT... the cost of the SAS disks for the G8 are still quite dear and I am loathed to buy 6 x 1Tb disks which then when I want to increase I have to go and buy 6 x larger disks in the future.

 

So... I have tinkered with VMs on my UNRAID NAS at home and got to thinking maybe I could build this unit based on UNRAID and then just add odd disks as I go... has anyone else tried anything similar and have any thoughts? All the purists are saying 'noooo' you cant use UNRAID, you would be better off with ESXI or similar - which if this was a clients machine I would agree with - but for my own personal box the upgradability of the disks on an individual basis is appealing.

 

As a follow on from that, if I started with 4 x 1.2Tb 10k SAS disks and then added a 2Tb 7.2k SAS disk (as an example), does anyone know what UNRAID thinks of mixed spindle speeds?

 

Any thoughts or experiences appreciated.

 

Thanks

[1812]

I have unRaid on 4 DL380 G6 servers, add disks as needed, run a couple dockers, run a couple vm's.

 

Not sure if unRaid will like your B320i...

 

I'm pretty sure I used mixed rotational rates in my array. Only matters when reading/writing to that specific disk or during parity checks, where you are limited by the speed of the slowest disk.

 

You may run into issues if you try to use a gpu.

 

Aside from smaller specifics, that's about it for me.

[SliMat]

Thanks 1812...

 

I think it looks like I will have to just set it up when the first couple of disks arrive and see what it makes of it - it will do one of two things

 

Thanks

[SliMat]

OK, a quick update

 

Finally got the machine running and it turns out that there is a P420 controller with 1Gb FBWC installed... stuck a 320Gb SATA disk in and put a trial version of UNRAID on a key and it all works fine - UNRAID recognises the LAN card and sees the 320Gb disk.

 

Thought I'd report back in vase it helps anyone else going down this route

[burningstarIV]

might be picking one of these g8's up soon .. so this was helpful to know its working - have you ever tried passing through any of the gigabit ports ? 

[Meph]

To let you know i'm a new user with unRAID. Installed it yesterday. Running on a HP Proliant DL380e Gen8 with 3,5" disks in front.. 8 slots.. (not 360e as i first though...)... Snatched a picture from internet.. it looks like this (ignore the red arrow and circle in the picture):

 

Running with 1 CPU inside it and 32GB RAM.. Works great.. I need to fix 2 more HDD sledges since i only got 6 of total 8

 

Running old disks at the moment in it... 3 x 2TB and 3x 500GB.. Disks are SATA because they are cheaper... Controller supports SAS discs too i think.. When disks starts to fail i will replace them with 4TB disks probably... 

 

EDIT: Regarding the B320e controller inside it, i disabled it in BIOS and the HBA controller inside it takes over... Thats a hint for you guys trying to install with a RAID card... 

 

Edited November 18, 2017 by Meph

[burningstarIV]

for general knowledge the hp p420 will go into jbod mode within the update disc on the array option. If no drives are assigned you can set it to passthrough. This will disable the cache, but sees all the disks and gets info. Additionally the leds work unlink my 580 with dell sas hba. Getting about 80 mb/sec so far on old sas 3g 10k drives. 130 mb/sec on other seagate 4tb 2.5" - will post some additional info after more testing and upgrading to more 4tb disks