Currently running CORE on an old Dell XPS desktop. Works great for simple SMB shares and the ability to mirror a drive. I have an older Dell Poweredge T110 server. Both of these boxes seem to have been built in 2009, so both are old.
I’m considering moving the installation to the Poweredge just to have the option to add more disks. If I’m doing that, I was thinking about moving to SCALE to be able to play with VM’s and add apps. (I also have a few raspberry pi’s running piVPN, pihole, and Immich).
Is it worth moving to scale and getting all these services on one device? Or do I just stick with CORE since it works?
All the development and innovation is going into SCALE these days, so if you are going to make a hardware jump, then may as well get on the moving forward train.
I also run Immich directly on my TrueNAS box, it is really nice to do that directly on the storage box now and avoid the hit of using a protocol to another device.
Thanks for the feedback! I thought scale would be the better option, so I just needed a slight nudge to jump in.
Even though the server is old, I assume it will have enough power to process the images?
Waiting for that to be delivered now. I’ve tried 3 sets of RAM that’s should have been compatible but didn’t work. The plan is to have at least 16GB. Hopefully it’s at least the same, if not a little bit better then the old desktop.
Specs show the first T110 tops out at 16 GB of ram. If you are ordering ram and the processor and motherboard support, get ECC, error correcting code.
Nothing else really stands out except the HBA / Raid cards that may be in the server and not suited for ZFS
You may want to list a detailed hardware list. You might be able to do this by putting in the Service Tag with Dell and getting the build list, It’s accurate if no hardware changes have been made
Below are the specs for the service tag. The only thing I don’t see there is it has a RAID controller, UCS-61.
Service Tag: 1QFS3P1
420-6320 : No Operating System
341-4158 : HD Multi-Select
341-3933 : Embedded SATA
341-0793 : Info, S100, 2HDD
330-6454 : SHIP,T110,NO,NO,DAO
330-5707 : ODD Cable, PowerEdge R210
330-5704 : Electronic System Documentatio n and OpenManage DVD Kit
330-5569 : PERC S100 (Embedded SATA Softw are RAID) supporting 2 Hard Dr ives - RAID 1
330-5552 : PowerEdge T110 Heatsink
317-5941 : 4GB Memory (2x2GB), 1333MHz Si ngle Ranked UDIMM
317-3746 : Intel Core I3 540 3.06GHz, 4M Cache, 2C/4T
317-2022 : Memory for 1CPU Platform
313-7919 : Baseboard Management Controlle r
224-6816 : PowerEdge T110 Chassis with up to 4 Cabled Hard Drives
I think ECC RAM is out. I don’t think the processor and motherboard support.
Try to find the documentation for the system on the Dell support website. The Service Tag helps.
I figure you need a boot drive (truenas needs separate) and two other drives for data. That gives you mirrored data drives. Three SATA connectors used.
TrueNAS and ZFS want direct access to the hard drives. Any RAID card that can’t be flashed to ‘IT’ mode is not suited. I don’t know if you can bypass the PERC S100. The other card, I think is a Dell Dell SAS Raid SCSI 6/iR Controller Card E2K-UCS-61. It may not be suited to TrueNAS.
I am hoping others will comment if they know the hardware listed.
You might want to check the firmware on the T110 and update it to the latest. You could do a temp install of Windows (trial is fine) to do this.
EDIT - I forgot you were on a server with BMC. You might be able to update it using the BMC without and OS installed. Looks like there might be an ISO you can download and boot from Dell for updating too.
The other thing is you should do a through test of the hardware. Memory test after you get your RAM.
I would try the burn in testing before installing and setting up TrueNAS.
Thanks again for all the help. I’ll have to look into the RAID controller and just put a test TrueNAS install on before moving anything. I might be better off just looking for a server that’s a little newer. Trying to find a balance between something to play with and not using a ton of power since it’s always on.
Hello fellow Dell T110 enthusiast I might have a few of those hanging around, not sure if they can be seen in the backdrop of any of the podcasts.
First off - pull the 0UCS61 PERC6 card out - it won’t be any good here, as it’s SAS1068 based and can’t support drives over 2TB.
“Dell S100” is just their fancy branding for the onboard SATA controller with softRAID support - it can be disabled by setting SATA/AHCI mode in the BIOS. Perfectly fine to bypass this way and use the ports as regular SATA.
Regarding your RAM, the i3-540 doesn’t support ECC as pointed out by @SmallBarky - but thankfully the Xeon X34xx series chips that do support ECC are dirt cheap - $5 or the equivalent in whatever your local currency is should get you one, and you’ll be set if you choose ECC. You will need to get unbuffered ECC RAM or UDIMMs though, so ensure that you search up any part numbers to ensure you don’t buy registered or RDIMM sticks.
That saves me some time trying to figure out the RAID controller. For a few dollars I can probably just get an HBA that can go in that PCI slot.
Swapping out the chip is definitely uncharted territory, but since this is just a project right now I might try it.
You don’t need an HBA at all, if the T110 first-gen is anything like the second-gen I have, you just need a bunch of regular SATA cables to run from the plugs in the top-right of the motherboard.
No, you’ll need to go way back in the generations - think Xeon X3430 or similar vintage on the LGA1156 socket.
One thing I should mention is that you’ll want to keep an eye on drive temperatures if you pack four disks in there - there’s passive airflow drawn across the drive sleds but it’s not at a high volume or speed. When I ran mine as testbeds I used two drives, or SSDs.
I see. I do have 5 SATA cables direct to the motherboard. One for the boot drive, two more for the main storage mirror, so at most I could put two additional drives. That’s probably enough for my use though. I will pull out that PCI card and give this a try as a test.
I might have a few of those hanging around, not sure if they can be seen in the backdrop of any of the podcasts.