I’m not tech illiterate, but it’s also not my job or anything. That said I managed to figure out how to get a synology up and running and it hosts my Jellyfin and *arrs. Nothing too exciting. I also have a couple of vps’s that I use for nextcloud, a recipe server, all in docker containers. Not nothing but also, not the hardest thing to accomplish.
Well, my manager gifted me an old Dell PowerEdge R720 and 4 hard drives. Yeah, this is way more than I know what to do with, or even where to start. Do I need to plug both power cables in? I still need to figure out how to get a monitor hooked up to it with what looks to be a VGA cable. And even then this thing is a behemoth and what do I even do with it?? My manager was so excited to talk to me about it and I’m all 😵💫
Where do I start?
TrueNas Scale was mentioned here several times. If you want something more easy like Synology but just as flexible, you could give HexOS a try. It’s still very early in development but has the main features. It’s running on top of TrueNas so you can always use the more complicated settings when you need to.
typically you only need one power supply to run it, once you move to redundant power you can use the second one in case the first one fails. when you plug both in it will just balance across both until one fails.
in my opinion, hardware should only be hypervisors that run virtual machines, then you can provision VMs, similar to using VPSs. going this route you will need a vga monitor for initial setup, eventually everything is done over the lan with a web ui or ssh.
i use proxmox which is Debian based for the hypervisor.
As far as what you do with it, is that you can in theory replace the VPSs or test software in your lan.
to compare, i have my router (vyos), homeassistant, a docker server for hosting small services, a network lab (gns3), windows and mac VMs, and more running on a cluster that is using similar hardware.
I’d say if it’s as power hungry as people say, it’d maybe make a good on-demand backup solution. Install some NAS distribution and power it on once a month, make backups of your *arred collection and your laptop/workstation and shut it off again.
What’s the drive config? If it’s a SAS raid, you’ll probably want to look up how to flash it to IT mode so it’s not doing hardware RAID. I’d install Proxmox in a RAID 10 ZFS configuration and go to town.
Sometimes I miss my r720s but the silence is nice now.
Xcp or proxmox as your os.
720 depending on chips and memory is great for game servers.
That thing is power hungry. Don’t even plug it in if you’re not even sure you need to use it for anything. It’ll cost you plenty in electricity just to have it idling.
Its just a computer, nothing more. You would do exactly the same thing as you would on a desktop or vps.
No you do not have to plug in both power cords but if both aren’t plugged in it may blare an alarm. If so plug in the other or just remove the redundant PSU.
If you don’t want it, I’ll take it off your hands. I have a rack designed for that kind of hardware and all of the infrastructure to fully support it.
I don’t, but I’d still take it.
Uff, I wouldn’t even know how to ship that without it costing an arm and a leg
Depending on where you’re located I would happily pay for shipping.
Huh, I’m also in the PNW. This could work out. I think it’s a bit too much for my needs, and I really don’t have the space for it. That said, I do want to learn how to use it, and get it up and running, etc. But after that I would definitely be looking to get something more practical. And quiet if it’s as loud as people are saying.
That would be awesome. I have a Dell Optiplex 7040 Micro that might be better suited for your needs after you play around with the big server. Maybe we could trade?
While I would be open to a trade, I’d be more looking for something like the Synology that I already have, just not so walled garden. I currently have a number of 2.5 and 3.5 inch disks that I’d like to keep using, and I think the Optiplex is more of just a regular desktop than a server?
Sorry for the late reply. The optiplex is absolutely sold as a desktop, but I’ve been using it as a server for a couple of years. Very small, quiet, and it sips power, but it only has support for 2 2.5" SATA drives (though it does have plenty of USB 3 ports if you don’t mind using external storage). TrueNAS installed on it would be similar to your Synology setup (without the vendor lock in), though not nearly as convenient as the front bays you’re used to.
It’s yours if you want it, but no worries otherwise.
Keep in mind that even at idle, running a rack mount server like this 24/7 can cost $20+ dollars to operate per month.
depending on specs it will be a little power hungry, but a good virtualization platform.
yes, the power supplies are likely redundant and the server will complain if they are not both powered.
it will use a VGA connection, but you should be ale to find cheap VGA monitors or cheap adapters.
RAID controllerfor those drives? how many processors and cores? how much RAM? what OS are you planning on running on it? iDRAC included? (if so, likely idrac6, but still usable)
this hardware is very well supported by linux - I have used these older servers extensively. your boss was right to be excited for you. its a great exploration platform that you will be able to do lots of things with.
fire up a live linux distro and get detailed specs on the box - that will guide what you can play with right away.
Hey, OP! I was recently gifted a desktop PC, with one spare drive, and 2 drives I had in storage for “bad sectors”. I popped the old ones in (because I have a backup) and downloaded and installed TrueNAS Scale.
TrueNAS’ web UI is BEAUTIFUL and very informative at a glance. What I was NOT prepared for, was the permissions. Like you, I started out with a Synology, because I didn’t know anything. It did what it needed to do, and that was fine. I use Plex and Jellyfin, and the new desktop had a 1660 Super in it, so you bet your ass I wanted to put that to use!
TrueNAS isn’t as easy as Synology, and like I said, the permissions thing really threw me for a loop because of how the wording on things is. To me, it isn’t in english so to speak. I learned a few tricks here and there, so if you need any help, feel free to reach out and I’ll try to help! :)
Thanks for the encouragement! To be honest, while it was a good place to start from its hand holding, I don’t love synology for how walled garden it is. I’ll definitely take a look at TrueNAS and see what that’s like.
The multiple power supplies are for redundancy. It will work with one plugged in but you are “supposed” to plug in both.
It’s fundamentally not that different from a consumer desktop. Plug in a monitor and a keyboard and a USB with your preferred flavor of headless Linux installer on it. Configure ssh as the first thing you do because you won’t want to plug the monitor and keyboard into it every time you need to tweak something.
You can probably find VGA to HDMI adapters if you can’t find a monitor with VGA support.
oOooo… Quite interesting.
If you are intending to use it, I have some thoughts about the way that you should get it setup and running.
First thing I would look into is getting the iDrac reset and working. iDrac is intended to allow you to view the display of the server without connecting a monitor, simply use a web page. It also allows you to power on/off the server remotely even if it is frozen or off. It is a simple web interface that allows you to control it.
After that, I have some questions about your intention for this server. If you are intending to use this server as a hypervisor, I would like to take just a moment to shill for Apache Cloudstack. I recently setup a server running this and it is going absolutely wonderfully. The reason I chose to use it is it is more open to DevOps workloads, by default compatible with Terraform and takes literally 5 minutes to setup an entire Kubernetes cluster. However, the networking behind it is a bit more advanced and if you want more detail just ask me. For now, suffice it to say that it is capable of running 201 vlans protected by virtual routers.
If that is too much to bite off for a hypervisor at one time, then Proxmox is the way to go. You can probably see a few videos from Linus Tech Tips involving that software. It has much simpler networking and can get you up and running in no time.
Finally, if you are intending to learn something a little more professionally viable, then I would talk to your boss about utilizing an unused VMWare license or perhaps working with Hyper-V(my least favorite option).
If you do intend a Hypervisor, then I would highly recommend setting up a raid. Now, the type of RAID depends highly on what you want. RAID 5 will probably work for a homelab, but I would still recommend a RAID 10. RAID 5 gives you more storage space, but I like the performance benefits of a RAID 10. I think that it is very important when multiple virtual devices are sharing the same storage. You can read more about the various RAID levels here: https://www.prepressure.com/library/technology/raid
I’d start with proxmox.
I tried to start with OpenStack. Oof. Yup. Proxmox.
There are a lot of good guides. I run almost everything on proxmox these days, even virtualized my Windows, and (after a lot of messing around) got my GPU passed through for when I game.
I’m picturing open stack being fairly similar to Cloudstack? Cloudstack is nice, but does require some odd networking.
I’ve seen others mention the redundancy for the PSUs. One note about that, they are meant to be plugged into 2 different circuits! Otherwise, if they are on the same one and it fails, then redundancy is out the window.
Not a requirement, but if this is going to be a data hoarding type deal or you want it highly available for your purposes, then you should make sure you keep this in mind.
On that same token, read up on RAID Levels for hard drive redundancy.
