HP Z840 AS TRUENAS SCALE SERVER

[Muhammad Ahmed]

hello community

i am very new to trunas and planning to build my first real server. i an planning to use 4 x WD Red 4Tb ssd or samsung Evo 4 x TB ssd. with ZFS1 mainly my usage will be for personal data particularly songs and movies with. secondary use will be plex server. My question is will HP Z840 with 32GB ram work for me. your suggestions will be much much appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

 

[jgreco]

hello community

i am very new to trunas and planning to build my first real server. i an planning to use 4 x WD Red 4Tb ssd or samsung Evo 4 x TB ssd. with ZFS1 mainly my usage will be for personal data particularly songs and movies with. secondary use will be plex server. My question is will HP Z840 with 32GB ram work for me. your suggestions will be much much appreciated.
Thanks in advance.

"What's ZFS1"?

Do you mean RAIDZ1?

Terminology and Abbreviations Primer

We realize that new users have a lot to learn when they come to FreeNAS. There's a certain amount of confusion added to discussions when users pick random/approximate terms to describe things. I've spent a lot of time quietly trying to translate terms on the reader's side when reading posts...

www.truenas.com

The HP Z840 is probably a poor choice for a server. It's a big fat workstation, usually with dual E5 CPU's and a GPU card, and will consume lots of power. It's also not clear at first glance what it uses for a disk controller; TrueNAS needs a basic HBA, PCH SCU, or SATA AHCI controller -- NOT a RAID controller, which some workstations incorporate.

 

[Muhammad Ahmed]

"What's ZFS1"?

Do you mean RAIDZ1?

Terminology and Abbreviations Primer

We realize that new users have a lot to learn when they come to FreeNAS. There's a certain amount of confusion added to discussions when users pick random/approximate terms to describe things. I've spent a lot of time quietly trying to translate terms on the reader's side when reading posts...

www.truenas.com

The HP Z840 is probably a poor choice for a server. It's a big fat workstation, usually with dual E5 CPU's and a GPU card, and will consume lots of power. It's also not clear at first glance what it uses for a disk controller; TrueNAS needs a basic HBA, PCH SCU, or SATA AHCI controller -- NOT a RAID controller, which some workstations incorporate.

yes by zfs1 i meant raidz1 as i said earlier i am new :D and availbility is restricting me for chosing other models thats why asked your opinion about this model as it is available.

 

[Muhammad Ahmed]

where i live i can find almost every gaming board, but not a single suitable server board. Desperate to build my first truenas core based storage server need you guys to help me out.

 

[jgreco]

I basically gave you what I was aware of in the previous response. If you don't care about power consumption and it doesn't use a RAID controller, the workstation is probably a feasible option. If you can identify how it attaches to disks, we're happy to provide feedback on that, but I didn't find anything quickly on that issue. May require digging into some technical manuals.

 

[HoneyBadger]

The Z840 workstations use an LSI SAS controller, which fortunately TheArtOfServer has released a video on the process of crossflashimg to IT mode.

How to flash HP Z840 Z820 to IT mode firmware | for ZFS Unraid TrueNAS IT mode

In this video I'm going to show you how to flash the onboard LSI RAID controller of the HP Z840 and Z820 workstation to LSI IT mode firmware. By converting t...

youtu.be

You'll also need a graphics card (GPU) in order to install TrueNAS. I'm not sure if the Z840 is capable of running in "headless" mode afterwards; I'm aware of an undocumented method to enable it on the earlier Z820 workstations, but I can't say that it works on the newer model.

 

[Muhammad Ahmed]

Found another machine Dell Precision T-5810 it uses Intel AHCI controller will it work for me ??? my appologize in advance for disturbing all of u. but i really need some help here

 

[jgreco]

An Intel AHCI controller is perfectly fine.

 

[Muhammad Ahmed]

An Intel AHCI controller is perfectly fine.

thanks a lot for your help

 

[jgreco]

thanks a lot for your help

That's what the forums are here for. I took a little extra time and dug up more detail because I wasn't sure at first what class of product this was; a consumer desktop might not be a good option. I understand you're constrained on your options due to limited availability. Your T-5810 looks pretty good:

Dell Precision Tower 5810 Owner's Manual | Dell US

It's a Xeon, so it has stuff like ECC memory, and it's a Xeon E5, so you have memory options up to 256GB, it's a single CPU so it isn't going to be as wasteful as that Z840, it has Intel ethernet i217, etc. Its main problem is that it has what I would call "stupid slots" (a PCI slot, a PCIe x1 and x4 slot, etc.) but if it's all that you can easily get, it should be able to get you all the basics of a NAS.

Anyways while I can't guarantee it will be problem free, it looks like a better option than the Z840 to me.

 

[Muhammad Ahmed]

That's what the forums are here for. I took a little extra time and dug up more detail because I wasn't sure at first what class of product this was; a consumer desktop might not be a good option. I understand you're constrained on your options due to limited availability. Your T-5810 looks pretty good:

Dell Precision Tower 5810 Owner's Manual | Dell US

It's a Xeon, so it has stuff like ECC memory, and it's a Xeon E5, so you have memory options up to 256GB, it's a single CPU so it isn't going to be as wasteful as that Z840, it has Intel ethernet i217, etc. Its main problem is that it has what I would call "stupid slots" (a PCI slot, a PCIe x1 and x4 slot, etc.) but if it's all that you can easily get, it should be able to get you all the basics of a NAS.

Anyways while I can't guarantee it will be problem free, it looks like a better option than the Z840 to me.

again i am very thankful for your time efforts. at first i only need to populate it with 4 storage drives and 1 os drive if the board and disk controller is not an issue then i think it will work for me.