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It also won’t have iLO, etc. Even for a homelab these are useful features to have, I don’t want to go hooking up my monitor and keyboard every time I need to t
by snuxoll 7y ago
It also won’t have iLO, etc.
Even for a homelab these are useful features to have, I don’t want to go hooking up my monitor and keyboard every time I need to troubleshoot some boot issue or install a new OS. I can also get used DDR3 ECC memory for a hell of a lot cheaper than DDR4 right now.
Unfortunately the person who wrote this article is in the EU who has much slimmer picking in the second-hand market. I can buy a Dell R620 for $200-300, two 10-core Xeons for another $300 if it doesn’t come with enough cores, and 128GB of 16GB DDR RDIMMs for $200 - total price is under $1000USD, and that’s excluding any components that come with the server I may opt NOT to replace.
- mey 7y agoUseful iDRAC features like remote display and remote ISO install isn't in the base Dell iDRAC license. So I still need to hook up keyboard/monitor if it's more than a reboot. Edit: iDRAC is the Dell LOM, iLO is HP
- snuxoll 7y agoSure, but the licenses to unlock them are easy to acquire. Dell ties them to the service tag, which is quite easy to set via racadm and you can buy a license off eBay. Older Dell systems required a $30 part you can find on eBay. HP just uses a key they send you on paper. Hell, many times these decoms still have the license applied to them. I have 2xR210 II’s, a R320, R520 and formerly had a HP ML10 and a Lenovo TD340. The Lenovo was the biggest pain to get VKVM because of the stupid hard to find dongle. Don’t buy Lenovo servers for a homelab; BTW. Dell lets you override the ramp in fan speed when a non-Dell branded PCIe card is installed, newer Lenovo servers ramp them up to 100% and you can’t turn it off (I had to leave my TD340 on the initial BIOS revision with security issues because of this).
- lozaning 7y agoBack when I was in the HP VAR game iLO licenses where some of my highest money makers. MSRP for those licenses was like $250.00. I was buying them grey market from ESISO for like $35 a pop.
- mey 7y agoI have some principals with my homelab. Not doing grey market licensing is one of them. That's my personal preference, but just wanted to point out that iDRAC enterprise is additional.
- bubblethink 7y agoThe 100% fan on non-whitelisted card is such a dick move. Is there a single legit reason for this ? Did someone's building burn down because they didn't buy the quadro gpu that Dell sells ?
- snuxoll 7y agoIt’s not even limited to GPU’s, a quad-port Intel NIC in my TD340 causes it to max fan speeds if I’m not running the A01 BIOS. The argument is they don’t know the thermal requirements of the card because it’s not OEM-branded so they max the fans “to be safe”, but not letting you override it is just bullshit.
- sitkack 7y agoThey do something similar on Chromebooks and 3rd party mini pcie WiFi cards. If you insert a non Lenovo branded card, it will fail to even enter the bios screen with a Dick Move error. Also, same stupid justification,”this configuration hasn’t passed FCC EMI tests” when the cards a qualified directly, they are the FCC certification boundary.
- bubblethink 7y agoI think lenovo has stopped doing that recently. However, we now have soldered wifi cards.
- louwrentius 7y ago> Hell, many times these decoms still have the license applied to them I was indeed that lucky. Thank you <bank>.
- herpderperator 7y agoIf you buy Supermicro motherboards, which come in regular form factors too, like for example X9SCM-F [0], or X11SSL-F [1], they come with IPMI (which is what the -F designates), which is exactly what iLO, DRAC, etc., is and in a normal form factor. You don't have to buy fancy jet-engine "server" boxes when you can get the same stuff in a mATX form factor. No license needed. I have been using the X9SCM-F for the last 9 years, and enjoy being able to modify the BIOS remotely, boot remote ISO images, or troubleshoot any boot problems without physical presence. [0] https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C202_C204/X9SCM-F.cfm https://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C202_C2... [1] https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/X11SSL-F https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/X11SSL-F
- aetimmes 7y agoOriginal parent comment was talking about installing a Ryzen consumer CPU, which is generally mutually exclusive with any board manufacturer (SMC, Dell, HP, or otherwise) that provides any sort of baseboard management controller. Some of the SMC boards listed support i3 processors, but generally, if you want a BMC, you're stuck with enterprise-grade processors.
- herpderperator 7y agoI listed two motherboards I personally researched in the past and knew about already. There are plenty of consumer Supermicro boards that have IPMI. Here's one I found just by browsing the first page of their workstation motherboard section. [0] [0] https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/X11SCA-F https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/X11SCA-F
- rhizome 7y agoNone of yours are Ryzen, though.
- bsder 7y agoUm, these are AMD EPYC (the server processor): https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/H12SSW-NT https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/motherboard/H12SSW-NT All Supermicros for EPYC have IPMI. This EPYC is $599: https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16819113596?Item=N82E16819113596&Description=PPSSHZKQUPOGEJ&cm_re=PPSSHZKQUPOGEJ-_-19-113-596-_-Product https://www.newegg.com/p/N82E16819113596?Item=N82E1681911359...
- phasor 7y agoActually, remote display is possible with the base Dell iDrac Express license by enabling ssh console COM2 redirection. This is not enabled by default and not very obvious that it is even possible (probably because Dell wants to sell these iDrac licenses). For me the COM2 redirection is all that I need for a server in a datacenter without physical access. For example, if the server OS is not booting, I can still ssh to the idrac and change BIOS options or select alternative boot options in grub. For OS installs I use chroot. So really no need for an idrac license in my case.
- AdrianB1 7y agoI am running home servers for ~ 10 years, I never felt the need for iLO even when I moved the stuff in the basement. I have iLO on the servers at work, so I am not dismissing the utility, just the need at home.
- snuxoll 7y agoI’ve got 4 servers in my rack at home, I don’t like getting behind it to swap peripherals around. I plan on getting more eventually for a Ceph cluster too. If you’ve got one or two, then, sure.
- jagger27 7y agoThis is where I really appreciate front-side VGA ports.
- rhizome 7y agoIt can happen once in awhile. I've been not-at-home the past few months and my mailserver fell over one day. I went to my apartment, turned it on, made sure mail was flowing, then went home. It had turned itself off again in the meantime. I drove out again, and turned it on, babysitting it for a few hours to see what might be happening. It's been up ever since, so, mystery. I would have liked a telephone/internet rebooter during all of this!
- vbezhenar 7y agoI'm reinstalling Linux few times per year, so iLo comes very handy.
- unethical_ban 7y agoMeh. I bought a $55 7" LCD screen and a $10 tenkeyless mini keyboard. Much cheaper and more flexible than iLO for how often I need to have non-network access.
- mrweasel 7y ago> It also won’t have iLO, etc. You could install the free version of VMWares ESXi and use that as a sort of iLO. In most case that would be a more pleasant experience.
- Nextgrid 7y agoAt a potential performance penalty and significant extra attack surface (you now have to worry about your hypervisor’s attack surface and your actual OS’ attack surface, where as on bare metal you only have a single OS to worry about). Not to downplay the advantages of virtualisation, but if all you needed was a bare metal server then running a hypervisor adds one extra thing that can go wrong that you didn’t ask for.
- amanzi 7y agoMost (if not all) home lab users will be using virtualisation to spin up multiple VMs.
- zrm 7y ago> you now have to worry about your hypervisor’s attack surface and your actual OS’ attack surface But the same is true of iLO. Worse in that case, because the iLO won't receive security updates for as long and is less well scrutinized in general than common Linux distributions.
- rzzzt 7y agoI'd really love to see a hypervisor that emulates IPMI/iLO/AMT/whichever flavor management hardware on machines that lack the capability. It should run a single VM only, and pass through all other hardware, but also cordon off eg. a single TCP port, and allow the user to power cycle the VM, along with remote control (could be done through VNC). Bonus points for exposing temperature and other sensors.
- snuxoll 7y agoBut when that hypervisor fails to boot you are SOL. I have vFlash cards in all my Dell servers with the OS install media and a recovery image so I can fix broken installs quickly. Oh, and that stupid PCIe training error from a NIC that went bad would have required I plug in my monitor as well. It would be useful, but why not just run VMWare or Proxmox at that point?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dcm360 7y agoYou can get a Tyan Tomcat EX or one of the ASRock Rack AM4 boards that have an Aspeed AST2500 chip to provide remote management. However, it might be difficult (and expensive) to get 4 32GB UDIMMs to work properly.
- zamadatix 7y agoI have an x570 board with IPMI, it's not unheard of. Waiting 2 months for Threadripper would probably be more sensible unless you need it RIGHT NOW though.
- waitwhatwhere 7y agoLink!
- paulmd 7y agoIPMI boards are increasingly available for AMD systems now. There is the Asrock X470D4U and X399D8A-2T and Supermicro also had a couple in the works I think.