I use mine as a NAS so to set up I just used VGA

How are you guys connecting this to a TV/Monitor ? I am looking at connecting one of these to a monitor which has VGA/DVI/HDMI connectors and other to a TV with HDMI.

Given that there are no HDMI out on these units and only has DisplayPort it appears getting a DisplayPort to HDMI connector is the only solution.

Fair enough - can this system, or even the XEON version make the most of this though? Surely the SATA interface or other resources will be saturated first? Could be wrong on this though - and if so - its something I can have a go at next time we upgrade the SSD system drives on other machines :smiley:

so 4 2.5" 2TB drives will be less hungry and heat issue than a modern 8TB 3.5?

My 7200 1TBs x2 are at 35C both in lower cradle, medium use, never spin down - if that helps.

And as I said in my other post - its straightforward to solder in additional connectors to the stock PSU if you are that way inclined - as I was. My stock PSU is still underworked and all of its internals aoppeared to be well designed and of relectively decent quality components. Not the best but far from a £9.99 PSU that will kill your PC.

I... uhhh... obtained a key for iLO and here we see that the system is using 74watts right now and has averaged 80. Fans running fast due to temperature.

Well I agree 36GB is overkill for a file server but in the future I can host websites, run a terminal server via RDP, and plenty of VMs. 97W really isn't that bad. Yes right now I'd be better off with a Synology NAS but in the future this can be upgraded, and it's a hell lot better than my Core2Duo desktop I had before.

It's still a Minimum of 97w at idle and that's with one drive inside. You are correct I don't have 36gb of ram but also I'm under no illusions that I need that much either. The standby load on my entire house is less than your server according to my smart meter.

I am slightly yes...

You just need to keep an eye out. I'm more proud of the ML350 G6 that I got from a charity on eBay - listed for collection only but we sorted out an arrangement to get it delivered. Just ask and 80% of the time a seller will probably agree. Typing this from a Win10 VM on ESXi right now, connected to via RDP on a ThinkPad X61s I got for £9.99.

It's a great setup, you just need to keep an eye out.

The DL380 G6's with a reasonable spec on ebay seem to cost around £170-200. Are you just getting lucky with your bidding?

I admit that for £200 you can get a very good bit of kit. I might have been tempted if I still had the 42U cab in the garage to put it in.

That's load power. Mine has basically been sitting idle which is a lot less. Plus it's a hell lot more powerful than this too - does this have 36GB RAM? Thought not

That's £171 a year running costs versus this at £64, your "bargain" is a false economy.

See my reply. They're not that bad actually.

grabbed another DL380G6 actually for a tenner delivered. that would be louder but tower servers should be ok. noisy at bootup but fine after that.

I could bring several home from work, but I don't want the power draw, heat or noise in my garage.

DSM reports 43, 40, 51, 49 for Disks 1 through 4. However, the server is in my garage which tends to get pretty hot in the sun (it's got a tiled roof). I think I managed to get the disk numbers aligned with their physical layout, so 3 & 4 are the lower bays.

I was gonna check iLO for current power usage but I need a key for that...

Well mine has a single 450W PSU and is running fine, quiet-ish. Look under "Noise and Power" http://www.alphr.com/hp/30289/hp-proliant-ml350-g6-review

161W load... that's barely hundreds of watts...

That uses hundreds of watts of energy...... Old servers were/are extremely power hungry.

Good deal but buy used at this price. I got a dual quad xeon server with 36GB RAM delivered for £55 just by watching ebay.

Less power, less heat, less noise...


but more often this at a guess... :smile:


hmm... this seems less than ideal, although people are clearly making it work OK with additional drives in practice. It also looks like it uses a proprietary front panel connector, so I guess this and all the other non-standardness might end up resulting in the hacking and bodging I was trying to avoid by simply swapping enclosures.

Still an insanely good deal though if it offers what you want out-of-the-box. In fact I'm going to get one anyway. Damn you, HUKD...

On another note, what drive temperatures are owners seeing in the current heatwave, particularly in the lower cage?

Frustrating to know that they are offering free delivery now as I had to pay delivery for the first server. To console myself, I bought another one with free delivery :smirk:. Now need to get Windows 7/10 to install on these.

I ran Plex on Xpenology on a fanless 1.1Ghz Celeron for nearly 2 years before moving it to the T20 a few months ago. It was this motherboard...

https://www.msi.com/Motherboard/C847MS-E33.html#hero-overview

Granted that I wasn't doing much transcoding - it struggled to transcode 1080p to 720p in real-time :smiley:

Ah well if you're happy I'm happy :smile:

I personally found plex too hardware intensive, I prefer my server ticking away in silence rather revving up and straining. Plus (call me paranoid) but don't like the fact it's mandatory to register.

It's approx 60% faster and has Sata 3.0

At home? Really?

Well one example I can think of is 4xSSD in raid 10 which would give you excellent IOPs to run multiple virtual machines off of, something I wouldn't want to do with mech drives, personally.

It was just a suggestion :smiley:

Winner :smiley:

As a heavy IT user I have still to figure out why one would need 4x2.5" drives in a desktop, or even moreso in a server... why would you when 3.5" is soo much cheaper? (unless you want to make use of all those mechanical laptop hard drives that end up in a drawer I suppose)

(Unless I am missing something? ) :smiley:

Good idea though :smile:

You could convert the 3.5" to 4x2.5" with this: https://www.amazon.co.uk/ORICO-Inch-Drive-Mounting-Adapter/dp/B00K5TKEWA

As this chap did: http://homeservershow.com/forums/index.php?/topic/7492-easy-mod-to-add-more-25-or-35-drives-to-a-t20/

Apparently this drive cage will fit with a bit of tinkering: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Dell-Precision-T7400-T7500-Workstation-Hard-Disc-Drive-Cage-with-HDD-Caddy-KC230-/272297581163?hash=item3f66335a6b:g:UVMAAOSwZ1BXe~qQ

I quite fancy trying to shoehorn one of these in...

https://www.overclockers.co.uk/lian-li-ex-36a2-quad-3.5-dual-2.5-internal-hdd-rack-ca-409-ll.html

Personally I wouldn't worry about the PSU too much. Its MUCH beefier than a HP Microserver PSU (like in my N54L, with 4x3.5, 1x2.5 and 1x optical drive + AMD 5450 gfx card on...

AND

I have successfully added a PCI-e power connector to one of these 80+ 290W Dell PSUs (small amount of soldering required) and they are pretty well made inside. - Add to that that it is a XEON version (much more powerful) and I added a 7770 GFX card, 1tb 7200rpm drive and a large SSD , and I STILL only can pull 115w max from the wall!!!

Unless you wanted to add a beefy gfx card the Dell one should support as many drives as you can connect to this (within reason), - though you should note only 4 SATA ports as standard so if you want more than 4 you will need an expansion card. Though as you say the power routing THROUGH the motherboard would mean I would personally be inclined to either add connectors or splice into the wires directly from the PSU (to avoid any issues with the MB)

You can also buy / possibly find cheap on ebay a drive cage which will add another 2 3.5" slots to the Dell case.

The dell case is pretty well made TBH, better than any cheapie std ATX case, so only change it if you really need to or want exposed 5.25" bays IMO.

:smiley:

It's certainly worth investigating, however, I wouldn't want to run too many drives of the off the stock PSU as the power is routed through the motherboard - I have no idea what the max capacity would be - this guys is running 8 without getting the Dremel out...

http://homeservershow.com/forums/index.php?/topic/11134-8-drive-setup/

Thanks for confirming - I was actually planning on transplanting the Dell PSU along with the rest of the system, so literally the only thing to be changed would be the enclosure itself.

I just thought that regardless of any other expenditure, I doubt if I could get a comparable new motherboard, CPU, 4GB RAM and PSU for less than £74, so it seems a logical way to go.

Yes, it's mATX, but you'd need the PSU adapter I linked to earlier to use the mobo in another case with a standard PSU.

I would question if this would be worth the bother.

If you're buying new drives, then that's going to be a significant investment in itself - in which case you should probably be investing comparable amounts on the CPU, Case, Mobo, etc.

If you're making use of a bunch of old disks, then hacking the case or adding an external SATA enclosure may be a better way to go.

I have 21TB of storage in or attached to my T20, that's plenty for my needs, but I appreciate that you may have different requirements.

:disappointed: I just bought one of these from ebuyer on Monday. Great deal...

Can anyone confirm that it uses a standard mATX motherboard with mounting holes in the usual places? I've seen how people try to macgyver additional drive bays into the case, but I was thinking it would be a lot simpler and easier to just pull the innards out and stick them in a different case with more drive bays (and better ventilation). I reckon I'd still be quids in compared to a self-build from scratch with comparable specs...

There's lots of info on this german forum

http://www.hardwareluxx.de/community/f101/dell-poweredge-t20-1031138.html

No WiFi on this model

Does anyone know if this can be Hackintosh'd to run OS X? I don't want to start an OS war, I personally just don't want to use Linux or Windows, this could potentially replaced the G4 that's in my cellar. Thanks to anyone with any helpful advise

Hi, can someone help me with the following please:
I am looking for a couple of machines at home 1) A cheap desktop for the kids and 2) A server attached to the TV so that I can use it for freeview recording.
For the OS can I install Windows 10 OEM - They are available for about 20 quid each. Can I download it to a USB and install it from there?
How much storage does it come with? Do I need to buy the HDD separately as nothing is mentioned apart from a capacity to hold 13 TB.
How do I setup the machine to act as a hard disk for the tv to record to? Is that what all the kodi discussion is all about?
Apologies, too many questions. Thanks in advance.

Yes, but physically, it's a standard ATX unit. You can buy an adapter to use with a standard ATX PSU should you want to replace it with something more beefy.

http://www.moddiy.com/products/Dell-OptiPlex-T20-PSU-Main-Power-24%252dPin-to-8%252dPin-Adapter-Cable-(30cm).html?setCurrencyId=6&gclid=Cj0KEQjwwry8BRDjsbjMpPSDvagBEiQA5oW0nN56JqgV-5LY5sNSMvGQJBB9z7baMRSieoTw_c1fUnwaAuAW8P8HAQ

Very good - I ran Xpenology on dedicated hardware for a couple of years and migrated my disk array to a VM by passing a SATA adapter through VMDirectPath I/O (You need a Xeon for this feature, the Pentium in this thread doesn't support it). All of the personality of the old server was immediately available on the VM (i.e. same hostname, share, users, apps, etc.).

No, I moved to Plex from XBMC over 4 years ago (I ran Windows Media Centre before that). I switched to Plex because of the server component and the ability to centralise metadata for all my media.

I have a lifetime Plex Pass, so I'm unlikely to move to another platform unless it has significant advantages for me.

Is the power supply proprietary?

I get 23w idle and 45w full load using 2x2.5" drives

Would this be a significant upgrade over the HP N45L Microserver?

I used to do it this way but got in a mess with ESXi licensing. Decided I wanted to get into dockers so looked at UnRaid. Pretty impressive, got Plex running in a docker on it nicely. Comes with KVM so I use that for my other VM needs. It also means the NAS part has true direct access to disks with full SMART monitoring. When running in ESXi, XPEnology would still have a thin virtualisation layer between it and the disks even using RDM to hook the drives up. I'm happy with the switch so far.

how do you find running expenology in a VM? i nee

Does this have hardware raid? Interested in this to replace my aging qnap. I realise it's a bit of an ask for £143!

Shouldn't be - I have a xeon version right next to me 24/7 consuming only 22w from the socket - whats that £30 a year? (rough guess)

IMHO anyone looking for a basic server I would suggest that the HP microserver is a better option (better built / designed IMO, have 2 of the older ones, and IIRC they still have cashback deals similarly?)
Whereas if you need any processing power at all the xeon T20 can be turned into a very capable machine indeed (have 2) - I added a pcie connector to the 290w psu which seemed pretty good quality when I opened it up, undervolted the xeon (since you cant overclock, why not save power - flies with 8gb and a spare 7770 - idles at 32w, 115w and 55C processor maxed out! :smiley:
As a server the annual electricity usage would not appear to be significantly increased but its in another league power-wise. Without the 7770 but 8gb = 22w idle and 84w maxed out.
For the sub £100 I think lenovo do their J20 (I think it is the model number) which only uses about 15w - and I made use of one of those as a basic server for a year or so - bonus as it comes with windows (And a full size case, for anyone bothered).

It's a server, that's what they are built to do.

Isn't this fairly power hungry to be leaving on 24/7?

Have you tried Emby? Much better IMHO

I don't want extra power just worried it's now 4 years old and never been switched off that it's due replacement.

Actually, Plex has both server and client components and has done for many years.

No OS, no keyboard, no mouse.

Web streaming via Plex. Out of interest what do you want the extra CPU horsepower for when your HP is serving its purposes?

Cheers, going to check out possibilities of getting Linux on it.

I'm assuming this comes without an OS?

Mirror Raid? Yes

Why not also try running plex on Linux, depending on your hardware it may be OK with two tuners, especially if you use a dedicated HDD for TV recording and don't share it. I had Plex, TV headed and Serviio all on one Linux machine and it did work fine I just didn't like the high CPU usage of plex so took it off.

Please note there aren't any TV PVR servers anywhere near as good for windows (there are some I have tried) but the best ones, including TVHeadend are Linux only I'm afraid.

Think 1 dual tuner would probably do me at the moment, but it's windows I'm running and don't think that workable. My nvidia shield tv does all the transcoding for me so the plex server is just sitting there taunting me to use it for something else :-) but as I mention that may change when I add a couple of other things to watch plex on. Cheers.

Can you run this in mirror Set up?

Plex is for serving media out VLC is for streaming it back in so correct, it's certainly no plex :smile:

CPU is average, But add 2 x 8GB and a 3TB WD HDD and it's a good home setup. An extra £200 approx.

Im happy using plex thanks, vlc while being an excellent player is definitely no plex!

Bandwidth and space. My server will transcode 60 minutes of 1080p video to 720p @ 4mbps and transfer it to my phone over wireless in under 10 minutes (whilst I sleep). The 720p files take up much less space on my phone, so I'm able to store unwatched episodes for several shows along with a sizable music collection in 64GB (I have a Nexus 6P, so no microSD storage expansion).

Hi I use TVHeadend for live TV on Linux, although as plex pretty much kills all resources you may struggle whilst doing anything "heavy" to expect your server to still record 4 channels at once while serving movies/recordings etc. TVHeadend doesn't use much CPU in itself I can record 4 seperate HD channels at 33% CPU. I'd recommend ditching Windows and Plex if you want a one box does all solution or having a separate server.

It's only limited to the 13TB by the options that Dell provide - there's nothing stopping you from putting 4x 8TB 3.5" and 2x 2.5" 3TB drives in it with the adapter and cables I linked to earlier. Power and space will be a limiting factor at some point, but I run 6 drives without issue.

Any ideas why the hard drive capacity is limited to 13tb?

I've already got this server which is used pretty much for plex and torrents and should really look into something like this, any links to how to get it set up after the card is bought and inserted. Running Windows 10. Cheers.

P.s I pretty much use an nvidia shield solely to stream from the server via plex, but do plan to start using it on more devices. Also have an iptv sub running on the shield so might look at shifting that into the server somehow to.

I see what you're saying and understand that everyone's needs vary, I personally never have the need to stream a full quality BluRay rip via the Internet. Obviously there are other ways of doing what you require such as Emby, but in general on-the-fly transcoding requires a lot of expensive hardware and energy.
My point was within the home basic OpenELEC clients ranging from something as cheap as a Raspberry Pi3 can natively decode anything you throw at it so why transcode?

​That seems an odd point. Yes the plex will work the cpu harder as it's converting the video and audio as apposed to just file sharing. But if I have a bluray rip that's full surround, and too high quality. It's cheaper to get the server to transcode than find portable devices that can cope with dts etc. While outside the house too my cable speed out isn't high enough to stream a 4gb movie file but transcode to 1080p or 720p stereo and no issue as sending about 1.5gb

I also prefer native, that's why I have two Nvidia Shield TVs which will cope with anything I can throw at them. I also have a Roku 3 that can struggle on a wireless connection and I want to watch stuff on the train in the morning...

The tiny overhead of running Xpenology in a hypervisor is more than compensated for by the fact that I can run multiple VMs and make use of the other 20GB of RAM in the server.

I'll second that - I'm using one right now to type this :smile:
The only condition is that the internal sound card is appalling, very thin\tinny sounding (unsurprisingly, it's a server!) so if you like watching movies, listening to music etc you'd probably want to add a sound card too.
Apart from that, it rocks as a home PC - more than enough power for most tasks.

The cashback takes some time to arrive, almost the full 30 working days for me, but it was a painless process.

HTH

Dave

​4 slots won't be enough.

Line runs Plex,sonarr and deluge with 4*2tb HDD.

Plex has 7 users, 4 folks can stream content at the sane time and never had CPU bottleneck. Those G3 chips are just silly.

Plex is heavy compared to native streaming, I took plex off mine as it was making machine noisy, I just use clients that are up to the job instead of compensating for them via transcoding. Although running virtual machines like that is quite heavy compared to running on a dedicated machine.

Yes, it will make a great home PC after you have bought a keyboard, mouse and an operating system. It's slightly faster than my desktop which has a top of the range i5 from the last generation of Intel CPUs.

I run Plex on Xpenology under a VM running on vSphere 6. I wouldn't say that Plex was particularly heavy, transcoding will max the CPU, but that's what I want as it gets the job done as quick as possible.

Yes

Daft question - could I use this as just a normal home PC?

I use a dedicated headless TVheaded server that serves all my Kodi clients, it also serves movies, automatic smartphone and file backup. Works great, I also use this on a N54L but looking at this as a replacement, it's approximately 60% more powerful than the N54L. When you say transcode to your parents you mean webstreaming via plex or TV headed?

Transcoding the audio stream doesn't require much grunt...

https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/201566396-How-are-Direct-Play-Direct-Stream-and-Transcoding-different-

Try fiddling with the device capabilities on the client in Settings/Video/Audio section.

Yeah plex is very CPU heavy, there are lighter ways.

So, that's your porn collection taken care of. :smiley:

So, that's your porn collection taken care of. :smiley:

that's how I use my HP microserver but not many people seem to do it! What backend software do you use? I use TVheadend and Kodi on the same back/front end, I only have Freeview and recently got a HD adapter so going to try and get that as a tuner in TVheadend too. Works great for me, if I was going to upgrade to this it'd only be to add the capability to transcode Plex to my parents, hot deal OP but i'm undecided.

I have the Xeon version - I have Plex setup to transcode files automatically as they appear and then send them to my phone so I can watch them on the train in the morning :smiley:

Sounds like a codec/software issue try VLC player?

xperia z3, and a windows 10 tablet, both while being powerful enough to transcode in their own right, sees ac3 and decides that instead of the client being capable, it needs it fed to it in stereo.

What devices are you trying to compensate for?

How man spare drive slots does this have?

i totally agree, native decoding is preferred, however while the tv handles that perfectly, the smart phone and tablet dont play as well and the xeon will do the trick.

More powerful but overkill for home use, unless you really must transcode, I prefer native decoding personally.

thanks, i had literally just found it :smiley:

really, dont suppose you have a link? thanks.

Add one of these http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/181765074613 or one/two of these http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/191761248467

Chuck in a HDD and you have a whole house PVR server for Kodi live TV that will easily handle 4 concurrent recording along with file serving.

its a shame their isnt a decent enough deal on the xeon ones atm

Is it possible to connect remotely from phone, tablet etc to upload files?

Make a fine PVR server! :wink: