Was gifted some Primergy RX2530 M1 M2 and M4 - suitable for homelab in termy energy consumption

3 years ago by jaenneken to c/datahoarder

Lately I received a primergy rx2530 m1, m2 and m4 (all maxed out with ram and cpus) and wonder if and which of them can be driven as energy efficient as any random diy built. I saw plenty of energy saving options on the Bios (cpu and ram related) but do not know how comparable this is with a consumer setup and which ones are important to be set. I will make my own measurements with truenas and proxmox but wonder if anyone else has those in use. I saw that the rx2540 might be the better option as it can pickup 8 x 3,5 hdd while on the rx2530s the m1 is the only one compatible with with 3,5. Also they have proprietary Hbas. Can those be switched into dumb mode where they allow the os direct access to the connected drives?

Thank you for any suggestions and sharing experiences.

Malossi167 3 points 3 years ago

I highly doubt these systems are suitable for your needs. Dual socket servers are not great in terms of power efficiency and the 1u form factor means you cannot even use some of the benefits like the high number of PCIe lanes. On top of that consumer CPUs got a lot faster in recent years so even if you need a fair bit of CPU power (normally not necessary for a NAS) you are better off getting something more modern. Your best bet is to sell off the servers and get something more suited to your needs.

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jaenneken 1 point 3 years ago

I guess selling them makes most sense. Removing one of the cpus and 3/4s of the ram might be necessary to bring down the power consumption for home use. Noise is not that much of an issue as it would be placed in the cellar anyway. I am about to donate one of them to my local hackspace though (they might be interested to fiddle and get their hands on server grade stuff as some of them over there do not have access to it at work), so I still wonder how to run them as energy efficient and quiet as possible with options given on the bios by Fujitsu. I will post some findings with power consumption in a separate thread or here. Thanks!

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Malossi167 1 point 3 years ago

Removing CPUs and RAM will also decrease its compute power. Disabling features also will likely remove some of the enterprise features like IPMI. You might end up getting the worst of both worlds - Not a ton of PCIe, few cores and RAM - but loud, and still pretty power hungry.

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chiisana 3 points 3 years ago

The m1/m2 looks like poweredge r630 equivalent with v3/v4 cpu and m4 is using scalable Xeon which is one generation newer. All of them are great systems, especially when maxed out. The m4 being the newest is probably the best all around choice.

From power point of view, they’re gonna be “less” energy efficient than consumer diy stuff in that they’re supposed to be highly dense systems ran in a data centre with thousands of other similar servers, to pack as much punch in as little space as possible.

Another thing I’d be wary about is noise… 1U means you’re stuck with itty bitty tiny fans that need to spin very quickly and make a lot of noise, should your components heat up. Again, that whole data centre high density thing… noise isn’t something they’re optimizing for.

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