Alright, so it's COVID19 quarantine induced spring cleaning time. Time to take the entire complex down, shut it off, do some cleaning, prep for some upgrades down the line and do some testing.
So, first thing to do is to shut down all the VMs on the t730, and then shut the t730 itself. Then we'll want to mark the 2 QSFP28 ports down and match it with the correct cable, then dismantle and bring it down from the top of the Ikea Gallant cabinet (which is situated 7 feet above ground in a "computing attic" area.
So, once the t730 is down we can do some testing.
a) Can we boot a t730 with a 65w HP smart laptop power brick?
- Nope. The machine will beep 4 times in a row and not power up. You need at least 90w to power it.
b) What about booting off the internal USB port?
- Also nope, and this has been tested even with the latest v1.15 BIOS (which was flashed), secureboot set to off, virtualization options set to on, and the USB drive recognized post-boot. It just don't like to boot off the internal port, even if it's enabled. I'll need to ping my HP channel rep and ask about this one.
c) Can we peg the heat consumption on this machine and see if the fan noise can be elevated?
Machine was booted off parttedmagic 2019-09-19 x64 on liveCD mode, and within the terminal, the following command was run:
stress -c 6 -m 58 --vm-bytes 512M -h 3
(Create 6 CPU hogs and 58 memory hogs each soaking up 512 Mbytes, and spin up 3 HDD hogs slamming the SSD (an Micron/Crucial MX500 series 512 GB unit used for Windows 10 Professional)
The temp readings were done after about 10 minutes
Sensor 1 (CPU) - 42C
Sensor 2 (DIMM slots) - 43C
SSD - 56C
Here's some external readings done with a laser/IR thermometer (that I actually use in my kitchen for cooking, heh) - RAM slot enclosure reads about 30C...
SSD reads about 33.
The tests were later repeated with the Mellanox ConnectX 3 card inside, an Intel 600p/256GB (used for Proxmox) but with practically the same conditions. Despite the card's heat sink reading about 56C, the rest of the machine only registers a 1-2 degree increase in heat production. The massive heatsink/heatpipe used in the t730 combined with the blower worked amazingly well to wick heat from the system.
The next bit of work would be to get rid of some of the dust bunnies lurking around the system. This involves taking out the blower...
(Delta NS75B03)
Then followed by scrubbing the interior with Q-Tips dipped in 91% Isopropyl Alcohol (I have a small bottle for electronics projects dating back about 9 months)
Once this is done some general scrubbing of the interior was done using the Q-tips + IPA.
The next bit of work was to pull the Sandisk SSD (with ESXi 6.5U3) out, along with the Mellanox CX3. The SSD was replaced with the MX500 with a Win10 build (1809). The task is to update Windows to 1909 along with relevant system firmware and/or BIOS version. The BIOS was updated from v1.04 to v1.15 using the HP/AMI Windows updater. The BIOS update took about 3 minutes. The Windows update took about 2 hours, mostly unattended. While this is happening, it's time to turn my attention to the Microserver G7 N40L. That one was taken down, and under the expert supervision of Peugeot the IT saavy cat, the machine was taken apart for cleaning and upgrade prep-work.
(She's a Torbie, folks - 80% Tortoiseshell, 20% American Shorthair Tabby, and 100% dedicated to inspecting the chassis screws with her tongue)
A major task was to open up the optical bay so I can see how I can fit something on top. Right now I have a regular molex power connector, but no SATA cable. I'll also want to loosen up the fan power connector so I can pull the fan out (The fan is large and responsible for cooling the 4 drive trays and the motherboard underneath) - it's secured by 4 screws in the back (I was removing one of them in the photo above). Note the metallic "tunnel" next to the space reserved for a SATA optical drive. The large unit underneath is the PSU, and the data cables from the SATA drives pass from the bay (In front of the fan) and towards the front, where they are plugged into the motherboard underneath.
So now it's time to remove the motherboard, which is 2 thumb screws to loosen, and disconnect all the cables. Then go to the back and unlock the PCIe slot - Once it's done the entire thing comes out...like so (The Mellanox CX3 on the N40L has been removed). Note that next to the coin battery there is a SATA data port dedicated to that optical bay, but there are currently no SATA data cable there. I'll need to find and install one.
The motherboard was given a dusting. Note the PCIe x4 IPMI port on the original MSG7, and the bootable internal USB2 port.
After the cleaning the motherboard (with the Mellanox card) was slid back in place, and the cables re-connected. Then up on top, a molex SATA power adapter was added, and a SATA data cable (In red) slid through reaching the motherboard below. Peugeot came back to inspect the proceedings.
Made a small discovery - looks like the plastic retaining clip for the allen key included in the MSG7 chassis for securing the drives in the bay broke its bottom clip and would no longer retain the key on the door. What to do?
Twist it 90 degrees to inspect it, and then during the install, twist it 90 degrees in the opposite direction so the top clip is now the bottom clip, like so:
Since there is now a bottom clip keeping the key from falling out, it went back into its place just fine.
After about an hour of further cleaning, the N40L Is ready for service.
Since it's the SMB server for my home and the iSCSI server for the t730 when running ESXi 6.5, it can go back to the rack (twisted 90 degrees so the ports are on the left side)
The machine is fired up, and once the RAM count reads 16GB (it randomly boots between 8192 and 16384MB so I'll have have to power cycle until it's correct) FreeNAS 11.1U7 booted back up. That resumed primary SMB service to the home.
The Windows 10 upgrade on the t730 has been completed, and I captured a disk image via Clonezilla (I might recycle that MX500 to install/test on a t740). The MX500 (with Win10) was swapped out, and the Intel 600p with Proxmox was swapped in. A general Proxmox upgrade was done, some test VMs were fired up - and everything looks good. The machine was booted back into Partedmagic for a heat test, and then a general check was performed to see if the v1.15 BIOS upgrade broke any hypervisor functionality or add the ARIFwd/ACSCtl functionality (it didn't). Once that's done, the original 32GB Sandisk SSD (with ESXi 6.5U3) was swapped back in. We are ready to close it back up, move it back to the attic and plug everything back in.
Well, that was a fairly productive downtime window. Now I'll be able to add a new boot SSD to the MSG7 (Probably a 128-256GB SSD) so we can upgrade FreeNAS to TrueNAS, and with all the labelling work done to clarify the cabling, we should be able to plan for the eventual t740 upgrade deployment.