Dell Poweredge R240 - Barebones w/ Xeon E-2124 - $180

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.
J

jcpingu

New Member
Feb 14, 2021
19
1
3
natanbackwards said:
With 4x 16GB RAM, 1x SATA SSD mine is idling around 38W in Debian. Might be able to shave some power off if I get rid of the H330 and run off the onboard SATA. Not sure what cabling looks like for the SATA controller configuration, some of the random cables on eBay don't seem to make sense.

Edit: Looks like you would use Dell PN #02F8RD for the SATA config?
Click to expand...
If you don't mind, can you show where we would plug that cable? I can't seem to find the connection?
 
J

jcpingu

New Member
Feb 14, 2021
19
1
3
Quartermaster said:
They're designed for low cost, ROBO type operations where cost is the significant driver (hence no dual PSU, amongst things). If you want more you step up to the R340 for a second power supply and additional PCIe slot, or R440 for more BOSS-style boot options

A M.2 BOSS card is an option, IIRC these don't support NVMe BOSS cards, only the first-gen SATA ones. There is one USB port under the PCI cards, and a standard SATA port on the right hand side near the memory slots.



Yes. And for Proxmox, nothing, installing in raidz1 or raidz2 across all disks. For anything else, an Intel SATA SSD in the optical bay (using a generic caddy from Amazon) plugged into the optical drive connector and a Supermicro slim SATA cable to the other side of the box where the SATA port for the optical drive is.



IIRC You can set the power profile to efficiency somewhere in the BIOS which also helps keep the fans low. Most optical bay to SATA caddies from Amazon will convert the optical drive power connector to SATA power with no issues. There's no M.2 connector on these, unless it's on a PCIe BOSS M.2 card.
Click to expand...
Quartermaster said:
Ahh!! They're hot swap. AWESOME! I wish I bought a few more. Caddies for the non-hot swap model are nearly impossible to find. Many thanks for the photos!

For my fleet of R240s, I have usually swapped out the PERC H330 for a 10G NIC, and then putting an Intel P4610 1.6TB NVMe SSD into the other PCI slot for L2ARC. You can plug the backplane directly into the motherboard with cable P# 0V4NCY

This turns an average box into a great workhorse, and unofficially supports 128GB of DDR4 ECC UDIMMs (4x 32GB).
Click to expand...
Can you confirm where on the motherboard P# 0V4NCY connects to?
 
O

Oarman

Member
Feb 28, 2021
38
24
8
chrgrose said:
Could you just install the Dell Quad M.2 'ultra speed' card, or do you need to use a BOSS card on these?
Click to expand...
The documentation suggests the half-height port on the riser (where the H330 is) is a x4 and the full-height slot (where I have the sound card in mine) is an x8. Googling around but not bios diving, it does not look like the R240 supports bifurcation.
 
  • Like
Reactions: chrgrose
Quartermaster

Quartermaster

Right, now pay attention 007!
Jun 3, 2020
58
36
18
jcpingu said:
Can you confirm where on the motherboard P# 0V4NCY connects to?
Click to expand...
Reading the manual here Dell EMC PowerEdge R240 Installation and Service Manual | Dell Canada and other R240 docs on the Dell site will help you with many of your questions


Oarman said:
The documentation suggests the half-height port on the riser (where the H330 is) is a x4 and the full-height slot (where I have the sound card in mine) is an x8. Googling around but not bios diving, it does not look like the R240 supports bifurcation.
Click to expand...
Correct, it does not. Found out the hard way :)
 
9

986box

Active Member
Oct 14, 2017
235
42
28
44
i'm having issue trying to bootup the server. it will try to spin up after pressing button. Upon releasing the power button, it power down.
Nothing on the display. Pulled out the ram and its the same issue.

Any idea what to check?
 
9

986box

Active Member
Oct 14, 2017
235
42
28
44
986box said:
i'm having issue trying to bootup the server. it will try to spin up after pressing button. Upon releasing the power button, it power down.
Nothing on the display. Pulled out the ram and its the same issue.

Any idea what to check?
Click to expand...
nevermind.. it finally bootup after i come back 20 mins later.
 
W

wermskates

New Member
Jan 3, 2024
6
3
3
In the event anyone else goes down the rabbit hole looking for info about flashing the H330 controller card to IT mode (HBA330) for use in TrueNAS etc

The original thread that is linked from various other message boards and posts was deleted. I eventually found someone else on the forum here posting the web archive link to it

Flash/Crossflash DELL H330 RAID Card to HBA330/12Gbps HBA IT Firmware

I also found a youtube video that referenced the same thread

How to crossflash Dell H330 to IT mode firmware

Some of the comments there referenced a problem encountered in step 10 of the process where it shows an error relating to PAL no initialized hardware. The solution noted there that i also used was creating a UEFI shell bootable USB drive. I used this resource to create the USB.

EDK2-UEFI-SHELL

Once i did that i followed the rest of the steps successfully. Hope this can help anyone else who recently picked up this server and goes looking for the same info i did.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Rcdriver and Switchback028
J

jcpingu

New Member
Feb 14, 2021
19
1
3
wermskates said:
In the event anyone else goes down the rabbit hole looking for info about flashing the H330 controller card to IT mode (HBA330) for use in TrueNAS etc

The original thread that is linked from various other message boards and posts was deleted. I eventually found someone else on the forum here posting the web archive link to it

Flash/Crossflash DELL H330 RAID Card to HBA330/12Gbps HBA IT Firmware

I also found a youtube video that referenced the same thread

How to crossflash Dell H330 to IT mode firmware

Some of the comments there referenced a problem encountered in step 10 of the process where it shows an error relating to PAL no initialized hardware. The solution noted there that i also used was creating a UEFI shell bootable USB drive. I used this resource to create the USB.

EDK2-UEFI-SHELL

Once i did that i followed the rest of the steps successfully. Hope this can help anyone else who recently picked up this server and goes looking for the same info i did.
Click to expand...
There's an SFF-8087 Connection on the motherboard. Is there a difference of using that connection instead of going through this flashing process? I just want to understand... Thanks
 
N

natanbackwards

New Member
Aug 24, 2023
11
2
3
jcpingu said:
There's an SFF-8087 Connection on the motherboard. Is there a difference of using that connection instead of going through this flashing process? I just want to understand... Thanks
Click to expand...
You can only use SATA drives with the onboard controller.
 
9

986box

Active Member
Oct 14, 2017
235
42
28
44
Installed 4 SAS drives with acquired caddies. All 4 drives are recognized by LSI 3008 HBA in IT mode.
Is it possible to add a small SSD boot drive using one of SATA port? There is no room for another drive. One option is to install USB drive near the memory. Not ideal.
 
W

wermskates

New Member
Jan 3, 2024
6
3
3
986box said:
Installed 4 SAS drives with acquired caddies. All 4 drives are recognized by LSI 3008 HBA in IT mode.
Is it possible to add a small SSD boot drive using one of SATA port? There is no room for another drive. One option is to install USB drive near the memory. Not ideal.
Click to expand...
yes you can. You can use the Sata port over by the memory slots. There is a 6 pin power connector on the motherboard that you can use with a re-pinned corsair psu cable.


I initially found it as an alternative to using the official dell cable on this reddit thread.

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/t479fm
I checked the pin out on the connector myself with a multi meter before wiring it up to anything. Once i re pinned the 6 pin connector i hooked up a SSD and everything is working fine.
 
9

986box

Active Member
Oct 14, 2017
235
42
28
44
wermskates said:
yes you can. You can use the Sata port over by the memory slots. There is a 6 pin power connector on the motherboard that you can use with a re-pinned corsair psu cable.


I initially found it as an alternative to using the official dell cable on this reddit thread.

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/t479fm
I checked the pin out on the connector myself with a multi meter before wiring it up to anything. Once i re pinned the 6 pin connector i hooked up a SSD and everything is working fine.
Click to expand...
Where did you install the drive? 4 of the drive bays are populated.

found a video showing how to install.

also ordered both the Dell MGRV7 PowerEdge R240 R340 Optical Drive Power Cable and slim ODD to 2.5” 9.5 mm kit from Amazon.
 
Last edited:
W

wermskates

New Member
Jan 3, 2024
6
3
3
986box said:
Where did you install the drive? 4 of the drive bays are populated.

found a video showing how to install.

also ordered both the Dell MGRV7 PowerEdge R240 R340 Optical Drive Power Cable and slim ODD to 2.5” 9.5 mm kit from Amazon.
Click to expand...
nice. i used one of those adapter kits from amazon as well.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom