Cisco UCS C240M3 12-bay LFF NAS barebone for $200 (price drop from $250) free shipping

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BLinux

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Joel

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If it says in the description that it supports JBOD, that may just mean "single disk RAID" device (meaning no SMART data, no ability to install drive in another system to recover data), correct?
Also a shame that no drive caddies are included.
 

oddball

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May 18, 2018
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These support JBOD. You can set the mode for the RAID controller via CIMC.

I have a c240 m4 with the 12G SAS controller running in JBOD mode. I will be converting a c240 m3 to JBOD in the coming weeks as well.

You can purchase lots of caddies on ebay relatively cheap. I purchased 10 caddies for $50.

In this case I'd keep an eye out for the 240 m4 LFF, they pop up barebones on ebay all the time and go for about $150-200. They also include a 10Gbe LOM. It's all the same seller about an hour north of Philly. Someone decommed a number of servers.
 

klammore

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Jun 17, 2016
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Probably going to grab 1, anyone have a link/part number for the caddies? I've found a few but not 100% on the compatibility and they are $25+ per tray.
 

oddball

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Yes, that's the caddy. I've been able to purchase them close to $10 apiece. Deals seem to come and go.
 

klammore

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Got one a couple weeks back, great shipping and seller($180). I really like the Cisco UCS m3 platform, just hate the cisco tax on parts.

I bought the trays on BO for $17 per and 15% off ebay coupon($173) so I paid almost as much for caddies as I did for the chassis...

The seller did update the bios and CIMC firmware to latest it seems(OCT/NOV dates) which is nice, I also found in the CIMC that you can tick a box and enable JBOD pass through. No need to flash the HBA.

I can't for the life of my get the Java KVM to actually launch though, I've tried way too many version JRE 6/7/8 and finally gave up. Only 2 external USB ports are annoying for initial setup.
 

BLinux

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@klammore awesome! Please share some photos or video! Was the HBA option to make it work with megaraid firmware or does it actually run with IT firmware? Is it LSI SAS2008? How would you compare it to other brands with similar model servers?
 

DRAGONKZ

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I’ve got 2x C220 M3, which are just the 1RU version of these... if you need any help I can probably assist as well.

I’ve had no issues with the java KVM on current operating systems (once the CIMC firmware was updated to later ones)

What error do you see?
 

oddball

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Running a bunch of UcS gear. KVM works with Java for me too.

What I found with some versions is it downloads with a weird extension .jlp1234566 etc. if you delete the numbers so it’s just a java extension it works fine.

Some of our servers do this, others don’t. I can’t figure out why.

If you have the console KVM you get an additional two USB ports plus VGA and serial.
 

oddball

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@klammore awesome! Please share some photos or video! Was the HBA option to make it work with megaraid firmware or does it actually run with IT firmware? Is it LSI SAS2008? How would you compare it to other brands with similar model servers?
All UCS servers can run in HBA/IT mode without flashing. It’s an option in CIMC.

Have a 240 M4 LFF with FreeNAS on a pool of disks in HBA mode. No issues.
 

frogtech

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Jan 4, 2016
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Got one a couple weeks back, great shipping and seller($180). I really like the Cisco UCS m3 platform, just hate the cisco tax on parts.

I bought the trays on BO for $17 per and 15% off ebay coupon($173) so I paid almost as much for caddies as I did for the chassis...

The seller did update the bios and CIMC firmware to latest it seems(OCT/NOV dates) which is nice, I also found in the CIMC that you can tick a box and enable JBOD pass through. No need to flash the HBA.

I can't for the life of my get the Java KVM to actually launch though, I've tried way too many version JRE 6/7/8 and finally gave up. Only 2 external USB ports are annoying for initial setup.
you might be able to use supermicro's IPMI view to get a kvm console, if really really desired and absolutely no luck getting java to perform with it on your computer.
 

BLinux

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All UCS servers can run in HBA/IT mode without flashing. It’s an option in CIMC.

Have a 240 M4 LFF with FreeNAS on a pool of disks in HBA mode. No issues.
thanks for responding, but that's not really my question. i'm wondering if choosing "HBA mode" in CIMC results in running the IT firmware, or if it just runs the megaraid firmware with pass-through. I know many recent LSI cards have an "HBA" mode in their Megaraid firmware, which allows using it as HBA with the megaraid firmware, but there's a slight difference when it is megaraid firmware in HBA mode vs the real IT mode firmware. Do you know which it is?
 

oddball

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thanks for responding, but that's not really my question. i'm wondering if choosing "HBA mode" in CIMC results in running the IT firmware, or if it just runs the megaraid firmware with pass-through. I know many recent LSI cards have an "HBA" mode in their Megaraid firmware, which allows using it as HBA with the megaraid firmware, but there's a slight difference when it is megaraid firmware in HBA mode vs the real IT mode firmware. Do you know which it is?
Depends on the hardware. If you have a 220 or 240 without the RAID controller you can connect the drive backplane to the PCI bus with integrated motherboard slots. When doing that the BIOS controls the drives and will operate in IT mode, or software RAID.

If the backplane is connected to a RAID card the card goes into a HBA mode, called JBOD mode. If the card doesn’t have a cache I believe this is almost the same as IT mode. If a cache is present I’m not sure how that works as well.
 

BLinux

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Depends on the hardware. If you have a 220 or 240 without the RAID controller you can connect the drive backplane to the PCI bus with integrated motherboard slots. When doing that the BIOS controls the drives and will operate in IT mode, or software RAID.

If the backplane is connected to a RAID card the card goes into a HBA mode, called JBOD mode. If the card doesn’t have a cache I believe this is almost the same as IT mode. If a cache is present I’m not sure how that works as well.
ok, in HBA/JBOD mode, do you know what PCI vendor ID and product ID is presented? that might be the quickest way to answer my curiosity on this. if you have linux installed on one, 'lspci -vnn' will usually show that info.
 

oddball

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I'm trying to figure this out, there is a ton of junk dumped on the screen. I went into CIMC, here's what I see:
 

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oddball

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May 18, 2018
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Full lspci attached.

The RAID

Code:
0d:00.0 RAID bus controller [0104]: LSI Logic / Symbios Logic MegaRAID SAS-3 3108 [Invader] [1000:005d] (rev 02)
        Subsystem: Cisco Systems Inc MegaRAID SAS-3 3108 [Invader] [1137:00db]
        Physical Slot: 0-2
        Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 37, NUMA node 0
        I/O ports at 5000 [size=256]
        Memory at c7500000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
        Memory at c7400000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1M]
        Expansion ROM at c7300000 [disabled] [size=1M]
        Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 3
        Capabilities: [68] Express Endpoint, MSI 00
        Capabilities: [d0] Vital Product Data
        Capabilities: [a8] MSI: Enable- Count=1/1 Maskable+ 64bit+
        Capabilities: [c0] MSI-X: Enable+ Count=97 Masked-
        Capabilities: [100] Advanced Error Reporting
        Capabilities: [1e0] #19
        Capabilities: [1c0] Power Budgeting <?>
        Capabilities: [148] Alternative Routing-ID Interpretation (ARI)
        Kernel driver in use: megaraid_sas
        Kernel modules: megaraid_sas
 

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