Yet another great offer for the folks in the US
Dell PowerEdge R710 LFF Server 8-Core 3.5" HDD 48GB PERC6i iDRAC6 + 2 Trays | eBay
Dell PowerEdge R710 LFF Server 8-Core 3.5" HDD 48GB PERC6i iDRAC6 + 2 Trays | eBay
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If I was shopping for some older gear, this one would be hard to turn down: Supermicro 1U X8DTU-6TF+, 8 x 2.5" bays, 2 x E5620, 72GB RAM, onboard 2 x 10GbE SFP+, onboard SAS2108.
The R710s are Tanks compared the Supermicros. I"ve used them since they came out and they are battle proven, reliable, and damn near close to commodity based hardware. The iDRAC is 10000x better than the IPMI of the supermicro and there's a huge amount of expandability in the R710s. I picked up 4 R710s that my old shop was giving away and i'll use them until they die.
No license related issues with iDRAC etc? (thinking about setting few R710s in to my homelab)
0. These are before dell decided to bake into their idrac into the motherboard. you can pickup an idrac on ebay for cheap and slap one in. The firmware updates do take awhile and I highly advise doing them all. Once you get everything going in these idracs you'll scoff at how basic the supermicro's are.
To be specific, you want "iDRAC 6 Enterprise". The R710 ships with iDRAC 6 Express by default (Enterprise gets you the dedicated Ethernet port, the SD card slot, and a bunch of extra features). The SD slot wants special Dell-branded cards which are 200% overprovisioned. There's a seller on eBay that normally has the Dell SD cards for $10 or so.
The R710 will accept anything from the 5500/5600 family, including the elusive X5698.
I find my R710's idle at around 200W with dual 5680 CPUs, 48GB RAM, a bunch of 15K SAS drives, etc. I can get them up to around 225W if I hit them with a heavy workload, and the 12-month peak I've recorded is 240W.
Not entirely true about R710's accepting accept anything from the 5500/5600 family. There are two "versions" of the R710 one with a Gen1 motherboard and one with a Gen2 motherboard. Gen1 boards will only accept up to a X5675 so X5680 and higher require a Gen2 motherboard. If you plan to use a X5680 or greater you should try and ensure you are getting a Gen2 board (which can sometimes be difficult if sellers don't know what they have).
With regard to idrac, be aware that not all R710 come with iDrac express as a minimum, they could come with no idrac (Express or Enterprise) at all. This is what the Express card looks like: Redirect Notice
It fits in where the Enterprise one sits (but without offering a dedicated lan port) It's not really a big deal these days as Enterprise iDrac for the R710 can be easily found for around $15 US shipped; i.e. Dell K869T J675T Remote Access Card iDRAC6 Enterprise R410 R510 R610 R710 | eBay
With Regard to connecting an LSI HBA to the R710 backplane, it first depends on if you have a 6x3.5" Drive bay Chassis or an 8x2.5" drive bay chassis. The connection type on both backplanes accepts the "original Internal Mini Sas" aka SFF-8087. There is enough room behind the 8x2.5" backplane to NOT have to use the angle (90 degree horizontal? angle) plug that Dell uses. This is what the dell cable looks like: 80cm SFF-8087 Mini SAS 4i 36P to 36Pin reverse 90 degree Right Angled Data Cable | eBay I just got these for my 8x2.5" backplane: Lot of 2x 34 Inch SFF-8087 to SFF-8087 Internal Mini SAS 36-Pin RAID Cable | eBay
as they are cheap. They are longer than necessary but there is room to coil them up behind the 8x2.5 backplane. For 6x3.5" backplane you will need Left Angel ( Left Vertical 90 degree angle) plug like this:
Ultra Slim Flat Left Angled Mini SAS 36pin SFF-8087 to 8087 Data Raid Cable 80cm | eBay
This cable is likely a little long but you can coil extra in the old Perc6i card location.
Is there a standard naming convention for the angle plugs (Left Horizontal, Right Horizontal, Left Vertical, Right Vertical Ahh! to many options!)
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Gen1 R710s are pretty scarce in my experience. If you get the service tag from the seller (don't rely on the picture as it may not be the actual item) you should be able to look up the build configuration on Dell's site. A G2 motherboard is as low as $26 on eBay if you need to swap. There's also an issue with power supplies, as Dell sold some R710 systems with wimpy power supplies.
iDRAC6 Express is standard on the R710. Some lower-end Rx10 systems don't come with Express standard, but R710s did. That doesn't mean it is always there, particularly if the system in question is an OEMR R710 or a Google Search Appliance. But there are definitely separate locations for the Express and Enterprise cards.
You are right, the iDrac Express does not go where the iDrac enterprise goes but onto the MB in the area under where the Perc6i would normally sit. I totally forgot about that (I only came across this situation once). With regard to the Gen1 motherboard, I think most of the systems I have come accross are Gen1. Did not matter to me as X5675 always seemed to be the sweet spot in the bang for buck department. I went through a bunch of OEM / Dell debranded stuff which probably explains my experience... Being able to get Bios updates and even convert back to a "Dell branded Bios" was/is great...