HP t740 Thin Client as an HP Microserver Gen7 Upgrade (finally!)

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ReturnedSword

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Jun 15, 2018
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Another thought I’ve had on a smallish pfSense would to go the boutique chassis route, such as a Velka 3. A standard ITX board would be supported then, along with a socketed CPU. With a flexible PCIe riser two different PCIe adapters can be used at x8 each. Cooling would be great since it would support 80mm/120mm fans which can be undervolted. Would vastly be more expensive than repurposing a thin client though.
 
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greatsquare

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What did you have to do to get SR-IOV working? I followed the steps here: [TUTORIAL] - Enabling SR-IOV for Intel NIC (X550-T2) on Proxmox 6. I'm using a Cisco branded i350 on the latest Proxmox.

Everything looks ok but when I run the 'echo 7 > /sys/class/net/enp1s0f1/device/sriov_numvfs' command I get a -bash: echo: write error: input/output error. A search on that error suggests something's not enabled in the BIOS. The BIOS options on this thing are vary limited though. I have virtualization enabled fwiw. Basic PCI passthrough does work, so it's not a complete deal-breaker. I hope it's not an issue with the card firmware... From what I can tell SR-IOV should be enabled.
 
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servernerd

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Jul 4, 2022
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Oh, that’s a bummer, but thanks for confirming. Then is there anyway to make use of that gpu in a virtualization setting? Thinking out loud, something like a lxc container in proxmox which somehow has the gpu mapped?
 
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Gitsum

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Jul 27, 2022
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Just got one of these off E-Bay and has a bios password. Anyone know how to remove or reset it?
I found a video for the t630 but the steps don't work on this t740
 
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sloniu82

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Jun 11, 2020
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Hi.
I've been using T740 as my main home server for some time - and it performs very well.

As I need one more NIC, thought that I can insert chineese M.2 RTL8125B 2.5 adapter (A+E Key, in place of original wifi card)
Physically it fits perfectly, unfornetly no joy - card is not detected. No entries in dmesg or lspci

PXL_20221014_214504728.jpg
Next I checked in my laptop - and it works there without issues.

Is in this HP some kind of vendor lock for m.2 A+E key?
Could someone help to to make this card working?
 
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WANg

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Jun 10, 2018
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sloniu82 said:
Hi.
I've been using T740 as my main home server for some time - and it performs very well.

As I need one more NIC, thought that I can insert chineese M.2 RTL8125B 2.5 adapter (A+E Key, in place of original wifi card)
Physically it fits perfectly, unfornetly no joy - card is not detected. No entries in dmesg or lspci

View attachment 24854
Next I checked in my laptop - and it works there without issues.

Is in this HP some kind of vendor lock for m.2 A+E key?
Could someone help to to make this card working?
Click to expand...
Not vendor locked AFAIK - I had an i350 dual port card (on an M2 A+E to MiniPCIe adapter) running on both my t640 and t740. Both detected the card.
 
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sloniu82

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Jun 11, 2020
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WANg said:
Not vendor locked AFAIK - I had an i350 dual port card (on an M2 A+E to MiniPCIe adapter) running on both my t640 and t740. Both detected the card.
Click to expand...
Hmm..this is interesting.
I found this adapter:
Zrzut ekranu 2022-10-19 o 21.05.23.png
Is it the same as yours?
Found another type:
1666272786223.png
Should be better for me to use with m2 m key intel I220 2.5G adapter I found in chineese shops.
 
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WANg

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sloniu82 said:
Hmm..this is interesting.
I found this adapter:
View attachment 24911
Is it the same as yours?
Found another type:
View attachment 24923
Should be better for me to use with m2 m key intel I220 2.5G adapter I found in chineese shops.
Click to expand...
Well, my i350-am2 card is MiniPCIe, so it’ll need the M.2 adapter. If that i220 requires key M and you are on a keyA+E slot, that would probably not work. That being said, the NVMe slot is a key M slot - put a SATA SSD on the B+M slot and see if using the NVMe slot will work.
 
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WANg

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ReturnedSword said:
Another thought I’ve had on a smallish pfSense would to go the boutique chassis route, such as a Velka 3. A standard ITX board would be supported then, along with a socketed CPU. With a flexible PCIe riser two different PCIe adapters can be used at x8 each. Cooling would be great since it would support 80mm/120mm fans which can be undervolted. Would vastly be more expensive than repurposing a thin client though.
Click to expand...
The Velka3 is also substantially larger than the t740. The t740 is 2L and change. The Velka is around 4L. I mean, that's like the NUC9 Extreme in terms of size.
 
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newabc

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Jan 20, 2019
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WANg said:
b) My 7NN06AT didn't come with the RAM shield - I talked to my vendor (local ebay seller) and he was gracious enough to send me one - I have no idea where he sourced it from (but judging from the sticky tack on top of the RAM shield...it's probably from a t640). AFAIK, I think only certain SKUs get them (probably the ones with the E9173 PCIe graphics cards). I didn't notice much difference in terms of cooling or performance. For an idea of what it looks like, see the PCIe extender photo above - it's actually right under the PCIe extender cable.
Click to expand...
Hi @WANg ,

Is the metal cover with holes over the RAMs (RAM shield?) used to block electromagnetic radiations or the heats to the RAMs?

My T740 (8gb ram/16gb emmc) didn't come with it, too. If it is for blocking heats from the PCIe card over the RAMs, I guess that probably I will not need it because of the low power consumption of Solarflair 5122F card.

Thank you again for your detailed posts on T730, T740 and Wyse 5070!
 
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WANg

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newabc said:
Hi @WANg ,

Is the metal cover with holes over the RAMs (RAM shield?) used to block electromagnetic radiations or the heats to the RAMs?

My T740 (8gb ram/16gb emmc) didn't come with it, too. If it is for blocking heats from the PCIe card over the RAMs, I guess that probably I will not need it because of the low power consumption of Solarflair 5122F card.

Thank you again for your detailed posts on T730, T740 and Wyse 5070!
Click to expand...
Eh, probably heat sink for the RAM, but I saw no difference with or without. It's really one pulled out of the t640.
 
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newabc

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newabc

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When using passmark(Performance Test ver 10.x) to stress the CPU, the power consumption are from near 40 watts to just over 100 watts. And the highest CPU temperature is around 85C - 88C.
When using stress-ng to test all 8 vCores in a VM of Proxmox, the highest CPU temperature is around 85C.

But I haven't found a way to know the CPU fan speed in Proxmox.
 
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servernerd

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I couldn't get SRIOV in X520-DA2 to work in Promxox (v7.2-3). One forum post mentioned something about ACS, but that option is not present in BIOS. How did people get SRIOV working for this card in t740?

Output:

root@x:~# dmesg | grep -e DMAR -e IOMMU -e AMD-Vi~
[ 0.427685] pci 0000:00:00.2: AMD-Vi: IOMMU performance counters supported
[ 0.431053] pci 0000:00:00.2: AMD-Vi: Found IOMMU cap 0x40
[ 0.431295] perf/amd_iommu: Detected AMD IOMMU #0 (2 banks, 4 counters/bank).
[ 5.289648] AMD-Vi: AMD IOMMUv2 loaded and initialized

root@x:~# more /sys/class/net/enp1s0f1/device/sriov_totalvfs
63

root@x:~# echo "2" > /sys/class/net/enp1s0f1/device/sriov_numvfs
-bash: echo: write error: Input/output error

root@x:~# dmesg | tail
[86004.912842] ixgbe 0000:01:00.1 enp1s0f1: SR-IOV enabled with 2 VFs
[86004.975431] ixgbe 0000:01:00.1: Multiqueue Enabled: Rx Queue count = 4, Tx Queue count = 4 XDP Queue count = 0
[86005.086612] pci 0000:01:10.1: [8086:10ed] type 7f class 0xffffff
[86005.086625] pci 0000:01:10.1: unknown header type 7f, ignoring device
[86006.105765] ixgbe 0000:01:00.1: Failed to enable PCI sriov: -5
 
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