HPE EC200A Xeon D-1518 'hybrid server' on ebay ~$150

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duckduck

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Aug 22, 2016
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iLO and Xeon D-1500 series cpu @ ~$150 is what makes it great. Wish it offered a more traditional PCIe slot.
Indeed.
For me it was wanting a box as a low power proxmox node, that didn't need much in terms of storage space. 2 drives and the M.2 is enough. But it did need the ability to use the RDIMMs. Because I had some laying around doing nothing. So seemed like the perfect little box for this, certainly for the price.
 

mmo

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Sep 17, 2016
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Indeed.
For me it was wanting a box as a low power proxmox node, that didn't need much in terms of storage space. 2 drives and the M.2 is enough. But it did need the ability to use the RDIMMs. Because I had some laying around doing nothing. So seemed like the perfect little box for this, certainly for the price.
Xeon D does support RDIMM, but not LRDIMM.
 
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duckduck

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Aug 22, 2016
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Xeon D does support RDIMM, but not LRDIMM.
Yes, that's what I meant and why I got one of these. But most other low power boards don't support RDIMM. From what I've found it's really just the Xeon D's and now the new embedded EPYC 3000. Aside from those, not really anything I'd call low in power usage.
 
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illamint

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Dec 25, 2015
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Picked one up from an eBay seller that claimed it included the HD mounting brackets. Should arrive next week; will report back if it did indeed include the brackets.

Very tempting to buy multiple units; my plan with this one is to slap some drives in it, install Proxmox, and ship it off to my parents' house to serve as an offsite backup node.
 
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mmo

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Sep 17, 2016
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Picked one up from an eBay seller that claimed it included the HD mounting brackets. Should arrive next week; will report back if it did indeed include the brackets.

Very tempting to buy multiple units; my plan with this one is to slap some drives in it, install Proxmox, and ship it off to my parents' house to serve as an offsite backup node.
is the one selling it with the original box and ship from CA?
 
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duckduck

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Aug 22, 2016
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Very tempting to buy multiple units; my plan with this one is to slap some drives in it, install Proxmox, and ship it off to my parents' house to serve as an offsite backup node.
Hehe, same for me with the offsite proxmox node idea. But for me it's an aunt, with the same FTTH provider as me, so <2ms between us.
 
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ske4za

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Feb 4, 2019
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Yes I was able to setup and install pfsnes. I actually had more problems with the Adata SU655 SSDs I bought failing.
The performance is pretty good. I never see any problems.
Good to hear. I have a C2758 for pfSense but I never RMA'd it for the fix, might use this as a replacement/upgrade for when I eventually do send it back.
 
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WANg

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Jun 10, 2018
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Lets hope for a video about it in the tinyminimicro project.
Eh, I got a feeling @Patrick would do a video on it, but it probably won't be under the TinyMiniMicro banner. It's bigger than than a t730 thin client so it's not a TinyMiniMicro machine. It's more like an SFF that has aspirations to be a server.

I personally think the EC200a is far superior to any of the tinyminimicro's, but it isn't sustainable. Once this current supply runs out, it might be hard to find replacements. Also the upgrades for it are few and pretty hard to find at a reasonable cost. But it does have its own niche - having iLO in such a small footprint is pretty damn good.
I would not call this machine "far superior" to the TinyMiniMicros. The TinyMiniMicros have wide availability, multiple vendors, cheap laptop parts, VPro/AMT/AMD DASH remote management, low power consumption and ships ready out of the box with pre-baked OS licenses, which gives them longevity as both a mini server and an HTPC. Some of the TinyMiniMicros have better CPUs than the D1518, most (anything past Intel Broadwell or AMD Steamroller) will have 64GB RAM ceilings via a pair of 32GB DDR4 SODIMMs. Some (the Lenovo m720q and etc) have PCIe slots. This machine is a bit bigger than most of the TinyMiniMicros (it's 254mm x 254mm x 47mm, which makes it ~3L - most of the TinyMiiniMicros are 1.5L or less). It beats out the SFF cousins of the TinyMiniMicros, but just barely. In order for it to be "far superior" to the TinyMiniMicros it'll need to be something like a Lenovo ThinkSystem SE350 - Xeon-D 2000 series, quad DIMM slots supporting up to 256GB of RAM, XClarity controller, PCIe slot, either 3 or 5 M2 storage slots and dual power supplies, all in a server the size of 4 TinyMiniMicro machines stacked 2 deep, front-to-back. At least @Patrick massively geeked out on it (as did I...until I saw one ramp up its 3 fans on a video...nope, that would not go into my home)...

It's basically an HPe Microserver Gen10 plus that had a soldered 3 year old Xeon D 1500, had its quad drive bay cut in half (unlike the Gen10+ this thing has an M2 SATA, which makes it more useful), no PCIe slot, went through the 3 year amortized cycle under someone else and it's dumped on the secondary market. If you have spare RAM, 3.5" drives and don't mind jury rigging drive mounts, sure, go for it. It might make for an interesting pfsense box for GigE connections, but what else would it be good for? Not enough RAM slots to be a better virt machine than the TinyMiniMicros (and if it’s a home lab why would you need ECC/RDIMM? It’s not like they are cheaper than laptop SODIMM), too power hungry to make for a good 2-bay home NAS, no 10GbE, and no way to mount it later on as it has no PCIe.
 
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jak

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Apr 17, 2016
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Has anyone been able to get the front network indicator LEDs working? They do not seem to blink with my pfsense install.
 
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Mymlan

Clean, Friendly, and In Stock.
Oct 1, 2013
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Has anyone been able to get the front network indicator LEDs working? They do not seem to blink with my pfsense install.
The NIC information (and therefore activity LEDs) require the HPE Agentless Management agent loaded in the OS to feed back to the iLO. You'll note the embedded NIC has a status of "Unknown" in the iLO status page. While there are agents for Windows and Fedora/Deb, FreeBSD is left out in the cold. So much for "agentless"!

If you really want activity LEDs for blinkenlight, you can just flip it around so the NICs point forward.
 

nophtosh

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May 8, 2020
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For anyone interested, I have a copy of the March 2020 HPE Service Pack disc I can share privately. My EC200A came with the original 2016 v1.00 system ROM. This brings it up the latest v2.66 available via entitlement. I can confirm that both Debian and FreeBSD installed without error via remote .iso attach from the iLO Remote Console.


I'd like a copy, please!
 
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alexalex

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Oct 9, 2017
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For anyone interested, I have a copy of the March 2020 HPE Service Pack disc I can share privately. My EC200A came with the original 2016 v1.00 system ROM. This brings it up the latest v2.66 available via entitlement. I can confirm that both Debian and FreeBSD installed without error via remote .iso attach from the iLO Remote Console.

I would love to have it as well, thank you!
 
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dirkthedaring83

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Aug 14, 2020
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True, if you can't put a normal OS on them, they end up seemly fairly worthless for anything this forum would use them for.
You can install your own OS. I have installed Proxmox on mine. I just ordered 3 more of them and will be loading proxmox on them as well creating a cluster. I'm using the NVME slot for the boot drive. I'm sure you could load Windows or Linux or even esxi if you wanted to.
 
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dirkthedaring83

New Member
Aug 14, 2020
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For anyone interested, I have a copy of the March 2020 HPE Service Pack disc I can share privately. My EC200A came with the original 2016 v1.00 system ROM. This brings it up the latest v2.66 available via entitlement. I can confirm that both Debian and FreeBSD installed without error via remote .iso attach from the iLO Remote Console.

Stock firmware upon receipt:

Firmware NameFirmware VersionLocation
iLO2.40 Dec 02 2015System Board
Intelligent Platform Abstraction Data10.7System Board
Intelligent ProvisioningN/ASystem Board
Redundant System ROMU26 v1.00 (04/14/2016)System Board
Server Platform Services (SPS) Firmware3.0.3.9.1System Board
System Programmable Logic DeviceVersion 0x07System Board
System ROMU26 v1.00 (04/14/2016)System Board

Firmware post-update:

Firmware NameFirmware VersionLocation
HPE Ethernet 1Gb 4-port 366i Adapter - NIC1.2529.0Embedded
iLO2.73 Feb 11 2020System Board
Intelligent Platform Abstraction Data12.02System Board
Intelligent ProvisioningN/ASystem Board
Redundant System ROMU26 v1.00 (04/14/2016)System Board
Server Platform Services (SPS) Firmware3.0.3.9.1System Board
System Programmable Logic DeviceVersion 0x07System Board
System ROMU26 v2.66 (07/19/2019)System Board
Yes please! I would like a copy. Thanks!
 
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