ISILON NL410 / X410 trays being scrapped anything worth salvaging?

[penrhos]

We have just decommissioned an old Isilon array - it consists of 2 * X410 modules and 2 * NL410 modules.
Unfortunately due to GDPR/PCI regulations all the drives have already been removed and shredded (all 144 of them).
So apart from the 64Gb of 8Gb DDR3 10600R sticks of ram and 10Gbe network cards is there anything worth salvaging?

I have a home lab but these are far too big and heavy to use in it - I'll stick with my IBM/HP 2U servers for now.
They have the following cards installed:-

415-0067-01 - dual 32Gb m-sata (these were the boot drives for the tray and they were still in the machine).​

303-409-001B - NVRAM​

CX354A Connectx-3 dual-port InfiniBand​

PBA G35828 dual port raid/hba​

BC0210406-01 - Broadcom dual port 10Gbe network + SFP's​

Dual E5-xxxx CPU's + Intel E-ATX server motherboard.

From a linux/windows 2016/TrueNas/VMWare point of view I'm pretty sure only the 10Gbe network and Intel raid cards will be easily re-usable.

I'd love to try the NVRAM & dual m-sata cards but am struggling to find drivers for them, can't be bothered using InfiniBand at home anymore.

 

[UhClem]

... PBA G35828 dual port raid/hba ...
Dual E5-xxxx CPU's + Intel E-ATX server motherboard.

From a linux/windows 2016/TrueNas/VMWare point of view I'm pretty sure only the 10Gbe network and Intel raid cards will be easily re-usable.

Just a note of caution: That Intel HBA (you referenced as G35828) is almost certainly a (Intel part #) RMS25KB080 -- it is LSI2308-based (ie, PCIe Gen3 [x8]). [That's the good news ... BUT] it is locked to only work on a subset of Intel server mobo's--mostly s2600 family.
A search of the STH forums will give details.

 

[penrhos]

Got a result - One of the NL410's must have been newer/different spec to all the others - it contained an Intel S1400FP2 motherboard which is just a little larger than an ATX motherboard - all the others were E-ATX.

So I've got a Motherboard, 2.4Ghz E5-Xeon processor, 48Gb PC3L-10600R, fussy Intel raid controller,10Gbe dual-port nic with optics, and the msata card with 2 x 32Gb drives all for free!

Took it home to play and flashed the latest Intel bios & ipmi onto it no problems at all - I had a suitable SuperMicro heatsink/fan combo, an old Chieftech ATX mid-tower case and a 650W PSU so just need a few bits to complete the build (board has 2 x pcie 8x, 2 x pcie 4x and a pci slot).

Will an "S2600CP2 / S2400SC2" I/O shield fit? It looks about right and is a fraction of the cost of one for a S1400FP2?

in the meantime I'm using a 3D-printed blank io shield from thingieverse.

I did plug the msata card in and it seems pretty pointless, it just gives you 2 x 32Gb sata drives without using a drive bay, but it occupies a slot instead. I did install FreeNas onto one of them and it worked fine (OMV had issues formatting the card) So I could get a bigger msata drive if I don't need all the slots

As it has loads of SATA/SAS ports on board I should be OK without using a raid controller, so looking at Video card, 10Gbe card and the msata card - leaving two pcie 4X slot free.

Currently It's full of 8GB sticks of ram - but I can get 6 x 16Gb PC3L-8500R sticks but not sure if fast enough for CPU yet, need to check.

Only issue I have found so far is the board seems to loop twice on POST on initial power on (subsequent reboots are quicker) I'm assuming this is BMC/IPMI initialisation as I've seen slow initial POSTs on other motherboards with BMC/IPMI.

I've read warnings over the Intel raid card but as it was in a S1400FP board I think it may be OK in any Intel server board - If I'm running FreeNas with ZFS will it give me any better performance than the onboard ports anyway (I'll be using 2Tb Seagate 7200RPM Enterprise SATA drives - as I got 10 for free!)?