Lenovo Thinkcentre/ThinkStation Tiny (Project TinyMiniMicro) Reference Thread

[sash020]

Hi guys,
i'm in the planning of building a 3 Node Proxmox Cluster of 3xM720q. I'm unsure which components i should buy and hope you can give me some hints:

- 3x 10gbe Cards - i'll buy some CX322A -do i really need a selfmade braffle? Here they are talking to just use the low-profile one from the 10GBe Card?! Or do i misunderstood something?
- if put the PCIe Card into the M720q - could i insert a 2,5" SATA SSD? I have 4 of the Datacenter Version from Samsung and like to use them instead of buying new m2 SSD

thanks
sash

 

[cromo]

My external 3.5" USB HDD started malfunctioning and I hope it's the enclosure at fault, so I need to test the drive by connecting it directly. I have a PCIe SATA card but need 5V and 12V to connect the power to the drive. Is there any reliable source of 12v inside the cage I can use?

I don't have any other PC handy at the moment so need to get by with using my p340 tiny for that.

OK, the fan is 12v, so quite an easy find actually.

 

[Parallax]

- 3x 10gbe Cards - i'll buy some CX322A -do i really need a selfmade braffle? Here they are talking to just use the low-profile one from the 10GBe Card?! Or do i misunderstood something?

No, you don't have to use one. But it does look very nice...

- if put the PCIe Card into the M720q - could i insert a 2,5" SATA SSD? I have 4 of the Datacenter Version from Samsung and like to use them instead of buying new m2 SSD

You usually can, but you will need to shuck it (ie take the case off) and you'll need to wrap it in electrical tape to avoid shorting.

 

[rocking8050]

I'm planning to get m90q gen 4 intel i5-13600 the psref mentions the maximum storage for 2.5" SATA is 1TB.
Is it unofficially possible to install 4TB 2.5" SSD or will the BIOS lock me out from booting?

 

[Parallax]

I'm planning to get m90q gen 4 intel i5-13600 the psref mentions the maximum storage for 2.5" SATA is 1TB.
Is it unofficially possible to install 4TB 2.5" SSD or will the BIOS lock me out from booting?

The PSRef only describes the maximum size Lenovo will sell that model configured with out of the factory. It's not a physical limitation or one that is enforced on the hardware, the motherboard chipset defines that. So you can run an 8TB SSD if you like.

 

[AlexGee]

I just ordered a M720q (8400T) and a PCIe Riser ( 01AJ940 ) and want to use the M720q as a Proxmox Hypervisor incl. OPNSense Firewall.

Any thought, or recommendations towards the configuration below?

NIC:
Currently I have a Huawei 4G Modem with 1Gbit RJ45 LAN, but I plan to upgrade to 5G soon and would like to have at least 2.5Gbit. Downstream, there is a TP-Link switch with 2.5Gbit RJ45 and 2x SFP+ 10GBit (SFP+ occupied by FIleserver and Workstation).

I do have a Intel X520-DA2 Dual SFP+ 10GBit lying around, which I could use, or I move that one into my Workstation and use the current Intel X710-DA2 Dual SFP+ in the M720q.
I was thinking about 2x RJ45 SFP Transceiver, which support 2.5GBit...

I was pretty surprised, that there are no cheap dual Intel i225/i226 NICs available
Another (expensive) alternative would be an Intel X550-T2 NIC with RJ45

RAM:
I plan for 2x Crucial SO-DIMM 32GB, DDR4-3200, CL22-22-22 (CT32G4SFD832A) as I read in some forums that this one should be compatible

Storage:
Lexar NM790 4TB - M.2/M-Key (PCIe 4.0 x4)

Planned Software Setup - 24/7:
Proxmox OS:

• OPNSense
• PiHole
• Home Assistant
• Omada Controller
• Cloudflared
• Heimdall Dashboard
• Kavita (Book Library)
• OpenProject
• PaperlessNGX
• Jellyfin (Movies stored on Fileserver, Music local)
• Nextcloud (Media stored on Fileserver )

Seperate Fileserver with TrueNAS Scale

• Proxmox Backup Server
• some redundant services (2nd PiHole, Omada Controller)
• would like to only use the fileserver on demand

 

[Parallax]

Writing as someone with a fairly performant 5G service for home internet I would say you'll only very rarely exceed 1Gbit, so it might not be worth putting the effort into 2.5GbE unless you need it for other reasons.

Personally if you really want 2.5GbE I'd suggest you put a card into the WiFi slot. You'll mostly find only Realtek options for this but I think that's fine - the Intel 2.5GbE chips were/are fairly poor and have gone through many revisions accordingly, the Realtek ones tend to "just work" unless you want to run ESXi. The WiFi slot option is way cooler and easier to manage, even 10GbE DACs heat up the Tiny a fair amount and I would imagine a 2.5GbE SFP to RJ45 in a 10GbE card would be even hotter than that.

If you need multiple 2.5GbE ports, there are 4 port PCIe cards on AliExpress etc that should also be cooler to run than a 10GbE card. I would suggest you should only run a 10GbE card if you need 10GbE.

 

[Mark Linton]

I am planning on using a couple of these boxes for remote machines, and I'd like to be able to equip one with an internal M.2 LTE Modem (preferably with 5G and eSim functionality). Does anyone have experience with installing one in one of the m.2 slot (say of an M90q) if so, are there any 4g/5g modems that work with eSims?

Thank you.

 

[Helzy]

something like this?

ThinkPad Fibocom L850-GL CAT9 M.2 WWAN

 

[Mark Linton]

Exactly - there are some other models that are less money as well - just wondering if people have used these on the tiny platforms, and how best to do it.

 

[snowylake]

Notice that P3 Tiny/m90q G4 (Tiny 9?) wasn't yet added.
PCIe Riser is exactly the same as Tiny 8.

2 lower cost PCIe NIC cards are added for Tiny8/9 and appears to be on ESXi compatiblity list from 6.5 to 8.0U2 :
Broadcom 5719 4-Ports (PCIe 2.0 x4) - 5A71H31576, baffle appears to be Newbracket4PortLANCard AVC 5M11H28443 (needs confirmation)
Broadcom 5720 2-Ports (PCIe 2.0 x1) - 5A71F30926, baffle appears to be Newbracket2PortLANCard AVC 5M11H28444 (needs confirmation)
While new to the Tiny, these are card with a long history dating back at least a decade, supported since ESXi 5.x / Windows Server 2008, obviously designed for Servers and yet is considered active products.

I would suspect them to work on Tiny 6/7, given that the I350-T4 baffle are the same on both Tiny 6/7 as well as Tiny 8.
Compatibility with the x16 riser is not known.

HSF on Tiny8/9 are new parts :
Tiny8 65W AVC ILM Cooler - 5H40U93051
P360 35W AVC ILM Cooler - 5H40U93052

Found 14 Gen processor in parts list for the P3 Tiny, which means that we should see new models using those processor soon.

 

[snowylake]

I am planning on using a couple of these boxes for remote machines, and I'd like to be able to equip one with an internal M.2 LTE Modem (preferably with 5G and eSim functionality). Does anyone have experience with installing one in one of the m.2 slot (say of an M90q) if so, are there any 4g/5g modems that work with eSims?

I happen to be looking at WWAN cards earlier and noticed that they appears to be of m.2 3042 form factor, which is longer than the wifi 2230, and wider than the ssd's 2280, so getting them to fit would be a challenge, unless you can find one in the 2242 size, but in that case they are usually B key, while the current 2280 are M key, so that wouldn't help either.

Perhaps some form of adapter from the wifi slot could work, or the earlier M900 Tiny probably have B key M.2 slots.

 

[Helzy]

Yes most are actually mini-pcie cards with built in SIM slot on the card. The Lenovo one I posted is.not

 

[avggeek]

It's not a very exciting suggestion, but you could try clearing/resetting the BIOS. Next step would be swapping the drive, given 250GB NVMe drives are basically being given away free in cereal packets nowadays. Also check your PCIe card and riser are properly seated. Run a RAM check.

Well here's what I've tried:

• Got another second hand m920q. Unfortunately this unit had two problems - it was not detecting the AOC-STGN-i2S on the PCIe riser card at all and the CPU fan was running at 100%. So had to give up on replacing the entire unit.
• Replaced the old Samsung 980 256GB NVMe with a brand new Samsung 980 Pro 512GB NVMe on the same m920q as before. This initially seemed very promising but that turned out to be a false hope:
  • With the new NVMe drive, I was able to successfully install the opt-in 6.2 kernel for PVE 7 and boot the host successfully with this kernel.
  • However, any attempt to install PVE 8 fails for the exact same reason. The host abruptly shuts off during the install process.
  • When I was swapping the hardware around, I reseated the RAM, the NVMe drive and the PCIe riser. I can try running a RAM check again but I ran a partial test for several hours which did not throw any errors.

This might be a dumb question but why not just install v8?

I wish I could! Any attempt to install v8 (using the ISO, upgrading from v7, Installing v8 on top of Debian) fails with the host shutting down during the install process and basically bricking the OS.

 

[avggeek]

Run a RAM check.

Ran the extended memory test via the UEFI diagnostics to completion. 17 hours later, the tests completed successfully.

 

[PANiCnz]

Without re-reading all 67 pages of this thread, has anyone got any posts or other resources re tuning a M720q to be as energy efficient as possible? My workloads aren't particularly taxing so keen to make sure the device is running as efficiently as possible e.g. enable the right C states etc.

 

[cromo]

I bought a ConnectX-4 LX (MCX4121A-ACAT) to upgrade my ConnectX-3, mostly for ASPM support, and my P340 Tiny won't boot with it at all, even with DAC disconnected. I have a 135W power adapter. Any idea what's happening here? Should it work and thus my card is faulty or what?

EDIT: covering SMBIOS pins doesn't help.
EDIT: neither does PRSNT PIN connecting hack

 

[serpro69]

Hi,
New here. I've been pondering a home-cluster-build (running either a Proxmox or a Kubernetes cluster) based on NUCs for awhile now, after it struck me that going the Tiny/Mini/Micro route would improve upgradability and performance of the nodes with little to none extra cost (well, not counting any potential upgrades of course) since NUCs are quite expensive even second-hand, while Tiny/Mini/Micro machines are often sold at a good discount (due to their larger I guess). And then I found this thread, so just wanted to thank for all the effort and information available here!

Currently I'm trying to source a couple of Lenovos to get started, looking at M920[qx] or M90q primarily, as they seem the best performance-to-cost options now (e.g. even though I'd like to get me some M90q G2 or G3, the prices that I see locally are still quite high)

 

[Helzy]

I'd suggest the tiny thinkstations or as you mention the M910x/M920x/M90q versions, mainly for two reasons, 2x M.2 slots and PCIe addon capability.

 

[serpro69]

I'd suggest the tiny thinkstations or as you mention the M910x/M920x/M90q versions, mainly for two reasons, 2x M.2 slots and PCIe addon capability.

Oh, so the 910q/920q versions don't have the PCIe slot? That wasn't very clear from overview table on the first page.
Thanks for the tip.