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Won a DL380 G9 for $37, now what?

Dedicated Servers by tallinnying 12 replies 6K views
tallinnying

Member OP

Night Shift

#1

Won a dl380 g9 for $37 on some gov auction site at 3am anyway, wasnt even looking for it just wanted to see if the bidding worked

Came with 2x e5-2620v3, 64gb ddr4, 8x 300gb sas. No rails, no bezel, faceplate cracked. Idk why I do this

Planning to run proxmox with zfs mirror for vm storage but the p420i is giving me grief. Firmware locked or something? Flashed it to hba mode at 4am, lost the web bios, recovered via usb cuz I had a dump of the efi partition from another g9 I killed last year

Anyway should I keep the p420i in hba or try to get a proper lsi 9211-8i? Shipping was $89 which hurts the "$37 server" narrative

Also the ilo fan curve is aggressive as hell, this thing sounds like a jet at idle

builds at 3AM, sleeps at noon
Rangga

Member

#2

Wah $37 is good price already,but shipping $89 lah,total $126 already,not so cheap already

I buy server-server before from auction also,shipping always kill the deal,I go already to local pickup only since 2 years

For RAID card,I use LSI already,more easy,no firmware-firmware problem,just flash IT mode and go

Your fan noise,check the sensor-sensor maybe,or set manual in ilo,very easy lah

everseoul

Member

#3
tallinnying said:
Shipping was $89 which hurts the "$37 server" narrative

Gg wp on the win but that shipping is rough, my minecraft box is a dl380p g8 and the ilo fan curve is just built different, valheim lag when the fans spin up cuz my desk is in the same room

For plex I just run hba mode and passthrough the disks to truenas, zero lag on transcodes with the p420I in it mode but ymmv

$126 total still beats anything on Contabo or RackNerd for raw hardware, my $15/month GreenCloudVPS vps cant even run a 10 player server without lag lag lag

Mark my words tho youre gonna spend another $50 on rails and caddies easy

haroldgsm

Member

Grumpy Old Sysadmin

#4

Back when I started in this business, $126 bought you a proper Supermicro chassis with working rails and no cracked faceplates. Kids these days celebrate garbage because it has a badge on the front.

The P420I is a toy. I have thrown dozens in the bin over 20 years in this business. Spend the $40 on a genuine LSI 9211-8I, flash it properly with P19 IT firmware, and sleep soundly. The time you will waste debugging HBA mode quirks on that HP firmware exceeds any savings.

Your shipping cost was entirely predictable. These sellers make margin on freight, not the unit. Mark my words: you will replace the power supplies within 18 months, and then you will be underwater on this "deal."

IPv4, IRC, and irssi — fight me
BR

Member

#5

Proxmox version?
zfs or zfs?

uma

Member

99.99% or bust

#6

Actually which LSI model. Actually the 9211-8I or the 9207.

436 days. reboot is surrender.
priya

Member

🇮🇳 netops ninja

#7

Kindly you share the shipping cost to Mumbai only. Is it same $89.

tallinnying

Member OP

Night Shift

#8

Yeah shipping was $89, still $126 for a G9 is stupid cheap even if I have to pick up a €20 rail kit from Hetzner later — https://www.hetzner.com/sb

Rangga said:
I use LSI already,more easy

Ended up grabbing a 9207-8I off ebay for $18, flashed IT mode in ten minutes, p420I is sitting in a drawer now. Should have done this first instead of fighting hp firmware at 4am

Fan noise settled down once I stopped letting the p420I overheat, who knew

Haven't decided on the zfs layout yet, 8x 300gb is awkward. Might just do two mirrors and call it a day

builds at 3AM, sleeps at noon
pieter_rtm

Member

#9

17 days and still no word on whether the P420I stayed stable after that 4am reflash

Rangga said:
I use LSI already,more easy,no firmware-firmware problem

This is the real answer for anyone else reading later, the Smart Array line is just not worth the headache for ZFS

Did you ever solve the fan curve thing or are you running it in a closet somewhere

Containers before it was cool
Rangga

Member

#10

34 days already, this thread sleeping already

priya said:
Kindly you share the shipping cost to Mumbai only. Is it same $89.

Gov auction shipping is domestic US only, Mumbai no chance unless you use forwarder-forwarder and then price also not $37 anymore

For international better check local auction sites or Shopee/Lazada sellers, I see sometimes old Dell and HP come up in Indonesia and Malaysia, shipping inside ASEAN more cheap

My last local pickup was 2x DL360 G9 from company closing down, RM 150 each (~$32) with rails and bezel even, 10 minute drive only

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