Dell MD1200 and Dell R720 - Home Data Storage

[Dssguy1]

Hi guys, I am very new to the idea of rack mount storage. I have been using a ~5 year old 2 bay Netgear ReadyNAS Duo box to backup my wife's photo business data and some misc data we have. But recently I ran out of space on the 2tb limited capabilities of the Netgear and it was annoying having to buy old 2TB hard drives that were compatible with it. I also have about 6 external USB Hard Drives to store a 12GB collection of Blu-ray movies that feed a WD Live media box.


So I began the search for something else. Started reading and decided to go big with a 16+ drive storage solution. I bought a bunch of Hitachi Ultrastars SAS 7K3000 drives in 2TB and 3TB sizes. I also bought a HP Z800 ($225) as a server for the SE3016. Quickly I realized I was building a power hungry monstrosity.

I already purchased a SE3016 to house all the drives before I remembered my neighbor had an enterprise electronics recycling business.

I got his list of electronics and immediately focused in on a Dell MD1200 (since it was by far one of the newer storage devices on his list) and a Dell R720 (with a 2013 build date, and PERC H710P ). $400 to my door for the R720 and MD1200! I'm pretty sure he is doing me a favor with these prices.

While I realize there are a million options and typically at today's normal pricing of a MD1200 and R720, it would be stupid for me to use these as a home data storage and movie server but at $400 total, am I going to be good with what I bought?

The config for the R720:

Here is the MD1200 Configuration page:

I know my question is very vague but I will be learning as I go, just checking to make sure 6 months from now I don't realize I made a poor decision and need to start over.

Help please, be gentle...

 

[Dssguy1]

I am ordering today, so any last second recommendations? I am pretty sure this is a smoking deal regardless and I will be able to sell this stuff at a huge profit if it turns out to be the wrong solution to my simple problem.

 

[Suprnaut]

I am ordering today, so any last second recommendations? I am pretty sure this is a smoking deal regardless and I will be able to sell this stuff at a huge profit if it turns out to be the wrong solution to my simple problem.

Based on the specs listed you will need an external SAS card. If you plan to use the MD1200 with hardware raid you would need something like the Dell H800 card. If you want to use it as a jbod for ZFS you would need a card like the LSI 9207-8e card.

If it were me I would do a napp-it all-in-one solution with ESXi on the 720 with the MD1200 connected as a JBOD. Passthrough the sas card to a VM and run OpenSolaris + napp-it front end.

You are right that is an amazing deal. If he happens to have anymore Dell hardware like that he is willing to sell, let me know

 

[Dssguy1]

Based on the specs listed you will need an external SAS card. If you plan to use the MD1200 with hardware raid you would need something like the Dell H800 card. If you want to use it as a jbod for ZFS you would need a card like the LSI 9207-8e card.

If it were me I would do a napp-it all-in-one solution with ESXi on the 720 with the MD1200 connected as a JBOD. Passthrough the sas card to a VM and run OpenSolaris + napp-it front end.

You are right that is an amazing deal. If he happens to have anymore Dell hardware like that he is willing to sell, let me know

Hey cool, I actually bought a LSI-9207-8e already, what a coincidence!! I was going to use it with my Z800 but decided to go with a rack mount solution since I had a line on a good deal. So you are saying the H710P is no good for this setup? Should I just sell it off and use the LSI-9207 in the R720 instead?

I will have to read up on the ESXi and VM/OpenSolaris + Napp-it. Sounds more confusing than I had hoped. I was dabbling with FreeNas a little just to get familiar. Remember, I am just using this as a video server for PLEX and a backup for files.

 

[Suprnaut]

Hey cool, I actually bought a LSI-9207-8e already, what a coincidence!! I was going to use it with my Z800 but decided to go with a rack mount solution since I had a line on a good deal. So you are saying the H710P is no good for this setup? Should I just sell it off and use the LSI-9207 in the R720 instead?

I will have to read up on the ESXi and VM/OpenSolaris + Napp-it. Sounds more confusing than I had hoped. I was dabbling with FreeNas a little just to get familiar. Remember, I am just using this as a video server for PLEX and a backup for files.

The H710p is fine for controlling the local 2.5" drives in the R720. So for instance you could create a simple Raid 1 on two 2.5" drives. Install ESXi on them. Use the remaining space for an OpenSolaris VM (or a FreeNas VM if you are more comfortable with that.) From there you add an NFS datastore from the VM SAN. So now you have not only a SAN, but an ESXi server where you can run several VMs of your choosing.