So I don’t really use my big Dell Poweredge R710 much anymore aside from just using it for heating the room in the winter. It’s just too slow, data transfer wise, for me to enjoy it anymore. maybe it’s my config but idk. I don’t want to put any more money in it if it’s not gonna help with that. Maybe if I can get a few TB worth of SSDs for a low price and replace the two Sun F40 SSDs in the rear as they run too hot for what speeds I get out of them.

It’s current storage is 4x 900GB 10K SAS HDDs and 4x 600GB 10K SAS HDDs attached to the front backplane that’s connected to the HBA for ZFS then there’s the two 400GB F40s I use for ZFS cache. The HDDs are configured in a raid 10 array. Gets me about 3.77TiB. If I can get 2-4 ssds with more space than that with a nvme drive for the cache and it actually helps the performance than maybe I’d do it. Then I’d just have to manage the noise.

I’ve also been thinking of pulling one of the cpus to cut the power usage but I’d need at least 4x 16gb sticks of ram to maintain 64gb of ram. I’d need to check the pricing on that and see if that’s even supported. I doubt it can do 32gb dimms to run at 1600MHz, at least 4 of them will get me 1333MHz. I don’t know if I need a higher clocked cpu as I’m not entirely sure what I want to do with this old box. I’d like to just get a newer generation box but then I’d need to sell this one and the logtistics of doing that… not sure if I want to do it.

Kinda have in mind of finding a R720 or R730 to replace it if they run cooler and quieter. I want something that’ll take 3.5" drives so I can use my old drives from my NAS as I upgrade it’s storage over time. Such a box could be used as a backup destination at least. I just feel like this R710 just doesn’t have the capacity for backups. I don’t need it for running apps as my NAS can handle that.

Now the Dell Poweredge T320. My NAS/Plex Box. It currently runs Xubuntu 20.04. I haven’t updated to 22.04 yet. I will eventually. I’ve been thinking of moving it over to truenas then pass the storage controller to a VM for plex or maybe a container somehow. idk, seems like a lot of work with more abstaction of the storage. It’s current setup is the drives are connected to a HBA and are formatted with XFS with mergerfs joining them all. Performance is adequate but if I try dumping data onto the pool while also playing video on plex, plex will gradually run out of buffer time since I can’t really control where mergerfs dumps data while reading from another. At least, I don’t know how yet.

Then you have the Raspberry Pis. There’s two Pi 4s, 4GB version, that are constantly on with ssds attached for the boot device.

The first one has docker on ubuntu to run a few things I don’t really use besides syncthing that acts as a backup service for a few shares on my main computer that is also sync’d to my NAS. Mutiple copies.

The second one runs raspbien with XFCE to use as a remote desktop if I ever need it. Been thinking of reflashing it with ubuntu and running nextcloud on it, I’m just not sure how that’ll perform or if it’s worth the effort as I’ve been wanting to just put nextcloud on my NAS instead so I can play with some of it’s newer features.

I mainly just want nextcloud to serve as a dumping ground for my phone’s pictures or maybe just use syncthing for that with the purpose of moving away from dropbox or at least have a good solution for when they eventually ruin their service. Device limits is one thing but if they break the client somehow, I’ll have no choice. I’m a linux guy, windows and mac only clients aren’t gonna work. That’s why I don’t use the other clouds since last I tried, they just didn’t work or didn’t work as I’d expected. The client should be able to push the deltas of files, just the changes, not the whole thing. Dropbox does that I believe, the rest doesn’t afaik. Again, last I checked. It’s been a few years.

Interestingly enough, I could sell the pis for about as much as I’d get if I sold the R710. lol I don’t think I will. They have their purpose, a greater purpose than the big server and a lot lower power consumption.