Table of Contents

Jennay

Jennay is a HPe ProLiant DL380 Gen 9 that I picked up in November 2019 at the same time that I picked up a mess of DL380pG8s. I wasn't planing on getting it originally, but when the seller offered to let her go at the same price as the gen8s, well, I decided I would be a fool not to go for it. Jennay is my beefiest server to date, and based on the capabilities of the Haswell and Broadwell based CPUs, I expect that it should last me quite a long time.

That weird name

I don't usually give computers names outside of their model designations; for example, past servers having been ML350G6, T310, or ts140. There was a hot second where I had two ts140s, but I actually was super lame and named them ts140 and ts141. This changed earlier this year when I had a stack of R710s and I started to give them weird names. I soon realized that I only really wanted to have two R710s running at a given time, so I ended up naming them Harley and Orlando, after two of my favorite cats.

Jennay actually came second, Louise came first. Louise is a DL380pG8 that I got a couple of days before the G9. Its LOM hostname was ilouse345kbvj. I don't know if this was a factory set name or something set by the previous owner, but I kept reading it as louise, so I named that machine “Louise”. A few days later, when I picked up the DL380G9, I realized it would need a name. Its LOM hostname was nothing that I could really worth with, so I just called it “gen nine”. Eventually “gen nine” slurred into “jeanine”, which them because “Jennay”. Specifically, Jennay pronounced the way Forrest Gump pronounces “Jenny”. I don't know, it is what it is, and it has stuck.

Specs

Quick:

CPU

Jennay supports both Haswell (v3) and Broadwell (v4) based CPUs. Right now she has a pair of E5-2620 v3s, which are decidedly low-end. However, they're going to stay in place for a few reasons:

  1. When I got Jennay, she had one E5-2620v3. I knew I wanted two CPUs, and since the 2620 is both low end (and I already had one) it was both cheap and I only required one. I did have to get another heatsink + fans kit, however.
  2. The 2620 is plenty powerful enough for me right now. In my current use cases
  3. What I would want to upgrade to are Broadwell L-series (low power) CPUs. There aren't a ton of options: 2608L, 2618L, 2630L, 2628L are the ones I'm most interested in. These are either similar-performance, less-power, or more-performance, less-power, both of which are appealing.
  4. v4 CPUs are expensive. The few low models listed above regularly cost $150-200 each, which is significantly more than the server itself. That said, there are very powerful and efficient v4 chips which I will be able to buy in the future as more of these machines are decommissioned and parted out. I imagine it will take a couple of years.

RAM

Jennay came with three 8GB DDR4/ECC/Reg-2133. I purchased a fourth, then moved them into my z640, and moved the four 16GB DDR4/ECC/Reg-2133 from the z640 into Jennay. When the second CPU (and heatsink/fans) arrived, I ordered another four identical sticks. All told there are eight 752369-081s, for 128GB total. This is plenty for my labbing activities, and it leaves 16 more slots open! I can see myself getting 16 8s or another set of 8 8s for 256 total, whichever is cheapest and makes most sense.

For my use cases, raw capacity is far more important than speed or latency when it comes to RAM.

Storage

There are four types of storage configured for Jennay right now.

  1. 512GB 2.5“ SATA SSD in one of these sorts of adapters, replacing the optical drive. It is attached to one of the onboard SATA ports, using the existing cabling. It's configured as the boot/“C:” drive. This works well because:
    1. I don't like to use the main internal array as a boot drive
    2. I won't use the optical drive
    3. This is a clean way to mount an extra drive in the machine
  2. a 1.25TB FusionIO PCIe card for “super fast, maybe not reliable” storage
  3. Eight 480GB HP SAS SSDs, model HSCP0480S5xnNMRI, configured in a RAID5. I got a really good deal on these drives, about $60 each. Normally I wouldn't do anything like this, but they very fast and silent, which is appealing. These are attached to the onboard P440ar controller.
  4. Twelve 2TB 3.5” 7.2k RPM SAS drives in an HP Storageworks DS2600 connected to a P421 with two standard MiniSAS cables. They are configured in a RAID5, with one hot spare drive, for a total of 18TB live. This is the biggest single large pool I have ever worked with, and in true r/homelab and r/datahoarder fashion, I have literally no way (or plans!) to back it up. This will replace what my traditional “NAS” had held in the past: backups of all sorts, media (TV, Movies, Music, etc.), ISOs, and “other”. I like using a standalone NAS, but right now my solution kinda sucks, so going forward with this is a workable solution. That said, there is a largely non-zero chance that one of the drives in this RAID5 will die, and that more will die when the array rebuilds around the hot spare. If this happens, I will be frustrated, but I'm also not really doing anything to prevent it, so…. Short of spending more money, the best thing I can do is cross my fingers.

Future storage ideas

Honestly I don't need to put any more storage in this thing any time soon, it is very comfortable as is. However, since I intend to grow into it, I am keeping my mind open. There are two easy solutions, one of which I can do right now.

  1. Use a PCIe m.2 drive adapter card thing. I have one of these already, and it has two m.2 slots on it: one is a “proper” NVMe slot that uses the PCIe bus, the other is a bastard m.2 SATA slot, with a SATA connector at the edge of the card. The latter uses the PCIe slot for power, so it's very convenient. Using this, I can easily add both big and (relatively) slow m.2 SATA SSDs (at the time of writing a 1TB m.2 SATA SSD is about $100) and a fast NVMe drive (reputable 1TB NVMe drives are about $200 currently).
  2. Add a second eight-bay 2.5“ drive cage. This is the “prettier” option in my opinion, and what I would rather do. Mostly because I like the “security” of RAID5E, which is what I would use. It does have steeper requirements, and I have none of the required parts.
    1. A Drive cage to go in the front, plus power cables
    2. Either a SAS expander for the onboard controller, or a second P420/220. I'd probably do the second, because cheaper, and I'd do multiple different arrays anyway.
    3. Eight drives and caddies. Maybe I'd get really lucky and get more of those sweet SAS SSDs.

Neither are needed any time soon, but I'm going to keep my eye on drive cages and controllers.

Performance

Storage

Methodology:

(https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/josebda/2014/10/13/diskspd-powershell-and-storage-performance-measuring-iops-throughput-and-latency-for-both-local-disks-and-smb-file-shares/) 

diskspd.exe -c50G -d300 -r -w40 -t8 -o32 -b64K -Sh -L C:\diskpsdtmp.dat > DiskSpeedResults.txt

Local SSD RAID5: 

Total IO
thread |       bytes     |     I/Os     |    MiB/s   |  I/O per s |  AvgLat  | LatStdDev |  file
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     0 |     54156394496 |       826361 |     172.15 |    2754.40 |   11.617 |    12.059 | F:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     1 |     54284320768 |       828313 |     172.56 |    2760.90 |   11.589 |    12.052 | F:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     2 |     54223306752 |       827382 |     172.36 |    2757.80 |   11.603 |    12.057 | F:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     3 |     54217539584 |       827294 |     172.34 |    2757.51 |   11.604 |    12.053 | F:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     4 |     54092890112 |       825392 |     171.95 |    2751.17 |   11.630 |    12.060 | F:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     5 |     54198730752 |       827007 |     172.28 |    2756.55 |   11.608 |    12.053 | F:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     6 |     54138109952 |       826082 |     172.09 |    2753.47 |   11.621 |    12.095 | F:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     7 |     54177366016 |       826681 |     172.22 |    2755.47 |   11.612 |    12.050 | F:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
total:      433488658432 |      6614512 |    1377.95 |   22047.27 |   11.610 |    12.060

FusionIO ioScale2 

Total IO
thread |       bytes     |     I/Os     |    MiB/s   |  I/O per s |  AvgLat  | LatStdDev |  file
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     0 |     33140899840 |       505690 |     105.35 |    1685.59 |   18.985 |    30.420 | D:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     1 |     33356447744 |       508979 |     106.03 |    1696.55 |   18.862 |    30.189 | D:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     2 |     32926728192 |       502422 |     104.67 |    1674.69 |   19.107 |    30.494 | D:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     3 |     33045938176 |       504241 |     105.05 |    1680.76 |   19.039 |    30.357 | D:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     4 |     33286062080 |       507905 |     105.81 |    1692.97 |   18.902 |    30.318 | D:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     5 |     33171243008 |       506153 |     105.45 |    1687.13 |   18.967 |    30.333 | D:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     6 |     33032962048 |       504043 |     105.01 |    1680.10 |   19.047 |    30.416 | D:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     7 |     33134084096 |       505586 |     105.33 |    1685.24 |   18.989 |    30.301 | D:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
total:      265094365184 |      4045019 |     842.69 |   13483.01 |   18.987 |    30.353

Storageworks DS2600 RAID5E 

Total IO
thread |       bytes     |     I/Os     |    MiB/s   |  I/O per s |  AvgLat  | LatStdDev |  file
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     0 |      4032888832 |        61537 |      12.82 |     205.12 |  156.056 |   204.815 | D:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     1 |      4005625856 |        61121 |      12.73 |     203.73 |  157.057 |   207.255 | D:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     2 |      4021288960 |        61360 |      12.78 |     204.53 |  156.461 |   206.285 | D:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     3 |      4035969024 |        61584 |      12.83 |     205.27 |  155.880 |   203.751 | D:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     4 |      4014735360 |        61260 |      12.76 |     204.19 |  156.722 |   205.797 | D:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     5 |      4026335232 |        61437 |      12.80 |     204.78 |  156.262 |   203.704 | D:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     6 |      4002349056 |        61071 |      12.72 |     203.56 |  157.210 |   205.556 | D:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     7 |      3982557184 |        60769 |      12.66 |     202.56 |  157.992 |   206.083 | D:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
total:       32121749504 |       490139 |     102.11 |    1633.75 |  156.702 |   205.407

Internal SATA SSD 

Total IO
thread |       bytes     |     I/Os     |    MiB/s   |  I/O per s |  AvgLat  | LatStdDev |  file
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
     0 |     11524440064 |       175849 |      36.63 |     586.13 |   54.590 |    26.742 | C:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     1 |     11525619712 |       175867 |      36.64 |     586.19 |   54.585 |    26.826 | C:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     2 |     11525160960 |       175860 |      36.64 |     586.17 |   54.586 |    26.848 | C:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     3 |     11525160960 |       175860 |      36.64 |     586.17 |   54.586 |    26.792 | C:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     4 |     11525160960 |       175860 |      36.64 |     586.17 |   54.586 |    26.868 | C:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     5 |     11524767744 |       175854 |      36.63 |     586.15 |   54.588 |    26.690 | C:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     6 |     11526864896 |       175886 |      36.64 |     586.26 |   54.579 |    26.734 | C:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
     7 |     11524964352 |       175857 |      36.64 |     586.16 |   54.587 |    26.748 | C:\diskpsdtmp.dat (50GiB)
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
total:       92202139648 |      1406893 |     293.09 |    4689.41 |   54.586 |    26.781

CPU