This was a very thorough walk-thru of the R720. It's too bad this great server is not really supported any more under ESXi 7 (though it does install), or ESXi 8 (may or may not install). Looking forward to similar walk-throughs of the R730, and especially R740 and R750. We just got our first two R760s at the office, but they're unaffordable for most home labbers and probably will be for a decade. You know what they say: "Real men run PowerEdge servers" (and have beards).
Thank you! Actually this one is running ESXi 8! I've considered selling a T420 that I have and getting an R730... or maybe adding some cash on top of it and getting an R740. Love the T420 though. Really good workstation, but the 2470 v2's are starting to show their age. The single 13700KF in another machine runs circles around both of them.
@@Warning56kb I had gotten ESXi 8 running on both my R720 and T620 (both now gone). I used vCenter's Lifecycle Controller to update them from 7. No issues. I've heard stories though. I keep looking at R730s and thinking what a nice machine that is. Yeah, not going to happen. Past that point, not looking back. Saying it again, I do enjoy your posts!
I also have an R710 and tried to see how far I could go with ESXi 8 on it. After days of fighting with command line I finally got it past the CPU halt and to install, but with zero support for the RAID cards. Just not happening with the old girl.
@@Warning56kb They grow up so fast! Going from "The old girl" to e-waste seemingly overnight. There are still buyers for such a machine. Non-VMware users or those happy running 6.x.
@Warning56kb I had 2x r610 , really like with the power consumption, one is running truenas and the other plan to install esxi 8 with H710 upgrade, as I heard people could upgrade from perc H700 to H710(it's not official support but it work)
Just picked-up forty, 1TB 2.5" constellation hard drives for less than $200 delivered. Some dude on e-bay had a 60% OFF sale and I bought all of it. 😂 Started out with five fully loaded R610's for $120.00 each and got effin addicted to PowerEdge servers. It's so much fun to build/mod them compared to a desktop pc because its more complicated. Dell really knows how to KIT a SERVER with multipurpose parts.
One of the best reviews I''ve ever seen on one of these! Have had one of these beasts running my home lab for several years, and its been fantastic. Thank you Sir!!
Hey there, just wanted to say, your channel has been super helpful to me as I've been building up my homelab and I just wanted to say thanks. On Friday I got a r720xd in the mail, with a pair of 2597v2's and 128gb ram, and it's been awesome getting everything going on it
Vey nice! You're very welcome as well! If you haven't already, check out the video I made for manual fan control. It helps tremendously if yiu have your server in a living area. Just make sure to not lower the speeds too much, as the RAID card can get toasty!
The R720s are seeing prices fall even more lately. Check on FB Marketplace in the 'used IT equipment' groups. There's been some nice R720s pop up for just $200-ish.
Thank you for the kind words! I tried to cover as much as possible for most situations people will run into. The PCIe side of things can be tricky with video card power requirements, the special power cables needed, and have enough space for certain cards. The power profiles and general BIOS settings are another whole topic in of themselves!
@@Warning56kb I just bought my server about 2 months ago and am learning it while upgrading some things. Since lifecycle controller updates are no longer working, downloading the 22GB iso. file and installing Windows to update the BIOS’s of everything was fun…..grin
Awesome overview! I just bought one of these to finally get a legit homelab running to work on a lot of my SysAdmin skills or to load it with networking equipment to study for my CCNA. I was previously using the Dell OptiPlex 5060's and although I could chuck a few VM's into ESXi, it just wasn't the best. Any suggestions on racks? I was looking at the StarTech mobile racks and something between 12U and 25U since it seems the prices are almost identical.
Thank you for the kind words! They're a little pricey as most new full racks are unless you can find used, but I absolutely love Sysracks... www.amazon.com/s?k=Sysracks&i=electronics&crid=3RLE7TZ8JM8XW&sprefix=sysracks%2Celectronics%2C136&ref=nb_sb_noss_1 They have quite a few nice features that most racks don't. The StarTech racks are very straight to the point, but for about the same price you could get a Sysrack. Check out some of their reviews on CZcams and see what you think. I doubt you'll be disappointed.
Amazing overview. Super thorough. Super chill. 720XDs are great budget servers for Chia and can be found cheap in a 12x3.5 up front. 730’s coming down in price too.
@@openworked Yea I have sort of the same power draw but a little different. I have a 720xd that pulls 300W+ barely doing anything lol I wish I could get it down to 150 watts LOL.. I have 24 -32 gig sticks , dual 2660v2 .. I took the dual 2697v2s out to see how much power savings there is. Not much if any. More than likely will put them back in. Heat from it is way down. 1100 watt power supplies. , 10-14tb drives, 4 SSds.. 2 rear two up front.. 9400-16e HBA, Tesla P4, Highpoint Technologies SSD7101A-1 holding 4 intel 118 gig optanes and a 1.6TB Intel DC P3600. LOL But that is not the worst of it LOL 6 EMC KTN-STL3 diskarrays with 90 more drives. Figure im pulling about a kilowatt.
I have a r710 and the poer consumption coupled with high electricity bills made me stop using it. Whats the r720 like on power consumption?, been looking at r730
It'll obviously vary depending on how loaded out you have it, but this one with the highest core count cpus, all drive bays loaded with HDDs and all RAM slots occupied, it idles at 150w. Thst with two VMs running on top of ESXi.
I had 2x R610, still enjoying playing around with it, like truenas and idle at 116W, the only thing is I can only install esxi8 on usb, but I heard people upgrade PERC to H710 and run esxi8 and it detected internal SAS drives.
@@sunnylm2045 I can confirm that with the H710. I know for certain ESXi 8 at least recognizes the H710 and drives when in IT mode, but never tried it while still in hardware RAID mode.
@@brandoncech6385 Yes! It applies to the R420 as well. That's not a bad idea for another video. I've had a few people message me about the Clover boot option.
@@brandoncech6385 You're very welcome! Been busy with business trips, but your comment got me really thinking to make one when I get back. Expect to see it sometime next weekend!
@@Warning56kb that's awesome, I have been trying so hard to pull my OS off the perc S110. I was thinking about adding an additional h710 to the pcie slot and running my OS off of some SATA ssds. Do you think that is possible?
Just got an R720 and your video is fantastic. Thank you. If I want to run an NVMe off a PCI 3.0 card, can I boot off of it using Clover? Do I get a PCI 3 card off Amazon or do I need to get a Dell version off Ebay? Thanks!
You can, clover works great! You can use any PCIe card adapter, but only one nvme per PCIe slot. If you don't mind spending the money, there's a few nvme's that support sata function, so they will show up naturally as a boot option in the bios, allowing booting without clover. They'rs now older nvme's from around 2013, so harder to find. Can't remember off hand, but let me dig up the model numbers and i'll let you know asap.
Correct. The TDP limit was mainly for when running power hungry graphics cards. Check out the technical manual and search for "TDP". It will take you straight to the CPU support list. PowerEdge R720 and R720xd - Dell i.dell.com/sites/csdocuments/Shared-Content_data-Sheets_Documents/ja/jp/Dell-PowerEdge-R720Technical-Guide-2018Jun.pdf
hi, maybe a stupid quesstion, but when you are talking about booting from the internal usb slot. If you booted the first time and loaded the OS, do you need to keep the USB in the server or can you remove it?
Not a stupid question at all! The USB drive stays in it. That way the next time the server reboots the USB drive is available to beread from again. All the USB drive is used for is to redirect the boot process to the NVMe drive at each boot since the BIOS Is unable to see the PCIe NVMe by its self.
@@Warning56kb Oh, I see. Thank you for the answer! On Thursday, I'm going to be configuring my first server, and your video helped me understand the internals much better, so thanks for that!
I recently rebooted my R720xd, I noticed that the fan speed was steady throughout the process. Can you run Windows from a n internal USB? If so, which sticks will work or does it matter
Oh you most definitely can! I've run them both ways, but if you have the room I'd recommend a PCIe to NVMe adapter to run the host OSs or hypervisor on and use the onboard USB to boot Clover that then points to the PCIe to continue boot. IOPS between the two are astronomically different. The R720xd has a USB 2.0 port, so that spec immediately and realistically limits it to 36-ishMB/s from what i've seen, and with 'good' USB IOPS close to that of a 5200rpm platter drive from 2000. But, if you still want to stick with a USB to run from, look for a Kingston Datatraveler or the Teamgroup USB I talk about in this video: czcams.com/video/kq_Z1HVbeKM/video.html Two different price ranges with the Kingston performing better with benchmarks i've run, but again the USB 2.0 spec limit would keep things to sub 36MB/s anyway.
To allow 12th Gen servers to boot from any typical PCIe-mounted NMVe drive rather than being limited to the front plane SATA interface. It works exceptionally well.
There's different variables that the BIOS uses to determine fan speed, such as the processors used and if you have non-Dell PCIe cards, but without modification they can be fairly loud. No horrible, but definitely not quiet. I made a video with a link in the description going through the process of manually lowering the fan speeds through command line.
I run TrueNAS scale and you can add a Truecharts app that auto sets the fan speed whatever you want OR you can manually set them. ipmitool -I lanplus -H youripaddress -U yourusername -P yourpassword raw 0x30 0x30 0x01 0x00 this disables the cooling response logic and ipmitool -I lanplus -H serveripaddress -U yourusername -P yourpoassword raw 0x30 0x30 0x02 0xff 0x32 which is = 50% speed the 0x32 is a hexidecimal for 50. So you can change it to say 40% by changing 0x32 to 0x28 which is the hexadecimal for 40. ipmitool is found on various unix like systems. Basically you are just telling IPMI to manually override fan speed. Some people run scripts but with TrueNAS and a truecharts addon it is set and I can reboot and always be at 45%
This was a very thorough walk-thru of the R720. It's too bad this great server is not really supported any more under ESXi 7 (though it does install), or ESXi 8 (may or may not install). Looking forward to similar walk-throughs of the R730, and especially R740 and R750. We just got our first two R760s at the office, but they're unaffordable for most home labbers and probably will be for a decade. You know what they say: "Real men run PowerEdge servers" (and have beards).
Thank you! Actually this one is running ESXi 8! I've considered selling a T420 that I have and getting an R730... or maybe adding some cash on top of it and getting an R740. Love the T420 though. Really good workstation, but the 2470 v2's are starting to show their age. The single 13700KF in another machine runs circles around both of them.
@@Warning56kb I had gotten ESXi 8 running on both my R720 and T620 (both now gone). I used vCenter's Lifecycle Controller to update them from 7. No issues. I've heard stories though. I keep looking at R730s and thinking what a nice machine that is. Yeah, not going to happen. Past that point, not looking back. Saying it again, I do enjoy your posts!
I also have an R710 and tried to see how far I could go with ESXi 8 on it. After days of fighting with command line I finally got it past the CPU halt and to install, but with zero support for the RAID cards. Just not happening with the old girl.
@@Warning56kb They grow up so fast! Going from "The old girl" to e-waste seemingly overnight. There are still buyers for such a machine. Non-VMware users or those happy running 6.x.
@Warning56kb I had 2x r610 , really like with the power consumption, one is running truenas and the other plan to install esxi 8 with H710 upgrade, as I heard people could upgrade from perc H700 to H710(it's not official support but it work)
This young man is very intelligent and is a great teacher. Truly a gifted teacher.
Just picked-up forty, 1TB 2.5" constellation hard drives for less than $200 delivered. Some dude on e-bay had a 60% OFF sale and I bought all of it. 😂 Started out with five fully loaded R610's for $120.00 each and got effin addicted to PowerEdge servers. It's so much fun to build/mod them compared to a desktop pc because its more complicated. Dell really knows how to KIT a SERVER with multipurpose parts.
One of the best reviews I''ve ever seen on one of these! Have had one of these beasts running my home lab for several years, and its been fantastic. Thank you Sir!!
@@itmagic4377 Thank you for the kind words! 🤟
Hey there, just wanted to say, your channel has been super helpful to me as I've been building up my homelab and I just wanted to say thanks. On Friday I got a r720xd in the mail, with a pair of 2597v2's and 128gb ram, and it's been awesome getting everything going on it
Vey nice! You're very welcome as well! If you haven't already, check out the video I made for manual fan control. It helps tremendously if yiu have your server in a living area. Just make sure to not lower the speeds too much, as the RAID card can get toasty!
This is an incredible walkthrough, you deserve some bigtime viewership for this effort level!
Thank you for the kind words! I tried to make it as thorough as possible without breaking the TMI barrier.
Just keep doing your thing, the content is exceptional and I think you found the perfect balance.@@Warning56kb
Very through and detailed walkthrough. Very helpful. Look forward to more of your videos on Dell servers etc. Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for the kind words!
Hi great overview, I'm looking to build a dual socket xeon for my home lab system, couldn't find much DIY dual socket motherboards...👍🏆
The R720s are seeing prices fall even more lately. Check on FB Marketplace in the 'used IT equipment' groups. There's been some nice R720s pop up for just $200-ish.
Thanks for the great video explaining the motherboard and all the connectors. This video is better than the manual…..😂
Thank you for the kind words! I tried to cover as much as possible for most situations people will run into. The PCIe side of things can be tricky with video card power requirements, the special power cables needed, and have enough space for certain cards. The power profiles and general BIOS settings are another whole topic in of themselves!
@@Warning56kb I just bought my server about 2 months ago and am learning it while upgrading some things. Since lifecycle controller updates are no longer working, downloading the 22GB iso. file and installing Windows to update the BIOS’s of everything was fun…..grin
Awesome overview! I just bought one of these to finally get a legit homelab running to work on a lot of my SysAdmin skills or to load it with networking equipment to study for my CCNA. I was previously using the Dell OptiPlex 5060's and although I could chuck a few VM's into ESXi, it just wasn't the best. Any suggestions on racks? I was looking at the StarTech mobile racks and something between 12U and 25U since it seems the prices are almost identical.
Thank you for the kind words! They're a little pricey as most new full racks are unless you can find used, but I absolutely love Sysracks... www.amazon.com/s?k=Sysracks&i=electronics&crid=3RLE7TZ8JM8XW&sprefix=sysracks%2Celectronics%2C136&ref=nb_sb_noss_1
They have quite a few nice features that most racks don't.
The StarTech racks are very straight to the point, but for about the same price you could get a Sysrack. Check out some of their reviews on CZcams and see what you think. I doubt you'll be disappointed.
Amazing overview. Super thorough. Super chill. 720XDs are great budget servers for Chia and can be found cheap in a 12x3.5 up front. 730’s coming down in price too.
God I hope that another class of hardware doesn't get leached up by Crypto miners. This is why we can't have nice things.....
ditto. very good overview.
Hi. This setup actually works: 2x E5-2697 v2 with TWO nVidia Quadro RTX 4000. It uses around 600W, been stable for months. Cheers
Using two 1100W PSU’s
Nice! I've seen most of the RTXs used, but not a 4000 yet. I bet those fans are screaming with two of them!
@@Warning56kb it’s surprisingly silent! Fans at
@@openworked Yea I have sort of the same power draw but a little different. I have a 720xd that pulls 300W+ barely doing anything lol I wish I could get it down to 150 watts LOL.. I have 24 -32 gig sticks , dual 2660v2 .. I took the dual 2697v2s out to see how much power savings there is. Not much if any. More than likely will put them back in. Heat from it is way down. 1100 watt power supplies. , 10-14tb drives, 4 SSds.. 2 rear two up front.. 9400-16e HBA, Tesla P4, Highpoint Technologies SSD7101A-1 holding 4 intel 118 gig optanes and a 1.6TB Intel DC P3600. LOL But that is not the worst of it LOL 6 EMC KTN-STL3 diskarrays with 90 more drives. Figure im pulling about a kilowatt.
I have a r710 and the poer consumption coupled with high electricity bills made me stop using it.
Whats the r720 like on power consumption?, been looking at r730
It'll obviously vary depending on how loaded out you have it, but this one with the highest core count cpus, all drive bays loaded with HDDs and all RAM slots occupied, it idles at 150w. Thst with two VMs running on top of ESXi.
I had 2x R610, still enjoying playing around with it, like truenas and idle at 116W, the only thing is I can only install esxi8 on usb, but I heard people upgrade PERC to H710 and run esxi8 and it detected internal SAS drives.
One thing to add I have solar on my roof and I normally shutdown at night so it's been running free with no cost during day time:)
@@sunnylm2045 I can confirm that with the H710. I know for certain ESXi 8 at least recognizes the H710 and drives when in IT mode, but never tried it while still in hardware RAID mode.
@@sunnylm2045 Now that's sick! Do you know what your total solar surface area is?
Can you give use this walkthrough for the poweredge r420? Additionally, do you have a guide for clover boot?
@@brandoncech6385 Yes! It applies to the R420 as well. That's not a bad idea for another video. I've had a few people message me about the Clover boot option.
@@Warning56kbI have been trying for weeks to boot to nvme and no luck! Thank you for your reply and will be waiting for that clover walk through!
@@brandoncech6385 You're very welcome! Been busy with business trips, but your comment got me really thinking to make one when I get back. Expect to see it sometime next weekend!
@@Warning56kb that's awesome, I have been trying so hard to pull my OS off the perc S110. I was thinking about adding an additional h710 to the pcie slot and running my OS off of some SATA ssds. Do you think that is possible?
Just got an R720 and your video is fantastic. Thank you. If I want to run an NVMe off a PCI 3.0 card, can I boot off of it using Clover? Do I get a PCI 3 card off Amazon or do I need to get a Dell version off Ebay? Thanks!
You can, clover works great! You can use any PCIe card adapter, but only one nvme per PCIe slot. If you don't mind spending the money, there's a few nvme's that support sata function, so they will show up naturally as a boot option in the bios, allowing booting without clover. They'rs now older nvme's from around 2013, so harder to find. Can't remember off hand, but let me dig up the model numbers and i'll let you know asap.
The TDP of the 115 watt CPU is prevent overheating correct? Nothing is actually preventing me from running a 130watt CPU?
Correct. The TDP limit was mainly for when running power hungry graphics cards.
Check out the technical manual and search for "TDP". It will take you straight to the CPU support list. PowerEdge R720 and R720xd - Dell i.dell.com/sites/csdocuments/Shared-Content_data-Sheets_Documents/ja/jp/Dell-PowerEdge-R720Technical-Guide-2018Jun.pdf
@@Warning56kb thank you for this.
hi, maybe a stupid quesstion, but when you are talking about booting from the internal usb slot. If you booted the first time and loaded the OS, do you need to keep the USB in the server or can you remove it?
Not a stupid question at all! The USB drive stays in it. That way the next time the server reboots the USB drive is available to beread from again. All the USB drive is used for is to redirect the boot process to the NVMe drive at each boot since the BIOS Is unable to see the PCIe NVMe by its self.
@@Warning56kb Oh, I see. Thank you for the answer! On Thursday, I'm going to be configuring my first server, and your video helped me understand the internals much better, so thanks for that!
I recently rebooted my R720xd, I noticed that the fan speed was steady throughout the process.
Can you run Windows from a n internal USB?
If so, which sticks will work or does it matter
Oh you most definitely can! I've run them both ways, but if you have the room I'd recommend a PCIe to NVMe adapter to run the host OSs or hypervisor on and use the onboard USB to boot Clover that then points to the PCIe to continue boot. IOPS between the two are astronomically different. The R720xd has a USB 2.0 port, so that spec immediately and realistically limits it to 36-ishMB/s from what i've seen, and with 'good' USB IOPS close to that of a 5200rpm platter drive from 2000. But, if you still want to stick with a USB to run from, look for a Kingston Datatraveler or the Teamgroup USB I talk about in this video: czcams.com/video/kq_Z1HVbeKM/video.html
Two different price ranges with the Kingston performing better with benchmarks i've run, but again the USB 2.0 spec limit would keep things to sub 36MB/s anyway.
Cool video
why the hell would you boot clover
To allow 12th Gen servers to boot from any typical PCIe-mounted NMVe drive rather than being limited to the front plane SATA interface. It works exceptionally well.
How is noise ?
There's different variables that the BIOS uses to determine fan speed, such as the processors used and if you have non-Dell PCIe cards, but without modification they can be fairly loud. No horrible, but definitely not quiet. I made a video with a link in the description going through the process of manually lowering the fan speeds through command line.
I run TrueNAS scale and you can add a Truecharts app that auto sets the fan speed whatever you want OR you can manually set them. ipmitool -I lanplus -H youripaddress -U yourusername -P yourpassword raw 0x30 0x30 0x01 0x00 this disables the cooling response logic and ipmitool -I lanplus -H serveripaddress -U yourusername -P yourpoassword raw 0x30 0x30 0x02 0xff 0x32 which is = 50% speed the 0x32 is a hexidecimal for 50. So you can change it to say 40% by changing 0x32 to 0x28 which is the hexadecimal for 40. ipmitool is found on various unix like systems. Basically you are just telling IPMI to manually override fan speed. Some people run scripts but with TrueNAS and a truecharts addon it is set and I can reboot and always be at 45%
@@Fiberton only idrac 9 and later support IPMI. The 720 is on v7 or 8 I believe, but definitely not 9.
@@smalle I own a 720XD and this works.
@@Fiberton my mistake, you are correct, I read my info incorrectly.