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I was using several 1TB Samsung 870 EVOs on my T630, but some of them lost 40% of their health with less than 50GB of recordings. I discovered that there was a bug in the firmware they were running. I updated them and it seemed to have resolved it, but I decided to replace them. I found a bunch of very cheap Intel D3-S4510s with 99% health. I bought several, but I ended up discovering that they also have a bug in the firmware. I should have researched it beforehand, but they were super cheap.

So I tried to update their firmware before using them. However, they are from HPE, model VK001920GWTTC, and since I abandoned HPE after the paywall fiasco and switched everything to Dell, I would like to know if I can install the latest Dell firmware on these SSDs, since they are made by Intel.

But I don’t know what Dell SSD model this would be, could someone tell me which one and if it’s possible to do this upgrade, I don’t want to lose these SSDs either, and I need to get the T630 working again, I’m still setting up my lab.

(Rod-IT) 2

The Dell Enterprise C6K76 is essentially the same as the Intel D3-S4510.

I am unable to test of verify this

Intel Solid State Drive Firmware Update | Driver Details | Dell US

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P08572-001__40420.1610378531.1280.1280__84026
P08572-001__40420.1610378531.1280.1280__840261280×875 208 KB

I dug a little more, after the link you sent and link I noticed the other model, besides the HPE one, the one I have is SSDSC2KB019T8P, looking on Dell I found the model SSDSC2KB019T8R, change the ending from P to R, I have no idea of ​​the differences, if there are any, i add a picture of the current SSD.

I found the latest version of this model, the DL6B (https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/drivers/driversdetails?driverId=4DW70), downloaded it and tried it on a T430 with an H330 in HBA mode and Windows Server 2022, but the package said it was not compatible with this system.

No success so far, any tips?

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If it’s just a lab, run it as is, with any non-vendor specific drives there are always risks, in a lab this should be lessened by the data not being critical. Firmware incompatibilities, ramped up fans, false alerts, the list varies.

If you can’t afford or don’t want to use drives already with the correct firmware, run them as is but know any results you get may be inaccurate.

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Yes, this is my homelab that I’m finishing. I bought these drives used, at a good price, sadly i cant get any Dell branded for a decent price, I hope they last.

The fans didn’t go crazy on the T430, nor on the T630, but I miss some information, such as the remaining life that is not shown in the PERC.

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How many writes, realistically are you expecting to put on the drives - they’re geared for enterprise use, a homelab is unlikely to hit the TBW values any time soon.

Using HBA in itself may limit SMART features, especially on drives it doesn’t have signed firmware for. This is another risk you need to be mindful of.

If HBA is not essential, try RAID, if HBA is something you want/need for your projects, bear this in mind, you wont have 100% readability of the drives.

FWIW, I use NVMe in my homelab via PCIe adapters and SSDs for the OS, no issues and much faster IO along with lower latencies.

My lab is probably excessive compared to many others and IO can be high for what it is, I’ve yet to have to replace a drive.

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IDK, I intend to use it with VMware 7, I’m going to split it into 4x T630, I want to use VSAN, but I’m still studying this, I wasn’t actually going to buy the drives now, but the prices were very good here, and other people were taking all the available stock.

I still have to buy the 10G NICs and a 10G switch, I’ll have around 30-40 virtual machines, I’ll use them for various things, but the main ones will be for software development and testing with distributed systems.

I was thinking about using TrueNAS, but I don’t know how VMware will behave with it, so I think I’ll use the native RAID of the H730 and use VSAN only.

I’ve been researching about it, it’s a good alternative, there is this option, natively using the upper bays of the T630, and also PCIe cards, but from what I’ve seen the PCIe bifurcation is a problem with this Dell model, it would have to be a card with a PCIe switch, which is also quite expensive, I’m still planning what to do.

Thanks for the tips anyway, this forum has been a valuable source of information for me!

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I don’t know where here is since you’ve opted to hide your profile.

is 10G necessary if this is only a lab. Wouldn’t 2.5G or 5G work, they’re cheaper and still relatively fast, and on a home network between two low use machines I doubt 10G would benefit you (though it’s your money, feel free to spend it on what you like).

Be mindful with your drive choice is you do want to use vSAN, note that you also require 3 hosts for VMware vSAN, but only two for Vendors > StarWind vSAN.

vSAN also requires either HBA mode or pass-through for your drives, so using RAID on the controller, given your requirements wont work.

Given this is a lab, I would suggest you try many options, if you only have 2 hosts, then VMware vSAN may not be an option (I am aware though, there may be a way to use a smaller witness machine, like a Raspberry Pi).

If it’s of any use to you, if you have one host powerful enough, you can test vSAN in a nested environment, it depend son your objective.

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Brazil, everything here is very expensive and scarce. To give you an idea, a used T610 costs more than half of a new T640, and there’s a huge chance that you’ll receive a brick instead.

I used to buy from eBay and AliExpress, I never had any problems and everything was always original, but the government created import taxes of 108% on imports, and it also takes at least 2 months to be held in customs, and many times the item disappears or is auctioned by the government, with the excuse of irregularities, so it became unfeasible!

Ubiquiti started selling directly here, which reduced prices by about 80%. I already have practically the entire Ubiquiti network, so it is easy and cost-effective to install a USW-Aggregation for this part. Buying the 2.5G switches would be more expensive, I intend to use DACs.

The primary use would be for VSAN and VMotion.

I have 2x T630, but I thought it was a good deal, so I bought 2 more T630s. I plan to remove the T430 and keep only 4x T630s, 2 of them have 8 LFF and the new ones have 16 SFF, that’s where I’m going to put these HPE SSDs that I bought. It looks like I’m going to have a lot of fun!

But besides the homelab, I’ll also have some things, like a place for backup, I have 4 new 18TB Exos waiting to be used, some simple WordPress sites, management, etc., so although I have requirements, I can’t keep changing them all the time.

But the mystery of doing a crossflash on these SSDs still haunts me!

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For your use case, and the fact they’re not production, I’d use them as is.

As far as 10G being cheaper - makes sense to go for 10G, but vMotion isn’t a huge issue over 1G for a lab. Storage vMotion is different.

Good luck.

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But realistically… would you buy a $10,000 server and new Dell or HPe SSDs for $2,000 each then sell them off for $1,000 (server) or $100 (SDDs) after a few days ?

But your “homelab” using 40 VMs and 40Gbs network ??

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Nothing new, the T630 is considered “new” around here, and those SSDs are very old too, things start to be considered old around here after 15+ years of use, and really old 20+!

Yes, around 40 vms, but not all at the same time, most are used for software development, distributed systems, validations and pipelines, they are not used heavily, and the network I want to build is 10gbe, not 40gbe (But I would like to).

As well as playing with new things!

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The P suffix drive is optimized for read performance over write speed,
the R suffix has balanced read/write speeds.
(no idea if that implies the nand chips are different, but i would think maybe so,
or at least interleaved differently)

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Then that is not a homelab but literally a workspace already ??

Then what OS are the 40 VMs ??

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Yes, it’s getting big, the homelab part is that I could be using all of this in the cloud in a destructive way, but I wanted to set up my homelab in time, I’m trying, and it’s being fun, I’ve already had a rack manufactured, and I’m going to put everything in one place.

Mostly Linux, from various distros, some with Windows server with test database and .net applications, one macOS that I lost the password for, but most are Ubuntu server, since it seems like everyone is using it out there. One thing I want to do is something like Kubernetes and use Dockers more, today I do everything manually.

I’ve been setting up this lab for about 2 years now, I’ve stopped and started several times, now I’ve added 2 more T630s, I’m going to give the processors a boost, more memory and add these SSDs that I found for a good price, let’s see what headache I’ll have, or not!

I still have the network part, I need the 10GB cards and the switch.

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But if they are truely test VMs, why not use the free tier on AWS of some training labs in GCP ? At some time Google was giving like USD 300 (for use with GCP) on top of their free tier for more “advanced requirements” in self-learning.

It is sure cheaper than the hardware, OS licensing and probably power costs ?

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Hopefully not virtual, because if it is and it’s not on mac hardware, you’re against the T&Cs of the OS license.

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I doubt Apple cares if I’m running Mountain Lion in a VM, it came from a defunct Xserve that my old company bought, it was migrated to VMware around 5.x by an engineer wizard and ended up coming along with some backup restore, it’s been through several hardware, I don’t even know if it works, but since it was bought legitimately, I believe there are no problems, especially when their hardware stopped working, it’s more of a memento than anything useful!

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You’re not allowed to virtualize it on non-apple hardware, period.

It’s age is irrelevant.

I’m not telling you this to tear it down - you take the risks of whether apple care or not, I’m advising you so you know. Forewarned is forearmed etc.

The second issue is, in order for it to run on ESXi the OS will have been modified to allow Apple to be an option.

VMware stopped support for ESXi on Apple hardware a while back.

As above, this is so you are informed. The decision you make from this information sits with you, but as IT professional i wouldn’t be comfortable not advising you of this.

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This is very useful information, I’ll keep an eye on it as I look for more used SSDs for sale.

Because i like to build things and learn new skills!