HP Server: which hard drives to use???

[esseffe]

Good evening, everyone,
I am new to Proxmox. I am planning to purchase a refurbished HP ML350 G9 server but I am undecided on which hard drives to use. I have read that using consumer ssd is not recommended especially in a ZFS raid configuration, also in order to better manage the smart status features of the HP iLO (fan speed, hdd status etc.) it is mandatory to use HP branded hdd/ssd.
Could you please suggest which type of HP hdd/ssd to use?
Thanks in advance for any advice

 

[Dunuin]

Depends on what you want to do. What will be your workload? HDDs are terribly slow if you want to run a lot of VMs/LXCs on them primarily.

 

[esseffe]

Depends on what you want to do. What will be your workload? HDDs are terribly slow if you want to run a lot of VMs/LXCs on them primarily.

Thank you for your reply Dunuin!

The intention is to create at least 6-7 VMs. I'm seeing these hard drives NVMe specifically for servers:
https://buy.hpe.com/emea_europe/en/...f-bc-u-3-static-multi-vendor-ssd/p/p47844-k21

What do you think about this?

Thank you

 

[davemcl]

It isnt mandatory to use genuine HP/Dell/Lenovo drives but you should definitely check what backplane your intended purchase supports. Older servers almost always support SATA/SAS with NVMe being a 'maybe'.
Solidigm/Intel & Micron DC drives have come down in price a lot, personally I use Micron 5300 MAX and Solidigm S4620 in Dell servers. They are about 1/2 the price of the equivalent genuine Dell part.

 

[esseffe]

It isnt mandatory to use genuine HP/Dell/Lenovo drives but you should definitely check what backplane your intended purchase supports. Older servers almost always support SATA/SAS with NVMe being a 'maybe'.
Solidigm/Intel & Micron DC drives have come down in price a lot, personally I use Micron 5300 MAX and Solidigm S4620 in Dell servers. They are about 1/2 the price of the equivalent genuine Dell part.

I read that if you use unbranded HP drives the iLO doesn't handle the fan speed as well as it could, I don't know if this is true, can you confirm?
I wouldn't like to have a noisy server 24 hours a day.
You are right about NVMe, ML350 g9 does not support it.

 

[davemcl]

I read that if you use unbranded HP drives the iLO doesn't handle the fan speed as well as it could, I don't know if this is true, can you confirm?
I wouldn't like to have a noisy server 24 hours a day.
You are right about NVMe, ML350 g9 does not support it.

For the minutiae I would ask that on HP forums or Reddit /sysadmin & /servers

With Dell I get a complaint from the BOSS card on boot that it cant read some smart attribute - I use other tools to read smart data anyway.