In over my head with new "homelab"

[dusk egret]

Okay so long post time. I pieced together a "cheap" sub $500 home lab setup thing with the following specs to try and run FUTOs self hosted guide and run HEXOS (I already have the key and got it installed onto the NAS, but that's where the first issues arise). Noise/electric isn't an issue for this.

I have a Tripp Lite SmartRack SR12UB 12u rack

Cisco sg300-52p Poe switch connected to my spectrum IPS router for now, I intend to replace this with a Pfsense box, eventually and keep it as a bridge.

2 gen 10 HPE servers with 128gb ram total (currently all in one system with a 1tb NVME) with dual Intel Xeon Silver 4208 CPUs

A 24tb I think supermicro x8dth 8bay server (6x4tb Hitachi drives, I intend to replace with 18tb drives by the end of the year)

I've got the switch connected to the router and everything else (including my windows 11 gaming PC) connected into the switch, and my MacBook on Wi-Fi as well as a raspi 3b+ and a zerow I believe to play with if needed.

I created a bootable USB drive with etcher to install hexOS to the NAS, but it isn't being detected by the network and it gives me an error. I've tried power cycling and rebooting several times and connected directly to the router itself versus the switch. I can occasionally see the NAS on the network and snag an IPV4 address from my ISPs app, but I'm such a beginner and out of my league I'm not sure where to go from here after two days of playing with it.

I switched over to the HPE server, and I cannot even figure out how to work the BIOS to enable the PCIe NVME card and install an OS, I was thinking proxmox and attempting to run PFsense and the rest of the self hosted guide on it and leave the 2nd one ram less and unplugged.

Long story short, I'm so lost on where to start with this stuff and keep googling different starting points and things to try that I'm coming to you guys to save the AI slop. Let me know what you need from me, and I'm sorry for being such a noob here, maybe I wasted my money.

[pearl fulcrum]

It would appear that you're connecting the IPMI port. That only provides access to the BMC (board management controller), not the server itself.

[dusk egret]

I thought that, but the Ipmi port is labeled, I've I've tried Ethernet into all 3 ports at once with no luck

[pearl fulcrum]

from the pics theres one ethernet cable plugged in and the firmware screenshot shows IPMI has got a DHCP lease. Run dmesg -kw in the linux shell and plug into one of the non-IPMI ports

[dusk egret]

Alrighty I'll try that 🙂 thanks

[open gulch]

Wait so it sometimes does connect to the network? But most of the time it doesn't?

[dusk egret]

I'm plugged into 2 different network ports currently and ran the command

[pearl fulcrum]

It shows enp1s0f0 came up, the left one that's blinking presumably. Check ip addr now

[pearl fulcrum]

exit back to console setup, enter option 1, select enp1s0f0, and share a pic of that page

[pearl fulcrum]

enable ipv4_dhcp, that's supposed to be enabled by default on truenas

[dusk egret]

Alrighty

Thank you for the help

What's next? Reset it?

[pearl fulcrum]

idk the behavior of truenas. normally enabling dhcp requires only a network stack restart and I would assume the console setup tool does that

but if it didn't, then yes restart

[dusk egret]

Got the hexos dashboard! Time to mess with the hpe server tomorrow and get it into the rack

[pearl thorn]

what about your proliant Gen10 issues are you using nvme drive in the hot swap bay or via pcie to m.2 adapter?

i highly suggest that if you get any system first step should be factory reset the bios and ILO as you dont know what was configured by a previous owner

[dusk egret]

Good idea, thank you ! Here's the pic of the server I got, it's on a PCIE card.

[dusk egret]

Sorry it's been a hectic week with work, I haven't even been into my server room in 5 days 😅 i went in and reset the bios on the HPE server this morning and still no update on the PCIe card being detected. The bios for the HPE servers are so weird I'm not even sure where to begin haha

[pearl thorn]

take a photo of your m.2 drive, it is possible that you are trying to install sata m.2

[dusk egret]

https://www.bestbuy.com/product/crucial-p310-1tb-internal-ssd-pcie-gen-4-x4-nvme-m-2/JX8PSKCGL8 this is the drive I'm using

[pearl thorn]

is part number of this riser you have 877946-001 ?

photo is too low res for me to tell

https://community.hpe.com/t5/proliant-servers-ml-dl-sl/dl380-gen10-m-2-enable/td-p/7047830
if it is then it only supports sata m.2 drives

hpe in its infinite wisdom has chosen to put in a m key m.2 slot for a riser that only supports sata. they should have used B key slot instead

[dusk egret]

Looks like 871820-001

[pearl thorn]

its sata m.2

[dusk egret]

Well there's the issue, thanks man!

Guess I'll have to find a different SSD and wait

[pearl thorn]

you could probably get a cheap passive pcie to m.2 adapter

quad one too as it supports bifurcation

[dusk egret]

I didn't even think of that good idea

[pearl thorn]

15$

[dusk egret]

Should have one on Saturday, thanks!