I saw this TikTok (that I tried and failed to embed using Hugo shortcodes because TikTok doesn’t let me embed slideshows…) and noticed that an r730 wasn’t outside my price range for a random person. My brain got a new hyperfixation; I wanted to upgrade my server.

Upgrading from an Old Office PC to a Dell PowerEdge R730xd Server

I went combing through eBay for half a month before settling on a r730xd So, guess who finally decided to jump from an old optiplex office PC from KFC to real enterprise hardware?? 64Gb of ram and 2 2997v4 CPUs and it came with a dozen 6tb drives that I’m more than likely going to sell off. Me!!! Goodbye little Ford Transit Connect of computing. It will be back though, don’t worry. I have plans for that little OptiPlex 3060 somewhere else in my homelab. I got myself a Dell PowerEdge R730xd server and can finally self host like a pro.

Showing off my server in a cardboard box, those red things are various 6TB hard drives

I popped the hood

Why Upgrade?

The old server was super slow with heavy tasks. The stupid former KFC register #3 couldn’t even run a Minecraft server without it hogging 100% of the CPU. My R730xd has dual E5-2997v4 Intel Xeon CPUs and tons of RAM. You know how much shit I can do with that? At least 90 servers. With space for up to 12 3.5" drives, the R730xd has lots of room for my legally aquired linux ISOs. Also, I could probably slap a GPU or two in there and get a local LLM with Ollama.

Backup Data

Before starting the upgrade, ensure all data from the old server is backed up using rsync. I would to not lose my very very important data I store. I just moved everything to my Seagate Exos X22 22TB HDD. Honestly, was simple to do because my set up is simple. I put all my docker compose files in subfolders in the same spot. Sorry, I mean subdirectories because Linux 🐧.

I did a Stupid

Fun Fact: I have incredible planning skills. I forgot a power cable. For a few days I had a server without a power cable and a switch without a console cable. Peak brain activity

I did use this time to stick an SSD I wanted to use for booting Proxmox. I wasn’t sure if I did it correctly, but it turns out it was as simple as sticking it in a slot.

I love SSDs

Powering On

Honestly, remote management is awesome

If someone is reading this unironically, you have to set the boot drive as not for raid in the iDrac console. Since I was looking through a lot of settings trying to find why the drive wasn’t usable, I took the time to limit the power to the lowest wattage. I would to not make my parents power bill explode. Thankfully, it’s been staying at an uncomfortable but okish 130ish W.

Software Setup

I picked Promox because it seemed like the only way to put a GPU in the r730xd model using a GPU passthrough. I’m not covering how to install it because it’s about the same as any GUI linux distro. I picked Debian for my homelab because I trust it and give it pretty much all the resources I could toss to that beefy VM. I believe in the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) philosophy because it works and I’m lazy. I did passthrough my comically oversized storage drive using the following command.

root@proxmox:~# qm set 100 -sata3 /dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST22000NM001E-3HM103_ZX200S21

Ignore the ✨poverty aesthetic✨

Server lost its v-card

I’m not really storing anything important so I didn’t bother setting up a RAID array using the smaller drives. Maybe someday when I unironically start to use NextCloud, but I would only be moderately disappointed if my data was lost (Linux ISOs, I promise).

Photo Dump o’ Clock

Silly me forgot to allow the ssd as something non-RAID

Debian

Conclusion

So, there you have it! From a clunky old office PC to a beastly Dell PowerEdge R730xd, my homelab is off to great start. Sure, I forgot the power cable and stumbled through a few setup issues, but it was totally worth it. Now I’ve got a server that can handle anything I throw at it. I do have plans for the future involving some 10G networking and physical hardware. If you’re thinking about upgrading your server, just go for it.