I’ve recently picked up an Intel P4000 and I’m purchasing some parts to set it up. Since it’s an older platform, I get that there are some limitations on what I can use, so I’m worried about buying things that aren’t compatible.

I’m interested in installing a Dell Boss N1 Monolithic to run Proxmox in RAID1, but have some concerns:

  • Will it even work with my system board? Maybe my search skills suck, but I can’t glean from the Internet how tightly controlled Server hardware ecosystems are. Would my mb even recognize a component like this, or the drives installed on it?

  • What drives work with it? According to the user manual, there are only three supported drives, and they have to be 480gb or 960gb in size. Had anyone tested using different NVMe M.2 drives?

  • @Ptsf
    3•5 months ago

    From what I can tell this isn’t going to function, mainly just due to the additional proprietary connectors on that Dell card. I imagine there’s some sort of firmware integration as well though since it’s got a data line coming off it too. Quick side question, is there any reason you’re not just picking up some N95 boxes off Amazon? They’re so cheap you’d pay for them in power savings vs this box alone and you could essentially treat it as a Raid 1 of the entire system with a handful of backup scripts.

    • @[email protected]OPEnglish
      2•5 months ago

      Thanks for your time and consideration. I planned a few different builds with an N100, but everything priced out way more than I wanted to spend, even without drives. I saw this server for $80 on FB marketplace, and that was that.

      RAID1 is only for the Proxmox installation, them I will use ZFS for the block storage.