Building a Xeon E5645 TrueNAS server with a Supermicro X8DTL-6F & SAS2008

In a previous post I detailed building a NAS from a Supermicro 1U server, using a X8DTL-3F motherboard and a Xeon E5645 CPU. I’ve made some big changes since then, so I decided that this warranted a new post rather than just an update to that post. Obviously, one change… Continue reading

Flashing the SAS 2008 on a Supermicro X8DTL-6F to IT mode

I recently updated the motherboard on my NAS server from a Supermicro X8DTL-3F to a X8DTL-6F, which is a pretty much identical motherboard only with an onboard LSI SAS 2008 controller on it. During the course of that update, I needed to flash the SAS 2008 to IT mode, and… Continue reading

Mouse freezes on Ubuntu and Windows with Supermicro X8DTL

I have been regularly encountering an issue with a USB keyboard and mouse, where the mouse pointer freezes, and the keyboard experiences missed or delayed keystrokes. After approximately two seconds, it would unfreeze again, but the problem would reoccur almost immediately. Having now found a solution, I thought I would… Continue reading

Building a dual Xeon X5680 workstation

In a previous post I detailed how I built a NAS server from a Supermicro X8DTL-3F motherboard with Xeon E5645 CPU and DDR3 ECC Registered memory. It set me thinking on my spare PC. This PC used to be my main PC before an upgrade and is not really appropriate… Continue reading

Building a Xeon E5645 FreeNAS server with a SuperMicro X8DTL-3F

I’ve been running a small NAS server for several years using the excellent HP MicroServer N40L upgraded to 8GB RAM (officially its max, although I know some people have got it to work with 16GB), and with five WD Red 2TB drives, running FreeNAS v9. The N40L only has 4… Continue reading