OofC_S7v7N
Gawd
- Joined
- Apr 9, 2007
- Messages
- 723
A job, a lot of sweat, a lot of swearing, and an unaware wife
So im guessing some kind of construction, and your wife must not pay attention at all
![[H]ard|Forum](/styles/hardforum/xenforo/logo_dark.png){kind=logo}
Project: Galaxy 4.75
- Thread starter Ockie
- Start date
So im guessing some kind of construction, and your wife must not pay attention at all
Ockie and those of you that have contributed to this thread, thanks!
It's awesome and has given me ideas and helped me rethink and re-plan stuff for my own server
Thinking real hard about running WHS.
I have one question (sorry if I missed the obvious somewhere), been thinking hard about picking up a Supermicro SAT2 MV8 SATA Controller, do these things support port multiplication? If not I would need to find a board that has 3 PCI-X slots to be able to fill all 20 bays of the Norco 4020, unless there is an easier way?
It's awesome and has given me ideas and helped me rethink and re-plan stuff for my own server
Thinking real hard about running WHS.
I have one question (sorry if I missed the obvious somewhere), been thinking hard about picking up a Supermicro SAT2 MV8 SATA Controller, do these things support port multiplication? If not I would need to find a board that has 3 PCI-X slots to be able to fill all 20 bays of the Norco 4020, unless there is an easier way?
They work in standard 32-bit PCI slots as well. If you get a board with just 1 PCI-X slot, you can have the other 2 share a single 32-bit bus, or maybe you could get lucky and have a server board with 3 separate buses.
Even if you share a single 32-bit bus with all three cards (like Ockie in one of his earlier builds), it will still work fine, just a little lower performance.
On a side note, I have a PCI Express Adaptec 31605 16 port SATA controller with four SAS-SATA breakout cables that I am looking to sell for $400 CND.
Depending on your mobo you may only need 2 cards. if you have 5 sata ports on your mobo, 16 from the 2 cards, 4 from the mobo to fill the 20 bays. 1 more for the OS drive.
nitrobass24
[H]ard|DCer of the Month - December 2009
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2006
- Messages
- 10,466
Hey Ockie I know you have used a lot of those 5/4 in 3 hotswap cages...which one do you recommend for 3.5 SAS drives?
Supermicro no question about it when your factoring in SAS drives.
Update with pics:
The rack in progress...
The new APC 3000's... pretty nice, I like the load so far
Little blinky lights...
All 3 Galaxies, the bottom one isn't completed yet.
The two new 30amp breakers, more power captain!
The rack in progress...
The new APC 3000's... pretty nice, I like the load so far
Little blinky lights...
All 3 Galaxies, the bottom one isn't completed yet.
The two new 30amp breakers, more power captain!
That looks like the bigger version of the rack that I plan on picking up during the week. Found one of the Dell 2410s locally. Looks nice with the lights off, but I think the little HP server feels all alone way up at the top.
It will get some friends soon, I haven't had the time to put in a proper switch yet nor have I finished the other two servers that will still go in
I don't know what you mean? The light signaling is built into the backplane, no signaling wires was needed.
coolrunner84
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2008
- Messages
- 147
I have never bought a server rack before, but there is one for sale in the FS/FT forum here. Is this a good one?
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1287529
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1287529
Shark makes very high end racks. Yes. Typically their racks are expensive, so this makes it an even better deal.
The more important thing for you is to detirmine what you want and what you want to install on it and how you want to install in it. Things I look for is sides/doors/ventillateddoors/units/depth/raildepth, etc
He's using SATA drives. Maybe it's because the 1280ML expects to be connected to a backplane (and if you haven't, that means those I2C connectors aren't being used). Otherwise, it has LED headers on the board.Are you using SAS drives?
No blinking lights with my SATA drives and an ARC-1280ML
Are you using SAS drives?
No blinking lights with my SATA drives and an ARC-1280ML
Weird, on my Rev 1 Norco 4020, with a 1280ML I get the HD status, just like Ockie does...
Update with pics:
The rack in progress...
The new APC 3000's... pretty nice, I like the load so far
Little blinky lights...
All 3 Galaxies, the bottom one isn't completed yet.
The two new 30amp breakers, more power captain!
grrr, imageshack is screwed up. can't see the pics.
Are you using SAS drives?
No blinking lights with my SATA drives and an ARC-1280ML
Dude.. you just need to look real close - the orange lights are kind of faint during activity. Even if I run an HDTune read bench which pegs them all to be solidly lit, they're still kind of faint. Kind of piss poor on Norco's part, "but on the other hand, the low price" *roll eyes*
I too thought I didn't have activity lights at first, but they ARE there. Mine are also connected to an 1280ML in one of my two Norco 4020's.
Hell even if you connect a SATA cable between the motherboard and drive bays you get activity - its just coming off the SATA cable, no signal cables required.
Actually my activity lights are just as bright as the online leds.... this is the same with all 3 systems using the norco cases.
Yeah, I know its coming off the SATA cable, which is why I was confused.
I double checked... in a totally dark room I could barely make them out, and that was with 10 disks working constantly.
Those are some really really shitty LED's. Bit weird, since the green ones are fine.
I wish mine lit up like Ockies....
Long shot, do you use both molex connectors on each row? (yes, this is a long shot, like the distance between earth and the sun long..)
Nope, I run one molex per 4 drive strip.. sometimes I'd even milk it and run one feed to a few backplane strips
Update: Last two servers ordered... so pics of the entire project coming soon. I hope things will go smoothly from now on (curses at power sports company for ordering all the wrong snowmobile stuff, curses at paypals security key issue, curses at directv) so much went wrong tonight, it was almost commical.
Everyone has bad days, man, sit back, relax and watch The Big Bang Theory!
coolrunner84
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2008
- Messages
- 147
There is a discussion going on about WHS on avsforums right now, and someone mentioned that there is a 16tb limit since WHS is a 32bit operating system.
This is not good for me since I plan on putting nothing but 1tb drives into my WHS setup, which means I can will have a total of 21tb as a result.
Is this true?
This is not good for me since I plan on putting nothing but 1tb drives into my WHS setup, which means I can will have a total of 21tb as a result.
Is this true?
Doubt it, no one on [H] (that I know of) has had that problem
nitrobass24
[H]ard|DCer of the Month - December 2009
- Joined
- Apr 7, 2006
- Messages
- 10,466
Yea I'm not quite there myself but I know Ockie has one of those full of 1tb and I hadn't heard a thing about it from him...also he does his HW before he jumps on a new system and I think that would have thrown red flags all over the place.
That is correct nitrobass24.
No there is no space limitation for windows home server, IIRC it was something like in the decibytes or something up there (in otherwords, we will never hit it with this operating system).
The largest galaxy with WHS is 21 terrabytes and I plan on swapping all the drives out to two terrabyte drives the moment they come out. WHS has no unreasonable drive nor space limitations.
coolrunner84
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2008
- Messages
- 147
That's good to know.
Just a little update on my WHS build. I ended up buying a new CPU and motherboard, since my old board could not support the installation of another Supermicro card. If all goes well then I should have everything by the end of this week to give it another try.
Edit: Ockie, what drivers did you use for the supermicro cards?
Edit2: nvm, found the drivers here
Just a little update on my WHS build. I ended up buying a new CPU and motherboard, since my old board could not support the installation of another Supermicro card. If all goes well then I should have everything by the end of this week to give it another try.
Edit: Ockie, what drivers did you use for the supermicro cards?
Edit2: nvm, found the drivers here
You should use the drivers that came with the cd... I used drivers before from downloading and it did not jive well with WHS.
LOL - we're in the same boat as far as preferring the 2Tb size and wanting to skip over the whole 1.5Tb factor. I did a whole spiel about it on avsforum.
What's crazy is that the prices I'm seeing for the 1.5Tb drives is going to make them EXTREMELY cost effective - for the first time in history (or at least the last 10-15 years) a new larger size factor is going to come out that isn't disproportionately more expensive than the next size down. The Seagate 1.5Tb's are showing $189 on Ingram Micro, and elsewhere $199 (retail), which in terms of 1Tb pricing would be the equivalent of $125-$131 depending on where you source from.
So, a lot of people "buying new" for an array are going to enjoy some great pricing for the 1.5Tb factor despite its 'flagship' size status, unlike previous generations of size factors (i.e. when 1Tb came out and was more than three times the price of 500Gb).
Still I'm going to ignore 1.5Tb in any large quantities for new arrays in anticipation of the 2Tb form factor, except for buying maybe 4 to 8 to test out in array use.
Somebody doesn't know what they're talking about. There's no correlation between 16Tb partition size and 32-bit O/S. There WERE issues related to GPT partition type in Windows Server 2003 before the R2 release came along, but were resolved in that release. I ran 2 x 22Tb partitions (after Raid6 overhead) on 32-bit Windows Server 2003 Enterprise R2 for about 6 months before switching to something else.
I assume WHS is using whatever code improvements happened in W2K3 R2 since WHS it's newer than R2 which came out Summer 2005, so I'd be hella surprised if there were issues or limitations with WHS and partition sizes except for any that Microsoft arbitrarily implemented.
The 16TB limitation is present when you use 4k blocks instead of 512b (so, no GPT). Why would anyone want to skip GPT when all modern OSs support it (sans Windows XP) is beyond me. Only reason to use 4k blocks would be if you have to use Windows XP.
coolrunner84
Limp Gawd
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2008
- Messages
- 147
I am trying to set up a meet with the seller to look at this server rack, but I need to know what kind of questions I should ask and anything that I should check.
This will only be used to hold a Norco 4020 case, switch, router, and modem at the moment. I will slowly expand with more equipment with time. However they will all be standard size.
TBH it is overkill for my needs. A 22u rack would be enough, but I plan on running a patch panel so I don't want it too far away from the ceiling.
Ya, I still have memories of Hitachi 1TB drives at $400 when they were first released...
On DL.TV, Patrick Norton used to joke about the fact that every drive that he has bought since the 80's, has been right around $400 when it was released........