Misterpats Home Server Build

[misterpat]

Greetings everyone!

I wish I found this site prior to starting the build on my new server/nas.

Here is where I'm at so far.

Norco RPC4020 case.
Supermicro X8SIE-F motherboard
Intel Xeon X3430 2.4g quad core
24GB of Kingston DDR3 SDRAM ECC Registered memory
60gb OCZ SSD (for OS)
OCZ 1250w power supply

Replaced all fans with silent ones.

Here is where I wish I found this site prior to starting this build. I originally bought a HighPoint 2760A RAID controller. After installing and fighting to get it working, I gave up. The card would not recognize any drives in the system. The few times it would, The OS never saw them. Plus it ran HOT! Hot enough that I couldn't keep my finger on the heat sink for more than 2 seconds. I pulled it from the system and RMA'ed it back.

After looking at other threads on here, I think my case is an older model. I don't have 5 sas connectors on my back-plains. I have 20 individual sata connectors.

Now I found this site and figured out where I'm going for a HBA card and expander. I just purchased a LSI 9211-8I and a HP 24 port SAS card. So hopefully that will be here shortly after the holidays.

Some pics of the build so far.

Front with power on and 3 odd hard drives installed.

OCZ drive, DVD rom.

4-80mm silent fans and the 20 sata cables.

CPU cooler and silent 92mm fan, 1250w OCZ power supply

Another view. All the SAS connectors that used to go too the High Point controller.

So thats where I'm at so far.

I do have a couple of questions though.

1. Does anyone have any experience with the LSI 9211-8i on a Debian system? That's my preferred OS.

2. The plan is for 20 2tb Hitachi's. But can't decide between raid 6 or raid 10. I don't need super fast transfer rates, so the raid 6 looks appealing due to the more available space. Primary uses for this system are central nas, webserver backup, video and music streaming to a xbmc box.

Thanks for any input on this!

 

[ABSiNTH]

Nice build! I am currently in the middle of a similar one myself. Questions:

-Since you already plan on getting an expander plus an LSI 9211-8i, why not do ZFS with OpenIndiana or Solaris 11?
-Why such an enormous PSU? A 750-850watt could easily handle what you want.

Thanks and keep us updated!

 

[misterpat]

Nice build! I am currently in the middle of a similar one myself. Questions:

-Since you already plan on getting an expander plus an LSI 9211-8i, why not do ZFS with OpenIndiana or Solaris 11?
-Why such an enormous PSU? A 750-850watt could easily handle what you want.

Thanks and keep us updated!

Honestly? I am not familiar with those OS's. Ever since I started with Linux, I've been on Debian. My current server is Debian Lenny and has been rock solid with 6 1TB drives in a raid 10.

About the power supply. If I found this site prior to starting the build, i would have bought otherwise. I really didn't know how much power I would need and just bought the bigger one to be safe from my local Micro Center.


On a side note, I've been looking into different raids and think I'm going to go with a raid 6 setup. I can start out with the minimum 4 drives and add as $$$ allows. With raid 10, I can't. There is no grow option. At least from what I found so far with Mdadm.

http://superuser.com/questions/311570/adding-drives-to-a-raid-10-array

 

[TypeRazor]

I dont believe the 9211-8i can even do RAID6 and if it could it wouldnt exactly be fast

 

[ABSiNTH]

Honestly? I am not familiar with those OS's. Ever since I started with Linux, I've been on Debian. My current server is Debian Lenny and has been rock solid with 6 1TB drives in a raid 10.

About the power supply. If I found this site prior to starting the build, i would have bought otherwise. I really didn't know how much power I would need and just bought the bigger one to be safe from my local Micro Center.


On a side note, I've been looking into different raids and think I'm going to go with a raid 6 setup. I can start out with the minimum 4 drives and add as $$$ allows. With raid 10, I can't. There is no grow option. At least from what I found so far with Mdadm.

http://superuser.com/questions/311570/adding-drives-to-a-raid-10-array

A RAID 10 for home applications seems wasteful in my opinion anyway since you only get roughly 50% of your total capacity usable (even more so now with the hard drive shortage). I currently run a RAID 6 and have had way less issues with that versus when I ran a RAID 5, when that much space and drives are used. Of course, I only have a 16TB drive pool in use on my current server. And I believe the LSI 9211-8i does not do RAID 6 as mentioned earlier...

 

[misterpat]

I was not planning on using the raid options in the LSI card. I am planning on using it simply as a HBA. I was going to let the OS handle the raid via Mdadm.

Is this not possible?

Thanks for the input so far!

 

[ABSiNTH]

Definitely via that route then...You may just need to flash the card to IT mode.

 

[misterpat]

Well, Its been awhile and finally got this thing up and running. Here is a brief run down of what I have been up to the past few weeks.

I received my LSI and HP expander from NewEgg. Dropped them into the system and booted and was presented with a slew of IO errors. After tired of dealing with this, I broke down and installed CentOS 6.2. I figured since the drivers for this card are all Red Hat based, might as well go with the next closest thing.

After installing CentOS, my cd-rom worked great and the new LSI card worked great. Before installing my hard drives into the raid, I flashed the LSI into IT mode. Booted up and put together a 5 disk raid 6 array. Upon doing so I noticed that the expander card was running hot. Really hot. I had a small fan once used for an Atom processor and screwed it onto the expander's aluminum heatsink. Since then, its been only mildly warm.

So far, so good. Its been up running 24/7 for almost 2 weeks now with zero problems. Heat is not an issue so far and its whisper quiet. I am running a bunch of programs on it and regularly push the cpu load over 1.5-2.

If anyone is interested here is whats running on this machine.

1. Ampache

http://ampache.org/

Stream Your music collection anywhere in the world. One nice feature is once configured, it will transcode Your mp3's on the fly to a lower bitrate to make streaming easier.

2. Zoneminder

http://www.zoneminder.com/

Keep an eye on Your home when away. I have 3 IP cameras set up so far, one on motion detect in the garage, and the others on the driveway and back patio. Very cool stuff once its up and running.

3. Samba
4. Proftp
5. SSH&Rsync
6. Apache
7. Transmission Bittorrent
8. Webmin to help run it all.

There are a couple other things going on, but not worth mentioning. If anyone is interested in any of this software, I will try my best to help get it installed with you if you run into any problems.

Other than that, I'm cruising ebay for Hitachi 7k3000 2tb drives as my budget allows. Hopefully once I get close to 16tb, they will have the necessary patches in place and the 3.2 kernel to allow me to re-size over 16tb.

Now for the pics.

Thanks for reading and the help!

 

[Red Falcon]

I was not planning on using the raid options in the LSI card. I am planning on using it simply as a HBA. I was going to let the OS handle the raid via Mdadm.

Is this not possible?

Thanks for the input so far!

Yes, that is definitely possible.
MDADM with a hardware RAID controller (with RAID disabled) is totally possible and will work great, especially for your needs.

btw, very nice setup, I look forward to seeing the finished product.


EDIT: Looks like I'm a bit late for the answer, but nice job all the same!

 

[ABSiNTH]

Nice man! Inspiration/motivation for my own build that I am currently in the middle of! I love CentOS too BTW. Let me know how that works out. I am attempting the ZFS (using Solaris 11) route.

 

[brycejones]

Fyi you have the current 4020. The model with SAS connections is the 4220. With your version you can also get a replacement for the fan wall in the center that has spots for 3 120mm fans instead of the 4 80mm fans. I believe Norco has link from their info page for the 4020.

 

[misterpat]

A little update on my progress.

As seen in previous pictures, I was at my racks limit. But I wanted to still add more components. I was looking on ebay and found this rack close to my house for a decent price. Still have some more to add to it still. Going to add a rack console for a few folding computers I plan on running in the bottom half. I'm also planning on moving my desktop computer into a 3u or 4u case and putting that in there. To finish it off, a nice UPS to keep it all running for a few seconds in case of a power outage before the stand-by generator kicks on.

Server update.

All older 1tb drives have been swapped out for 2tb Hitachi's. I'm up to 9 drives so far at 12.7tb. I'm also back to running Debian Wheezy. Everything is running very smoothly.

 

[bleomycin]

Very cool setup, i'm curious about the move of your desktop PC into the rack, how do you plan on handling video/usb? Is the rack extremely close to the room with your desk/monitors? I've been thinking of doing something similar for years now but i haven't come across any way to handle transporting high-res video for my monitors ~100ft without adding severe latency.

 

[madhuinc]

misterpat,

I was wondering the same thing as bleomycin, how do you plan to manage the video, usb so forth from relocating your desktop pc to a rack mounted setup?

I've been wanting to centralize my pc's around the house into my rack, for example locating my desktop pc in a 2u-3u server case and then just having mouse, keyboard, lcd on my desk but the issue has been how to direct usb and video over a long distance (50-100ft). I have seen alot of options for video over cat 5 as well as usb over cat 5 but haven't seen many people use it for this type of setup.

Thanks,
Madhu

 

[ckryan]

That rack is incredible. The whole setup is awesome, and it I had the space I'd love to attempt that one day.

 

[McTurkey]

How are you handling cooling in that closet? How is the noise level with the door closed?

 

[D-EJ915]

Just wanted to say that rack makes me hrrnggg IBM RS/6000 ftw.

 

[dashpuppy]

GREAT WORK DUDE! These pictures & description deserve to go into the network pics thread

 

[misterpat]

Very cool setup, i'm curious about the move of your desktop PC into the rack, how do you plan on handling video/usb? Is the rack extremely close to the room with your desk/monitors? I've been thinking of doing something similar for years now but i haven't come across any way to handle transporting high-res video for my monitors ~100ft without adding severe latency.

misterpat,

I was wondering the same thing as bleomycin, how do you plan to manage the video, usb so forth from relocating your desktop pc to a rack mounted setup?

I've been wanting to centralize my pc's around the house into my rack, for example locating my desktop pc in a 2u-3u server case and then just having mouse, keyboard, lcd on my desk but the issue has been how to direct usb and video over a long distance (50-100ft). I have seen alot of options for video over cat 5 as well as usb over cat 5 but haven't seen many people use it for this type of setup.

Thanks,
Madhu

The closet that this is in is right next to the home office. So my plan is to just use 20' dvi, usb and sound cables. 20' will allow me some slack when ever I need to roll out the rack for what ever reason.

That rack is incredible. The whole setup is awesome, and it I had the space I'd love to attempt that one day.

Thanks!

How are you handling cooling in that closet? How is the noise level with the door closed?

I leave the door closed to the closet with no cooling. When ever I open the door and feel the rack, its warm, but nothing hot. Just enough that You can feel something is in there generating heat. So far, about a month, zero temp problems. With the door closed, its silent. Cant hear anything running.

If the temp becomes a problem, I will cut up the bottom of the door to create a gap to draw in cold air while placing some fans on the top portion of the door. Maybe a few 120's run at 5v. Just enough to move the hot air out.

Just wanted to say that rack makes me hrrnggg IBM RS/6000 ftw.

GREAT WORK DUDE! These pictures & description deserve to go into the network pics thread

Thanks! Once I get all the hard drive bays filled, I plan on adding it to the 10tb+ system thread. I will check out the network thread as I got cat5e snaked all over, cleanly, and everything comes back to here.