neilt0

I read the power meter too soon. On idle, with all drives spun down, it's measuring 27W! I've updated the first post.

Huh? unRAID can only be installed on a USB flash drive, and yes, it's on the internal USB port.

It looks like the bezel might be slightly at an angle, but the IB-68 has adjustable wibbly bits, which I haven't tried to wiggle yet.

Preamble I had been looking to replace an older server that had 10 small drives with a smaller machine with less drives, but with larger capacity. A deal on the Proliant Microserver had been posted last year, which I didn't take up, but was recently re-promo'd by HP and now with a slightly larger drive, up from 160GB to 250GB. This time, I couldn't resist. At £121 (US $195) for a chassis, PSU, low power dual core CPU/mobo and RAM with 4 coldswap slots and potential to add a 5th drive, I think it's the bargain of the decade as far as small servers go. OS at time of building: unRAID 4.7 Pro CPU: AMD Athlon™ II NEO? N36L (1.3GHz Dual Core, 12W TDP) Motherboard: ? Here is a photo of the motherboard RAM: 1GB ECC (standard, upgradable to 8GB) Case: HP Drive Cage(s): 4x Cold Swap plastic and metal + 1x Icy Box IB-168SK-B Power Supply: 150W SATA Expansion Card(s): None (motherboard includes 2x PCI-E slots) Cables: n/a Fans: 1x 120mm fan for whole chassis + 1x 40mm PSU fan Parity Drive: 2TB ST32000542AS Data Drives: 2x 2TB WD20EARS, 2x 1.5TB ST31500341AS Cache Drive: 320GB WD Scorpio 5400rpm Total Drive Capacity: 7.32TB Primary Use: SABnzbd, Transmission, Blu-ray server, day-to-day file storage Likes: Very lower power. Very Quiet (21dB). Compact. Very cheap. Well designed and constructed. Easy to swap out drives. Slide out motherboard tray. IPMI card option. A screwdriver (which fits all screws in the system) and drive screws are held in place in the front door! Dislikes: You can almost fit another 3.5" drive in the top part of the chassis, but not quite! Plastic parts of coldswap bays feel a little flimsy, but these should be easily user-replaceable if they do break. 250GB drive is a waste of money. They shouldn't have bothered including it. Add Ons Used: SABnzbd, Transmission, SickBeard, Bandwidth Monitor NG, unMenu, lighttpd, php, nzbgetter, ntfs-3g, screen, unrar. Future Plans: Upgrade RAM. Upgrade 2.5" cache drive. Boot (peak): 115W Idle (avg): 27W (all drives spun down) Active (avg): 35W (downloading to cache drive at 20mbps with SABnzbd) Light use (avg): 36W (unpacking rar with SABnzbd) Parity check speed (at start): 64,271 KB/sec This photo shows the standard 4 drive slots and the 5th slot added in the 5.25" bay with the use of the Icy Box IB-168SK-B: In order to run the 5th slot at full SATA speeds, you will need to modify the BIOS. Thanks to zheka_ppp for his help in locating the files needed to do the mod. I ran an eSATA to SATA cable back in through a PCI slot, up in to the cavity behind the 5.25" bay: It's easy to fit a 2.5" drive below the 5.25" bay. Viola! 6th drive! I chose this to be the cache drive, so I don't have to worry if the eSATA cable accidentally gets pulled out of the back at some point: And the Icy Box IB-168SK in place with the 5th drive: The eSATA to SATA cable is a bit thick and long, but there's plenty of room in the case to accomodate it. I have a thinner cable somewhere (I do not have Cable OCD ) so when I find that, I may replace the current one. Closing comments Other tweaks made: Write caching turned on in the BIOS VGA set to 32MB in the BIOS PCI Power saving turned on in BIOS wdidle3 /d for WD drives I think the HP Proliant Microserver is a fantastic little box. If you are in the market for a server with relatively few drives, and you can get it on a promo price, I highly recommend it.

unRAID already makes beeping noises as it boots and once it's established a LAN connection. Doesn't it? Mine does.

4 drives?! What next -- a lovely 2-drive Media Server? Ask and ye shall receive, http://dune-hd.com/hd_players/current/152-dune-hd-duo.html That's a player, not a server. My point is that unRAID was designed as a Media Server -- designed to serve data from many hard drives. 4 is not many!

4 drives?! What next -- a lovely 2-drive Media Server?

I think Sharkoon is a German company, so it's unlikely to be called that. Someone found the same case in Asia (Thailand?) with a different name, so it may be available, but under a different name. I think I was the first to use the Rebel 12 for unRAID, and only found it after looking at almost every case on the market in the UK in order to found what I was after -- a cheap case that could hold the most drives. So, you may find the case or something like it in the U.S. just by doing the kind of "deep search" I did.

The Sharkoon Rebel 12 can fit 26 drives if you use 5in3s. I'm in the middle of moving drives in mine and should have 22 drives in a few days. I'll post pics when done.

Nice! That case looks familar... How did you mount the top fan mount in the case? Mine is wedged in with rubber shims, but I'm thinking of drilling some holes as it's a bit loose. Funnily enough, I also decided a while back to move my Scythe 4-in-3s to my Sharkoon case as well, for a 22-drive machine, but I haven't got around to it, as it's going to be a big job. Does the case feel solid and sturdy, that's my only concern at the moment? And have you tried moving it? It's going to be very heavy with all those drives. I drilled holes for the top fan mount. I would say the case is fit for purpose. My son helped me move it downstairs. I used the scythe 4-3's to save money but i'm sure at some point in the future when I have to replace a hdd i will regret taking that course.. Thanks. I may drill some holes in my case. I've replaced a few drives in my Scythes and it's a pain. My plan is to put my smallest and oldest drives in the 6 bays on the floor of the Sharkoon case, as they will then be easy to replace.

Nice! That case looks familar... How did you mount the top fan mount in the case? Mine is wedged in with rubber shims, but I'm thinking of drilling some holes as it's a bit loose. Funnily enough, I also decided a while back to move my Scythe 4-in-3s to my Sharkoon case as well, for a 22-drive machine, but I haven't got around to it, as it's going to be a big job. Does the case feel solid and sturdy, that's my only concern at the moment? And have you tried moving it? It's going to be very heavy with all those drives.

You were right about the weight... With 14 drives and 2 PSUs (one of which is just a massive heatsink), this thing weighs a ton. It's a good job I built it in the room next to where it's sited, so I just need to drag the thing a few feet. Cheers! The top was mainly held on with machine screws. I think there were a few rivets, but after some monkeying, they inadvertently came loose, so they must have been crappy rivets. You can see in the photo when I "hinged" the top that it's pivoting on a rivet, but that fell off. It's held on with so many screws that it's not loose though. It might be worth emailing Sharkoon to see if it's a unique design or if they OEM it from China, in which case it might be available from other manufacturers. It's known as a "Big Tower" as well as "Rebel 12", if that helps in your Googling fun.

Here's more info on my Sharkoon Rebel 12 build, which is basically complete now. I call mine a "Rebel 18", as it has space for 18 drives. With 4-in-3s, you can fit 22 drives, and with 5-in-3s there's room for 26 drives. The idea was to find a new case and stuff all my old hardware and old drives in to it -- I didn't want to buy any other new components apart from the case. As as secondary server, it's switched off most of the time and just contains backup data and offline data that's not used very often. Being switched off is good as this thing sucks up a ton of power. I ended up buying a couple of 80mm fans and a Dual ATX PSU Connector so I could use a second PSU. The primary PSU is a dual rail 500W Phantom and can only power about 9 drives. The second is a tiny 300W PSU from a mATX case, but it's single rail and has an 18A 12v rail, plenty of power for the remaining drives: Per my previous post, I didn't think the top 3.5" (floppy) bay could be removed, but it can -- I removed the top of the case and the bezel (front of the case) and unscrewed the bay converter: Here's the result with a 3-in-3 right at the top of the case. Note that the top bay doesn't have any screw holes for 5.25" devices, so putting a single-drive SATA hotswap tray device there probably won't work. Using a 5-in-3 or 4-in-3 device is more likely to work as you can use the holes from the lower bays to mount the device: The 2x 3-drive cages towards the rear of the case need a couple of 80mm fans to be mounted on the right hand case panel (as viewed from the front of the case). There's no space on the other side of the case for the fans. Without the fans, the drive temps get very high, even on idle. I mounted just 4 drives for now, as with 6, the drives are spaced very tightly. If I add more drives in future, there's expansion space available: I used rubber mounts from the Sharkoon Silencer Kit to mount the two 80mm fans. The case comes with 1x 140mm fan mounting plate, I bought another two (£3.50 each) to mount a total of 3 fans at the front of the case. I used my existing 120mm fans from my P180. Ideally, you should use 140mm fans as the smaller fans don't cover the entirety of the drives. So far, the drive temperatures have remained in the 20s on idle or light use, but I haven't tried a parity check yet. I'll do one when the case is complete and all closed up. The top fan plate can't be screwed in without drilling the case with new holes, so I've mounted it by wedging small adhesive rubber feet (from the Silencer kit) at the sides and it's held in with friction and the pressure from the front bezel. So far, it's not rattling at all: I mounted 9 drives at the front of the case using three 3-in-3 cages from my Antec 1200 and another using a 5.25" to 3.5" converter for a total of 10 drives up front. There's room for another 2 drives there. At the rear, I mounted four drives in the two 3-drive cages, leaving space for another two drives: Using 6 IDE drives and 2 PSUs makes the cabling tricky. There's no real space to hide cables either, so this is as best I could get. There appears to be plenty of airflow though, as this is a huge case: The specs for this server are listed in my sig under "Rig 2" EDIT: I closed up the two vents over the CPU and GPU and then switched the three front fans to their low setting (they are 3-speed Antec 120mm fans). The rear fan is another 120mm fan and is the only exhaust. That one is temperature controlled. The system isn't silent, but it's reasonably quiet, comparable to my Antec 1200. I started a parity check and after about an hour, the drive temps ranged from 30 to 36 degrees. This was a bit of a surprise, as I was expecting higher temperatures. I'm pretty pleased with this case. This case upgrade cost me (exc. tax) Sharkoon Rebel 12 Fan Frame (5.25") x2 £2.99 = £5.98 Sharkoon Rebel 12 Economy Edition Black x1 £58.49 Ultra Products Dual ATX PSU Connector x1 £6.70 Akasa AK-181BK-2B Ultra Quiet 80mm x2 £4.25 = £8.50 TOTAL (exc. tax) = £79.67 (US$123)

This is true. I've got 15 drives in there now, and it's pretty solid.

Yeah, it's a nice case for the money. If I end up filling it, I'll look at removing the top 3.5" section, but for now, I've kept the two bottom bays empty as well, so it's not a problem. It doesn't have castors, but it's pretty light -- it's a fairly cheap case, so the steel is fairly thin.

I've just started to rebuild my second server based on the Sharkoon Rebel 12 case. After reviewing just about every case on the market, I came across the Rebel 12. I wanted a case that could hold lots of drives, but wouldn't cost a ton, because it's only being used for my older, smaller drives. I specifically chose the Economy version, not the Value, as I didn't want the huge fan on the side and also knew I was going to re-use the 120mm fans from my P180. The Rebel 12 Economy is £68 at Scan. Sharkoon are a German company, so I don't know if this case is available outside of Europe. What's interesting about this case is that it has 11 5.25" bays up front, but also has 6 3.5" internal drive bays. These bays are tool-less. The 11 front bays are fully meshed and filtered. The top bay is for 3.5" (floppy) devices only, it's not removable. With 1:1 usage of the 5.25" bays, you can fit 17 drives. With 3x 4-in-3s + 2x SATA racks, you can fit 20 drives. There's not a lot of point in using 5-in-3s -- you might as well get a Norco. I've re-used the three unused 3-in-3 cages from my Antec Twelve Hundred to mount 9 drives in the front 5.25" bays: The case comes with one 140mm fan bracket for the front bays: And, I bought 2 more frames (£3.50 each) to add more fans. The frame covers 4 bays, so the third won't fit without some Dremel work. The 6 internal 3.5" drives are mounted sideways, and the case has a mount for 2x 80mm fans to blow air sideways through the case. I thought I had a couple of 80mm fans lying around, but can't find them, so may have buy a couple. In the meantime, I've stuck a 120mm fan between the front of the case and the internal cage. I'm still putting everything together, so will post pics later. Assuming it doesn't all explode.

I finally found Molex to 4 SATA power cables in the UK. I think this is a new listing for Scan. They are more expensive than the monoprice ones, but look nice as they are braided. I'll probably order some tomorrow (they're on a Today Only offer until midday tomorrow) along with an interesting case that is cheap, yet may hold a lot of drives. http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?ProductId=36286

I was also curious as to the choice of 80mm over 120mm fans, or even 140/160mm?

Oh, that does look good. OK, to pay me back, see if you can find a UK supplier of those power cables...

Nice! I'm glad to see my write-up was useful. There are a couple of people on another AV related forum who have used it too. I was going to tidy up my cabling after upgrading drives at some point in the future, and I think your pics have convinced me that I should.

Thanks for posting your pics, but they are tiny! Do you have any higher resolution ones?

That should be the new unRAID reference design! Seriously, if I ever think my build is a "bit untidy", I shall take a look at your pics.

Parts list: P5B-VM (not DO) motherboard (5 SATA, 1 ESATA, 2 IDE) 2x Adaptec 1430SA PCI-E SATA controllers (8 SATA) Core 2 Duo 2.4GHz 2GB RAM Antec Twelve Hundred case Corsair TX 850 PSU 4x Scythe 4x "Hard Disk Stabilizer x4" 4in3 cages 16 hard drives = 12.75TB inc. parity The Antec case has room for 9 hard drives as standard -- it has 3x 3in3 drive cages. You can go to 12 drives if you use the remaining 5.25" bays in a 1:1 manner. I first considered 5in3 devices to get to 20 drives, but once I got to 16 drives, I realised it would be more cost effective to upgrade the existing smaller (500GB) drives to 1.5TB or 2TB drives than to add another controller to take me past 16 drives. So, sticking with 16 drives, I looked at a few 4in3 cages, but most come with a fan and I didn't like the idea of throwing away the existing fans and grills as they work very well. I accidentally came across these 4in3 cages from Scythe ("Hard Disk Stabilizer x4"). They also happen to be extremely cheap -- about £6 or $9 each, and have large rubber isolators, so are supposed to cut down on drive vibration (they seem to do so in testing so far). Note that because they have no active cooling, I wouldn't recommend using them in other types of case. The Antec Twelve Hundred has 4 120mm fans in front of the drives. I wasn't sure if they would fit in the case and still allow for the standard fans to mount in front, but looking at the photos online, it looked like they would, and so I took a chance. Here is one 4in3 mounted in the case. You can see the fan/grill below this clears the cage: All 4 cages are installed in this picture, with 3 visible. The bottom one is covered by the fan and grill Internal shot showing all 16 drives installed. By using these very cheap 4-in3s, I've saved money, but if I have to remove a drive, there's a lot of unscrewing to do -- the grills have to be removed as well as the cage. Therefore, I labelled each drive with the manufacturer, size and last 4 digits of the serial number for easy identification. The last photo shows the case internals and my "good enough" cabling...

In some cases, you have to use Windows to force the registers on the NIC. Boot Windows, and then go to driver options for the NIC, and select all the options there. Also go to power management in the NIC, and make sure that "allow this device to bring the computer out of standby" is enabled, and disable "allow the computer to turn off this device to save power." I know that should make a bit of difference, but some NIC drivers in Linux have some bugs when it comes to setting registers for things like WOL.... but it you do them first in Windows they will stick. Also, go to the latest unRAID beta... the .29 kernel has a number of s3 suspend improvements. My bench machine does not suspend with unRAID 4.4.2 but does splendidly with 4.5-Beta6. I'm on 4.5Beta6. I have a P5B-VM motherboard. This should be a well documented board as it's close to the official board of late? Does the official board require the Windows settings? And does the NIC store these settings in flash or other non-volatile storage? I used to have this board waking up with WOL when it was in a Windows machine. I'd rather not set up Windows again just for this, as I recently erased the hard drive with Windows that was in this machine, but I will if I have to.

No, I haven't found a solution yet. N.B. My NIC lights all go off, they don't stay on.