DeepSpace

https://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=HD-W30EFRX Also in stock here, I have a few from them.

I tried running two of them without BIOS and leaving it on the third like bcbgboy13 suggested. Oh well, the third sold, and I'm now running 2 into an Expander and it's running just fine. Minor speed hit, but it works, so that is what I need right now.

I tried all different positions, placing each card in the different slots, and even downgraded their FW and BIOS.. no dice. Either my 3 cards didn't want to play nicely together, or more likely it is a board issue running three of them. I found no information online about it, with the exception that a similar error with a Dell branded LSI card. The error code given meant that the motherboard wasn't giving out a true I/O slot to it. That would make sense because it errors on boot, and after startup, ESXi didn't see it at all. Besides LEDs flashing, it was dead to the world. My Intel Expander should be here in a few days, and I'll give that a go with 2x M1015. By my calculations, running 2x into the Expander, shouldn't be much too slower than running 3 M1015s. Because the board sees both M1015s, and I can pass them through to unRAID without issue, I think adding in the Expander will work just fine. I'll report back. And RockDawg, you may want to just get the normal F. I've read multiple people here and on HardOCP running that setup without an issue. You might just need to get a dual or quad NIC card if you need additional ESXi flavored jacks.

Negative. I'm surprised I didn't try that arrangement though, I had high hopes. Oh well. Still stumped, but just sold one of the cards and ordered an Intel Expander RES2SV240. I'll run the two cards into that and while I won't have the same speed as 3x m1015, it shouldn't be too much different. Thanks for the help.

I realized I had P14 firmware and I didn't update the card's BIOS to the most recent version.. did that, still fails. The only change is the 3 lights blink at the same time on the top of the cards where as before it was random. I know, I'm stretching here.. I can't find any information about this error anywhere. I'm at a loss.

Okay, tried something new.. if I put 1 in x8, and 2 in x4, I get two of the BIOS Faults, and only one card shows up in the configuration panel. Beyond confused.

Slowing putting the pieces of my server together as they show up and I've run into an issue. I have 3x M1015s, all flashed to P14. That process went smoothly without error. When I threw them into the server and tried to boot, I was met with this error: As far as I can tell, with testing a few different scenarios. I don't think it is the individual cards. This board has two PCIe 3.0 x8 slots, and two PCIe 2.0 x4 (in x8) slots. I can run 2 M1015s in the x8 slots, or 1 M1015 in a x4 slot. When I try to run 3 total (2 in x8, and 1 in x4), or even just 2 total (2 in x4).. I get that message. It seems like it doesn't matter the card, or which x4 slot it is. Is there some BIOS setting I'm overlooking? Or was flashing to P14 incorrect? I have a feeling I'm missing something small.

Parts are starting to come in. I had to re-order some things so still playing the waiting game. In the mean while, because I can...

I don't think you're going to get away from not splitting SATA power. If you went with drive cages or a backpane setup (Norco 4224) you could tidy cables by making them yourself, but you're still splitting the power out. Power != Analog Signals, as long as your wire gauge is thick enough 18awg or lower, you're not losing anything (like reliability) by splitting it.

Is there a reason you are against using splitters?

I guess I didn't realize how long 1m really was inside that case. I'll ship those back to Monoprice when they get in. I grabbed these of eBay instead. Roughly 63cm so a lot less bulk to have to deal with. Thank you for that suggestion.

Good call on those, mikejp. I may replace them. Oh dear, more ordering and returning stuff. I had a panic earlier, I thought Newegg was going to charge me a restocking fee for the UPS (that hasn't even been delivered yet) on top of the 30 or 40 bucks that was required to ship it back. I contacted customer service though and I can just refuse the shipment tomorrow and I don't have to pay for return shipping and there will be no restocking fee either. I'm happy about that.

Thank you for the notes, I'll respond. Case I thought about the 4220, but decided that I didn't want to rip anything directly on the server. Mainly because I didn't want to have to put the server (right now) in a location that is easy to get to. The shelf I just installed for it is 10 feet up on a wall and I'd have to break out a ladder every time I wanted to rip things. I ordered directly from Norco so I'll report back with the type of bays and if I have any control over that or not. Fans I thought about PWM fans and ultimately decided to just go with normal ones. If I cared about sound and controlling them I'd handle that.. but this is going to be sitting in a closest and I rather them just run on full power all the time. Noctuas are super silent anyway, so I'd rather just save the money. NIC I'll report back with what I found, but from what I've read you can single them out and pass them to different VMs. USB Header I actually didn't know it had one on the board, that's pretty cool. They were $3.5/ea so no biggie. UPS It's a $120 dollar difference, for a better one that you linked me to. The nice thing is it's rack mountable and I plan on getting a rack when I move into the new place in a year or so. Thanks, I'll upgrade to that.

Introduction Welcome to my build thread for Baron. Let me first start out by saying I wish I never found unRaid or this forum. What was curiosity turned into an obsession about storage and virtualization. I remember saying the same thing about the AVS Forum prior to purchasing my ridiculous home theater equipment, but I digress. I'm here, ready to roll. I've always used ranks of nobility in my naming scheme, thus Baron has been born. Hat Tips I've studied the builds from other members here. Thanks goes out to Johnm, Rajahal, BetaQuasi and others. I now have someone to blame when my wife freaks out. Why, and usage? I'm mainly building this server because I can. I started looking into NAS systems from Netgear and Synology to act as a backup device for media files, as well as a Time Machine location for my rMBP. I did a lot of research into companies, devices and then RAID types. That is when I stumbled upon unRAID and started reading into why it's approach to redundancy makes sense for the modern times. Nothing stored on the server cannot be reproduced either ripping or downloading again - that's key, and that is what I didn't take into consideration before finding unRAID. I had posted a build check thread in Hardware a few days ago claiming that I didn't need ESXi.. that was until I stopped to think about it and decided it would be a good idea. Thread deleted, project changed. When I'm not building servers, my day job is a software developer - so having the ability to spin up new servers whenever I want is actually pretty attractive. So that's when I decided to go for ESXi and learn that whole process, and the Norco 4224 followed closely behind because, why not? If I'm already spending X amount of money, might as well spend a little more and get something that will last growth for years. Hardware Case Norco 4224 This gives me 24 bays, plus a lot of room for cabling. The only negative to this case is its size and weight. Typically one would mount this in a rack and forget about it, but for us apartment dwellers that isn't feasible. Keep that in mind if you're looking at getting one of these. The case, filled with drives, can be nearing 100 pounds. 120mm Fan Wall More air, less noise, less power. Pretty easy decision there. Motherboard Supermicro X9SCM-iiF This motherboard has 3 onboard NICs. 1 dedicated to IMPI (Intelligent Platform Management Interface) and 2 that are ESXi compatible. I wish all of the PCI-Es were x8, but that's okay. In order to get that, you have to move to a board that is double the price, and requires a CPU that is way over my needs. CPU Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2 Ivy Bridge The newest flavor of the low priced Xeons. 22nm architecture, Ivy Bridge, and I believe the 1230 is the lowest priced entry into HyperThreading. Memory Kingston KVR13E9/8HM - 8GB x2 This memory is a fairly good bargin. From what I can tell, the onboard Hynix modules have been tested with the Supermicro motherboard and should be good to go. This will be upgraded in the future to 32GB, but 16 is fine for now. Memory is a good lesson in how not to do it for beginner system builders. 4x2GB or 2x4GB or 1x8GB. Which is cheapest? The first, which is what you need to buy? The last. Never fill up slots without maxing the slot's capacity. Memory is cheap to upgrade later, but only if you haven't filled the number of slots with lower capacity memory. PSU Seasonic X-750 Gold I run Seasonic PSUs in other (gaming) machines I have. They are among the best of the best. Do not cheap out on a good PSU. It's the single device in your computer/server that has a direct connection and relationship with everything else inside the case. Spend the money, no brainer. HBA/RAID IBM m1015 (Rebadged LSI MegaRAID SAS 9240-8i) x3 This is what seems like the de facto standard for the unRAID community and others. With a little flashing magic into IT mode, you've basically unlocked the card into the default LSI card it really is, and you're able to use it as a JBOD card. I decided to go with 3 of these instead of 1 with the Intel RES2SV240 Expander. I made that decision because the price difference is so small that I rather gain the performance of splitting the drives over multiple PCI-e slots. I think people have been catching on to the usefulness of these cards. I read everywhere a price of $65-85 dollars for these things. They are 150-160+ on eBay now. I got these for $120ea from Server Supply and they have an iffy rating as a reseller. I decided to risk the cost savings and they have a 30 day warranty so I'll run these things through the paces before that 30 days has elapsed. Extra NIC Intel EXPI9402PTBLK As I said earlier, the Supermicro board has 2 ESXi compatible NICs.. but why stop there? This card adds an additional 2 NICs so my VMs can have their own NIC assigned to them. I picked this up for $40 on eBay. Cables Monoprice 1m SFF-8087 to SFF-8087 I don't remember where I read it, but I believe the Norco branded SFF-8087 cables are too short. I ordered the 1m from Monoprice. They are cheap, and Monoprice value is second to none. These will connect the m1015s directly to the backpanes of the hard drive rows on the case. Fans Noctua NF-R8 80mm Fan x2 Noctua NF-P12 120 mm x3 Noctua, duh. Like the PSU, buy the best fans. 80s are going on the back wall, and the 120s are going on the fan wall. Expansion Bays StarTech 2.5-Inch SATA Removable Hard Drive Bay for PC Expansion Slot I have two additional bays for the ESXi drives which I'll explain below. These drive bays fit inside a expansion slot and gives you a way of mounting the drives safely. They are expensive for their usage, but it saves you from having to come up with a location to mount them in the case. Thumb Drives Lexar JumpDrive FireFly 4 GB x2 unRAID Approved, and will work for ESXi as well. USB Header to USB A StarTech USB A to USB Motherboard 4-Pin Header This allows you to put your thumb drives inside the case. Safety third. Datastore Drives (ESXi) Crucial M4 CT064M4SSD2 64GB SSD Seagate Momentus XT ST95005620AS 500GB 7200 RPM The SSD is for OSX Mountain Lion. I wanted to give it its own drive. The 500gb Seagate is for all other VMs. I don't care about the speed of of the other VMs as much initially, I'll upgrade that later. These will be connected directly to the motherboard. I will separate the 24 bays out (running on the m1015s) entirely. unRAID Drives Unknown yet. Initially I wanted the warranty of the WD Black, but now I'm pretty interested in the Reds - which are impossible to find. I think I'll be going with Reds. I'll be running faster parity and cache drives. These hasn't been purchased yet. UPS APC BR1500G I typically buy CyberPower UPSs, but I know that APC has good integration with ESXi, so I went that direction. UPS, again, something you should not cheap out on and it's a requirement. Unless, you know, you like wrecking servers. APC Smart-UPS 1500 Rack Mount 2U As per Synx's recommendation. I've upgraded the UPS to the SmartUPS from APC. Gaining true sine wave, enterprise-y, and rack-mountable. Electricity Monitoring P3 International P4400 Grabbing this to see what the wattage is going to be of the server when idling. Normally, UPSs can tell you this but I want to know from from wall plug to server how much is going out. To Do Dynamic list, I'll update this as I go. Wait until all of my shipments arrive Build server Build custom power cables Install ESXi and VMs Figure out what hard drives I want for unRAID, and slowly order them Get unRAID up and running I'll update this thread when things happen. I recently ordered everything and it's coming to me over the new few days. I also installed new shelf in my closest where this is going. I'll take pictures of that and everything else when it all gets here. For now, you can just look at my shipments.. anxiously awaiting them like me.