Chuck Posted February 18, 2011 Share Posted February 18, 2011 This boxes primary purpose is to serve media over a gigabit LAN to a WDTV Live Hub, Seagate FAT+, and/or HTPC. It also stores a small amount of personal data (photos etc.) as backup for the PC's in the house. OS at time of build: unRAID 4.7 Pro CPU: 2.7 GHz AMD Sempron 140 CPU cooler: ZALMAN CNPS10X FLEX (passive, no fan) Motherboard: MSI 880GMA-E53 RAM: Kingston ValueRAM 2 x 1GB DDR3 1333 x2 = 4GB total HBA: Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 4 SAS/8 SATA ports Case: Antec Nine Hundred Two v2 Drive Cages: ICY DOCK MB455SPF-B 5-in-3 x 1 = 5 bays ICY DOCK MB973SP-B Tray-less 3-in-2 x 3 = 9 bays Power Supply: Seasonic SS-400FL 400w fanless, 33 amp +12v rail Cables: SATA3 cables from monoprice. Seasonic also sent me a couple extra molex cables for the PS, for free! Forward breadout cables: 3ware CBL-SFF8087OCF-05M Fans: Scythe SY1225SL12SL 120mm in the plastic side pulling air in Icy Dock fans: The one in the 5-in-3 runs all the time on low; the fans in the 3-in-2's are set to auto (effectively low) Failsafe fan switch: Automated Thermal Switch 40° C Threshhold (On at 40°C / Off at 32°C or Less). This switches on the 200mm top fan and the 120mm rear fan, both of which are set to high speed and oriented to evacuate air from the case. Misc: CPU and cooler faces polished before Arctic Silver applied Startech USBMBADAPT2 USB motherboard header adapter to mount boot device in case Parity Drive: Seagate ST32000542AS 2TB, CC35 firmware Data Drives: (7) Seagate ST32000542AS 2TB (CC35 firmware) plus (3) Western Digital WD20EARS 2TB, no jumper, aligned correctly. Online Spare Drive: Western Digital WD20EARS, no jumper, aligned correctly. Read cache SSD (not write cache) INTERNAL: A-DATA S596 Turbo Total External Bays: 14 Primary Use: Media server (BD/DVD/FLAC) Likes: Total cost, ease of setup, performance, flexibility Dislikes: It weighs a ton. Cable spaghetti. Add Ons Used: unMENU, custom scripting in go, ssh Future Plans: I need to get the UPS status reporting working, auto-shutdown if power is going down, along with email notification. Would do differently: I would use a SuperMicro mobo with an Atom CPU and IPMI and trayless 5-in-3 or 4-in-3. Case mods: Two of the flaps on each side of the case for guiding 5.25" devices in had to be flattened for the 5-in-3. I started them with a small pair of channel locks, then finished flattening them with a C-clamp. I put a small piece of plastic under the rotating tip in the C-clamp to minimize marring the outside of the drive cages. These were taken when the box had 7 disks and no SSD Boot (peak): 194 Spinning up disks peak: 173 All disks spun up no activity: 96 Idle (disks spun down): 56 Watching one movie: 61 Active (parity check): 118 I was a little disappointed that this incarnation is less power efficient than the previous. The box is running headless. The KVM was only used to setup the BIOS. My next mobo will have IPMI. The original build from which the mobo/CPU/RAM/disks and cooler were taken is here. I think it took almost as long to make this post as it did to build the box. 3/8/10 Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on /dev/sda1 3.8G 133M 3.6G 4% /boot /dev/md1 1.9T 1.8T 71G 97% /mnt/disk1 /dev/md2 1.9T 1.8T 71G 97% /mnt/disk2 /dev/md3 1.9T 1.8T 73G 97% /mnt/disk3 /dev/md4 1.9T 1.8T 72G 97% /mnt/disk4 /dev/md5 1.9T 1.8T 70G 97% /mnt/disk5 /dev/md6 1.9T 436G 1.4T 24% /mnt/disk6 /dev/md7 1.9T 33M 1.9T 1% /mnt/disk7 /dev/md8 30G 60M 30G 1% /mnt/disk8 /dev/md9 1.9T 33M 1.9T 1% /mnt/disk9 /dev/md10 1.9T 33M 1.9T 1% /mnt/disk10 /dev/md11 1.9T 33M 1.9T 1% /mnt/disk11 shfs 19T 9.2T 9.1T 51% /mnt/user Quote Link to comment
Rajahal Posted February 20, 2011 Share Posted February 20, 2011 Interesting, you don't see too many 14 drive builds. Why the 3-in-2s? Did you have them left over from a previous build? Quote Link to comment
Chuck Posted February 20, 2011 Author Share Posted February 20, 2011 I chose these 3-in-2 specifically because of their fan control. They were the only backplane (I found) that spins down the fan when the drives spin down. And because the ultimate density with 3-in-2's is greater than with 4-in-3's. So most of the time, the fan in the 5-in-3 is running, along with the quiet/slow 120mm fan in the side panel blowing on the HBA, north bridge and passive CPU cooler. When a disk is spun up in a 3-in-2, its fan spins up, otherwise the box is near silent. I am not sure the thermal switch is working or if I don't have it in a hot enough place, but the top/rear fans haven't spun up. When I short around the switch they do. I need to pull it out and hit it with a hair dryer. Quote Link to comment
Rajahal Posted February 21, 2011 Share Posted February 21, 2011 And because the ultimate density with 3-in-2's is greater than with 4-in-3's. Not quite sure I'm following you here - three 5-in-3s will give you 15 drives. The fan control makes sense, though. Quote Link to comment
BRiT Posted February 21, 2011 Share Posted February 21, 2011 I think he was only comparing the 4-in-3s to the 3-in-2s and not thinking about the 5-in-3s at all. Using 6 slots you can get the following: 10 drives with 2 5-in-3s 9 drives with 3 3-in-2s 8 drives with 2 4-in-3s Quote Link to comment
Chuck Posted February 21, 2011 Author Share Posted February 21, 2011 Brit is correct; the 3-in-2 is more efficient than 4-in-3, but not as efficient as 5-in-3. This was a reasonable compromise to me. I really wanted a 12 bay case, but the price on the 902 was great, and it had everything else I wanted (top fan, bottom power supply, no external volume type knobs, and actually available for sale). Also the cost per slot was the same between the 3-in-2 and the ID 5-in-3 ($25 per slot AR for Icy Dock). I sent Icy Dock an email suggesting they make a trayless 5-in-3 with smart thermal control on the fans, and w/o the front USB/eSATA ports. I doubt they listen, but that is what I wanted. This was as close as I could get. Temps are running in the 30's during normal operation, as high as 44 during parity check. Which is basically what I wanted. I would prefer a couple/few degrees cooler, which should be possible by turning up the fans during PC, but this is acceptable to me. Quote Link to comment
kizer Posted February 21, 2011 Share Posted February 21, 2011 I can't say enough about how clean your gear on your wall looks above your server. I think I'm going to completely copy that. Could I con you into a farther away shot? Meaning show more wall? Quote Link to comment
Chuck Posted February 21, 2011 Author Share Posted February 21, 2011 Thank you. The white cables are one subnet, with the Uverse boxes, PS3 and receiver on it. The black cables are the more internal subnet. I had a little 4 bay NAS on the shelf, but I outgrew it. Quote Link to comment
NodNarb012 Posted February 21, 2011 Share Posted February 21, 2011 Is that a wiring diagram on the wall??? Quote Link to comment
Chuck Posted February 22, 2011 Author Share Posted February 22, 2011 It is a little outdated and needs freshened up, but yes. Quote Link to comment
kizer Posted February 22, 2011 Share Posted February 22, 2011 Thanks Chuck. I had a drawing like that once floating around my room too and I should revive it because I would create an ip and forget what it was and for the life of me I would beat my head against the wall trying to remember the login ip to configure a router. I've been in a forever redesigning my dream office/computer room and I keep getting little ideas like this to well delay me even more. Quote Link to comment
Chuck Posted February 23, 2011 Author Share Posted February 23, 2011 Any suggestions on how/where to mount a 2.5" SSD in this box? Quote Link to comment
Rajahal Posted February 23, 2011 Share Posted February 23, 2011 I don't know about the V3, but in the V2 it is at the very bottom of the case, between the PSU and the bottom-most 5.25" bay. There are special extra-long screws and silicon grommets that come with the case specifically intended to be used for a 2.5" drive. Quote Link to comment
Chuck Posted February 23, 2011 Author Share Posted February 23, 2011 It is a V2 case, and the long screws & insulators are there, but I am not sure how to install. I guess I will pull out the book. Quote Link to comment
Chuck Posted January 27, 2014 Author Share Posted January 27, 2014 Update: Server has been rock solid for almost 3 years now. The SSD being used only for the movie metadata died, and was replaced with the spare WD20EARS in the box, bringing the current usable to 21TB. Today I upgraded it to 5.05, pulled all the disks and cleaned the case and fans out, and it is running again. One of the Seagate 2TB disks failed pretty early on and was replaced. No other failures or issues have been had. Plans: There are 2 open disk bays, so at some point they will be filled with 3TB disks. One for parity and one for data. That should be 26TB which will last for a few more years. Quote Link to comment
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