unRAID unleashed & unboxed

[paulvincit]

Here are a couple of views of my headless minimalist 5TB array. I can swap a hard drive in under a minute. the entire mobo in under 3 minutes and the processor chip in under 4 minutes. Worst case HDDs get to body temp in this environment.

 

FRONT

 

REAR

 

The masking tape labels add a nice touch of informality  .

 

paul

 

[goofygrin]

you don't have kids, cats or a wife do you? 

[limetech]

That is a true rackmount!  I really like your set up - it captures the essence of unRAID: how to organize hard drives in the simplest, cheapest, and most reliable way possible.

[paulvincit]

Goofygrin - wife yes  (this is in the unfinished basement - out of sight), cats yes  ( 2 they can't climb this far up the rack), kids no  ( but would a case help in that case?).

 

Limetech - thanks for the comment - can we have more than 15 discs in the next release? As you see I don't have an expansion problem 

 

paul

[NLS]

ats yes  Cheesy ( 2 they can't climb this far up the rack)

 

don't be so sure

 

 

[bubbaQ]

Nice aesthetics.  But unless you have a big fan moving air in the room, this setup is definitely not optimal for heat.    Depending on the number of BTU's involved, open-air cooling quickly becomes inefficient with a delta-T more than a few degrees, due to low conductivity and heat capacity of air.  That's why your air-conditioning system's condensing coil sitting outside in the open air uses a fan.  Drives and mobos create heat, and you have to move that heat away from the devices.

[limetech]

Nice aesthetics.  But unless you have a big fan moving air in the room, this setup is definitely not optimal for heat.    Depending on the number of BTU's involved, open-air cooling quickly becomes inefficient with a delta-T more than a few degrees, due to low conductivity and heat capacity of air.  That's why your air-conditioning system's condensing coil sitting outside in the open air uses a fan.  Drives and mobos create heat, and you have to move that heat away from the devices.

 

Would the air flow due to convection be sufficient to cool his set up?  Also there is at least some air flow generated by the CPU and power supply fans - perhaps a more strategic placement of the power suppy would help.

[limetech]

 

Limetech - thanks for the comment - can we have more than 15 discs in the next release? As you see I don't have an expansion problem 

 

paul

 

Supports 16 now - but yes, just for you we'll consider expanding that.  Have you posted this on AVSForum?  Those guys would probably really appreciate your set up.

[nightfly]

Count me in as 1 impressed AVSer and I'm sitting here wondering why the hell I'm bothering to think about cases

 

That's awesome. I'll cross-link to the unRAID support thread on AVS if you don't mind

[paulvincit]

Like some of you I was concerned about temperature so I've been watching the stats. I recently moved 500GB of stuff between shares via Windows which created lots of read/write activity in the array. None of the active drives went much above 40 degrees. This setup is in the back basement under an a/c vent (no cooling right now I live in Iowa). In the interests of full disclosure the array sits next to one of my HTPCs which has a large fan creating some airflow benefit for the array.

 

 

The honking Zalman CPU cooler means that I don't have any mobo temp problems and defintely contributes to array cooling.

 

If I see any temp problems in the summer its easy to add fans.

 

paul

 

 

[bubbaQ]

Would the air flow due to convection be sufficient to cool his set up?  Also there is at least some air flow generated by the CPU and power supply fans - perhaps a more strategic placement of the power supply would help.

 

What is "sufficient" is the question.  Drives have an operating temp range, and they will work in that range... but cooler is generally perceived as better for reliability.  A drive that the manufacturer says can operate safely at 50C will of course do so, but if you keep it's temp at 35C it will be more reliable.  So does "enough" mean enough heat shedding to keep the drive at 50C, or enough to keep it at 35C?  It looks like the area above the drives is solid so convection is blocked.  Removing that blockage could help.

 

If you don't have something to move the air, then convection will be the only source of air movement.  Convection can often be laminar flow and not turbulent, so while convection is good for moving hot air from one place to another, it is not as good in moving heat from the surface (drive) to the fluid (air).

 

Given that HDs don't generate a lot of heat to be removed, you need to just make sure the air is not stagnant, the flow is not laminar, and enough air volume is moving to carry away the heat generated.  In this case, enough movement to create minimal turbulent airflow around the drives would make a significant difference.  The exhaust from the HTPC and the flow from the Zallman is probably enough to keep the drives within manufacturer's tolerance.

 

Several chips on a mobo are intended to be cooled passively (without their own fan) but they do expect to be in a case with mechanically produced airflow (except special cases like mobos designed for fanless cases).  Heat-pipe cooling has similar expectations -- that something else is moving the air around.

 

If it was me, I'd probably put the mobo above the drives, and a couple of 200mm fans below them.  I try to keep drives at 35C or below.  That also give you room so when fan grills and blades get loaded with debris over time, have a safety margin.  Also, there are some inexpensive open-air type cages (not the nice drive caddies and hot-swap 5-in-3 type cages) that hold 3 or 4 drives with a 120mm low-RPM fan, and they are extremely good at cooling.  Also, some drive manufacturers actually design for conduction from the drive mounts to a metal computer case to be part of their heat shedding design.

 

Which brings up another point about temps... an absolute reading "drive is 40 degrees" is a statement relevant to the drive.  To evaluate the cooling however, it is usually stated in terms of degrees above ambient.  A system that keeps the drives at 40C in a room that is 25C ambient, is a different kettle of fish than a system that keeps drives at 40C in a room of 15C ambient air.  One is a delta-T of 15C and the other is a delta-T of 35C.

 

I will say that the particular Zallman cooler shown (the all copper model, not the AL-CU model) is my personal choice... its performance is outstanding given its minimal noise and compact design.

 

I have an open-air bench system like this too... I'll post a pic later.  It is my test system though, not production.

[dabl]

Can you please give some details on exactly how the hardrives are attached/affixed?

[paulvincit]

dabl - the HDs are mounted using extrusion designed to support wall mounted adjustable shelving available from your local hardware store.

 

 

Its pre-slotted for the shelf brackets and came in 4ft lengths in this case. I cut each 4ft length into 2ft sections for mounting the drives. I then attached one drive to each end of two sections and used nylon ties to secure the whole assembly to the rack (I used old drives for this part in case I dropped the whole thing). Once the assembly was in place I added more ties for a secure mounting, removed the old install drives and then mounted the real ones simple using screws through the slots into the mouinting holes on the drives. Thats it. You can slide the whole assembly from side to get good access to the mounting screws.

 

 

Hope that helps.

 

paul

 

[goofygrin]

I don't know what drives you have bubbaq, but mine get REALLY hot just on their own.  Almost every hard drive I've ever used has generated a LOT of heat.

 

My current 1TB hitachi drives get above 50"C when copying lots of files (this was when I had them stacked in the case).  Currently they idle around 30* and kick up over 40* when copying lots of data.  There is no way I could get them, while active to be under 35*.

[bubbaQ]

If they get hot, that means either 1) lack of airflow or 2) the air that is flowing is too warm.

 

In my desktop, I use the Coolermaster 4-in-3 cage with 120mm fan.  http://www.coolerguys.com/840556033615.html  I just copied about 16GB of data from one drive to the other (DVDSHRINK) and it took 15 minutes.

 

From my desktop system (Ambient temp is 24C):

 

Your hard disk is a WDC WD4000KD-00NAB0 with firmware 01.06A01.
The average temperature for this hard disk is 36C (MIN=25C MAX=50C) and yours is 32C.

Your hard disk is a ST3160827AS with firmware 3.42.
The average temperature for this hard disk is 34C (MIN=24C MAX=45C) and yours is 31C.

 

Idle temps are a couple of degrees lower.  I do not enable spindown on these desktop drives.

 

 

The WD Green drives in my unRAID are even cooler.  The real PIG is a WDC WD5000KS-00M... constantly 5 degrees hotter than all other drives... and it is noticeably hotter to the touch.    My unRAID at spinup (Ambient temp is 21C):

 

parity 	WDC WD10EACS-00Z/WD-WCAS  21°C 	976,762,552 	
disk1 	WDC WD10EACS-32Z/WD-WCAS  21°C 	976,762,552 	
disk2 	WDC WD5000KS-00M/WD-WMAN  26°C 	488,386,552 	<-- piece of crap
disk3 	WDC WD4000KD-00N/WD-WMAM  22°C 	390,711,352 	
disk4 	WDC WD5000AAJB-00UHA0/WD  23°C 	488,386,552 	
disk5 	WDC WD5000AAJB-00UHA0/WD  21°C 	488,386,552 	
disk6 	ST3400632A/4NF1D88Q 	  21°C 	390,711,352 	
disk7 	ST3300831A/3NF00S42       22°C 	293,036,152 	
disk8 	ST3300631A/5NF19633       22°C 	293,036,152 	

 

Spun up for 20 min:

 

parity  WDC WD10EACS-00Z/WD-WCAS  27°C
disk1 	WDC WD10EACS-32Z/WD-WCAS  27°C
disk2 	WDC WD5000KS-00M/WD-WMAN  34°C
disk3 	WDC WD4000KD-00N/WD-WMAM  28°C
disk4 	WDC WD5000AAJB-00UHA0/WD  27°C 	
disk5 	WDC WD5000AAJB-00UHA0/WD  27°C 	
disk6 	ST3400632A/4NF1D88Q 	28°C 	
disk7 	ST3300831A/3NF00S42 	29°C 	
disk8 	ST3300631A/5NF19633 	28°C 	

 

After copying 10GB of files to disk5:

disk5 	WDC WD5000AAJB-00UHA0/WD  29°C 	

 

This is typical of all the drives, except the pig in disk 2.  Spundown they reach ambient temp.  They rarely if ever exceed 10C above ambient (except the pig).

[dabl]

dabl - the HDs are mounted using extrusion designed to support wall mounted adjustable shelving available from your local hardware store.

 

<pic removed from post>

 

Its pre-slotted for the shelf brackets and came in 4ft lengths in this case. I cut each 4ft length into 2ft sections for mounting the drives. I then attached one drive to each end of two sections and used nylon ties to secure the whole assembly to the rack (I used old drives for this part in case I dropped the whole thing). Once the assembly was in place I added more ties for a secure mounting, removed the old install drives and then mounted the real ones simple using screws through the slots into the mouinting holes on the drives. Thats it. You can slide the whole assembly from side to get good access to the mounting screws.

 

<pic removed from post>

 

Hope that helps.

 

paul

 

 

thanks man you're awesome!

[paulvincit]

I recently needed to rebuild parity so I decided to take some of the advice that has been posted in this thread and reconfigure the components in my array.

 

 

The drives are hung as before. The PSU moves to the shelf under the drives and the mobo moves to the top shelf. It is mounted on a sheet of plywood with two slots directly above the drives on each side. The whole is covered by an inverted plastic storage box, stolen from my wife, which is depressurized by a 120mm fan. This means that cooling air is drawn in over the drives through the slots which also provide access for the disk connection cables.

 

This ‘Donvan’s Brain’ configuration maintained the drives at 8-12 degrees C above ambient compared with 15 – 20 degrees for pure convection during simultaneous operation of all the drives. The range relates to the inherent hotness of the drives. Samsung coolest - WD hottest.

 

I’m not sure what impact this will have on reliability but I’m OK with the extra $10 invested in the ‘case’ and the running cost of the fan. Now, given my drive duty cycle, I may be running a 2004 300 GB IDE drive (the oldest drive in the array) when everyone else is getting 50 TB drives from Newegg for $50.

 

paul

 

[Joe L.]

I love it.  Including the "blue lights" in the power supply...  Love the idea of the plastic box to cover the MB.

 

Joe L.

[bubbaQ]

The plastic cover is a bad idea.  You can build up a static charge... particularly via the fan's blades.

 

If you must use plastic, I'd get some foil tape, and do some loops around the box inside and out, and tie them together to chassis ground on the PSU.

 

[Guest Sparkie]

In the event of a fire, I'd like to see you running with this outside the house. (After you get the wife and cats out first  )

[SSD]

Here are a couple of views of my headless minimalist 5TB array. I can swap a hard drive in under a minute. the entire mobo in under 3 minutes and the processor chip in under 4 minutes. Worst case HDDs get to body temp in this environment.

 

REAR

paul

 

Is that a round yellow IDE cable I see?  Might want to ditch it!

 

[paulvincit]

What a great forum! I really appreciate all of the suggestions and advice that you guys have provided.  So now I present the mark III version of the unleashed unboxed array.  I didn't find any signs of static with the Donovan's brain version -- the plastic box was treated to be Victoria's Secret skimpy black panty friendly, as I'm sure we all strive to be.   The concern about the fire risk is well taken and is probably equally applicable to those acrylic cases out there.  This reconfiguration was prompted when I added some additional storage and a SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 8-Port PCI-X SATA Controller (thanks to lungnut for the pointer).  I found that the cooling slots made the drive supports hard to access and kind of negated the convenience of the concept. 

 

SIDE

 

 

FRONT

 

 

REAR

 

 

 

So the latest version changes the orientation of the motherboard, encloses the drives in a glass box fabricated from glass bricks and tempered glass panels (this creates a chimney effect that enhances convection and also increases the effectiveness of the 4 speed controlled fans which are mounted below the drives).  With this arrangement the drives range from 1 to 7 degrees Celsius above ambient at the lowest fan speed.  Perhaps this the 'Lord of the Dynamos' configuration will attract some worshipers  if I add more blue LEDs.

 

The round pata cable is history - well spotted! 

 

 

Thanks again for all your support -- paul