Baron - [4224 / ESXi]


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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.  8)

 

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

 

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

 

USB Header to USB A

 

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.  :D

 

shipments.jpg

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Some notes from my build which is almost identical.

 

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.
     

 

I got the 4220 because I wanted to add a slim bluray burner for ripping my DVD/Bluray collection.  One thing I noticed with the latest 4220 which might apply to the current 4224 models.  They removed the vent control from the drive bays.  So my 4220 has bays that stay open unless I fill them with some non-flamable foam.  Something to look out for in your case.

 

Fans

 

I've got the NF-P12's and they are awesome fans, I also purchased these with the 120mm fan wall.  Problem is they are 3pin non PWM fans.  Both the iiF and older X9SCM boards tell you to not mix PWM fans with older 3pin fans on any of the motherboard ports.  What I ended up doing was pluging my NF-P12's directly into a power molex connector.  Even without one of the supplied resistors these fans are super quiet so that should be a non issue.  You will, however, not get any reporting on fan status.

 

 

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.
     

 

I need to try this.  Any idea if you can assign the NICs one at a time to VM's or if you have to pass-through the entire board?

 

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.
     

 

The 1m's are long but with the M1015 this might be your only option, I had to spool up the extra in my case.

 

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.
     

 

On my RPC-4220 there is are two spots for mounting 2.5in drives.  Also I ended up putting my ESXI drive in the top hotswap backplane.  I got a brakeout cable from newegg and have been able to mount all my 2.5in drives in the hotswap trays with low profile screws.

 

 

USB Header to USB A

 

I need to get one of these myself, there is a single port already on this board incase you were not aware.

 

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.
     

 

You really should consider one of the Smart-UPS line.  They are pricy but I just got a refurb Smart-UPS 1500 rack mount with new batteries from http://www.refurbups.com for $300.  Its a great UPS and on my single server very similary spec'ed is saying 80-104min of run time depending on load, plus running all my network gear.  This site has a great reputation from the HardOCP crowd (search http://www.hardforum.com )  and amazing prices.  If they don't have the 1500 in stock it shouldn't be too long before they get another, I only had to wait a week or so for another to pop up on their website.

 

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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.

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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.

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I also ditched the 1m monoprice cables 'cos of lack of space to spool the leftover cable up, especially with the Startech expanders present.  Ended up with a better quality cable for similar $$ anyway:

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=19332.msg186529#msg186529

 

The 60cm is the perfect length to go from all 3 of the M1015's through the centre gap and into the backplanes, with about 5cm of slack at the most.

 

Good to see more of these builds in any case - I'm sure you'll love it as much as I do!

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