My Second Unraid Server

[SidebandSamurai]

Hi Everyone,

 

I am building a new server my old server needs to be upgraded.  My old server was an HP XW4300 with 1.5mb RAM and 3 3TB hard drives.  I have been running on 5.06 basic for a while.  Now that I am out of space its just time to upgrade.  So here is what I have purchased.  Most of this stuff I purchased a couple of years ago, and I just recently picked up the last of the parts.  With out furter ado here is my new hardware.

 

Supermicro X9SCM-F-O

Xeon E3-1240 3.3Ghz Procesor LGA1155

32 Gig Kingston KVR16E11k4/32.  This is not the Intel certified ram but seems to be working.  Intel Certified RAM will have an I after the 32, and cost a bit more.

3 5x3 Norco SS-500 drive cages.  I will be upgrading the internal fans to the Coolink SWiF-801 80mm fans for quiet operation.  My order mistakenly has an SWiiF2-800 fan which I will be using but the only difference is the speed.  The 800 runs at 1100rpm and the 801 runs at 1500.  I don't think with these high quality fans that drive cooling will suffer.

Antec Nine Hundred case.  Specifically selected to house the 15 drives I want to install.

(2) IBM M1015 HBA controller card. which will be flashed to IT mode.  I had 3 but I traded one of these cards to a friend for an 12 drive unraid PLUS license he had lying around.

Seasonic X Series 750W 80 Plus Gold Certified Power supply.  Some people may think this is overkill.  I have read too many articles where the builder simply did not have an adequate power supply and just caused all sorts of parity issues with hard drives.  I was not going to go that route.

 

I selected this equipment because at the time it was going to be used as an ESXI LAB and Unraid server.  Now with Unraid supporting KVM, well I am just going to go that route. 

 

So as the story goes up to this point.  for the last 3 years or so I have been slowly collecting the parts mentioned above when finally a month ago a friend of mine needed more hard drive slots.  I had the IBM M1015 card and he had the Plus license, which was on 5.01 at the time.  So I traded him and upgraded to 6.1.9 and placed it in my current server.  This server has been rock solid ever since I put it together.  After 24hrs the server locked up for the first time ever.  Thought this was odd (it had a kernel panic) so I rebooted restarted the array and walked away.  Next day I was watching a movie and the movie stopped, and upon investigation, I saw the server in Kernel Panic mode again.  I rebooted it as there really was nothing I could do.  Next SMB stopped working, and I stopped and started the service and it has been working with out a single reboot ever since.  I am thinking since I only have 1.5gb RAM that this is really the true issue and just need to get the server upgraded properly.

 

Now comes the build.  Yes Pictures are on the way, but I have to get this out of my head first.

 

I decided that I was going to bench test all the equipment before installing into the case.  So after I painstakingly verified that all the equipment would work as purchased, I opened up the motherboard, installed the processor and Intel fan.  You know I just hate these fans, they never secure them selves properly to the motherboard.  They are just crap.  I may replace this later but for now its working

 

I installed the RAM placed the system board on top of the box it came in which was on top of the foam that shipped inside the box on top of the anti static bag the board came in.

 

I hooked up the fan to Header 2, then I hooked up the power supply and powered it on.

 

No video.  The fan would spin up to full speed then settle down to idle but no beep no video.

 

I did not hear any post codes just nothing.

 

Verified that the onboard video was enabled.  It was

 

So I moved the cpu fan from FAN 2 to FAN A.  Made sure everything was set right and started the system again.  This time I got the IPMI is initializing, a reboot then no video.

 

I unplugged the CPU and looked at the manual some more, verified that the CPU and memory were correct, and restarted the system again.

 

This time it booted.  I set the time in the bios but it just kept locking up.  The PLUS key would not work and a bunch of other odd stuff was happening.  Frustrated, I took the USB keyboard off and used a standard ps/2 mouse and keyboard.  I have had systems that actually require the use of a PS/2 keyboard if the port is present.  This seemed to clear the instability up a bit more.  The system restarted with the new keyboard attached, and I set the date and time.  I have not made any other changes at this point and i booted the Unraid USB key to begin the MEMTEST 5.01 phase of this project.

 

The system tested for about 8 hours, which accounted to two complete passes of the 32GB of ram.  The CPU was running around 56C.  I have seen higher on some systems so that looked ok to me. I then accidentally tapped a key on the keyboard and the system locked up.  No numlock and it stopped testing the RAM.

 

I powered it off powered it back on it started the test again and about 15 minutes later it locked up again.

 

I powered off the system, and began thinking it was over heating.  but what would be causing the over heating.  The heatsink was cool to the touch.  I picked up the system board from its "Test Bench" and found the under side was really hot.  I thought what the heck? I lightly touched the metal heat sink on the bottom and it must have been at lest 60 or 70c.  I did not burn myself.  but I left the system off to cool down.  It quickly cooled off and I noticed that the plastic bag had started to melt, and at that point I decided that the way I was testing the mother board was not going to work.

 

After the bottom heat sink was cool to the touch, I set the system board on its edge against a couple of boxes to allow good airflow to the underside of the system.  Powered on and started the test.  This time the CPU temp is between 48 and 50C.  Much cooler.

 

Right now the system is burning in with the memory test running.  If it does not lock up and it passes 10 memory tests, I will then move the board into the case.

 

The antec case is really nice, I needed to bend the hard drive tabs down to that I can accommodate the SS-500 drive cages I bought.  That was not a really big deal to do.

 

Now I am about to install the SWif2 fans into the Norco Drive cages.

 

This article helped me in selecting my fans.  http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=15916.0  This looks to be a very simple process as I simply remove the 4 screws on the plastic housing, remove the fan connector from the back plane, remove the 4 screws holding the fan to the plastic shroud and swap the fan.

 

I will post more as I progress.

 

~Sideband Samurai

[anonomouse]

Hey there, hows that build coming along, get any further?  I stumbled upon this and started to laugh because it's pretty close to my build. i have the 900 the X9SCM-F-O, a E31230v2 CPU, only 16Gig ram, 3 Icy dock cages, 2 H310 cards and the same 750 seasonic PSU.  The build has been rock solid but just upgraded to V6 and thinking of ditching ESXI and going baremetal once again