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Interest check - fully configured 20 drive server (Norco 4220) - $850 + shipping

Rajahal

By Rajahal
in Good Deals!

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Rajahal Mentor

Rajahal

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As you may know, I've got UCD (unRAID compulsive disorder) in the worst way.  I recently completed my 20 bay 'beast' server, which has the following hardware:

 

Case: NORCO RPC-4220

Mobo: ASUS P5BV-M

CPU: Intel Celeron 430

RAM: 2 GB Kingston DDR2 800 (low profile)

PSU: Antec NEO ECO 520C 520W Continuous Power ATX12V v2.3 / EPS12V 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply

Cables: 4 x NORCO C-SFF8087-D and 1 x 3ware CBL-SFF8087OCR-06M

Fans: 3 x COOLER MASTER R4-S2S-124K-GP 120mm Case Fan

Add-on Cards: 2 x SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

 

This server is fully configured and ready to support 20 green drives out of the box.  I say 20 green drives because the PSU is rated at 40A on the +12V rail, so 20 7200rpm drives would likely be too much for it.  Here's a few pics:

 

wmdNb.jpg

(note that the above picture was taken before I added the second SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 card...use your imagination  ;))

 

5nt0J.jpg

(the above photo shows where I moved the fan control board for easy accessibility)

 

YWE7Y.jpg

(the above photo shows the front of the custom fanplates, along with my craftsmanship with metal working tools...or lack thereof)

 

nV6zp.jpg

(I've generally been running the server on its side like this to save space)

 

(these photos were generally aimed at showing the custom fanplate.  I can take some better photos if there's interest)

 

Benefits:

  • Cheap
  • Huge drive capacity - 20 drives (1 parity + 19 data OR 1 parity + 18 data + 1 cache)
  • Hot Swap trays included (each drive is secured with 4 screws, also included)
  • Rackmountable (sliding rails not included)
  • Quiet, though not silent
  • Reasonably low power, considering the server's capacity (I don't remember the exact numbers right now, I'll report back with them later if there's interest)
  • Lots of blinking lights (impress your friends!)

 

Downsides:

  • No IPMI (I don't know if it is possible to install an IPMI card onto this motherboard
  • Physically huge (case dimensions are 19" x 25.5" x 7.0")
  • Very heavy (probably 60-75 lbs with drives installed)
  • Somewhat ugly (at least I think so)
  • A few sharp metal edges (some Norco's fault, some my fault)
  • Some future upgrades may be required, see notes below

 

Some notes on this server:

- I made the custom fanplate myself.  As it was my first ever metalworking project, it is a bit rough.  If you care about the aesthetics of the inside of the case, you may want to replace it with the official fanplate that Norco should be selling soon for $15.  I discuss the fanplate modding a bit in my 'pimp' post.

 

- I've only ever filled the case to about half capacity, 10 drives or so.  The 3 x 120mm fans are perfectly adequate to cool this many drives.  However, when the case is packed with 20 drives, I don't know if these fans will be enough or not.  Therefore, it is possible that you may need to replace the fans with more powerful ones as you add more drives.  Since the fanplate is removeable and I moved fan control board into the motherboard section, replacing fans is quite straightforward with this case.

 

- Likewise, the PSU is rated at 40A on the single +12V rail.  This is exactly what is required to run 20 green drives.  However, I have not actually tested this since I don't have 20 drives to throw in there.  So again, there's the possibility that you may have to upgrade the PSU, especially if you wish to run 7200 rpm drives instead of green drives.

 

- Try as I might, I can't get the motherboard to maintain the USB flash drive as the primary boot device.  This means that every time you add a drive or swap drives around, you have to go into the BIOS and change the boot order to boot from the flash drive again.  Short of changing out the motherboard, I haven't figured out a solution to this.  Between drive changes, the system is completely stable and will boot from the flash drive every time.

 

- Currently every single SATA port is being used to control a 3.5" drive bay (4 onboard SATA + 16 on the two SuperMicro cards).  This means that if you wanted to use the case's two 2.5" internal drive bays (bringing the capacity up to 22 drives), you would have to control them using a PCI SATA card.  This would introduce a slight bottleneck into your parity check/rebuild speeds.  If you are interested in doing this, I'll throw in an old PCI Promise TX4 card and two SATA cables for free.

 

As you can see, this server isn't perfect, but it is pretty damn close.  As the project is complete in terms of what I wanted to do with it, I'm now bored again, and planning to build a new server :D

 

So I haven't completely decided if I want to sell this server or not, but I'm thinking about it.  I paid around $740 for all the parts (not including hard drives).  If I do sell it, I would like to make a bit of profit on it, so I'm thinking I'll offer it up for around $850 + shipping, or $1000 and I'll cover shipping.  Or make an offer if you have something else in mind.

 

Again, I'm not completely sure I want to sell this, I'm just gauging interest right now.  Also, if you aren't interested at the moment, but would be interested if I did a bit more work on it before selling it (such as replacing the fans, PSU, and fanplate so that it could support 20 7200 rpm drives) please say so.  My next project could get getting this server up to 'perfect' status ;)

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Rajahal Mentor

Rajahal

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I should also mention that if you go all-out with the shipping on this beast, I expect it to cost somewhere between $200 and $250.  By all-out I mean insuring the package up to $2000, having a custom box made that will protect the server during transit (I know a guy who does great work for a minimal fee), and having it ship in a reasonable amount of time (probably 7-10 days).  You can of course go cheaper on the shipping and save some money (you might be able to get it down to around $150), but I wouldn't suggest it.  This would be the price to ship within the continental US, I expect international shipping would be more expensive.

 

Also, if you happen to live anywhere in Central to Northern California or Northern Nevada, I would consider hand-delivering the server for the cost of my gas, so that may or may not be cheaper than the cost of shipping, depending on where you live.

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rharvey Explorer

rharvey

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Sorry I too am all set even though I'm thinking about the Norco case alone to upgrade from my old Cooler Master Stacker.

 

Disable INIT13 on the SAS cards that should fix your USB boot issues when you move or add disks. By doing this you make any drive connected to the SAS card to NOT be seen as a potential boot device by BIOS.

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WeeboTech Veteran

WeeboTech

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Good idea, rharvey, I'll give that a try, thanks!  The four HDDs connected to the motherboard could still try to steal the boot priority, though...I'll just have to try it and see what happens.  Is that setting in the SAS cards' BIOS or the mobo BIOS?

 

You might be able to use grub4dos to put a boot sector on the motherboard disks and then using /boot on a local drive to continue.

The image will still mount the usb flash on /boot.

It just skips booting syslinux and bzboot/bzroot from the flash drive.

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Rajahal Mentor

Rajahal

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The power used by the server will vary based on how many hard drives you use, and if they are green or not.  I'm currently using 11 hard drives, as follows:

 

2 TB Seagate 5900 rpm x 1 (parity)

2 TB WD 5400 rpm x 1

1.5 TB WD 5400 rpm x 1

1.5 TB Seagate 7200 rpm x 1

1 TB Samsung 7200 rpm x 1

1 TB WD 5400 rpm x 3

640 GB WD 7200 rpm x 1

500 GB WD 7200 rpm x 1

250 GB Seagate 7200 rpm x 1 (cache)

 

Here's some numbers based on this configuration:

- During boot the server peaks at around 220W.  After a few seconds it will settle down to between 130W and 150W for the rest of the boot sequence.

- During idle (all disks spun down), it will use around 80W.

- During low activity (such as movie/music playback, one disk spun up with a sequential read and the rest spun down), it will use around 84W.

- During moderate activity (such as seeding torrents, about half the drives spun up with random reads), it will use around 110W.

- During high activity (such as a parity check, all disks spun up with sequential reads), it will use between 155W and 165W.

 

I can provide you with the KWHs used during 24 hours of normal activity as well, if you like (as this will help you determine how much it costs to run the server).  I can tell you that in my area I pay around $8 per month to run the server 24/7 in a state of perpetual moderate activity (seeding torrents).

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Is the CPU powerful enough to support two simultaneous streams of high bitrate BluRay movies?  Frankly, I don't know.  Are these streams being transcoded on the fly (by PS3MS or similar?).  If so, then I expect not.  However, if not, then the CPU shouldn't factor in at all - a direct stream won't require the CPU at all, the only potential bottlenecks are the network and the drives themselves.  Still, if you need a more powerful CPU, I would be happy to upgrade it for you.  My desktop is currently running off a dual core 2.7 GHz AMD Black which I'm thinking about replacing soon, so I could easily install that into the server.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

Concerning the boot issues, disabling INT 13h worked!  At least it worked for the drives on the SuperMicro cards.  The drives connected directly to the motherboard can still steal boot priority when unplugged/replugged.  Still, that is a major improvement as 16 of the 20 potential drives will never steal boot priority!  I might give Grub4DOS a try, as Weebo suggested.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

In another unfortunate turn of events, I discovered that one of my drive bays is broken.  Well, not broken exactly, but slightly defective.  The situation is that the backplane doesn't line up to exactly the right height, so when you try to plug a drive in, it's SATA data and power ports won't plug into the backplane.  I was able to open the case and gently apply some upward pressure on that part of the backplane to get it to line up correctly with the drive's ports.  I don't feel that the backplane is under any undue stress, as it was only out of alignment by a millimeter or two.  Once plugged in, the drive works perfectly (it is detected by unRAID, etc).  Now that I have a drive in there, hopefully the backplane will slowly fix itself over time due to being forced into the correct position.  I suppose I could RMA the backplane with Norco, but I'm not sure such a minor inconvenience is worth all that trouble.  Still, maybe I should advertise this as a 19 bay sever ;)

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

And another side-note:  I recently moved, and my server is now sitting on a table (not in a cabinet), with a nearby window that I often leave cracked open.  I've noticed my drive temps drop considerably just from this change in location.  Whereas before my drive temps were all in the high 30s to low 40s, they are now in the high 20s to low 30s.  My peak temperature is now 36C (as opposed to 43C before), and my lowest temp is 28C (as opposed to 32C before).  I haven't had a chance to measure the ambient temp in this room yet, but I expect that the fresh air coming in through the window is the primary cause of the difference in temp.  So as they say in real estate....location, location, location.

 

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