Intel Core i3-530 and Core i5-650 in the Windows Home Server (WHS)
When Intel announced the i3-530 and i5-6xx family, I was full bore on building the Big WHS which included an LGA-1366 i7-920 CPU. The new i3-530 and i5-650 are based on the 32nm Clarkdale core with an integrated, on package GPU. For the home server world, read low power consumption and integrated graphics. To say the least that combination, along with the low cost of the parts + motherboards had me eagerly purchasing a $99 i3-530 from Microcenter and a $99 Intel BOXDH55TC mATX H55 chipset motherboard. To keep with the low power theme, I also ordered some G.SKILL Ripjaw DDR3 that runs at 1.5v.
The Big WHS Update: Sorting Controllers and other Issues
Just as a quick update to those who are following this build. Some adjustments have been made ove the past week.
First, I finally decided that 32 ports from two Adaptec 31605's would first off be slightly less than I had wanted. I realized that while the initial build would hold 19-20 1.5TB drives, 6x 2TB drives, and 4x 1TB drives, odds are that I would want to add another 6-7 2TB drives in the next six months if for no other reason just to spread the storage a bit more.
Port Costs and the Home Server!
Most people who build custom home servers will be able to articulate the cost per GB (cost/GB) of their drives. Yet this is a somewhat outdated metric. The major cost consideration that a lot of people overlook is port costs. Simply put, this is the cost to connect a hard drive to the system. For normal computer users this is often in the sub-$5 per port since they have open SATA connectors on their motherboards and open spots in their case making the cost of adding a drive the cost of a SATA cable. Home servers are a different story all together. A quick audit of the Big WHS showed that my port costs were approximately $46/ port. Compared to the $70 going price of a 1TB drive, this can be a huge portion of costs and is certainly appropriate to add to the cost/GB equation.
The Big WHS: First (Big) Pictures
Since there are some requests here are the servers side by-side. The New WHS is on burn-in duty while the old WHS has had 9.5TB removed thus far. I moved the cases to somewhere that is more comfortable for me to work from in anticipation of the "final" build this week. Also placing them next to each other made it really easy to segment the two servers on a dedicated switch for doing the file transfer.
Old WHS Being dismantled on the left, new WHS doing burn-in on right, IBM power supply in middle.
The Big WHS Update: Prepping the Old System and New Parts
Just as an update. I installed the second Adaptec 31605 today, filling all 16 ports with 8x WD Greens, 6x Hitachi 2TB, and 2x Hitachi 1TB drives. There is an additional 1.5TB Seagate 7200.11 being used as an OS drive. That's 27.5TiB raw capacity.
Here's a view of all the drives currently in The Big WHS. Note, I may have killed yet another WD Green. A single SMART error so I'm making quadruple sure that something isn't wrong.
17 Drives, 27.5TiB Raw installed for testing
The Big WHS – Disaster Strikes, Part II
Continuing to test the new WHS box, I was treated to yet another new Western Digital Green failure this week. Ridiculous!
This was the second (of 8 new) WD greens to fail in its first week.
The Big WHS – Disaster Strikes, Part I
At around 1:30AM I woke up to what I believed was the fire alarm. After about 30 seconds outside in the cold, I realized that it was not a fire alarm, but rather an Adaptec controller alarm. The first hard drive has failed.
The Big (30+ drive) Windows Home Server Quick Update
After work today I got the server up and running doing a build/ verify Raid 6 array on the 8x new Western Digital Green 1.5TB drives. Since the current WHS is still in use, I used some spare hardware in the place of the legacy hardware including a 850w Coolermaster PSU, EVGA 8800 GTS 512MB, and an Adaptec 5805.
Something I should have known to do, but forgot to check, is that VMWare ESXi does not work with the Realtek onboard NICs of the Asus P6T7 Supercomputer, and apparently there is a further chipset conflict. Since I was between going Hyper-V and ESXi as a hypervisor, VMWare's incompatibility made the decision easy.
Tomorrow after work (which sadly has been consuming 12+ hours a day lately) I will probably pick up Windows Server 2008 R2 as a Hyper-V platform. I like the idea of running WHS from the free Hyper-V server, however, since the goal of this box would be to run VM's for other servers anyway, I'll probably just go the Microsoft route.
The Big (30+ drive) Windows Home Server (Part 2) Hardware Selection
First off, this is not a typical WHS build, and it was not meant to be. For the majority of users, a HP MediaSmart (by far the WHS to get if you do not DIY the build) is the way to go. For my purposes, I have seen a consistent, but increasing 500-600GB/mo of extra disk usage. Just for the record, unlike the opinion of certain Seagate executives, it is not for material of questionable moral value. Alas, I needed a solution that would allow me to have one box that could be upgraded and used for up to 24 months. As mentioned in Part 1, this project is an upgrade project and therefore I had some parts, and had a good idea of what I was doing before embarking on the project.
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