ServeTheHome.com

It has been a long time since I have posted about The Big WHS. At the last update in May 2010, the machine occupied 8U using two 4U enclosures, and was topping 60TB of raw storage capacity. Since then there have been quite a few developments that I thought I would write about. Read the full story

Norco is a server case manufacturer that is very popular with home build enthusiasts as they provide inexpensive means to house large quantities of disks in 2U, 3U, and 4U configurations. Like the DIY JBOD/ SAS Expander project posts from a few months ago (using Norco cases nonetheless Iteration 1 and Iteration 2 – A Better Solution) , Norco is releasing new products in the next week aimed at the JBOD/ SAS expander chassis markets. Read the full story

Norco has a reputation for providing inexpensive server rackmount cases that are oftentimes good enough for many home and small business applications. Being server cases, popular models like the RPC-4220 and RPC-4020 are built to be installed in server rooms where airflow takes precedence over noise. Traditional 90mm fans were found in the center partitions of those models. While the typical quality Delta units moved a lot of air, the fan speed required with the smaller fans also yielded a lot of noise, which is not desirable for a lot of users. Cavediver (who can be found on the ServeTheHome.com forums and [H]ardforums fabricated a fan bracket for the popular Norco cases that incorporated 120mm fans. 120mm fans can spin slower while moving a similar amount of air due to their larger fin areas. With the introduction of the RPC-4224, Norco started using the 120mm fan center partition design, and made the bracket available to end users for a relatively nominal amount (something like $11 not including shipping). This is pretty much a simple, install fans on the new, unscrew and remove the old, screw in the new, and hook up fans to a power source job so I have some illustrations to show users what this is like. Read the full story

Having recently published the high-end home/ small business December 2010 buyer’s guide, I received a lot of feedback requesting items for the mid and low-end guides. The mid-range I define as a minimum of six drives in the system with a maximum of fourteen drives. Anything more than fourteen drives and getting a 4U storage chassis becomes cost effective. Furthermore with only one add-in or onboard 8-port controller to handle 7-14 drives this seemed like a strong cut-off point. Read the full story

A constant question I am asked is what is a good NAS build for various usage scenarios. Based largely on my experiences with things like The Big WHS and reviewing other components for this site, I have put together two power-user builds below that provide a strong starting point for someone looking to build a 20+ drive home or small business server. One thing that I learned is that building twice is generally more expensive than purchasing an end-state build up front so the below does not represent the absolute least expensive build possible. Instead, I tried to configure two machines that are cost optimized using quality components. Read the full story

My main server, the Big WHS now houses over 60TB of storage, runs multiple VM’s, and has over 10 Gigabit NICs. At the heart of this server, is a Supermicro X8ST3-F. It was not the first motherboard I tried in the server, as I originally tried using an ASUS P6T7 WS Supercomputer in the Big WHS, but it has been running solidly since its first installation. Aside from its stability, it also comes with many PCIe slots, an onboard LSI 1068e based 8 port SATA/ SAS controller, dual Intel Gigabit NICs, onboard video, and IPMI 2.0 with KVM over IP.

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The Patriot PS-100 32GB continues to be a very low cost SSD after rebates. I purchased two of the drives early on and did both single drive and raid 0 benchmarks. After that I did PS-100 firmware 2.008 benchmarks. Recently, Patriot released a new firmware, v3.000 so I decided to try the flash and see if the claims of better small (4K) reads/ writes were better with the new firmware. I found that they are better, but there is a significant drawback.

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As a follow-on to the Supermicro X8SIL-F review, I had some interest in seeing power consumption figures for the CPU’s involved. I have already discussed the Intel Core i3-530′s low idle power consumption and relatively low maximum power consumption extensively. As I have a habit of doing, I decided to use an Intel Xeon X3340 in the new server for two reasons. First, I wanted to see a performance of the X3440 versus the other CPU’s I have tested for video encoding and transcoding on a Windows Home Server platform. Second, I wanted to have a server running Microsoft Hyper-V Server with Windows Home Server and Ubuntu 10.04 as guest operating systems running in Hyper-V virtual machines. In the end, I found that the Xeon X3440 provides a great feature set, relatively low power consumption, and performance all at a reasonable cost.

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After completing the first DAS/ SAS Expander JBOD enclosure project I realized that there was a major area of improvement. Using less than 30% of a large 4U case’s volume for useful purposes seemed like the key area to improve upon. As I was completing that build I soon realized that I wanted a secondary server to be able to access some of the drives for EXSi or Hyper-V virtual machines. Further, NAS operating systems that run poorly in virtual machines, such as unRaid require dedicated server for testing. I could have built another server in another enclosure, but I decided that I could improve upon the original design and access drives that are housed in the Big WHS ecosystem through a simple cable swap. This eliminates the need to physically move drives from enclosure to enclosure. The following is a slightly (approximately $20) more expensive version of the original Build Your Own JBOD DAS Enclosure with a HP SAS Expander iteration.

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The Big WHS was originally supposed to house approximately 30TB of storage when the plans were first detailed on an Excel spreadsheet BOM in December 2009. This was a big upgrade to my first DIY Windows Home Server box that had well under 20TB. About five months later, the storage capacity has crested 60TB, with further room to expand. The Big WHS now spans two 4U Norco cases (using a total of 8U of rackspace and another 4U chassis is in the works) has over 60TB of storage, and requires well over a dozen ports on the gigabit switch.

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