Show us your Servers - 2015 Edition

[Aergan]

That looks like a neat and tidy setup. I like the reusing of an old set of drawers to cover and raise the equipment.

 

I will be using your recommendations and raising/covering the equipment in my loft. It will have to wait a little bit though for now as I have to find a job that I can 'lose' the cost of the materials into. This is going to require some beefy supports! I am also going to have to add a thermostatically controlled extractor fan, as temperatures reach 35C max in the summer up there with no air circulation. I have not had that server there in the summer yet, so I have to get it fitted before then.

 

Have you got a smoke alarm in your loft? I fitted one with a 10 year-life battery in mine the other day just incase something decides to die up there, without killing us at the same time.

 

 

I have two, one in the attic and one on the ceiling below. No issues during the summer as the pitch is north / south facing on a built up hillside (we don't get a lot of sun). I have a 7.5amp fuse fitted rather than 13amp for two devices, so it should blow before anything bad occurs.

[tonyjr]

Impressive tony. Don't you have any overheating problems using the loft? If I used my attic area, The NAS would overheat really quickly.

Thanks patseguin. I have not had the server up there in the summer yet - as you can see from the photos, I had to remove the cover of the router as it got hot Las summer. It got to 35C max last year up there. I am going to fit a thermostatically controlled extractor fan before the summer coming, so hopefully that will help get some air flowing to keep it cool. If not, ill have to move it downstairs again. The problem with that though, is noise. I have a graphics card in it so that made some of the fan's minimum rpm raise from 3% to 20%.

We shall see what happens when the temperature begins to rise.

[SouthGate]

Haven't got an actual photo of the server, but we have our clan server colocated with Rapidswitch.

 

[kBWarrior]

I'm torn.  On one hand I have a whole bunch of server room pics, but on the other hand they are of my clients or our datacenter.

For the clients, even though I designed and built it, I don't really see them as mine so I wouldn't feel right.

For our datacenter, it's a nono to post pics.

 

Oh well.

[wiretap]

New file server underway.. almost finished.

 

Specs so far:

Norco RPC-4220 4U Case

Corsair RM1000 Power Supply

Supermicro X9SCM Motherboard

Intel E3-1220v2 Processor

Supertalent 16GB (4x4GB) DDR3-1333 ECC RAM

2x 250GB Samsung Evo 850 SSD's in RAID1

3x 120mm Arctic Cooling F12 PWM Fans

2x 80mm Arctic Cooling F8 Rev.2 PWM Fans

1x 92mm Arctic Cooling Alpine 11 Plus PWM CPU Fan

5x SFF-8087 to SFF-8087 cables

 

Soon I'm probably going to order 3x IBM ServeRAID M1015's so I can start adding HDD's. Not sure yet on which drives I'm going with.. probably either HGST as a primary choice and WD as a secondary choice. (4TB or greater each) I need at least 20TB with two parity drives. This week I'm going to install Windows Server 2012 R2 on it and start setting it up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[wiretap]

Up and running! 

Server is 99% done. I transitioned everything from my old server to the new ESXi build.

Just in the process of adding the 24TB of storage from my old server to the new one. I should have ~40TB (with triple parity) when I format the old drives and append them to the SnapRAID array. As it sits, I have 20TB in there right now. I should be finished adding drives tomorrow so it fills up all the bays in the Norco.

Final server specs:
Norco RPC-4220
3x Arctic Cooling F12 PWM Fans
2x Arctic Cooling F8 v2 PWM Fans
1x Arctic Cooling F11 Plus PWM CPU Cooler
Corsair RM1000 PSU
Xeon E3-1240 Processor (had to install this new processor since I wanted 8 threads, plus there was an incompatibility with ESXi and passthrough devices on Ivy Bridge architecture)
16GB Supertalent DDR3-1333 ECC Unbuffered RAM
Supermicro X9SCM Motherboard
3x IBM M1015's flashed to IT Mode
2x 250GB Samsung 850 Pro SSD's
7x 4TB Western Digital SSHD's
13x 2TB Western Digital Green HDD's
---
ESXi 6.0
VM1: Windows 8.1 x64 w/ MCE (for ServerWMC CableCARD support to serve the HTPC's via Emby Server)
VM2: TBD (thinking of adding a network management option here to monitor everything, send notifications, manage backups, etc)

I'm probably going to order 32GB of RAM sometime in the near future, since right now I have 4x4GB sticks. I only have 8GB dedicated to VM1 at the moment, since I want to give each OS at least 8GB. But, I want to give the file server 16GB, and maybe give two more VM's 8GB each. Not sure yet, but I love ESXi now.

I pretty much made a seamless transition from my old file server to the virtualized one. I installed the VM OS, then transferred all my data to the new server (~18TB worth), then installed all my programs and services to mirror the old one, then turned off the old server and changed the IP address of the VM server to match the old one. My security cameras, HTPC's, and other networked clients didn't even notice a difference.

The parity build speed of SnapRAID with the SSHD's was pretty good. I did ~18TB of data in 8 hours with dual parity.

[Mindovermaster Global Moderator]

Up and running! 

Server is 99% done. I transitioned everything from my old server to the new ESXi build.

Just in the process of adding the 24TB of storage from my old server to the new one. I should have ~40TB (with triple parity) when I format the old drives and append them to the SnapRAID array. As it sits, I have 20TB in there right now. I should be finished adding drives tomorrow so it fills up all the bays in the Norco.

Final server specs:
Norco RPC-4220
3x Arctic Cooling F12 PWM Fans
2x Arctic Cooling F8 v2 PWM Fans
1x Arctic Cooling F11 Plus PWM CPU Cooler
Corsair RM1000 PSU
Xeon E3-1240 Processor (had to install this new processor since I wanted 8 threads, plus there was an incompatibility with ESXi and passthrough devices on Ivy Bridge architecture)
16GB Supertalent DDR3-1333 ECC Unbuffered RAM
Supermicro X9SCM Motherboard
3x IBM M1015's flashed to IT Mode
2x 250GB Samsung 850 Pro SSD's
7x 4TB Western Digital SSHD's
13x 2TB Western Digital Green HDD's
---
ESXi 6.0
VM1: Windows 8.1 x64 w/ MCE (for ServerWMC CableCARD support to serve the HTPC's via Emby Server)
VM2: TBD (thinking of adding a network management option here to monitor everything, send notifications, manage backups, etc)

I'm probably going to order 32GB of RAM sometime in the near future, since right now I have 4x4GB sticks. I only have 8GB dedicated to VM1 at the moment, since I want to give each OS at least 8GB. But, I want to give the file server 16GB, and maybe give two more VM's 8GB each. Not sure yet, but I love ESXi now.

I pretty much made a seamless transition from my old file server to the virtualized one. I installed the VM OS, then transferred all my data to the new server (~18TB worth), then installed all my programs and services to mirror the old one, then turned off the old server and changed the IP address of the VM server to match the old one. My security cameras, HTPC's, and other networked clients didn't even notice a difference.

The parity build speed of SnapRAID with the SSHD's was pretty good. I did ~18TB of data in 8 hours with dual parity.

<snip>

What good are the locks if you keep your key inserted?

[Crisp]

 

 

 

Where'd you get that pfSense sticker?

[wiretap]

 

What good are the locks if you keep your key inserted?

The main rackmount glass door that covers all the devices in the rack has a lock that I use. Those rackmount cases came with the locks, but I really don't use them. You can't remove the door unless you remove the rest of the front of the case.

Where'd you get that pfSense sticker?

From the pfSense webstore. 

[BetaguyGZT]

There's a guy on YouTube named Maxxarcade here in Michigan, and he's got a home file server setup a lot like that but it's a single-head rack. Pretty interesting how the whole system is put together. I mention Maxxarcade simply because he shows how that is done in his videos, especially the OS, and one won't break the bank putting it all together. That's what your setup reminded me of, Wiretap.