Anyone have a Blade Server Setup at home?

Gimpymoo · 27 Apr 2007 at 19:22

For a bit of fun and as a personal project, im wanting to fully network my house, although wanting to be a little eccentric about it so bear with me.

I have a considerable sized loft and am wanting to install a blade server for the following reasons:

A: They look cool
B: Lots of flashing lights

Only kidding.

The main reason is to enable the family to share data easier rather than using the current ad-hoc method. The ability to share music and films from a server in the home would have its advantages and would pretty much be unlimited in size as installing new HDD's would be a doddle.

Also, having the data in a centralised point would make it easier to host a website from home for friends and family etc without the need to upload to a host plus I would have the all the space I require. Also, the running of email servers etc would also be easier as would the monitoring of network traffic etc as to keep an eye on the young ones as they get a little older.

Am also looking to stream TV over IP on the network as well.

Would be wanting to utilise roaming profiles on the network as to put less strain on the client PC's. Im also hoping this would make file admin a lot easier to.

House to be Networked with Cat5e which I think should be adequate.

Any links to good suppliers of blades and racks which do not breach forum rules would be appreciated.

Anyone currently have a similiar setup?

Any advice appreciated as im sure this is going to be a long and often painfull journey, especially as ive never setup a centralised network before

m_cozzy · 27 Apr 2007 at 19:35

tbh you dont really need a rack of blade servers fro a home network. Just a single server with large disk capacity is more than enough for filesharing/email etc etc.

oddjob62 · 27 Apr 2007 at 19:37

A single blade (with the chassis) would cost you over 2 grand iirc. Bit of a cost for a home network. You can do everything you mention on a server costing half that amount.

fini · 27 Apr 2007 at 19:38

Agreed. From what you've said you need a relatively old computer, in a big case with a RAID controller and a stack of hdd's.

Actually, you should be able to get away with a NAS for most of that...

fini

K.C. Leblanc · 27 Apr 2007 at 19:44

Blades don't make any sence unless you need at least five servers. And unless you're the Sultan of Brunai I really don't think you've got enough PCs to warrant that. You have to have the blade station even if you only have one server (and often the require a special power socket because they use more then 13amps)

Also they are very poor for storage, since they often only have space for one of two hard drives.

For domestic use you'll be fine with a standard PC in a big case with loadsa hard drives (and possibly a raid card). Or if you want a proper server either get a tower one or a rackmount one (not a 1u one because they also don't have much space for drives).

We've just got an HP proliant DL380 G5 at work (with all the extras it cost about £2500), which takes 8 2.5 inch SAS drives.

What ever you get, get a a lot of ram, since it sounds like you want to try stuff out. So get VMware server(edit ) (which is free) and you'll be able to run several operating systems at the same time.

If you do buy a rack mont server make sure the cabinet you buy for it is deep enough. Most smaller cabinets are only designed for switches which are much shallower.

Gimpymoo · 27 Apr 2007 at 19:45

I agree with the comments made.

Didnt realise the blade servers were soo much although after looking, I nearly fell off my chair.

Gonna downgrade to a rackmount server

I like the idea of running several OS's at the same time.. would have many uses if configured correctly.

Topgun · 27 Apr 2007 at 19:59

On another note, isn't a computer in the loft a fire risk?

Gimpymoo · 27 Apr 2007 at 20:03

Good point.

May get a water sprinkler installed over the server.

Wouldnt most servers detect something is wrong and switch off though before the point of a fireball occuring?

oddjob62 · 27 Apr 2007 at 20:05

Gimpymoo said:
I like the idea of running several OS's at the same time.. would have many uses if configured correctly.

One decent server and VMWare is all you need.

Gimpymoo · 27 Apr 2007 at 20:14

Regarding adding additional HDD's, is it possible to cluster HDD's in a cabinet and then simply connect them to the server?

oddjob62 · 27 Apr 2007 at 20:17

Gimpymoo said:
Regarding adding additional HDD's, is it possible to cluster HDD's in a cabinet and then simply connect them to the server?

Yes, usually connected directly with SCSI or with fibre channel

Gimpymoo · 27 Apr 2007 at 20:24

From what I understand, SCSI is still the preferred weapon of choice for most servers even after all these years.

Not used SCSI since I got my first CD/RW.

A testament to good old fashioned reliable technology and not changing for the sake of it.

K.C. Leblanc · 27 Apr 2007 at 20:39

Gimpymoo said:
A testament to good old fashioned reliable technology and not changing for the sake of it.

It's changed a bit, for a start you don't have to [expleative denoting urine] about with terminators or ids.

Avalon · 27 Apr 2007 at 21:12

If you want a LOT of drives on a single machine consider trying to track down an old Abit IT7 ... I kept my old board simply because it will make Filezilla one day soon,only down side is it's IDE not SATA. With HD's hitting 1TB and it's support for 12 devices i'm sure you can see the attraction

bigredshark · 27 Apr 2007 at 21:47

Gimpymoo said:
From what I understand, SCSI is still the preferred weapon of choice for most servers even after all these years.

Not used SCSI since I got my first CD/RW.

A testament to good old fashioned reliable technology and not changing for the sake of it.

not any more, fibre channel for the high end or e-sata for the low end is the standard these days really. We've got a few SCSI connected arrays hanging around (mainly HP MSA20s) but they're being phased out now...

Gimpymoo · 27 Apr 2007 at 21:50

Are the e-sata controllers more expensive than the SCSI ones?

Beansprout · 27 Apr 2007 at 22:36

You don't need a rackmount. You might not even need SCSI.

Just buy a normal, every day system and throw a bunch of drives in, probably with some form of RAID. Sorted :cool:

bigredshark · 27 Apr 2007 at 22:53

Gimpymoo said:
Are the e-sata controllers more expensive than the SCSI ones?

Generally they're cheaper, and they're starting to be integrated on motherboards as well. Certainly they'll be cheaper than a decent SCSI controller...and the drives will be cheaper too.

Gimpymoo · 27 Apr 2007 at 22:59

Beansprout said:
You don't need a rackmount. You might not even need SCSI.

Just buy a normal, every day system and throw a bunch of drives in, probably with some form of RAID. Sorted

I dont know why, but even if I built my own, I dont think I could trust a desktop to be as reliable.

If im going to do it, may as well do it properly.

Besides, once ive set one up, it will last a VERY VERY VERY long time with probably only HDD's required as upgrades.

bigredshark · 27 Apr 2007 at 23:06

If you actually want a real server, then HPs DL380/ ML370 series are very very good indeed, you can get 2 dual core xeons in them, which will run a lot of virtual machines. They're also wonderfully reliable...

Probably overkill for home though, unless you're using it for development work and can justify it as a work expense, any HP server should do you though, they're all pretty trouble free.

Otherwise, IBM are worth a look.

Dell are, predictably enough, dodgy in the extreme, we have 300+ HPs (mostly DL360 / 380s) deployed and 30 or so Dell machines. It's very telling that we've had 12 faults with the Dells this year so far and 4 with the HPs...

HP are also quicker to fix generally...