Coolamasta's new home NAS & rack build :-)

[coolamasta]

Firstly would like to take the opportunity to say a massive thanks to Andy from OcUK for sorting me out some discount on 4 x 3TB Western Digital Red drives and a Seasonic 80+ Gold PSU, many thanks mate

So to cut a long story short I was using a HP Microserver as my home NAS with 4 x 2TB drives in for storage un-raided, there was also a Crucial M4 64GB SSD (OS) and a pair of 2.5" 500GB's for backup and while initially it was great because of the low power consumption and small footprint it didn't have much oomph behind it being just a 1.5ghz dual core.

I started using Plex as my media server because it has a server back end and multiple client front ends, I run plex on 3 HTPC's, an iPad 3 and 2 Android phones and I found that when streaming to the iPad and Android phones the video has to be transcoded on the fly which quite frankly the poor little CPU in the HP Microserver couldn't handle resulting in jumpy un-watchable media

I decided that I need a newer, faster NAS which still has a low power consumption, I also wanted to have a reasonably good looking install, I currently have a 12u rack in my "office" at home (small bedroom converted) I have ran all my network cables back to this room and up into the back of this rack, below is a pic of how its been looking for the last year or so

Over last couple of months I collected various parts ready to build my new NAS and decided to go for proper rack-mount cases as I already had a pair of 4u 450mm rack-mount cases sat spare, my only issue is that my 12u rack is 450mm from front to back so the cases will not fully go in at all so I have decided to get rid of the 12u and build my own pair of smaller racks!
I will be using MDF and instead of going 12u tall im going to do 2 x 8u wide so the 8u on the right will hold both my rack-mount servers (other 4u server is my VMware ESXi server) and the 8u on the left will hold the power and network gear, much more to come with this soon once I've done my calculations and been to B&Q to get some wood cut!...

So back to the new NAS - its now built and im currently configuring it and playing with the RAID settings, I have gone for a Raid-5 configuration so will be getting 8.18TB of usable space from the 4 x 3TB Red's, im going to stick with default 64KB stripe size and have a play with the read-ahead, read through, write through and write back settings to see what I/O I can get, will report back soon

Spec of the NAS is:

• 4U Rack mount case
• MSI H77MA-G43 s1155 Motherboard
• Intel i3 2120 CPU @ stock 3.3ghz
• Kingston Hyper DDR3 RAM 4 x 4gb @ stock 1600mhz
• Seasonic G series 360w '80 Plus Gold' PSU
• LSi 8-port 2960i RAID Controller with 256mb Cache (Need a BBU!)
• 4 x Western Digital 3TB "Red" (Raid edition) Harddrives
• Icy Box IB-545SSK Tray less 5 Bay HDD enclosure
• Crucial M4 64GB SSD for OS & Plex server
• WD Green 2TB HDD for general dumping group/PC backups/DL's etc
• Intel Pro 1000 PT PCIe Server NIC

There is a 120mm inlet fan at low speed, the top panel expansion card arm holder thing I've modded to hold an 80mm fan to breeze air over the RAID controller heatsink as that sucker gets hot!

Anyway Pics!...

Plenty more to come!

 

[coolamasta]

Yeah plenty of space in these cases, about the same space as an Antec 300 on its side, its purely for personal use at home for media streaming, file storage, training and testing

Getting some nice speed results from the RAID array, will get some screenshots up soon

 

[coolamasta]

Cheers bud, well I am pretty shocked at the speed of this array!

Below are the results of the array in a RAID 5 using the following config:

Stripe Size:- 64KB
Read Policy:- No Read Ahead
IO Policy:- Direct IO
Write Policy:- Write Through (was using 'Always Write Back' but need BBU)
Access Policy:- Read Write

I have 1 problem though and that is I don't have a BBU (Battery Backup Unit) installed which means that having the Write Policy set to 'Always Write Back' is dangerous because if there is a power failure then it will most likely cause data corruption and mess up the array and give me a massive headache!

I currently have set the Write Policy set to 'Write Through' which will get rid of the risk but it has dropped my write speeds to less than a quarter of what they are above, mad how much difference it makes! The BBU is about £140 so I will be getting one next month I think as I can't deal with 40-50MB/s write speeds!

(Screen shots below are with 'Always Write Back' turned on)

More to come...

 

[coolamasta]

I've also not come across Plex before. My HTPC has Vista on it, so I've recently moved away from Windows Media Centre and the plug in "Media Browser". We found that quite intuitive to use, but Media Browser only works on 7, not Vista, so we had to give that up as a bad idea. Anyway, now use XBMC which is OK, but seems to struggle in reading music video tags (I've got 1000+ music videos) and keeps on timing out using the default add in.

What do you use?

I never got on with WMC and the Media Browser plugin so I used XBMC for a while then I discovered Plex and was VERY impressed and have been using it ever since! You install the server back end on the machine where your media is located, tell is where you data is and categorise it as you wish then it will go off and pull down all the artwork/posters/info online.

You then install the front end clients on your HTPC's, Apple and Android devices, it will automatically find your server when you open Plex and then you just need to tweak your settings, turn on HD decoder etc etc and install a nice looking skin (PlexAeon is the best).

What I love about it is you can be sat downstairs watching something, stop it, shut it down, go up to bedroom HTPC or another device such as an iPad and then just resume watching your program/film

Try it mate, its free and trust me you wont turn back once you have it set up as you want it! Oh also a tip - install the server client on a SSD as the artwork comes up instantly when you are flicking through your media

 

[coolamasta]

Did you try our Plex over the weekend then mate?

I feel your pain with the array build time as well, took mine 2.5 days to initialise which I couldn't believe but then I suppose it has 12TB worth of drives to sort out, 3TB of that being the R5 parity drive which is a fair bit I suppose lol

What make you go for 128k stripe over the default 64k out if interest bud?

 

[coolamasta]

Out of interest - is the LSI card a sata 3 or 2 model?

I can;t find reference to a 2960, only a 9260. Which one is it please?

http://www.lsi.com/products/storagecomponents/Pages/6GBSATA_SASRAIDCards.aspx

I'm wondering whether I'll get any more performance out of the highpoint card by adding more drives, or whether I'd be better investing in a pro-card. My card is http://www.highpoint-tech.cn/usa/rr2680.htm#top

As for Plex - didn't get chance to install it. I was working on a SQL server build and that seemed to take an eternity to get all the updates down and installed for Windows Server 2008 and SQL server. I've not seen all 12gb of memory on my desktop machine in use until yesterday - it was quite underwhelming :|

Ah my bad, must have made a typo its a LSi 9260 8i Sata III controller, I think most of the speed comes form the I/O on these new WD Red drives more so than the raid card, when I first got the card I tested 3 x 250gb Seagate desktop drives on it and was hitting around 220Mb/s read which I suppose is why im so surprised how much faster these Red drive are working!

Virgin came round and delivered my new router (I think it's called a superhub) as well as the new TIVO box. Very impressed with the TIVO's ability to rewind "LIVE" TV. We missed the start and end of a film last night (A perfect murder) and was able to wind it back to see both. Nice.

I've now installed Plex media server on my media server, and added my movies, music vids and music. It's chugging away doing something, and I have to say, on the movies at least, it seems to be a loser match than XBMC's engine(s). I'll install the client on the HTPC a bit later on and see what it looks like.

Any tips? There's not a whole lot of plugins obvious on the main site. What do you use?

Ah nice work, Tivo is awesome and yeah I got the Virgin Superhub too and can confirm it sucks so I have put it into "Modem only mode" and use a decent Draytek router/firewall instead

How you getting on with Plex anyway, I know sometime the movie matches can be bit of a pain but out over 300+ I only had about 10 not work or display the wrong cover in a different language or something. There is an option to change where it pulls down its cover/info data from, Plex have huge forums which are helpful as well for reporting bugs and getting tips.

I literally use the Plex client with PlexAeon skin on my HTPC's which I have set up to how I want it and im very happy with the results, it does take a bit of playing around with and tweaking though but once done is great

 

[coolamasta]

Nice case and Nice server, looks huge but seems perfect for home enetertainment, considering it has a 12TB total disk space, I would pay for something similar to that for atleast two thousand pounds. 16GB of RAM? nice, honestly, that has to be the best media server I have seen. Nice job and weldone, how much did it cost?

Thanks bud, the case isn't that huge, about the same size as an Antec 300 on its side, total usable space is about 8.2 TB as the drives are in a Raid-5 array so the capacity of 1 drive is lost for parity (resilience) but I also have a standalone 2TB drive in the 5th drive bay for backups so there is a total of 10TB of usable space at the moment

I will work out at some point how much it cost, wouldn't be as high as 2k though, I estimate around the £1400 mark as I bought the Raid controller second hand instead of £450 of whatever they go for new!

how loud is that icybox drive caddy? I'm looking for some 5 into 3 drive bay adapters but noise is a real concern.

Doesn't seem very loud to be honest, it has a noticeable higher pitch tone with the lid off but when enclosed its nothing to complain about, the 80mm exhaust fans make more noise which are annoying and something I need to look at soon...

Coola - sorry for the hi-jack. Any progress with the build to report?

Not a lot else with the NAS server itself yet mate but got my MDF cut to size at B&Q yesterday ready to make my new enclosure, pics to follow shortly

 

[coolamasta]

Started building the new twin 8u rack this weekend to replace the old metal 12u rack, one side will house the 2 x 4u NAS and VMware servers and the the other side will be for the networking equipment etc, here are some progress pics.

 

[coolamasta]

I've got a D-Link router which has been brilliant - I used it for eons (I think it's the DIr-655) before my penultimate Virgin router was put in place. Top tip with using another router. I'll see if the superhub continues to give grief - I liked the D-Link because you could assign fixed IP addresses to MAc addresses, and then ip filter based on that defined range - I can't think of a securer way of doing stuff than that. Wireless-schmireless. Cat 5e all the way!

Regarding Plex, its..... adequate. Nice clean feel, which for me felt more welcoming than XBMC. Both are good products, especially when you consider they are non commercial products. Plex server also seems to work fine with my streamium stereo, so that's a bonus. I do miss WMC, specifically the media browser plug in, that had the right feel for me, and to jump around long lists of films (708!) and music videos (2011!!!!) it was ideal - you just start to type the name and it finds as you type. Simple, but effective. It also grouped films in folders as a single film, so if a film is in 2 parts, then it would recognise them as one film, and play both parts. Is that possible in Plex? Maybe I should register with their forums rather than taking over your build log. My bad. Sorry!

A lot say the VM router is OK but I also hear a lot of moaning about them, main reason I put it into modem only mode and use a separate router was for a better Firewall with DoS and SSL VPN so I can remote into my home network with my laptop from anywhere, I've even used it to steam plex content although I have to take a hit on quality with HD films as I do not have enough upload bandwidth (3Mb/s) but Plex will Transcode it on the fly to a lower quality which is still watch-able on a laptop screen

Like you say Plex and XBMC are both great systems, I never used WMC much as I just didn't like the feel of it but saying that I didn't mess about with the plug-ins much. What does it for me with Plex is mainly the fact you have a server back end as I connect a good 5+ devices to it and it will show what I have watched and what I haven't also I can stop watching something on 1 device and continue it on another.

Yeah its worth having a look around on the Plex forums and asking a few questions about things like the films in 2 halfs etc, im sure there are loads of great plug-ins for it that I don't know about!

 

[coolamasta]

Not had much chance this week to work on the cabinet but I have mocked up the 8u rails, had to use the router to shave 5mm of each side of the central 18mm MDF section to get both rails in tighter to allow enough space either side for the rack mount equipment.

There are some holes in the back to allow cables to be passed between the 2 compartments when the back is on and also im playing with a vent to put in the top back to allow the exhaust fans from the servers to push out the warm air, might invert it so it looks a bit neater, also might paint the vent but before I do anything I need to jigsaw out the hole haha

Couple more pics for anyone interested!

 

[coolamasta]

This is actually a really good idea, as I'd really love to make a custom sized rack for the storage cupboard in my apartment - shame I can't cut wood for puddin' nor have the tools to try. Sub'd either way as it'd be interesting to see how you get on

Cheers mate, if you make the plans exactly to right sizes then just get B&Q to cut everything to size you'll be sorted, just need some screws and glue then I had to make a couple of cuts myself but I knew that, I just got B&Q to do all the big cuts as they are much neater than what I can do with a hand or jigsaw!!

Sweet! A few questions. Why did you choose the LSI card rather then a Dell PERC 6? How did you get the discount for the drives!? Where did you get yr glass rack as I'm looking for one?

Cheers, The LSI card is 6Gb/s Sata so it supports 3TB drives where as the Dell Perc 6 is older 3Gb/s Sata and will only support up to 2TB drives I believe, the LSI has had some great speed reviews, oh and I got it cheap

The black 12u cabinet I have isn't glass, its all metal with a front locking metal door which isnt fitted so not pictured, it was from eBay about £80 I think I paid for it, will be for sale soon as my new one is built if you are interested and local-ish and I can't post it lol

Really intrested too see where this is going as looking to make a rack my self as only want something small and neat, cable layout, surge, nas to go in there and my server

Cheers bud, going to try and get the thing fully built this weekend and painted up in place, will see how work and things go

 

[coolamasta]

Can;t wait to see your next batch of updates.

PS. The more I use Plex, the more I like it. Thanks for the top tip!

Good stuff mate, also your welcome

I've just been catching up with my foldering reading over on B**-tech and seen your dual cpu build..... no wonder this is progressing so slowly

Yeah got 3 projects on the go in total, plus 101 other things going in life, all fun and games though!

 

[coolamasta]

Couple more pics before I paint it, also not sure which way im going to put the grill yet (2 middle pics show either way)

 

[coolamasta]

Wow how much did you pay for your RAID card? Are you around London/south-east?

Got it for under £100 I'm Bristol based mate so err yeah not very close lol

 

[coolamasta]

First coat of Jet Black Matt paint although it looks more like a charcoal colour! Hopefully will get a bit darker with a second coat later tonight!

 

[coolamasta]

I am pretty pleased with how its turned out although I must admit the huge black cabinet does look a bit out of place in a light coloured room! I will be painting the side of the big base unit the same colour black and I will change the crappy tiles on top to something better suited then I will be re-painting the whole back wall again as well as its a bit of a mess now, so yeah please ignore the colour mish-mash for now!

Everything is running sweet and funnily enough it seems to run quieter than it used to in the metal 12u rack, think I am going to soundproof the servers a bit more internally and I need to add the front dust filter into the NAS box (when I find it!) and clean the dust filter on my VMware host!

Heres the pics I took last night although they are not final as I just wanted to see how everything fitted, also there are internal pictures of the NAS and my VMware ESXi 5.1 box.

There will be a few small changes and improvements being made and I still need to screw in the servers properly but ran out of cage nuts plus I need to install a twin port KVM
I removed the base from the Virgin SuperCrap, oops I mean 'SuperHub' so I could fit it in and I think it looks OK although the plugs come out the top so cant use the top 1U space

Anyway feel free to make any comments good or bad as im always open to a bit of constructive criticism

** Oh top pic was after it had a second coat hence the lines, its not streaky now dry! **

 

[coolamasta]

Thanks everyone for the nice comments

Lovely build and looks pro! Do you have a model number for the 4U rack mount case? Not sure if its supplied through OC so a model will be fine

Cheers

Thanks mate, cases are made by Codegen, mine are 450mm deep but you can get them in 500mm and 600mm plenty about if you get your Google on

Amazing!!! What you doing with the old rack then dude? Can you list what each item or a model?

I'm temoted to throw something togther. Need too house

Dell Power Connect 2724I
Raspberry Pi X2 (1 webserver, 1 firewall)
AP for home wifi
AP in CLIENT as back up if BB drops (will personal hotspot to my phone)
AP's links to customers (got a few i supply wifi too)
2 open reach modems for fiber
1 switch for the above modems
Draytek router
12TB NAS
WD my world book

I llike the space between each layer which is what i would do.

Thanks mate, the 12u rack is now for sale, need to put the front door back on, take some pics and get it up for sale! Nice spec list you have there, will be looking forward to a build thread on that!

And yes when I do all the server installs in work I always like to leave a U spare between equipment if I can to help air flow and stop heat build ups

amazing build mate, looks damn good did you use a roller or spray paint it?

also what are these brackets called?

Thanks bud, I roller'd it on with a small roller hence the texture but painting with a brush just didn't look very nice so I have to live with the texture lol, also brackets are from here - http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/PAIR-8U-1...Rackmount_Cabinets_Frames&hash=item3cc00d6bf7

I would say its one very neat and compact server rack! Everything but BIG! Great job. Really neat and tidy solution for all your network gear!

Cheers bud, even though its quite deep I would agree its pretty compact and fits on top my other home made unit pretty well

 

[coolamasta]

Few new pics from tonight, now added a 2-port Belkin USB/VGA KVM so I can get on the server console's if there are problems, now have cage nuts for the servers and sorted out the filters so all looking a bit better, the Microserver for baking up is now living else ware hidden away

 

[coolamasta]

Thanks guys, comments are much appreciated

 

[coolamasta]

Can you list what each item in your rack is please?

Its a simple set up,

LEFT SIDE

Virgin "SuperHub" (which is NOT super!) set in Modem only mode
APC Power Switch (turns power on/off to 8 outputs via a web page GUI)
Draytek Vigor 2955 Router (awesome VPN capabilities)
Dlink managed 16-port Gigabit Switch with dual SPF uplinks

RIGHT SIDE

VMware ESXi 5.1 server, i5 CPU, 16GB RAM running 6 VM's
14TB NAS (10TB usable space) i3 CPU, 16GB RAM dual NIC

Soon I will be starting to learn Cisco IOS so will be swapping out things with various Cisco routers and switches