Hacked NAS & HTPC

[Jeci]

Morning Chaps,

So hopefully this is going to be a little bit different for you all to feast your eyes on...

This build log is actually two "build" logs in one, aren't you lucky! I use the term "build" as one of the machines is prebuilt HP N40L, that i'm doing some hacks to and populating with drives, I thought I might as well document it as it could be helpful to others.

So here's a picture of 70% of the components:

• HP N40L Microserver
• Netgear GS105UK + 3x10M Cat6e + 1x2M Cat6e
• Seagate 500GB 2.5"
• Toshiba 250GB 2.5"
• 3x2TB WD Reds
• Praeton LD964
• Lian Li PC-Q03
• Nexus Doubletwin
• XFX HD 5450

Not pictured (as it's not actually arrived yet) is:

• Intel Celeron G550
• Asus P8H61-I LX
• 8GB 1600mhz Corsair DDR 3
• be quiet! BN134 350W Power Supply

So as i've said this build log is going to document a couple of different builds:

HTPC - This is going to be a mITX based build housed in the Lian Li PC-Q03, it's going to be a dual core machine, with 8GB's of RAM, 2x2.5" HDD's (one for OS, and one for local storage).

NAS - This is going to be built into the N40L, it's going to house the 3x2TB WD Reds, i'm also going to swap the stock fan out for the noctua fan, furthermore i'm going install a hacked bios on the N40L, which will give me full AHCI speeds on the internal Sata port, and the esata port (giving further expansion capability). I'm going to mount one of the HDD's in the 5.25" bay at the top of the case, using the nexus doubletwin making it easier to expand storage later on. I'm going to be installing FreeNas on the system and have that running off of a USB Thumbstick, so ultimately i'm going to have 6x2TB WD Reds running in a RAIDZ1 array.

Lastly i've got the 5 port Gigabit switch which i'm going to be connecting my desktop, HTPC, NAS, TV to, and then hooking it up to my shi**y sky router, hopefully resulting in a seemless streaming!

I'll be building it this weekend if all of the parts arrive in time, so ready yourselves for lots of pictures!

 

[Anox]

Seems like an interesting Idea to use by gutting a proliant server like that!

 

[PsychoDuck]

Your N40L build is very similar to what I have just put together but I am running the N40L with 5 x 2TB WD reds, 4 in the hot swap bays and another in the 5.25" bay enclosed in a removable drive tray. FreeNAS wasnt the easiest thing in the world to set up correctly, I would recommend running ECC memory and using ZFS for the file system with some level of redundancy. I have to say that overall im pretty impressed and getting 90MB/s read/write speeds over gigabit network which makes my old Qnap NAS look silly.

 

[Jeci]

So I might have gotten a little carried away... After the rest of the components arrived today I spent my day working from home building the kit up!

I've got the HTPC all put together, and it's stealthily silent.

With all of the drives in it the server is significantly noisier, which is a little dissapointing, I will be moving it into a nearby cupboard I think.

Build pictures are incoming.

 

[Jeci]

Pictoral update:

Replacing the fan in the N40L:

Installing drives in the N40L:

7.25TB's of Goodness installed:

The Praeton LD964 looked a little suspicious, there appeared to be what looked like glue holding the heatsink to the heat pipes - Does anyone else think it looks a little suspicious:

HTPC bundle put together and looking good:

It's soooo small, awwww:

Testing that it boots:

Lian li cases are so gorgeous:

I had to take the heatsink off of the RAM to make space for the XFX 1GB HD5450, even with them taken off the card isn't fully seated, going to leave it for a while and see how it performs:

Mini storage:

Please don't judge my cable management, this case is literally impossible to make look tidy:

Side by side:

FreeNas up and running:

XBMC hooked up via CIFS share over the gigabit switch, no speed issues whatsoever, although I only seem to get about 12MB/s transfer speeds, a little dissapointing but everything works at the moment, so maybe i'll tinker around with it when I get a chance:

 

[coolamasta]

Looking good bud but surprised you aren't seeing very good I/O speeds, those WD Red's are fast drives and with the ACHI Bios mod (did you use TheBay's one?) then I would expect so see much faster speeds!

Hopefully you will find out what it is though

 

[Jeci]

I followed the process as described here, and used the bios linked:

http://homeservershow.com/hp-proliant-n40l-microserver-build-and-bios-modification-revisited.html

Within the modified bios I made the following changes:

From the MAIN Screen I went to => Chipset Menu => Southbridge Configuration => SB SATA Configuration => and set the following:

• OnChip SATA Channel [Enabled]
• OnChip IDE Type [IDE or Legacy IDE](1)
• SATA IDE Combined Mode [Disabled] — sets Ports 4 & 5 to use AHCI
• SATA EPS on all PORT [Enabled](2) — sets all Ports to be external SATA Ports
• SATA Power on all PORT [Enabled]

I'll try in the owners thread and see if they've got any suggestions, it is worth noting that i'm running the drives in a RaidZ array, but I would have expected to see 60MB/s speeds as a minimum.

For anyone wondering, to stream a moderately compressed 1080p rip (~20GB), you need about 20 Mb/s to maintain a jitter free viewing experience.

 

[Emlyn_Dewar]

What's the noise like on that BeQuiet PSU?

 

[randal]

CIFS is probably the performance culprit here.

Nice builds btw.

 

[GeezerButler]

Sure everything's running at Gigabit speeds? I had a problem with my NAS performance until I realised I'd used a CAT5 rather than CAT5e patch cable for one of the links.

Also, not sure if Jumbo frames would help your rates?

 

[PsychoDuck]

Running the same setup with the modified bios, getting 90MB/s read/write with a 4 drive RAIDZ-1 array, and 110MB/s with a single 2TB WD red drive set up as UFS. I believe there is also a performance hit for using 4 drives in RAIDZ-1 due to the way the data is partitioned, ideally it should be an odd number of drives.

 

[Jeci]

What's the noise like on that BeQuiet PSU?

The PSU is very quiet indeed, not completely in audible but quiet enough. Although I don't know if its my CPU cooler causing most of the noise...

CIFS is probably the performance culprit here.

Nice builds btw.

Thanks mate.

Sure everything's running at Gigabit speeds? I had a problem with my NAS performance until I realised I'd used a CAT5 rather than CAT5e patch cable for one of the links.

Also, not sure if Jumbo frames would help your rates?

I'm using cat6e throughout, I'm a little disappointed in this switch, can't seem to find its addressing to access the mgmt web ui. So I think I'm going to be trading it in for a different model...

Running the same setup with the modified bios, getting 90MB/s read/write with a 4 drive RAIDZ-1 array, and 110MB/s with a single 2TB WD red drive set up as UFS. I believe there is also a performance hit for using 4 drives in RAIDZ-1 due to the way the data is partitioned, ideally it should be an odd number of drives.

I need to definitely have a talk with you to see where our differences are! I enabled write cache in the bios, but that didn't help.

I tried enabling read ahead in freenas but that didn't have any impact, so thoroughly frustrated at the moment.

 

[kerrgreg]

I'm using cat6e throughout, I'm a little disappointed in this switch, can't seem to find its addressing to access the mgmt web ui. So I think I'm going to be trading it in for a different model...

The GS105 isnt a managed switch. So it wont have a management IP/web interface or anything management features.

 

[Jeci]

A I've still got the speed issues over the network although they're not causing any streaming issues to a single device.

I've ensured that gbps is enabled on the HTPC, so all I've got left to tinker with is the FreeNAS box, so I'm going to start looking into possible tuneables etc.

This post is more around my tinkering with XBMC & Catalyst Control Center and the settings I've used:

1. Disable everything in CCC Video/Quality other than "Enforce Smooth Video Playback"
2. Enable DXVA2 and select DXVA as Render method and disable everything else in XBMC system/video/playback
3. Disable "Use fullscreen window rather than true fullscreen" in XBMC system/system/video output
4. Ensure that CCC is set to refresh rate of 59Hz

 

[Jeci]

I've managed to get speeds more in line with what I was expecting.

I seem to get peaks around ~100MB/s both read/write, average speeds seem to be around 90MB/s.

I'll upload my Freenas tuneables so people can copy these if they'd like - the issue seemed to be with a cable! Even though they're all CAT6E, and were all purchased from the same supplier, one just didn't seem to perform the same as the rest.

 

[Jeci]

I thought it was time for a little update, now that things are pretty much all finished off and setup/working/non-buggy etc.

I've got all the services configured on XBMC, still struggling for it to get TV shows recognised, but i've got airplay working:

Remotes working on both ipad and iphone:

Here's the final setup:

I've got a Q Acoustics 2070Si on it's way over either today or tomorrow, i'll snap up a pic when it's arrived and I need sort out what i'm doing for rear speakers:

• Move current 2020i's to rears and get stands for them, replacing the void up front with the 2050i floorstanders
• Buy a second pair of 2020i's & stands for the rears

Any suggestions?

 

[Jeci]

The time has come for expanding my server - So I went ahead and brought another 2TB drive, with the expectation that I could plop it in my server and extend my volume, building an 8TB RAIDZ array (6TB usable)....

I was massively mistaken.

Looks as though the easiest and most efficient way of expanding this raid volume (ignoring the process of adding a new vdev to the zpool and rebuilding the array), would be tearing it down, backing up my data & rebuilding the array.

If i'm going to be doing that, as I don't want to do it again any time soon, I'll be max'ing out my server and purchasing another 2 x 2TB drives (totalling 6 x 2TB drives). As i'm getting to a relatively large number of drives I'll probably be migrating over to RAIDz2 as well. So i'll only end up with 8TB usable.

At my current rate of filling storage, that might just last me until the end of the year. At which point i've decided i'm going to get something like this: