Graduated from a microserver to running a Fujitsu server which serves as a host for various things; pfsense, xigmanas, pihole, Plex server and various Linux and windows VMs running on ESXi.
It was old, DDR3, and the Xeon is a lowly 1220, 4 core. And it's not a pleasure to work on when I want to change anything.
So I've been umming and ahhing about buying a more modern (but not new) HP or Dell. Then I stumbled across something a bit niche.
It was a Datto server which is really an ASRock rack, in a 1u pizza style case. Xeon-D2143 CPU, 64gb ram and a smattering of drives, spinning rust, SSD and nvme.
Plus it has two 10GBe, has built in remote KVM and management and enough onboard controllers for twelve drives.
And at 400ish quid I figured I couldn't build one for that.
Downside was it was noisy as **** being designed for a server room. But that's fine cos I had a plan.
The existing server had 4 drives in a raid 0+1 and an SSD, and this server came with 2 more, plus the SSD and nvme drives.
So I needed a case to take a menagerie of drives.
I gutted the Datto, and built it back up in a Fractal Node 804 case.
It's small but boxy, it's got a rudimentary fan controller to keep the noise down. And no RGB. Which is a plus point in my head.
Fired it up ok on the first attempt which was reassuring. TrueNAS found all the hardware and reported all ok.
What it also uncovered was a heat problem from doing the transfer to a new case.
The noisy ass 40mm fans were directed over the CPU which because this is a SOC also contains the drive, network and various other bits normally farmed off elsewhere on the motherboard.
But in the fractal it was hitting 85c pretty quick.
So I looked around for replacement coolers, looked on YouTube etc.
And in the end hotglued a spare 80mm fan straight onto the heatsink.
35c all day now and no discernible noise.
So plan then was to get VMWare up and running, transfer the drives from the old into it and see how it goes.
I had some upgrades on the way, 4x NVMe drives to see how fast an array it will support. The board does bifurcation and I grabbed an Asus card off eBay for cheap.
Voila..
4x 2TB NVMe usable directly by VMware, or presented to VMs using an RDM
And then I may try and find a cheap 10GBe switch, although most server load will be onboard VMs I think. But I love to tinker and this has scratched an itch that gaming simply isn't right now.
It was old, DDR3, and the Xeon is a lowly 1220, 4 core. And it's not a pleasure to work on when I want to change anything.
So I've been umming and ahhing about buying a more modern (but not new) HP or Dell. Then I stumbled across something a bit niche.
It was a Datto server which is really an ASRock rack, in a 1u pizza style case. Xeon-D2143 CPU, 64gb ram and a smattering of drives, spinning rust, SSD and nvme.
Plus it has two 10GBe, has built in remote KVM and management and enough onboard controllers for twelve drives.
And at 400ish quid I figured I couldn't build one for that.
Downside was it was noisy as **** being designed for a server room. But that's fine cos I had a plan.
The existing server had 4 drives in a raid 0+1 and an SSD, and this server came with 2 more, plus the SSD and nvme drives.
So I needed a case to take a menagerie of drives.
I gutted the Datto, and built it back up in a Fractal Node 804 case.
It's small but boxy, it's got a rudimentary fan controller to keep the noise down. And no RGB. Which is a plus point in my head.
Fired it up ok on the first attempt which was reassuring. TrueNAS found all the hardware and reported all ok.
What it also uncovered was a heat problem from doing the transfer to a new case.
The noisy ass 40mm fans were directed over the CPU which because this is a SOC also contains the drive, network and various other bits normally farmed off elsewhere on the motherboard.
But in the fractal it was hitting 85c pretty quick.
So I looked around for replacement coolers, looked on YouTube etc.
And in the end hotglued a spare 80mm fan straight onto the heatsink.
35c all day now and no discernible noise.
So plan then was to get VMWare up and running, transfer the drives from the old into it and see how it goes.
I had some upgrades on the way, 4x NVMe drives to see how fast an array it will support. The board does bifurcation and I grabbed an Asus card off eBay for cheap.
Voila..
4x 2TB NVMe usable directly by VMware, or presented to VMs using an RDM
And then I may try and find a cheap 10GBe switch, although most server load will be onboard VMs I think. But I love to tinker and this has scratched an itch that gaming simply isn't right now.
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