dlockers
D
dlockers
Cross-post from Home & Garden as this was as much of a man-job as a techy job.
Lesson learned for you all: KEEP IT SIMPLE. This device was a pet project in learning ZFS and quickly became mission critical. When I moved out, my mum relied on internet and fortunately whilst PfSense was rock solid, several 'big updates' happened to the underlying OS that meant my PfSense needed significant interventions to keep it patched over the years, or simply it didn't get patched. The final update that killed it was in 2018 IIRC, and it stopped receiving auto-updates. I tried an intervention but being remote is a killer if it goes down. I was worried it would die and I'd be unable to get there for weeks. So switching to a standard Sky router has been a game changer for my peace of mind.
It was rock solid, but if I had lost another drive - all my families data would have been erased. Luckily most of it is binaries but a lot of data nonetheless.
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Sad day in the dLockers household. I officially shutdown the ZFS file server I built in my Mums attic around ~2008-2009.
Excuse the tech pics. I started off by reminding myself when I bought this stuff! This was one of the hard disks, vintage Oct 2009.
The RAID pool had been 'faulted' for about... 5 years. I had bought a new disc to fix the integrity but it had a different byte size and wouldn't work... so I crossed my fingers for 5 years.
The server itself was super cool. It had Intel VT-D, which meant I could "pass through" hardware to the VMs to avoid any performance loss. I was running my pfSense router on here, as well as a Windows Home Server from an MSDN key I had a decade ago. It then ran my Mums CCTV, as well as being a rock solid Plex server.
Uptime of 427 days! I think PfSense had grenade'd at some point as well, so no updates were possible.
I had to passthrough a NIC as the PfSense was my only router. The RJ45 went to the OpenReach modem. ROCK SOLID for 10 years.
The beast itself:
The Antec case was an OG Overclockers purchase IIRC. The bits on the left are the PoE Injectors for the CCTV cameras. I have cables coming here from the hallway, my bedroom, my brothers bedroom, my living room TV - all hacked together around age 18 (just after my fathers death).
The new server:
I bought a similar one with an i5 which I use in my home. Unfortunately I could only snag an i3 version so this is a bit underpowered but was dirt cheap. I need to compare the chip to the XEON1230 and see what I'm down on power!
And as with any job, you bite off way more than you can chew; luckily I had ordered a 5 port TP Link gigabit switch as I had kinda expected that I was out of ports (the Netgear gigabit switch there has been ROCK SOLID, and is powered by a butchered MOLEX connector from the PSU lol). I ended up having to finish the "migration" remotely...
... and I've just killed her boys. What a sad day
Lesson learned for you all: KEEP IT SIMPLE. This device was a pet project in learning ZFS and quickly became mission critical. When I moved out, my mum relied on internet and fortunately whilst PfSense was rock solid, several 'big updates' happened to the underlying OS that meant my PfSense needed significant interventions to keep it patched over the years, or simply it didn't get patched. The final update that killed it was in 2018 IIRC, and it stopped receiving auto-updates. I tried an intervention but being remote is a killer if it goes down. I was worried it would die and I'd be unable to get there for weeks. So switching to a standard Sky router has been a game changer for my peace of mind.
It was rock solid, but if I had lost another drive - all my families data would have been erased. Luckily most of it is binaries but a lot of data nonetheless.
---
Sad day in the dLockers household. I officially shutdown the ZFS file server I built in my Mums attic around ~2008-2009.
Excuse the tech pics. I started off by reminding myself when I bought this stuff! This was one of the hard disks, vintage Oct 2009.
The RAID pool had been 'faulted' for about... 5 years. I had bought a new disc to fix the integrity but it had a different byte size and wouldn't work... so I crossed my fingers for 5 years.
The server itself was super cool. It had Intel VT-D, which meant I could "pass through" hardware to the VMs to avoid any performance loss. I was running my pfSense router on here, as well as a Windows Home Server from an MSDN key I had a decade ago. It then ran my Mums CCTV, as well as being a rock solid Plex server.
Uptime of 427 days! I think PfSense had grenade'd at some point as well, so no updates were possible.
I had to passthrough a NIC as the PfSense was my only router. The RJ45 went to the OpenReach modem. ROCK SOLID for 10 years.
The beast itself:
The Antec case was an OG Overclockers purchase IIRC. The bits on the left are the PoE Injectors for the CCTV cameras. I have cables coming here from the hallway, my bedroom, my brothers bedroom, my living room TV - all hacked together around age 18 (just after my fathers death).
The new server:
I bought a similar one with an i5 which I use in my home. Unfortunately I could only snag an i3 version so this is a bit underpowered but was dirt cheap. I need to compare the chip to the XEON1230 and see what I'm down on power!
And as with any job, you bite off way more than you can chew; luckily I had ordered a 5 port TP Link gigabit switch as I had kinda expected that I was out of ports (the Netgear gigabit switch there has been ROCK SOLID, and is powered by a butchered MOLEX connector from the PSU lol). I ended up having to finish the "migration" remotely...
... and I've just killed her boys. What a sad day
