Summer Project

Well, adding the door to the rack has taken the back burner. Not quite as interesting as I want. However, I think I will need to replace the rack posts with the “square hole” type. I thought that having the telco-style rails – tapped screw holes – would be best but it turns out, and I should have known better – that most equipment rails now come configured for square holes. It is easier – quicker – to mount rails into square holes as you don’t have to, well, screw anything in. :-S

Those four rails cost $100… 🙁

So the summer project is… A new NAS!

As I have posted about over the past number of years, I have three NASes. The old Synology DS211j that I use for iSCSI storage for my VMware ESXi server, a Synology DS216+II for documents and photos and a Qnap TS-219P II for movies and music. Even for me, three NASes is a little excessive. Two deficiencies that I have are: 1) each of these units only has two drive bays – that obviously limits expandability and 2) each of the units only has one network port – which means that to share DLNA services (movies, music) I have to use IGMP proxying to go across subnets. Since I use DLNA, I need good trascoding ability. I also use Docker for the Synology controller and have some more ideas of things to do with Docker.

So, this has arrived:

On the bottom is a

  • Supermicro YS-6027R-3RF4+ chassis
    • 8 x 3.5″ hotswap drive bays
    • 2 x 3.5″ internal drive bays
    • 2 x 740 watt Platinum Power Supplies
  • Supermicro X9DR3-LN4F+ motherboard
    • 2 x Intel Xeon E5-2630 V1 Hex (6) Core 2.3GHzRAM
    • 32GB DDR RAM
    • LSI 9210-i8 HBA
    • 4 x Intel 1 Gbit/s onboard NICs
    • Onboard IPMI with KV

Phase 1 is to install FreeNAS. I have been messing around with ZFS, jails, etc. for the past month or so. I need to get some more disks; I have two 4 TB WD Reds, err…, ready. I need two more. Once that is done I can start removing the disks from the old Synology and Qnap NASes. But for now, I need to do some more experimentation.

On top are two Quanta S98J QSSC 1U rackmount server cases with 4 x 3.5 hotswap nays. They don’t have power supplies yet. They will be phase 2 of my plan. I will be adding another LSI HBA with two external (or more) SFF ports. On each of the Quanta’s I will be adding an external SFF port (like this) with a 4 cable SATA breakout. Of course, I have to find some affordable power supplies.

Once more note – Supermicro IPMI with KVM is awesome. Right up there with HP iLO or Dell PERC. It lets me sit in a comfortable recliner and watch TV.

About Mike Pelley

Let’s see… A little about me… I’ve been around information technology since 1983 with computers such as DEC Rainbows (weird machine – the standard DOS couldn’t format its own floppy disks – remember them? – and I had to format them on a friend’s IBM PC) to Radio Shack TRS-80 to Apple ][e and Apple //c in the beginning. I have programmed in 8-bit assembly language on 6502, FORTRAN and COBOL on IBM System/370 (and I still hate JCL), VAX BASIC and COBOL (and a weird and massive WordPerfect 4.0 macro) on DEC VMS (Alpha), C/C++ on Digital Unix (ALPHA), and C/C++, Perl (it may be powerful but I still hate it), PHP on Linux (Red Hat, Centos, Ubuntu, etc.). I have work with databases such as Digital RDB (later to become Oracle RDB), Oracle DBMS, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL and PostgreSQL on VAX, Alpha, Sun and Intel. Check out my professional profile and connect with me on LinkedIn. See http://lnkd.in/nhTRZe I still think that Digital created some of the best ideas in the world: VAX clustering, DSSI disks (forerunner to SCSI) and the Alpha processor (first commercial 64-bit processor – Red Hat screamed on an Alpha!). DEC just could not seem to be able to give air conditioners away to someone lost in the Sahara Desert! VMware is one of the best ways to get the most out of an x64 server. And I have tried Oracle VM, Virtual Box and Microsoft Virtual Server. Outside of that I am a huge military history buff starting in the early 20th century. I love Ford Mustangs (my ’87 Mustang GT was awesome) and if I had the money I would have a Porsche 928S4. If I had a lot of money I would have a Porsche 911 Turbo. I also play too much AmrA 3 Exile mod. Over 5,000+ hours... I have a wonderful son, Cameron. I have a long suffering (Do you really need all that computer junk?) wife, Paula. I live in Paradise, Newfoundland and Labrador.
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