Project: Plutonium 3

Going down to the server room tonight to remove one 1tb drive which I sold, will take some pictures then... Also, I need to sell the other WD Green 1tb drive, looking for $200 Shipped...
 
Here are the pictures, remember, the cables are temporary, going to order a 1280ML soon....
Picture048-1.jpg


Picture050-1.jpg
 
That's awsome compared to my tiny little 120GB in my file server (one 80GB and 2 40's in RAID 1).

.. I'll eventually expand once I get it in a new case and/or some "new" drives.
 
Nice box. I hope you didn't get too many nicks and cuts on you hands with all those sharp edges. Those front covers are loose when new and don't know why they didn't take it off for you and put packing in there between the box and cover.

Have fun with the box. It is smaller than a Supermicro Pedistal server tho. Lighter also.
 
So I decided to go with the Adaptec 31605, and 16 Seagate perps, at least for now..
Well I finally cleared all the money needed, and placed an order with Newegg this morning, well 2 hours later I am looking for the ABM-800 Battery for the controller, and of course I find my controller at Ewiz for $706 versus the $820 Newegg wanted.. So I used the live chat and canceled my order.. But they said it can take 3-5 days to refund the money:(

A huge lesson learned here today, Newegg is 99% the cheapest source on items, but not this time and it is going to cost me more waiting time......
I feel like a total dumb*ss for this, I place a ton of orders and usually very well research things like this....
But at least I can get my 3 x 750s that I need to fill the array....

The other huge problem, is with only 16x 750s, I will only have 9tb in raid 6 or 10.2tb in raid 5, which is not a huge upgrade when considering that my current 6.2tb array is 99% full......
I think I will run some drives in a software raid 1 config for important stuff and keep my fully backed up tv on the 10tb array.... I really want to run raid 6, but loosing that 698gb of space from the array hurts.... But a 2 drive failure could really make my life suck.....
 
Nice work on the server, impressed by just how much you can cram into one system, 36 drives though never even entered my mind.

Now I know what I am going to do with my old Xaser III when it's getting replaced later this year, love that Shark case as well, wanted one of those since they released it and will be the case for my up and coming build.
 
Ok an update at last......

Been doing tons of thinking over the past week about how to beef this system up to a machine that can run 6-10 VM's 24/7.. Was thinking about copying Ockie's new Galaxy 5 mobo and cpus, but even less the costs of that, the Supermicro board used in his project, will NOT fit into Plutonium 3, I measured and the board would go way behind the drive back planes, which would not work.....
So I decided that in order to save money and still get to my goal of 8 VM's, I will do the following:
Going to order the Areca 1280DML from Ewiz....
Run the Supermicro (2) 8 Port SATA Controllers that I have in PCI-X slots....
Take the existing C2Q Q6600 G0 from my mainbox and put that in the server....
Dump 8GB ECC DDR2 RAM in the server to get those VM's running smoothly...
Get a good server mobo, with at least 1 PCI-X and 1 PCI-E x8 slot.....
Here are the choices for the motherboard:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131154
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182105

I am leaning towards the Asus, as I like that it has LSI RAID with 4 SATA and 4 SAS ports on the board.... Would bring me to a total of 48 SATA 2/SAS ports:)
I trust Supermicro's quality more then Asus, so please pipe in with your thoughts!!!
The good news, I only need the mobo/ram which is only $500, so not nearly as bad as the dual quad core setup I was thinking about..... Which means I may be able to completely "finish" this server by the end of January!!
I also got 2 more 750gb drives in today, brings me up to 15 x 750gb drives, almost to my needed goal of 20, in order to make the raid switch, I have to have 20 drives, to move the data over and then take the old array's drives and do them into the new array with OCE.......
Also need to decide which CPU cooler I will use, have three to choose from, Tuniq Tower, the existing Zalman 7700CU, or the factory Intel HSF, here again, help me choose, and this server will NOT be OCed no matter what, to much data at risk.....

I also decided that I want my 4 Raptors in the server for the VMware disk images.... Thinking either RAID 0, 10, or 5, probably will benchmark it to see what performs well without loosing any Parity...
 
Sweet and 8gb ram is a good choice for 6-8 VMs, i am wanting to turn my server into a 2-3 VM server with 4gb ram, athlon x2 and a barracuda 120gb running Windows server 2003 standard or maybe windows xp pro sp2 64bit but i am leaning more towards windows server 2003 standard.
 
Hey gang, got [h]ardware today...
Picture001-3.jpg


Look at all those SAS/SATA cables, cannot wait to test the onboard LSI controller:)
Picture003-3.jpg


8GB of ECC RAM, not nearly Ockie's 32GBs of ram dream, but should be enough to run my machine nicely:)
Picture002-3.jpg
 
jojo1224 said:
Have you gotten anymore hard drives?
Click to expand...

I have 4x Raptors, and I am up to 17x 750GBs, only 3 away from my target.... Plus the OS drive and its' mirror, brings me to grand total of 26 drives for stage 3 of this project, hopefully, that will last the next year, before I need more storage:)
Need to sell more gear, so please check out for thread....
 
Here are pictures of the motherboard upgrade process!
Getting the Quad Core with 8GBs of ram, as well as getting the sata controllers in PCI-X slots, my raid array write speed is 50-70% of 1Gbps networking, so I more then doubled proformance, does not really matter since I am going to the 1280ML in the next week....

The mobo/cpu:
Picture002-4.jpg


The HSF has been picked:
Picture004-3.jpg


Running on the "bench" for 48hrs, to burn in (memtest86, Orthos)
Picture005-2.jpg


Running Memtest86, took 10hrs to make 4 passes on all those GBs!!
Picture007-2.jpg


The board is in!
Picture009-2.jpg


A little burry, but those SATA/SAS connections, are in the perfect spot for the pass-through to the other side of the case:)
Picture010-2.jpg


Everything re-installed, waiting for that big brother, the Areca 1280ML!!!
Picture011-2.jpg
 
Looks awesome. I cant wait till i upgrade my server to an athlon x2 am2, 8gb ram, 4x 500gb in raid 5, CM stacker. And how much was the areca 1280ml?
 
jojo1224 said:
Looks awesome. I cant wait till i upgrade my server to an athlon x2 am2, 8gb ram, 4x 500gb in raid 5, CM stacker. And how much was the areca 1280ml?
Click to expand...

Have no picked it up yet, it is on the list, ewiz has it for $1050 when in stock, or Newegg has it is for $1150ish, so I hope ewiz gets it back!
 
Hey, why didn't you tell me you had those 1tb GP's for sale?!?!?!?! Man I would have killed for them.


Anyways, your build is looking good. Did your mini-sas cable come with the board? EDIT: It appears as if it did. Cool beans. Well for what it's worth, you can pick them up on ebay if you would like to have another matching set.
 
Ockie said:
Hey, why didn't you tell me you had those 1tb GP's for sale?!?!?!?! Man I would have killed for them.


Anyways, your build is looking good. Did your mini-sas cable come with the board? EDIT: It appears as if it did. Cool beans. Well for what it's worth, you can pick them up on ebay if you would like to have another matching set.
Click to expand...

I wish I would have known, I guess I assumed you had as many as you "needed"....

The board came with 2 sets of the mini-sas cables!! Although the onboard LSI SAS controller seems slow to me, 4x Raptors in raid 0, and I am only getting 137MB/s in HDtach, my Intel ICH8R was getting 160ishMBs in raid 0, and with only 3x Raptors!!! Cannot wait to get the Aerca!!
 
gjvrieze said:
I wish I would have known, I guess I assumed you had as many as you "needed"....

The board came with 2 sets of the mini-sas cables!! Although the onboard LSI SAS controller seems slow to me, 4x Raptors in raid 0, and I am only getting 137MB/s in HDtach, my Intel ICH8R was getting 160ishMBs in raid 0, and with only 3x Raptors!!! Cannot wait to get the Aerca!!
Click to expand...

A man can never have enough drives. Yeah, I would have taken them all off your hands.
 
Ockie said:
A man can never have enough drives. Yeah, I would have taken them all off your hands.
Click to expand...

Very true!!
Honestly, I was not very impressed with the 1tb GP's, I had one DOA, and I thought they were slow compared to Seagate 7200.10/11s or the Hitachi 1TB drives......

Ockie: do you use more then 24 1tb drives and then hotswap them as needed, (I saw your mainbox had a backplane)??
 
gjvrieze said:
Very true!!
Honestly, I was not very impressed with the 1tb GP's, I had one DOA, and I thought they were slow compared to Seagate 7200.10/11s or the Hitachi 1TB drives......

Ockie: do you use more then 24 1tb drives and then hotswap them as needed, (I saw your mainbox had a backplane)??
Click to expand...

All my boxes have backplanes :D Haha. Naw, I just stuff them wherever I can :)

I did have one DOA GP out of 17 or so, I didn't think thats too bad.
 
What was the reasoning behind getting the GP versions over the regular?
 
What size are your raptors? are you running them off the motherboard or off the controller card? same question with your OS drives.
 
Bar said:
What size are your raptors? are you running them off the motherboard or off the controller card? same question with your OS drives.
Click to expand...

The Raptors are 74GB 16MB Cache.... I want them in raid 0, 1/0, or raid 5, have to benchmark once the Areca 1280ML is in.....

I have the OS on a Seagate 80GB 7200.9, which I then mirror in Windows.....

The Raptors are on the LSI SAS controller at the moment, soon to be on the Areca card....

The OS is on the mobo sata, in ide mode....
 
I now have all 20 750GB Drives, just short the controller, raising funds for it, I have some Raptors up for sale in the FS thread here on [h], check them out, need to clear some more cash!!!! Decided that the Raptors are pointless for me, when my big array will get 800-100MBps, no need for a 10k RAID 0 array that gets 220MBps....
I basically went on strike from my job a week and a half ago, so I got my last check, which hurts this project:)
 
gjvrieze said:
I now have all 20 750GB Drives, just short the controller, raising funds for it, I have some Raptors up for sale in the FS thread here on [h], check them out, need to clear some more cash!!!! Decided that the Raptors are pointless for me, when my big array will get 800-100MBps, no need for a 10k RAID 0 array that gets 220MBps....
Click to expand...

Ahem?

ahh, well, I'll let it slide. You have 15 terabytes of storage.

:D
 
Sorry if its been asked, but how does this all fit together into the house? do you stream media from that server to a HTPC by the TV?.....thats alot of Effing hard drives, i can't grasp how u get so much stuff to fill those LOL
 
HD movies take up a hell of a lot of space. I was recently looking at downloading some HD movies, and one of them at 1080p was nearly 8GB :eek:. Even regular DVD's and TV adds up fast. I filled up my spare 80GB drive in less than a week with DVDs.

Looking forwards to your progress!
 
Dudeyourlame said:
Sorry if its been asked, but how does this all fit together into the house? do you stream media from that server to a HTPC by the TV?.....thats alot of Effing hard drives, i can't grasp how u get so much stuff to fill those LOL
Click to expand...

Ya, at the moment there are HTPCs around the house, although, I am trying to get my hands on a Sage TV HD Extender to replace the pcs..... And a backup is that the kids can watch on computers if they want to watch something and cannot agree on what....
 
Finally an update to post.

Got the needed 10 750GB drives to bring me to 20 750GB's!!!

Also raised the funds needed to order the Areca 1280ML from Newegg, and by God, it came down in price by over $100, so that was a nice bonus!!!

I will be ordering the Areca on Monday, after some money finishes transferring:)

But without further ado, here is some hardware p*rn to get us by!!!!

Picture002-5.jpg
 
Everything is ordered:)

Got the raid card from Newegg, Overnighted, so I should have it Tuesday, The ARC-6120 BBU from someone on Ebay (prolly going to be Friday, before it gets here), and the Kingston KVR533D2E4/2G RAM module for the controller cache, so we should be cooking with gas before the week is over:)

I will start a running total on parts here pretty soon, just want to "finish" things up, so I know where I am at!!!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top