treadstone
Gawd
- Joined
- Jan 25, 2010
- Messages
- 567
Thank you for checking out my build-log.
Server name:
The following picture will be replaced with a picture of my actual server once it is compeleted and up and running
The complete parts list for my new centralized home media server:
I know it has taken me quite some time to finally getting around to post this, so my apologies to those that have been waiting so patiently this entire time.
Note: Click on any image for a larger version.
Well, here we go... The build log...
11 JAN 2010
Items ordered:
20 JAN 2010
The server chassis arrived on it's own 26 x 40 inch skid...
I decided to assemble the server in the test lab at my company and once it's all put together I'm going to transport it home.
The shipping box measured 25W x 36D x 26H (without the skid) and weight in at 168 pounds (about 76.5kg)!!!
Located right under the shipping carton lid were 4 boxes containing the chassis accessories.
A sneak peek at the chassis after taking it out of the shipping box. The entire chassis was protected by a strong and rather large plastic bag.
At the bottom of the shipping box are the two 24 inch slide rails that come standard with this chassis!
The four boxes containing the accessories.
The content of accessory Box #1:
The content of accessory Box #2, #3 and #4:
A single hot-swap drive tray with the white 'air-blocking' plastic clip still in place.
Front view of the Chenbro RM91250 50-bay server chassis.
The top two drive slots are SATA only and are intended to be connected directly to the motherboard for use as system boot drives.
On the top left is the optical disk drive bay and above that are two USB connections, the reset, alarm mute and power button as well as the HDD activity, power, alarm, LAN1 and LAN2 LEDs.
Each of the 12 rows below contain a 4 port SAS/SATA backplane with a single SFF-8087 connector for connection to a storage controller.
Side/Back view.
Those build-in handles are EXTREMELY useful! Even in this state, the chassis is quite heavy and requires at least two to lift it out of the box and onto the work bench!
The back of the server.
The top portion contains the removable motherboard tray. Right below are four high-performance and hot-swappable 80mm fans and at the bottom, are two high-performance and hot-swappable 120mm fans along with the four hot-swappable redundant power modules.
The four hot-swappable power modules after I removed them from their cage.
Each power module has a 600W output rating and two Sunon PMD1238PQBX-A 38x38x28mm 15,000RPM 19CFM 5.8W 52.0dBA fans. Right below the handle on the left edge of each power module is a status LED (green = power ok, red = faulty module). The latch next to the IEC-320 power input connector in combination with the thumb screw is used to secure each module in the power module cage.
The power module cage and power distribution backplane. This cage is designed as a 3+1 redundant setup with a total output of 1620W.
One of the two high-performance and hot-swappable 120mm fans.
This is a Delta AFB1212SHE-F00 120x120x38mm 4,100RPM 190.5CFM 15.0W 55.5dBA fan with TACH output signal, but unfortunately no PWM control input.
The four high-performance and hot-swappable 80mm fans.
These are Delta FFB0812EHE-7N66 80x80x38mm 5,700RPM 80.2CFM 10.8W 52.5dBA fans with TACH output and PWM control input signals.
Each of the fan modules has it's own little 'mini-backplane' with a 10-pin card edge connector. Unfortunately, they don't utilize the PWM control signals even though the backplanes have all the necessary connections.
Looking inside the chassis from the back to the front after lifting the lid.
No tools required, just loosen two thumb screws and slide the lid back about 3/4 of an inch to lift it up.
A large sticker on the inside of the lid as a 'Chassis Quick Reference' guide.
The internal hot-swap fan tray. The tabs on top of the blue hot-swap fan modules are used to un-latch and pull-out the individual fan modules. The metal bracket actually consists of two brackets. One is mounted to the chassis and the second (to which the fan slots are attached) is mounted to the first via rubber mounts to isolate vibrations. There is also a chassis intrusion switch mounted to the fan tray bracket on the right hand side.
One of the internal hot-swap high-performance 80mm fans after removal from the fan tray. It's the exact same 80mm fan as those found in the back.
After removing 9 screws and removing the lid that covers the front portion of the chassis, the front panel PCB (LEDs, USB ports, switches and a processor to monitor ambient temperature and backplane signals and control the alarm beeper) as well as the fan monitor PCB (on the left) became accessible.
The connections of the front panel PCB (left to right):
A different view of the optical drive bay with the front panel PCB mounted on top of it. Also visible are the SFF-8087 connectors on the right hand side of the first three HDD backplanes.
The two-slot SATA backplane for the system drives.
Top down view between the internal fan tray and the backplanes (it's a bit messy in there with all those cables flying about).
Here is something I found rather interesting, they have the model number sticker on the INSIDE! Makes total sense doesn't it
28 JAN 2010
Items ordered:
In case you are wondering why I bought 52 drives, well here is how I intend to put them to use:
One of the WD20EADS 2TB green drives still in it's protective anti-static bag.
I mounted one of the drives in a drive tray to have a look at the fit and finish.
A close-up shot of the front of one of the drive trays. Located on the right side are two light pipes for the blue power LED (top) and the green activity/red fault LED (bottom). The actual LEDs are mounted on the backplanes.
Server name:
TBD (I'm still looking for a cool name...)
Total storage capacity: 100TB
Available storage capacity: 90TB+ (Will depend on configuration, more about that later...)
The following picture will be replaced with a picture of my actual server once it is compeleted and up and running
The complete parts list for my new centralized home media server:
- Case: Chenbro RM91250 9U 50-Bay Storage Center Server Chassis with 1620 Watt 3+1 Redundant Power Supply
- Motherboard: ASUS P7P55 WS SUPERCOMPUTER Motherboard
- CPU: Intel i7-860 2.8GHz LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor
- RAM: G.Skill F3-12800CL7D-4GBRM Ripjaw DDR3 1600MHz 4GB Dual Channel Memory Kit
- GPU: Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5450 1GB GDDR3 1600MHz DVI/HDMI/D-SUB PCI-E 2.0 Graphics Card
- RAID Controller: Areca ARC-1680i PCI-E x8 SAS RAID Adapter
- SAS Expander: 2 x HP 36-Port SAS Expander Cards
- ODD: Lite-On DL-8ATS SATA Slot Load Black Slim CD/DVD Burner
- HDD: 52 x WD20EADS 2TB 32MB SATA 3Gb/s Caviar Green Drives
- UPS: APC Matrix-UPS 5KVA XR 208V/240V in 120/208/240 Out with 3 x APC Matrix-UPS SmartCell XR Battery Packs
- O/S: TBD - Maybe Microsoft Windows Home Server V2 (when it finally gets released) or Windows Server 2008 R2 - More about this later
I know it has taken me quite some time to finally getting around to post this, so my apologies to those that have been waiting so patiently this entire time.
Note: Click on any image for a larger version.
Well, here we go... The build log...
11 JAN 2010
Items ordered:
20 JAN 2010
The server chassis arrived on it's own 26 x 40 inch skid...
I decided to assemble the server in the test lab at my company and once it's all put together I'm going to transport it home.
The shipping box measured 25W x 36D x 26H (without the skid) and weight in at 168 pounds (about 76.5kg)!!!
Located right under the shipping carton lid were 4 boxes containing the chassis accessories.
A sneak peek at the chassis after taking it out of the shipping box. The entire chassis was protected by a strong and rather large plastic bag.
At the bottom of the shipping box are the two 24 inch slide rails that come standard with this chassis!
The four boxes containing the accessories.
The content of accessory Box #1:
- 8 Hot-swap drive trays
- An assortment of cables
- Mounting screws for the HDD, motherboard, etc.
- ODD retaining bracket and interface PCB
The content of accessory Box #2, #3 and #4:
- 14 Hot-swap drive trays
A single hot-swap drive tray with the white 'air-blocking' plastic clip still in place.
Front view of the Chenbro RM91250 50-bay server chassis.
The top two drive slots are SATA only and are intended to be connected directly to the motherboard for use as system boot drives.
On the top left is the optical disk drive bay and above that are two USB connections, the reset, alarm mute and power button as well as the HDD activity, power, alarm, LAN1 and LAN2 LEDs.
Each of the 12 rows below contain a 4 port SAS/SATA backplane with a single SFF-8087 connector for connection to a storage controller.
Side/Back view.
Those build-in handles are EXTREMELY useful! Even in this state, the chassis is quite heavy and requires at least two to lift it out of the box and onto the work bench!
The back of the server.
The top portion contains the removable motherboard tray. Right below are four high-performance and hot-swappable 80mm fans and at the bottom, are two high-performance and hot-swappable 120mm fans along with the four hot-swappable redundant power modules.
The four hot-swappable power modules after I removed them from their cage.
Each power module has a 600W output rating and two Sunon PMD1238PQBX-A 38x38x28mm 15,000RPM 19CFM 5.8W 52.0dBA fans. Right below the handle on the left edge of each power module is a status LED (green = power ok, red = faulty module). The latch next to the IEC-320 power input connector in combination with the thumb screw is used to secure each module in the power module cage.
The power module cage and power distribution backplane. This cage is designed as a 3+1 redundant setup with a total output of 1620W.
One of the two high-performance and hot-swappable 120mm fans.
This is a Delta AFB1212SHE-F00 120x120x38mm 4,100RPM 190.5CFM 15.0W 55.5dBA fan with TACH output signal, but unfortunately no PWM control input.
The four high-performance and hot-swappable 80mm fans.
These are Delta FFB0812EHE-7N66 80x80x38mm 5,700RPM 80.2CFM 10.8W 52.5dBA fans with TACH output and PWM control input signals.
Each of the fan modules has it's own little 'mini-backplane' with a 10-pin card edge connector. Unfortunately, they don't utilize the PWM control signals even though the backplanes have all the necessary connections.
Looking inside the chassis from the back to the front after lifting the lid.
No tools required, just loosen two thumb screws and slide the lid back about 3/4 of an inch to lift it up.
A large sticker on the inside of the lid as a 'Chassis Quick Reference' guide.
The internal hot-swap fan tray. The tabs on top of the blue hot-swap fan modules are used to un-latch and pull-out the individual fan modules. The metal bracket actually consists of two brackets. One is mounted to the chassis and the second (to which the fan slots are attached) is mounted to the first via rubber mounts to isolate vibrations. There is also a chassis intrusion switch mounted to the fan tray bracket on the right hand side.
One of the internal hot-swap high-performance 80mm fans after removal from the fan tray. It's the exact same 80mm fan as those found in the back.
After removing 9 screws and removing the lid that covers the front portion of the chassis, the front panel PCB (LEDs, USB ports, switches and a processor to monitor ambient temperature and backplane signals and control the alarm beeper) as well as the fan monitor PCB (on the left) became accessible.
The connections of the front panel PCB (left to right):
- USB 1 & 2 (from motherboard)
- Motherboard control connections (power switch, reset switch, HDD activity LED, LAN 1 & 2 activity LED, power LED)
- Fan monitor board interconnect cable (provides power and alarm signal to the front panel PCB)
- Power supply alarm mute
- Power supply alarm status input
A different view of the optical drive bay with the front panel PCB mounted on top of it. Also visible are the SFF-8087 connectors on the right hand side of the first three HDD backplanes.
The two-slot SATA backplane for the system drives.
Top down view between the internal fan tray and the backplanes (it's a bit messy in there with all those cables flying about).
Here is something I found rather interesting, they have the model number sticker on the INSIDE! Makes total sense doesn't it
28 JAN 2010
Items ordered:
- 14 x Molex 79576-2103 Internal iPass Mini SAS Double-Ended Plug with Sidebands 36 Circuits 30 AWG 0.60m (1.97ft) Controller-to-Backplane Cables
- 100 x Molex 02081202 Female 14-20 AWG Crimp Terminal Power Pins
In case you are wondering why I bought 52 drives, well here is how I intend to put them to use:
- 2 drives (4TB capacity) in RAID 1 (2TB usable) as system drives and what the system doesn't occupy will be used for music storage
- 48 drives (96TB capacity) in either 2 x RAID 6 (88TB usable) or 3 x RAID 5 (90TB usable) configurations for the storage pool
- 2 drives (4TB capacity) as spares in case any of the other 50 drives fail
One of the WD20EADS 2TB green drives still in it's protective anti-static bag.
I mounted one of the drives in a drive tray to have a look at the fit and finish.
A close-up shot of the front of one of the drive trays. Located on the right side are two light pipes for the blue power LED (top) and the green activity/red fault LED (bottom). The actual LEDs are mounted on the backplanes.