Posted this over at Avforums, figured I would post my build log here, some of the text Iv written below has probably changed over the last few days. Not quite just a storage build but seems like the most appropriate place to put this.
Thought I would post a log of my ongoing build process here as some users may find it interesting, plus some users may give me some useful pointers in doing things correctly As some of this is getting quite complex very quickly!
My home network serves both typical home use such as WiFi, streaming HD video, computer backups. But also as a self employed software developer working from home I am constantly deploying multiple VMs for testing purposes, backing up endless amounts of data. Hence the slightly over the top kit I have. Also serves as a great platform to learn on!
First some history!
This whole media streaming obsession started around 2007 when I got my first external HDD, a whole 500GB! This was connected to my laptop which connected to my 32" TV, a student at the time, it was pretty impressive!
Won't embed the image, but here is the beauty Image
I very quickly out grew the 500GB external drive and around the end of 2008 started to investigate other means to store my media, also the time where I became self employed. So using a few parts I had in boxes, some old parts my dad had, and £30 odd later for a case I had my first file server!
Only ran some version of windows with basic network shares for my laptop and media PC but it did the job perfectly. In total I had around 3TB by the end of 2008
Only image I have of it unfinished (don't think it was ever finished!)
Moving on to early 2010, I had filled this little file server up as I was now storing Bluray rips, DVD rips, music and my work backups. I bought a new case, PSU and some HDD caddys, some new disks which I seem to remember totalling around 7-8TB ending up which what I thought was a file server which would last me 5 years atleast!
Pretty impressed with my cabling job here!
Moving onto 2012 I had around 9TB of storage and was running out pretty quickly, as I was now working for myself full time by this point the amount of data I had to store had grown very quickly.
I decided to buy roughly the following:
Setup as RAID6 this gave me plenty of storage space for some time, I had also bought a SAS expander so I could use my existing drives but this didn't work with my Adaptec controller so they were just left in the case unplugged.
I also ended up purchasing the following as my first ESXi host, which is still in use today 24/7
Which can be seen here in the case above my file server, the pc above that is one of my media PCs
And what's happened in 2013?
Back in January I bought an Areca 1680ix-24 port RAID controller so I could utilise all the HDD bays of my case, as well as 8 more 3TB Hitachi drives I had purchased.
In the meantime I setup the newer 3TB drives in RAID10 in my 24/7 ESXi box in a new case with my other Areca 1882i-8 controller, as well as some standalone disks to store all my data while migrating from the Adaptec controller to my Areca 1680 controller.
But unfortunately the Areca 1680 controller didn't work and had to be sent back. Which has left me in a complete mess, with a server running 24/7 consuming about 200w of electricity idle! So now I have an Areca 1882ix-24 on order, I figure this should last me atleast 10 years seeing as it has 6GB/s HDD support and an external SAS connector, so I can expand to another 24 bay case if I ever needed.
The plan?
To be honest I am still not 100% sure what to do, I would like my 24/7 kit to be as low power as possible. Ideally under 100w unlike the over 300w it is currently!
I would also like to be able to expand my vSphere cluster dramatically from it's current one host to multiple hosts
With my new raid controller I plan on having 16x 3TB drives and 8x 1TB drives in one system, but for some reason decided it would be a good idea to use an old E6750 Core2Duo and 8GB DDR2 ram as the main system for this so I could use the motherboard as another ESXi host.
Now looking at it, this motherboard probably can't handle the amount of data throughput from the raid controller and my planned 10GbE network for ESXi hosts!
Thought I would post a log of my ongoing build process here as some users may find it interesting, plus some users may give me some useful pointers in doing things correctly As some of this is getting quite complex very quickly!
My home network serves both typical home use such as WiFi, streaming HD video, computer backups. But also as a self employed software developer working from home I am constantly deploying multiple VMs for testing purposes, backing up endless amounts of data. Hence the slightly over the top kit I have. Also serves as a great platform to learn on!
First some history!
This whole media streaming obsession started around 2007 when I got my first external HDD, a whole 500GB! This was connected to my laptop which connected to my 32" TV, a student at the time, it was pretty impressive!
Won't embed the image, but here is the beauty Image
I very quickly out grew the 500GB external drive and around the end of 2008 started to investigate other means to store my media, also the time where I became self employed. So using a few parts I had in boxes, some old parts my dad had, and £30 odd later for a case I had my first file server!
Only ran some version of windows with basic network shares for my laptop and media PC but it did the job perfectly. In total I had around 3TB by the end of 2008
Only image I have of it unfinished (don't think it was ever finished!)
Moving on to early 2010, I had filled this little file server up as I was now storing Bluray rips, DVD rips, music and my work backups. I bought a new case, PSU and some HDD caddys, some new disks which I seem to remember totalling around 7-8TB ending up which what I thought was a file server which would last me 5 years atleast!
Pretty impressed with my cabling job here!
Moving onto 2012 I had around 9TB of storage and was running out pretty quickly, as I was now working for myself full time by this point the amount of data I had to store had grown very quickly.
I decided to buy roughly the following:
- Xcase 24 Bay SAS Case
- Xeon E3 1245
- Asus P8B-WS
- 16GB DDR3 Ram
- Adaptec 5805 8 port RAID card
- 8x 3TB Hitachi drives
Setup as RAID6 this gave me plenty of storage space for some time, I had also bought a SAS expander so I could use my existing drives but this didn't work with my Adaptec controller so they were just left in the case unplugged.
I also ended up purchasing the following as my first ESXi host, which is still in use today 24/7
- Xcase RM206 Short 2U case
- Xeon E3 1245
- Asus P8B-WS
- 32GB DDR2 Ram
- 240GB OCZ Agility SSD
Which can be seen here in the case above my file server, the pc above that is one of my media PCs
And what's happened in 2013?
Back in January I bought an Areca 1680ix-24 port RAID controller so I could utilise all the HDD bays of my case, as well as 8 more 3TB Hitachi drives I had purchased.
In the meantime I setup the newer 3TB drives in RAID10 in my 24/7 ESXi box in a new case with my other Areca 1882i-8 controller, as well as some standalone disks to store all my data while migrating from the Adaptec controller to my Areca 1680 controller.
But unfortunately the Areca 1680 controller didn't work and had to be sent back. Which has left me in a complete mess, with a server running 24/7 consuming about 200w of electricity idle! So now I have an Areca 1882ix-24 on order, I figure this should last me atleast 10 years seeing as it has 6GB/s HDD support and an external SAS connector, so I can expand to another 24 bay case if I ever needed.
The plan?
To be honest I am still not 100% sure what to do, I would like my 24/7 kit to be as low power as possible. Ideally under 100w unlike the over 300w it is currently!
I would also like to be able to expand my vSphere cluster dramatically from it's current one host to multiple hosts
With my new raid controller I plan on having 16x 3TB drives and 8x 1TB drives in one system, but for some reason decided it would be a good idea to use an old E6750 Core2Duo and 8GB DDR2 ram as the main system for this so I could use the motherboard as another ESXi host.
Now looking at it, this motherboard probably can't handle the amount of data throughput from the raid controller and my planned 10GbE network for ESXi hosts!
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