Hi everyone
Stumbled across this site and am so glad I did. I'm now not the only geek in the world trying to build a huge NAS/Hypervisor setup
So this story all started back in 2008 when I first built my home esxi server. I won't bore you with all the details and all the endless hardware I have been through and tried. Suffice to say I can never get it quite as I want. This time I am determined to do it. For the last 18 months I have been selling off all of my old bits and pieces and picking up what I can where I can. The plan is to have a setup that runs as low powered and as quietly as possible.
The plan so far is this:
NAS Server
As many disks as possible for various storage, up to 20 disks.
Ability so serve out data via iSCSI and also shares.
Low power and as silent as possible.
I currently have:
1 x Adaptec 6405 4 port 6Gbps RAID card (PCI-e 4x)
2 x Adapetc 5805 8 port 3Gbps RAID card (PCI-e 8x)
2 x Intel PT1000 Quad Port Gigabit NICs (PCI-e 4x)
4 x 4GB DDR3 DIMMs
With these cards I am looking for an ATX motherboard that has enough slots. The best one I have seen so far is the ASRock Z77 Entreme9
ASRock > Z77 Extreme9
The best processor I have seen so far is Intel Core i5 3470T which has max TDP of just 35W.
The biggest time has been spent looking at cases. I was going to use 2.5 hard disks to save on power and noise and was thinking of these hotswap bays from IcyDock:
MB996SP-6SB_INTERNAL MULTI-BAY_ICY DOCK manufacturer Removable enclosure, Screwless hard drive enclosure, SAS SATA Mobile Rack, DVR Surveillance Recording, Video Audio Editing, SATA portable hard drive enclosure
I had been planning to fit these to a Corsair Obsidian 550D but wasn't sure on how much airflow would get through the 5.25 drive bays with the door closed. I did email Corsair but they haven't replied
Then I saw the 50+TB thread by nry and the XCase rackmount cases. Whilst I can't have a network rack as I don't have the space, I could stack this on the top of my desk. Just worried about how noisy this will be.
Hypervisor Servers
The idea here was to have 3 x servers that are totally diskless and headless. These will boot the OS via iSCSI to the NAS server. This would allow me to use this as both a Hyper V and ESXi cluster just by changing the LUN the server boots from. See the link below for which Intel cards can be upgraded to boot iSCSI. This even includes the single port PCI-e CT desktop adapter.
Intel® Server Adapters — Which adapters support Intel® iSCSI Remote Boot?
I had wanted to use mini-ITX but just couldn't find any motherboards that supported 32GB of RAM. In the end I got 3 of these Intel DQ77MK motherboards when I saw them on offer. These have APM built in so I can run KVM over IP and have them totally headless.
Intel® Desktop Board DQ77MK: Overview
Processors I wanted to use for these are the Intel i7-3770t which run at a maximum TDP of 45W. These get great reviews and when I compared them appear to do everything that the Intel Xeon E3 chips do.
I searched and searched for some small MicroATX cases with no joy. Now I'm thinking about a simple 2U rackmount case from XCase for each one. The trouble is I already have 2 x Intel PT Quad Port network cards that I was going to use and they are full height.
So that's the starting point, after much rambling on. Any ideas on equipment would be great. I'd really like the NAS server motherboard to be able to run headless as well with it's own IP based KVM like the Intel boards.
Stumbled across this site and am so glad I did. I'm now not the only geek in the world trying to build a huge NAS/Hypervisor setup
So this story all started back in 2008 when I first built my home esxi server. I won't bore you with all the details and all the endless hardware I have been through and tried. Suffice to say I can never get it quite as I want. This time I am determined to do it. For the last 18 months I have been selling off all of my old bits and pieces and picking up what I can where I can. The plan is to have a setup that runs as low powered and as quietly as possible.
The plan so far is this:
NAS Server
As many disks as possible for various storage, up to 20 disks.
Ability so serve out data via iSCSI and also shares.
Low power and as silent as possible.
I currently have:
1 x Adaptec 6405 4 port 6Gbps RAID card (PCI-e 4x)
2 x Adapetc 5805 8 port 3Gbps RAID card (PCI-e 8x)
2 x Intel PT1000 Quad Port Gigabit NICs (PCI-e 4x)
4 x 4GB DDR3 DIMMs
With these cards I am looking for an ATX motherboard that has enough slots. The best one I have seen so far is the ASRock Z77 Entreme9
ASRock > Z77 Extreme9
The best processor I have seen so far is Intel Core i5 3470T which has max TDP of just 35W.
The biggest time has been spent looking at cases. I was going to use 2.5 hard disks to save on power and noise and was thinking of these hotswap bays from IcyDock:
MB996SP-6SB_INTERNAL MULTI-BAY_ICY DOCK manufacturer Removable enclosure, Screwless hard drive enclosure, SAS SATA Mobile Rack, DVR Surveillance Recording, Video Audio Editing, SATA portable hard drive enclosure
I had been planning to fit these to a Corsair Obsidian 550D but wasn't sure on how much airflow would get through the 5.25 drive bays with the door closed. I did email Corsair but they haven't replied
Then I saw the 50+TB thread by nry and the XCase rackmount cases. Whilst I can't have a network rack as I don't have the space, I could stack this on the top of my desk. Just worried about how noisy this will be.
Hypervisor Servers
The idea here was to have 3 x servers that are totally diskless and headless. These will boot the OS via iSCSI to the NAS server. This would allow me to use this as both a Hyper V and ESXi cluster just by changing the LUN the server boots from. See the link below for which Intel cards can be upgraded to boot iSCSI. This even includes the single port PCI-e CT desktop adapter.
Intel® Server Adapters — Which adapters support Intel® iSCSI Remote Boot?
I had wanted to use mini-ITX but just couldn't find any motherboards that supported 32GB of RAM. In the end I got 3 of these Intel DQ77MK motherboards when I saw them on offer. These have APM built in so I can run KVM over IP and have them totally headless.
Intel® Desktop Board DQ77MK: Overview
Processors I wanted to use for these are the Intel i7-3770t which run at a maximum TDP of 45W. These get great reviews and when I compared them appear to do everything that the Intel Xeon E3 chips do.
I searched and searched for some small MicroATX cases with no joy. Now I'm thinking about a simple 2U rackmount case from XCase for each one. The trouble is I already have 2 x Intel PT Quad Port network cards that I was going to use and they are full height.
So that's the starting point, after much rambling on. Any ideas on equipment would be great. I'd really like the NAS server motherboard to be able to run headless as well with it's own IP based KVM like the Intel boards.