FINAL Bachelor Build - Xeon D vSAN Cluster

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IamSpartacus

Well-Known Member
Mar 14, 2016
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That's awesome...and inspires me to get off my a$$. I keep going back on forth, Rack, no rack..etc. I thought I was over the Rack, this has me rethinking..again..lol.
Nice job !
@virtualfng @MiniKnight @whitey @wildchild Thanks guys. This was a lot of time (and certainly money) invested and I'm really happy to say that it really paid off. Lots more fun to have with this setup in the near future.
 

maze

Active Member
Apr 27, 2013
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Care to share some power numbers @IamSpartacus ? - would be interesting to see the units load and combined in usage/idle/fullthrottle
 

IamSpartacus

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Mar 14, 2016
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Care to share some power numbers @IamSpartacus ? - would be interesting to see the units load and combined in usage/idle/fullthrottle
At the moment the only numbers I have to go off of is what my UPS is reporting for usage. Everything in the entire rack (including 6 cabinet intake/exhaust fans) is connected to it. With the cluster basically idle I'm puling around 250w and with high usage it's in the 360-380w range.
 

Evan

Well-Known Member
Jan 6, 2016
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Thanks not bad at all considering what you have running. Switch probably uses a bit, even 16 x 3.5" hard disks idle is not nothing. Can't be too unhappy about that figure right ?
 

IamSpartacus

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Mar 14, 2016
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Thanks not bad at all considering what you have running. Switch probably uses a bit, even 16 x 3.5" hard disks idle is not nothing. Can't be too unhappy about that figure right ?
I'm not unhappy about these numbers at all considering all the gear I have running in this rack. One of these days I will spend an hour or so turning on the entire rack from scratch device by device and measure the startup power draw and idle power draw of each unit.
 

whitey

Moderator
Jun 30, 2014
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I am at roughly 4 amps so 480watts concurrent to run my stack, roughly $45 a month at my local power rates 11-12cents per KwH to keep her humming 24/7/365.

You're doin' alright good sir!
 

kidchunks

Member
Sep 28, 2014
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Grats on the build!

It seems this is your "Lab/Home" setup so here is a friendly suggestion that may save you from wifey troubles in the future. (I've had far too many..haha).

Purchase another low power firewall (edgerouter/SG-2220) or repurpose for your main home network then virtualize pfSense for your lab and expose services via virtual IPs. You get the safety knowing if you muck up on switch configs, etc that others still have access to the internet/other devices.

Just a thought!

Have fun!
 

wildchild

Active Member
Feb 4, 2014
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You inspired me sir ( plus i'm getting sick and tired of my CFO complaining of noice and mess, and treats to cut my lab budget ), so i'll be getting my personal rack neat and sound proofed.
 

IamSpartacus

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Mar 14, 2016
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You inspired me sir ( plus i'm getting sick and tired of my CFO complaining of noice and mess, and treats to cut my lab budget ), so i'll be getting my personal rack neat and sound proofed.
Glad I could light that fire under you [emoji6].
 

ridney

Member
Dec 8, 2015
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Singapore
Sorry for bringing this thread up. I was searching for a 2U rack fan and saw your rack with it (AC Infinity) before so I read it up again. I just purchased the same model from ebay, hopefully it's good. It looks nice too.

Anyways, congrats on your build, it is a really really great rack. I love it. Just one thing I noticed is that one of your 2U server's psu vent is blocked by the identical 2U server sitting on top of it. I guess this is one of the reasons why you were having trouble with your Xeon D temps?

 

IamSpartacus

Well-Known Member
Mar 14, 2016
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Sorry for bringing this thread up. I was searching for a 2U rack fan and saw your rack with it (AC Infinity) before so I read it up again. I just purchased the same model from ebay, hopefully it's good. It looks nice too.

Anyways, congrats on your build, it is a really really great rack. I love it. Just one thing I noticed is that one of your 2U server's psu vent is blocked by the identical 2U server sitting on top of it. I guess this is one of the reasons why you were having trouble with your Xeon D temps?


No need to apologize, I'm happy to answer any questions.

Yes technically the PSU vent is blocked but the PSU fan only kicks on if the PSU gets to a certain workload which is almost never will with my build. They are 360w PSU's and these servers aren't even capable of pulling 100w total on full load with everything running.

The temp issues were related to not having direct air flow over the Xeon D heatsinks which appears to be of huge importance for these boards. I remedied that with a duct from one of the 80mm intake fans directly to the heatsink and a 60mm Notctua directly behind it to pull the air through.
 

mixtecinc

Member
Feb 18, 2013
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Do you know approx noise level of this rack? Do you have it in a dedicated room or closet?

Thanks

Justin
 

IamSpartacus

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Mar 14, 2016
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Do you know approx noise level of this rack? Do you have it in a dedicated room or closet?

Thanks

Justin
It's in my open door office which is right off of my living room. So the rack is about 15 feet from where I sit watching TV and I can't hear it from there. As for actual measurements I don't really have any equipment that would actually measure that.
 
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tenet

Member
May 4, 2015
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Nice build. As for measuring equipment, I use this SPL meter to measure how loud my workstation area is in our data center: Galaxy CM-130

It can do a running measure of SPL and a maximum measured level.

For those interested, the loudest measurement for me was about 87DB
 

Chad_C

New Member
Jul 28, 2015
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It's in my open door office which is right off of my living room. So the rack is about 15 feet from where I sit watching TV and I can't hear it from there. As for actual measurements I don't really have any equipment that would actually measure that.
I've followed your build from *several* different sources and I'm curious about two things
  1. The rack -- can you take it apart?
  2. Is the iStarUSA M-4160-ATX really worth it? It seems very pricey but I need ultra-quiet ATX power supplies!
I have a wiring closet that is connected to a guest bedroom. The door frame is 24" at its narrowest point but the closet itself is 40" wide. Every coax/speaker/ethernet cable in my house terminates to this closet.

Could I take apart the cabinet and reassemble it inside the closet? I think I'd rather do that than destroy the trim/door frame.

For the record, I am married and my wife approves of this "cleanup" effort because the closet is a mess of wires and hardware right now :).
 
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IamSpartacus

Well-Known Member
Mar 14, 2016
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I've followed your build from *several* different sources and I'm curious about two things
  1. The rack -- can you take it apart?
  2. Is the iStarUSA M-4160-ATX really worth it? It seems very pricey but I need ultra-quiet ATX power supplies!
I have a wiring closet that is connected to a guest bedroom. The door frame is 24" at its narrowest point but the closet itself is 40" wide. Every coax/speaker/ethernet cable in my house terminates to this closet.

Could I take apart the cabinet and reassemble it inside the closet? I think I'd rather do that than destroy the trim/door frame.

For the record, I am married and my wife approves of this "cleanup" effort because the closet is a mess of wires and hardware right now :).
1. I don't believe you can take the rack completely apart though I haven't tried. I would visit the manufacturer's website from the link in my OP. I chatted with them online before making my purchase and they were super helpful. They'll be able to answer any questions you might have.

2. With regard to the M-4160-ATX, I really like it. The trayless drive bays is a huge feature for me. I wanted to super quiet PSU's as well but keep in mind that the included system fans are not PWM and they run at full speed without a fan controller. They aren't super loud but they're not super quiet either.

Glad you've got wife approval, you're already ahead of the game!
 

SGN

Member
Oct 3, 2016
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Great configuration. Congratulation!
I have 3 questions to you.
You are using Xeon D-1508 and Xeon D-1518 as your storage nodes.
1) Do you see any benefit from 1518?
2) How do you think, is 1508 powerful enough to handle storage (12x8TB) with ZFS (FreeNAS) + 10Gbit?
3) How do you rate 10Gbit speeds on 1508 platform? Are they close to the max?
 

Chad_C

New Member
Jul 28, 2015
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1. I don't believe you can take the rack completely apart though I haven't tried. I would visit the manufacturer's website from the link in my OP. I chatted with them online before making my purchase and they were super helpful. They'll be able to answer any questions you might have.

2. With regard to the M-4160-ATX, I really like it. The trayless drive bays is a huge feature for me. I wanted to super quiet PSU's as well but keep in mind that the included system fans are not PWM and they run at full speed without a fan controller. They aren't super loud but they're not super quiet either.

Glad you've got wife approval, you're already ahead of the game!
My 27u is in!

I have more questions about that case -- have you considered using 2.5" SSDs in any of those trayless slots? I'm trying to decide between the 3U and 4U case; with 4Us, I could devote a bank to SSDs for slog duties or whatever. I couldn't find any information on whether or not this was possible.

Thanks again!
 
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