Home Server and SAN Setup

[mason736]

I've been a member here for quite a while, so I figured I would post what I am using, based on the advice of many forum members, and countless hours of reading this forum/site. While not as impressive as some, I'm quite happy with the way it has turned out.

I built a new home in the summer of 2013, so I was able to start from scratch, and have all the wiring and cabling ran the way I wanted it done. I had everything come to a home run in the utility room (cat6 drops, RG6, speaker wire). I was able to acquire an HP/Compaq 42U rack through work that was being decommissioned, and have subsequently purchased a Dell c6100, and a HP P4300 G2 I acquired from a friend of mine that is an HP reseller.

All of the speaker wire comes into the rack. I'm only using 2 zones right now, but eventually all 6 will be enabled with Sonos units for distribution throughout the house in various places (gym, outside, dinning room, master bedroom, garage, office).

The c6100 has a node running WS2012E, that is serving up the data from the P4300 via iSCSI (and achieving some nice throughput on both read and write (around 220-250MB/s)). Another node is running Hyper-V, and is serving up a downloading VM (utorrent), a media center VM (Mezzmo), secondary DC, and a few others. The wiring in the back is a little messy, but not too bad.

All of the locations with a TV either have a samsung smart TV, or a western digital WDTV Live serving up the data from the media server to watch movies, etc...

 

[odditory]

Looks excellent, my man. VERY clean. Thanks for sharing this. Are those the lower-noise 750W PSU's in the Supermicro?

 

[PigLover]

I see a Dell Co 100 and an HP P4300...no supermicro. The PSUs with the big yellow 750 written on the back would be in the HP.

 

[PigLover]

Btw, looks nice. Did you do anything to calm the fan noise on the C6100? Or is your rack isolated enough that it doesn't matter how loud it gets?

 

[mason736]

Thanks guys. The rack is in the utility room in the basement, so noise isn't really a factor for me, at least not yet.

The 750w powers supplies are on the HP P4300, as PigLover mentioned, but I'm only running one of them right now. The total wattage from the P4300 is around 146W at normal operation.

 

[Patrick]

I see an extra NIC in one of the C6100 nodes. Is that the Hyper-V host?

 

[mason736]

I see an extra NIC in one of the C6100 nodes. Is that the Hyper-V host?

The extra NIC is actually 2 extra NICs now. I moved the 2 port NIC from NODE 1, where it is in the photo, to NODE 3 (right next to it on the top), and replaced the NIC in NODE 1 with a intel quad port PT NIC.

NODE 1 - WS2012E
NODE 3 - Hyper-V

I'm running the quad port in the WS2012E node b/c the one of the onboard NICs didn't support RSS,which was impacting the SMB3 transfers from the P4300 MDL, through the WS2012E server to the Hyper-V host. Therefore, 2 ports of the quad port NIC are teamed, and connected to VLAN 1 (the Cisco SG200-50) with the rest of the network, and the other 2 ports are using MPIO over ISCSI to connect to VLAN 2 (Cisco SG200-26), which is what the P4300 is connected to. I wanted to isolate the SAN traffic on its own subnet, which I was able to do by using OpenWRT, flashed onto a Netgear WNDR3700, sitting on top of the rack. Port 1 on the WNDR3700 goes to the SG200-50, and is on subnet 192.168.1.XXX, and Port 2 is going to the Cisco SG200-26, and is on subnet 192.168.2.XXX.

The Hyper-V host now has 4 NICs total b/c of the 2 port intel NIC card. I teamed the Pro/1000 PT ports, and is used exclusively for Hyper-V. The other ports are used as management for the host.

Still haven't found a use for the other 2 nodes, but I'd rather have them and not need them yet, then have purchased a 2 node system and not had the capability of adding them later.

 

[capn_pineapple]

Off topic, but how is the Sonos kit? I was looking into it a little while back (a bit expensive for my budget at the time). What's your setup like for it?

 

[pgh5278]

Initially was very hesitant, but followed the instructions, and it just works, turn it on, press a few buttons, it needs to know where the media is, on a server, pc, network etc. Have used a mix of wireless and Ethernet.
Have had great success with Sonos gear, have about 4 sets, first started using it when living overseas and moving countries / houses on a semi regular basis, and wasnt able to setup something more permanent in each house. One of those plug and play systems, which just works....

 

[mason736]

Off topic, but how is the Sonos kit? I was looking into it a little while back (a bit expensive for my budget at the time). What's your setup like for it?

I love it actually. I was going to go with a Control 4 home automation solution at first, but then decided to just localize everything, and use the Sonos units instead. I have the 2 Connect AMPs you see in the picture that are powering 2 sets of Martin Logan In-Wall speakers in my garage and gym. Then I have 2 regular 'Connect' products, non-amplified, 1 in my great room and another in my theater room, that are connected to Integra Receivers.

I love the setup, and having control over everything from one Android App, or the control screen on my laptop. Everything is synced, I can link the zones all together and play the same thing, or use them individually. The Connect AMPs actually pump out enough juice to push a decent speaker pretty well.

I'm eventually going to pickup a couple more connect amps for the dining room and outside, but the wife put a cabash on the spending for now