Luna

[sotech]

Installed the PSU and a new CPU:

Ahh, ECC support again.

A clean shot of the H100, this time not taken with a phone camera:

I seriously need to shorten the CPU power cables, it's kind of a jungle at the moment - still adequate clearance between the cables and the radiator though so as not to have too much of an impact on airflow:

As much as I usually hate cables ties they're somewhat necessary for the moment to prevent the cables from spreading out and obstructing airflow to the cards:

One of the backplanes was a bit flaky until I pulled the whole lot down and reseated everything; I suspect a slightly dodgy power cable. No more dropouts on that backplane after it was replaced, which is nice.

Still got a lot of work to do and more drives to arrive but I'm pleased with where it's at at the moment.

 

[mobilenvidia]

Thats is one 'sexy' case, you have done very well

 

[billgatesjr]

sotech, which motherboard did you go with for your E5?

 

[sotech]

We used the Asus P9X79 WS - it had six x16 physical slots (four x8 and two x4 PCI-E), 8 DIMM slots and supported ECC so it fit the bill just fine. That and there weren't any other single-CPU boards available at the time

I have no qualms using an Asus board - I can live with the lack of remote management and we've been using the P8B WS in another server build for >12 months with no issues.

 

[johngillespie]

The work you put in to that case really paid off, the result looks great !
I'm thinking of pulling a server together using the same case and spotted the internal drive cage that houses an SSD drive. Where did you get that cage from ?

 

[sotech]

The work you put in to that case really paid off, the result looks great !
I'm thinking of pulling a server together using the same case and spotted the internal drive cage that houses an SSD drive. Where did you get that cage from ?

Thanks

It's a run-of-the-mill 2x2.5" to 3.5" adapter - this one in particular is a Lian Li, cost me about $12. Just check that the screw holes of the models currently available will line up well enough with the gaps on the underside of the chassis if you don't want to drill extra ones - there's quite a few offerings from various other manufacturers of the same bracket so you'll definitely find something suitable. I'll see if I can find a picture of just the adapter for you.

 

[sotech]

Long while between updates and a few changes to report - swapping the processor out for a 2687W, removing the ESXi M1015 and running a software mirror for the ZFS VM instead from the onboard SATA controller and adding in a 10GBe card in place of the M1015. The drive bays are almost fully loaded - two slots on the backplanes appear to be faulty and cause a huge number of errors in any drive connected and I have lacked the time to look into replacing the backplanes so I'm just living with that for the moment. Temps are excellent - if anything the drives are at the bottom end of what I consider desirable since it's winter here and the ambient temp has dropped a little.

The processor upgrade was largely driven by a desire to fold - I can get away with a quad-core folding VM and still have better performance than what I was getting with the old processor. We've also upped our VM count, adding a couple of VMs for some software dev stuff we're doing so more performance there won't hurt, either.

Photos to come when I get time - have such a backlog that it probably won't be soon.

 

[Patrick]

That is not totally uncommon to have a Norco backplane be faulty. I think they are somewhere in the $30-50 range and are fairly easy to replace. I haven't done it yet but from what I recall, looks easy.

 

[sotech]

That is not totally uncommon to have a Norco backplane be faulty. I think they are somewhere in the $30-50 range and are fairly easy to replace. I haven't done it yet but from what I recall, looks easy.

I had to take them all out to paint the chassis and you're right - they're dead easy to remove and replace. A couple of thumbscrews and they just slide out.