New home NAS and Hypervisor setup

[ATrain]

Ah ha! That is brilliant ATrain. Thanks so much for the feedback

Nothing like a response from someone who actually has the hardware. I won't be running an optical drive at all so no worries there. I was looking at the 400W Fan less model. I don't think they make a smaller one. What do you have in yours if you don't mind me asking?

Does much heat come out the top vent? Do you run a rear fan as well? I have heard the front fan can get a bit noisy unless you slow it down a bit. I would really appreciate your input and thoughts?

I have the 460 watt version. I just looked on NewEgg and the have a 400 watt version that costs the same as the 460 watt version. I put a 120mm fan in the back and dual 120 mm CPU Noctua fans and it is still quiet.. The power supply sets in a separate area in the top of the case. It does not get very hot.

The system has an Intel I7 3770 with three SSDs and 16 gig of ram.

The case sits on the floor underneath my desk. I can barely hear the front fan which about 3 to 4 feet from my ears if the room is dead quiet.

 

[TallGraham]

I have the 460 watt version. I just looked on NewEgg and the have a 400 watt version that costs the same as the 460 watt version. I put a 120mm fan in the back and dual 120 mm CPU Noctua fans and it is still quiet.. The power supply sets in a separate area in the top of the case. It does not get very hot.

The system has an Intel I7 3770 with three SSDs and 16 gig of ram.

The case sits on the floor underneath my desk. I can barely hear the front fan which about 3 to 4 feet from my ears if the room is dead quiet.

Thanks again for the reply ATrain. I will be running the i7 3770T, the 45w TDP version with a fanless cooler. Hoping the front case fan will be enough to keep it cool. Not much else going in there apart from a network card as it is a diskless/headless virtual host server that will boot off of iSCSI. Hopefully I won't need to add the rear fans, but if I do I can run them really slowly.

Just out of interest I was googling and found this article that talks about fitting the SeaSonic fanless power supply in the Temjin case. It claims it is one of the best micro atx cases suited for it. So you made a good choice

Fanless Power Supply PC Build Guide | silentpcreview.com

 

[ATrain]

Thanks again for the reply ATrain. I will be running the i7 3770T, the 45w TDP version with a fanless cooler. Hoping the front case fan will be enough to keep it cool. Not much else going in there apart from a network card as it is a diskless/headless virtual host server that will boot off of iSCSI. Hopefully I won't need to add the rear fans, but if I do I can run them really slowly.

Just out of interest I was googling and found this article that talks about fitting the SeaSonic fanless power supply in the Temjin case. It claims it is one of the best micro atx cases suited for it. So you made a good choice

Fanless Power Supply PC Build Guide | silentpcreview.com

That's the article that convinced me to buy the case. I love that site. I have used there information to build low noise servers too.

 

[TallGraham]

Well it has been a while since I updated this. Just come back and all the old pictures cannot be seen, I am sure there is a fix for that. I will need to have a look and see.

So in August I moved into another house and decided that I had better cable this one up..... as you do

So here is the old master phone socket

And down the hall is the nice little alcove I wanted to move everything to.

Here is a better view

 

[Marsh]

Nice,
I would be in heaven if I have your nice alcove. I can't wait to replace my 15 years old 100 gallons water heater with a tankless model, so I could reclaim the hallway water heater closet for my homelab.

 

[TallGraham]

Next I got my friend to come round and help me out, he is a qualified electrician and fits network cables for a living as well. Lucky for me

So let's check for space under the floor and nice clear cable paths

Plenty of room there.....

And there.....

And there too. Excellent..... Let's cable

 

[TallGraham]

So I did a lot of cabling when I renovated my whole house originally, but I didn't add enough cables

This is a socket plastered into a wall. Thank god I put plastic conduit in the wall to feed the cables.

A bit blurry, but can I squeeze four cables through there?

Of course I can A little scuff on the casing but all tested OK with Fluke cable tester

On to the next cables. Purple are CAT6 for LAN, orange are CAT5E for phone, and white are Coax for TV ariels

More sockets. Every bedroom will have digital TV, phone, and network sockets. Lounge has digital TV, phone, and 3 x network. Because that's where my computer desk is

 

[TallGraham]

Hit a snag in this room, looks OK from above

But now lets look underneath.....

Yes..... that is my re-routed mains gas pipe and several electrical cables. Need to be very careful here indeed with the drill.

Success! Got the cable in there. But there was a thud from the stairwell when I was drilling.....

Oops Nothing a bit of filler and paint won't fix

Close up of the accident shows I just managed to miss the glossed dado rail. Phew!

Cables through and plasterboard back in again. Nice!

 

[TallGraham]

So cables now going into trunking down into the alcove.

Cables anyone? Looks more like spaghetti at the moment

All finished

A better angle to show the 8 x CAT6 points, 6 x power sockets, and the moved master phone socket ready for fibre broadband installation

 

[nry]

Looking forward to some more updates

 

[PigLover]

Beautiful work so far.

Just wondering if you've thought about how to evacuate heat from the servers? Isolate noise?

What are your plans for a rack? How will you deal with access to the rear of the equipment for maintenance?

Lots of questions - very interested to see how this develops. Please keep up the build log.

 

[Mike]

Beautiful work so far.

Just wondering if you've thought about how to evacuate heat from the servers? Isolate noise?

What are your plans for a rack? How will you deal with access to the rear of the equipment for maintenance?

Lots of questions - very interested to see how this develops. Please keep up the build log.

In a similar setup I roll the rack forward. Haven't had issues with heat build-up, but maybe I'm not productive enough to touch those limits.

 

[TallGraham]

This is what is going into the alcove. I was very lucky and picked it up for free from my friend. Was being chucked out somewhere he was doing a job.

It is a 600mm wide x 800mm deep cabinet. 20u are machined out on the posts but only 18 are actually available for rackable kit. That is my data server and switch already in there.

Quick shot from the side.

I got 3 x 3u cases to go in there, the first will hold and old Atom motherboard I have that I can use as a physical DC. The other two will be hypervisor servers that will be diskless and boot from the network. This way I can easily flip between using VMware, Hyper-V, or even Parallels. I have got 3 x Brocade BR-1020 dual port 10Gbe network cards that I intend to use for the iSCSI links between the servers and also the migration link between the hypervisor servers.

This is a few shots of the cases I ordered and the Atom motherboard and bits being fitted. Going to have a break for a few days to enjoy Christmas, then get it all put together I hope

Happy Christmas and Seasons Greetings to everyone on the forum

 

[TallGraham]

OK, another little update. Hope you all enjoyed a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

So I have started to put together the Hypervisor nodes. I have two of these that are made from hardware I have slowly been getting hold of. Sadly the i7-3770T processor (45W) was no longer available when I came to get mine, so I had to settle for the i7-3770S model which has a top power usage of 65W. I know there is a new generation of the T processor but I already had the motherboards so was stuck. This is what happens when you buy parts over time sadly.

So here is a shot of the back with inside the nice little 3U chassis. The Intel motherboard has 2 NICs on board. It is the DQ77MK so one is a sort of onboard KVM type thing. Not played with this yet but have the same sort of thing on the SuperMicro board in the server and it works nicely for headless. You can also see the dual port 10Gbe card and the 4 port 1Gbe card.

It is a bit hard to see here but the Intel 4 port 1Gbe card is full height and a little bit more. I was quite concerned with it touching the top of the case when it was on so used some electrical tape on the inside of the lid just to be on the safe side.

Fitted an 80mm fan to the front of the case for a little bit of airflow. Pointing mainly towards the cards, and removed one of the hard drive racks so the air can flow as cleanly as possible. case has a nice piece of filter foam in front of the fans that can be removed and cleaned. Sadly you need to remove the top of the case and 6 screws to get to it!

Nice shot of the inside of the case. I haven't fitted the processor yet, but there is 32GB of RAM in there.

The only snag I have found is that the 4pin ATX plug for the motherboard on this power supply is ridiculously short. In the other one using the Atom motherboard I had to stretch it across the CPU. Here that just won't work as the Brocade BR-1020 is in the way and so will the processor be with the fan. You can see the 4pin plug at the bottom of the picture, the socket on the motherboard is at the top of the picture above the CPU socket and to the right. I have had to order some extensions for the 4pin plug. This means I can't finish it and power it up. I am keen to see the power usage. Remember this whole rig is about being low power.

That is it for now. I will come back with some other updates when the extensions arrive and I can get some power readings.

 

[snazy2000]

Nice setup!, Are you going to be direct connecting the 10Gb nics? (from server to server) or you using a switch? keep thinking I want to do direct connect but didn't know if was possible with the nics you are using as was looking at them while back

 

[TallGraham]

Nice setup!, Are you going to be direct connecting the 10Gb nics? (from server to server) or you using a switch? keep thinking I want to do direct connect but didn't know if was possible with the nics you are using as was looking at them while back

Hi Snazy

Thanks, as you will see from the thread this has been a labour of love and going on for a while now.

Yes the plan is to direct connect. There is quite a large thread on here somewhere about these cards. Lots of people have had success with them. I think the trick is to get the right cables. I found some branded Brocade active cables cheap on eBay. £20 each for the 3m version.

I have 3 cards. 1 will go in my data server and the other 2, 1 in each hypervisor node. From the data server they will be the direct iSCSI link to each hypervisor. Then I will use the other port on each hypervisor to link them together. This will be their failover/vmotion type connection.

The hypervisor servers are also diskless so will hopefully also boot their hypervisor OS from the iSCSI connection as well.

 

[snazy2000]

That is the kind of thing i waa thinking i dont like the idea of having all my vms on one storage server becuase then that server is a single point of failure but seems to be only cheap option without using somthing like starwind software. Think ill end up storing everything on one server but meh lol. I need to make one of these threads about my setup as well [emoji14]

 

[TallGraham]

Beautiful work so far.

Just wondering if you've thought about how to evacuate heat from the servers? Isolate noise?

What are your plans for a rack? How will you deal with access to the rear of the equipment for maintenance?

Lots of questions - very interested to see how this develops. Please keep up the build log.

Hi PigLover

Thanks for the nice comments. I have seen your setups on here and they are frankly awesome.

You've probably seen the little rack cabinet I have now. I have all the sides and doors for it too so hopefully noise will be kept low and there should be sufficient room for airflow as well.

I was going to use fanless heatsinks as I did before to try and stop noise. The i7-3770S has a TDP of 65w over the 45w for the i7-3770T that I originally wanted. I was worried it might be too high without a jet engine case fan

The Xeon I run in the data server only has a TDP of 17w so no worries there

 

[TallGraham]

That is the kind of thing i waa thinking i dont like the idea of having all my vms on one storage server becuase then that server is a single point of failure but seems to be only cheap option without using somthing like starwind software. Think ill end up storing everything on one server but meh lol. I need to make one of these threads about my setup as well [emoji14]

Hi Snazy

I originally had everything in one huge server. I wanted to play about with storage, different hypervisors, failover etc so in the end started making this little lot.

You should definately start your own thread. Everyone on this forum are so helpful. Some of the guys on here even replicated my hyper-v set up on their rigs to help me track down a speed issue I was having.

This is the best forum I have ever used

 

[mackle]

Man I love build logs & pics.

I wonder whether the 3770T's will start showing up on Ebay with the release of Broadwell K. I'm hoping that some more K's come out at that point for a future build.

I know the S is a higher TDP part, but I don't think the higher power consumption will be that much greater in reality, especially if they're only powered on for tasks. Does your mobo BIOS allow for any undervolting/underclocking?