[sapper6fd]

Well I've finished up my fully automated downloader / NAS server and thought I would put up some images of it and explain how everything works.

Around 3 months ago I got into XBMC pretty hard core and decided to digitize my DVD collection. So I started building a NAS server out of an older HP XW8600 Work Station here are the specs on it.

Model [XW8600]
CPU [Dual Xeon E5440 @ 2.83 GHz]
RAM [6GB PC2 5300F ECC]
OS HDD [160GB 7200 Seagate]
Storage HDD [4 x 2TB Westrn Digital RED]
OS [FreeNAS]

I started off with three storage drives in RAIDz but decided to add a fourth as I was beginning to run out of room (250 + DVD's will do that to ya) and the chassis only has slots for 4 HDD. Three were used by the storage drives and the fourth was the OS drive for FreeNAS (Long story short, I had stability issues using a various flash cards so I went for a tried and tested 160GB HDD). S

So I went out and picked up a cheap fix in the form of a Silverstone CFP52B device that has 4 swappable 3.25 drive caddy's and fits inside three 5.25 bays. I just happened to have three available! so I picked that up and had to do a little modding of the XW8600 chassis because this hot swap case wasn't designed to be used with it.

Here's the before and after

Before





After









With the NAS server complete I was using my laptop for everything else. All my downloads, renaming and organizing... but that was pretty taxing. So I ended up getting my hands on a Poweredge 2950 Gen III server (Did a few hours of volunteer work at an electronics recycling facility refurbishing old computers and servers for non profit organizations in return for the free server) to be used as my downloader, renamer and backup server. The specs of that server are:

Model [Poweredge 2950 III]
CPU [Dual Xeon E5410 @ 2.33 GHz]
RAM [8GB PC2 5300F ECC]
HDD [3 X 500 GB 7200 WD Enterprise Grade RAID 5]
OS [Windows Server 2008 R2]

While a bit power hungry, (Ok a little more power hungry that it should be - both systems eat up around 400W an hour or about 9.6 KWh per day totaling $0.76 per day in electricity at my current rate) they get the job done and I have yet to have a single issue. They software setup I have going on the Poweredge 2950 is completely automated which helps when downloading Royalty Free TV shows and Movies. (Believe it or not there are quite a few of them out there and believe me when I say some of them are pretty damn good from interdependent film makers! I urge you all to give some of them a chance).

I've included the other image in the second post as only 6 images per post can be made here.

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Poweredge 2950





Both systems

[colemanuk]

Wow nice setup ill be doing something like this for my next DIY project :)

[GortWillSaveUs]

Nice work on the HP Workstation. I have 2 of those and they are a beast to modify due to the HP customized case. (Dell cases are similarly a pain).
However,....you have some mad customization skills!! Good for you! Saves some money, in that you don't have to buy a new case,...and you also don't have to worry about disposing of the cases and extraneous parts.

Enjoy!

[CaptainPsycho]

Wow, the PowerEdge seems to be totally overkill. :-D

[sapper6fd]

Thanks colemanuk. Its a while in the making and I'm not done yet. The Wife is looking at me like I'm nuts with all this data storage space and thinks I'll never need this much. She has a hard time realizing a DVD takes up a little more room that your typical Mp3 on an iPod. Little does she know I'm already planning on migrating most of the stuff in the NAS to a 20 or 24 bay 3U server chassis to make a 20TB NAS server

GortWillSaveUs, the modding wasn't too bad. The only real pain in the rear was dealing with the small aluminum slots that stuck out of the 5.25 bays. They were there to act as a small shelf to support the DVD drives that were in place. It was a tight squeeze to get some pliers in there to bend them out of the way (8 in total) as I didn't want to get the dremel out and have aluminum shavings spread throughout the case.

CaptainPsycho, Overkill is a total understatement. However I'm also planning on using the poweredge for a few additional tasks. While its primary purpose is as backup and an organizer, I'm also planning on doing a few small projects on it in Visual Studios (I do a lot of C# programming as well) and this will provide a great environment for it. That said I'm thinking of pulling one of the processors out of it as I'm not using 90% of their power. Their both quad core processors and at heavy loads as it is I'm only utilizing 20% of one physical processor. Since both CPU's are 90w chips I figure I could use the power savings and save a few bucks every month on electricity.

[CaptainPsycho]

I'm also planning on doing a few small projects on it in Visual Studios (I do a lot of C# programming as well) and this will provide a great environment for it.

So have a look at NCrunch if you're doing TDD. You'll like every core you have. ;-)

[PobjoySpecial]

...

[sapper6fd]

I'm also planning on doing a few small projects on it in Visual Studios (I do a lot of C# programming as well) and this will provide a great environment for it.

So have a look at NCrunch if you're doing TDD. You'll like every core you have. ;-)

That looks very interesting! I'll be looking into this one... Now you have me wanting to swap the processors int he HP and Dell servers. The NAS certainly doesn't use all the power they provide, and with NCrunch I may need the extra power of the E5440's

The only real pain in the rear was dealing with the small aluminum slots that stuck out of the 5.25 bays. They were there to act as a small shelf to support the DVD drives that were in place. It was a tight squeeze to get some pliers in there to bend them out of the way (8 in total) as I didn't want to get the dremel out and have aluminum shavings spread throughout the case.

A c-clamp works great for this.

A C-Clamp would have worked great on one side but I couldn't get the side paneling off the flip side of the chassis.

[sapper6fd]

So an update on this project....

I've decided to add four additional 2 TB ED RED NAS Drives to the NAS server. The ultimate goal is to move into a 24 bay Norco RPC-4224 Chasis. As it turns out, the XW8600 motherboard has a total of 6 SATA Ports, 2 which are rated as eSATA ports (no idea how that works considering their regular SATA ports but wont accept a SATA Drive) and 6 SAS Ports. The SAS Ports dont work with SATA Drives. When a SATA drive is connected the entire disk controller comes to a crashing halt. So I picked up three IMB M1115 HBA PCI Cards for another low price of free with some volunteer time. They are very similar to the IBM M1015 with a few upgrades. Same firmware, and flashed into IT mode. I have the room in the current chassis to add these drives so all in all an additional 5.9 TB of RAID Storage has become available bringing to total storage space up to roughly 11 TB.

As for the Poweredge being used as a downloader, I've taken it down, and rebuilt it to run as an ESXi machine with three Virtual Machines currently in operation

VM1 - pfSense Firewall - blocking all of China, Russia and Ukraine from accessing my network (up to 5000 failed login attempts per day to my Server 2008 installation's Remote Desktop).
VM2 - Downloader - Downgrade from WS 2008R2 to Windows 7
VM3 - CentOS Webserver

The server is in desperate need of some more RAM as I scavenged it down to 6 GB and put the remainder in the NAS server to boost it up to 24 GB. I'll be picking up a 32GB kit (8 x 4 GB) this weekend (On a side note, anyone need 6GB DDR2 5300F ECC? I'll have 6 x 1GB dimms as of Saturday available). The home has been networked a bit oddly to get the firewall working off of the ESXi VM.

A working diagram is below.