Home Server Rebuild: Part 1 The Grunt Work

I've been avoiding this for a while now..... the grunt-work associated with a major change. But it had to happen sooner or later. As I've discussed before, there are a number of things about my WHS (Windows Home Server 2011) running file server that I've become unhappy with; although, much of it doesn't have anything to do with WHS itself, but rather the HighPoint Caching controller. 

After a lot of hours of watching YouTube I came to the following conclusions:

• I have to decide how I want to manage my storage.
• I have to decide what operating system I want to use.
• How safe do I want to be in terms of the files residing on the file server?
• How much money do I want to put into the server in terms of drives?
• How much time do I want to allocate to learning the OS?

Don't get me wrong: I love this stuff! But I have another full-time profession, a family that expects me to spend time with them. AND I do not have an unlimited amount of cash to expend on this solution.

So, here are my options. They start with reloading Windows Home Server 2011 which has the distinct advantage that I own it and have used it for close to a year now so there's a level of familiarity. My hardware is also set up for it, with a 160Gb SSD for the OS to live on, and a Highpoint caching controller that I know works with it. The downside is that I'm not very happy with how it's working and will have to expend an unknown amount of time figuring out how to make it work better..... if that's possible. Furthermore, it's a product that's been "orphaned" by Microsoft, so this is the "end of the trail" for it.

An obvious alternative is FreeNAS. It's well-known and quite popular today. It has that always favorable attribute of being a free product. As such is supported by the "open-source" community. It and it's off-shoot, NAS4Free (more on this later), have the advantage of having a robust software RAID file system that doesn't require the use of an expensive (and often annoyingly difficult to use) hardware controller. Plus underlying technology that allows it to play nicely with various other systems ranging from Windows (CIFS), Linux (SMB) to AFP (Mac Networking). They can also handle standalone authentication or work with Active Directory, although that's not particularly relevant in my case.

 

And of course, you can't talk about FreeNAS without getting into NAS4Free which is ixSystems' attempt to do FreeNAS with a better web interface and plugin system. As it turns out, based on lots of research, it seems to be somewhat less "bleeding edge" than FreeNAS and thus easier for laymen like me to grasp. I'm not going to get into the nitty-gritty of what exactly pushed me in this direction. Suffice to say that the cleaner and easier interface was a better fit for me. 

....But what about the various Linux distros? Although, I'm certain that these are great for full production environments with a professional well versed in running command-line, these aren't for me. I will say that I was suitably impressed with CentOS during my time with it, but I just don't see myself investing the time necessary to become fully comfortable with it's use. Plus; I don't need a full server. I just need something to serve files, so really a "roll-your-own" NAS with greater flexibility.

What got done today? I loaded the OTP (Old ThinkPad) mobile file server up with NAS4Free 32-bit v. 9.3.0.2.1190 with it. Got it up and running. Copied a ripped movie file to it and played it back off. It's a good start! So stay tuned as this project proceeds and I decide whether this is in fact the server OS for me.

The Alienware Part 3: A Merry Alien Christmas!

All the parts were gathered..... kind of. The students sitting around the table in a circle. The patient laying on it's side with it's internal spaces open for access. Tools laid out. It was almost like one of those surgery theaters you see in a TV show or movie.

I stood there watching my student walking through all the internal parts that would go into the cosmetically altered Alienware Aurora 7500 with all the other computer club kids. I felt a bit like a proud doctor dad watching his surgeon daughter about to perform her first surgery!

In fact, we had done most of the hard work 2 days ago, when she and I reassembled the repainted case. All-in-all, it took the better part of two hours. While we were at it, we adjusted the "stand-offs" to the holes of the new motherboard, attached the drives to their slide-in frames, made certain all the connections we had, had somewhere to attach, AND that we knew where that "somewhere" was! The actual build took less than an hour, with much of that time being taken up by the adjustment and attachment of the Heatsink/Fan assembly.

Was there drama? Well..... yes, in that due to holiday shipping issues, the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo didn't arrive until the afternoon of the build. So I had to run home and get it off of my porch and bring it back to school! "Smart-Post" might be the single most idiotic shipping "solution" ever! Let's just say that it took a package that was supposed to arrive on Friday until the following Tuesday to get to my house from Newegg's Memphis facility! It's actually not an issue with either FedEx or USPS..... just the interchange between the two which adds one or two days to the process that I take exception to!

 

Anything else? Well, at least partially thanks to Smart-Post, the "bay" card reader/USB 3.0/fan controller didn't arrive till yesterday. That leaves it for me to install when I do the Windows load some time in the next couple of days.

Is there a silver lining? I'll have to say "absolutely"! I'll have this machine completed and back to her before Christmas! As I sit here typing this, the re-animated alien is happily purring away right here next to me loading it's updates. So, when she gets home from skiing in New Mexico, it'll be ready to go home. Plus, last week, we were able to finish my other computer club student's computer rebuild as well. So all this stuff is done before the holidays, which not only allows me to work on my projects (more to come), but more importantly, allows them to have their shiny toys to play with during the 2 weeks off! Merry Christmas indeed!

Re...Animating The Alienware: Part 2 (The Body)

 

 

After seemingly an endless number of screws to remove, the Alienware Aurora 7500 got disassembled! It's one complex case..... in fact; it's a case within a case. 

 

The number of plastic shell pieces was a little astounding! In fact, just the skin of the side panel alone was 3 separate pieces.. and that's not even including all the various fans, lights, and connectors.

 

In this case (literally) though, it turned out to be to my advantage. It allows for the pieces to be done in the faux carbon fiber look to be done separately and require very little masking! Oh, don't get me wrong: it's still a "pain in the a**", but not as bad as I first envisioned.

Now the trick will be for me to get all this done and put back together without getting confused and forgetting how everything fit and what screws went where!

The reassembly overall went pretty well. We had a bit of a problem getting the hinge of the door just right which necessitated some touch-up, but it's together. I'm generally pleased with the "carbon fiber" effect. If you'll look at the image of the top after the first coat of black versus the final product in the last image, you'll note quite a difference! This time around, I used another technique learned on YouTube; that of introducing a third color ("rubbed Bronze") that seems to really add some depth to the effect. As you can probably tell, the overall look is subtle, which is precisely what we were going for. Just so you know; I used Rustoleum spray paint exclusively on this project. I don't have anything against other brands, and they certainly aren't paying me for this, but I've had good luck with them so I use it.

 

 

Of course, that'll just be the prelude to the main event...... the actual build.

Reanimating the Alien.....ware: Part 1

Let me do a quick update, in case it's been too long since I wrote about this student-project. This is what my student's Alienware Aurora 7500 looked like when it came to us from California.... complete with FUBAR'd video card. It was just short of $200 with shipping. After a quick, oven bake; the GPU came back to life and functioned for several months while my student worked and saved for the build. About a month or so ago, the Windows 7 load crashed and "that was that". There wasn't any real point in saving it, or reloadinng, so we started looking at the parts vs. budget trade-offs.

In the meantime, we got serious about what it would look like. She had originally wanted one of the "Post-Dell" buyout computers with the sliding front panel done in flat black. However; after realizing that, that generation's machines only took Micro-ATX sized boards, we decided against going that route. In the meantime, we came across this amazing "mod" by the MNPC folks where they took specific panels and used a spray paint technique that gave it a carbon-fiber look.

 

You can see from the close-ups that the effect is remarkable! Overall, we decided that this gave us a great combination of flexibility of a full-sized case, yet a unique look that wouldn't cost too much to replicate.

 

The build will be based on the latest version of Gigabyte's G1 Sniper line that has the Z97 chipset. This not only gives it the ability to take the "Devil's Canyon" update of Intel's "Haswell" processor, but a unique high-end audio section that's isolated on the motherboard from digital interference. This was an important feature for her since she's very music oriented.

 

 

 

The timing of it couldn't have been more perfect occurring around the last week of November, thus coinciding with Newegg's avalanche of "Black Friday" sales! All-in-all, I'd estimate that we probably saved over a $100 on all these various parts. I've already talked about the motherboard, so here's the rest of it. The whole she-bang will be run by an Intel i5 4690K processor, with 16Gb (2 x 8Gb) of Corsair Vengeance Pro RAM. The OS will be loaded on a Crucial 240Gb MX-100 SSD, and the graphics handled by an EVGA/nVidia GeForce GTX 660 video card. At the end of the day, this whole set-up will come in below $1000..... and that's including the original Alienware computer! Stay tuned as I continue this series with build-logs as we make progress from here!

Retrograde File Server

Not long ago, I talked about my "amok time" when I went a little bit storage drive crazy. As part of that, I bought several Hitachi drives, one of which was a 2Tb Deskstar that filled out the connections of the HighPoint RocketCache 3240X8. This RAID controller has the capability to handle up to 4 SATA drives that can be any combination of SSDs and HDDs. Of course, at least one of them must be an SSD of up to 64Gb in order to take advantage of the caching aspects of the RAID set up. If you've been following along over the course of the last year or so, you're probably aware of it being a part of the Spectre upgrade from my original Hercules file server.

 

The whole shebang was built into a Silverstone Precision Series PS-07, Micro-ATX case that literally was just the right height to fit into the space I had for it. It went together great, and that case, as expected was big enough for all the drives, quiet and unobtrusive..... everything you want in a file server. Over time though, I've become increasingly unhappy with the HighPoint controller. It started off poorly with the included disk that had the wrong software, exacerbated by really, really bad documentation that made me reminescent about 70's Japanese model instructions! The thing that has bugged me this whole time was that it's RAID setup made one of the 2, 2Tb drives disappear entirely (no, it's not set up as mirrored). The capper was when I initialized the 3rd, 2Tb drive, the controller made that disappear as well! While, I'm a 100% certain that it probably can be rectified by some settings in the user UNfriendly software, I've decided that it's just not worth the continued hassle. 

Right in the middle of all this hoo-ha, I had decided to pull the living room HTPC and sell off it's guts for an upgrade. Although the Gigabyte GA-EP45 motherboard isn't worth much, the 8Gb of Mushkin RAM sitting in it could fetch upwards of $100+! As my sell-off/upgrade/purchase routines tend to be intricate and linked; it occurred to me that as an HTPC in today's world, it completely didn't need the power of a "Core" machine. I had retrograded my bedroom HTPC from a Westmere i3 to a Celeron of that generation with no ill results at all. It occurred to me that the "Brazos"-chipped Asus E35M1-M Pro board was completely wasting the graphical end of it's APU concept living out it's life as a file server in a cabinet! The features that originally drew me to it as a server board such as fanless processor, lack of need for a graphics card, and USB 3.0 were just as, if not more valuable in an HTPC. On top of which, a change to a different board would allow me the opportunity to resolve a few issues that has to do with personal quirks.

One of them being that I've always used an IBM RT-3200 compact TrackPoint keyboard as my server interface. Yes, I'm aware that most people imply use the web interface, but you might be aware that I'm not like other people! In fact, one of the four monitors in my desk setup has it's VGA input connected to the server to I can interact with it directly. I've tried KVMs and don't like them. Hey; at least this way, I don't have to have a separate mouse, which by the way is the reason I've always struggled with the Asus E35 MB. It only has one PS/2 port and no adapter I've ever tried (4) has allowed me to ability to connect both of those functions on my RT-3200. 

After quite a bit of head-scratching and research, I settled on an Intel DQ965GF. Why this board? Well.... you already know about the 2 PS/2 ports. So here are some other items that I really liked: Intel Gigabit NIC (can we say way faster than Realtek), 4 RAM sockets, integrated graphic (natch), 8 (vs. 4 or 6) SATA ports, 2 PCI slots, 2 PCIe slots, 6 USB ports on the back panel (plus 2 more headers on the MB), and socket 775 for which I got both dual core CPU and a quiet HSF in hand. There are some other random items that might come into play at some point such as Firewire, and a parallel port as well, but who knows right? This board ended up costing me $17! I bought a $12.99 PCI-e card to give me 2 USB 3.0 ports on the back panel, plus an internal header that will give me front-panel USB 3.0 for the first time. For some inexplicable reason the Asus board only had that on the back panel! Anything else? 

I'm considering an alternative to using Windows Home Server 2011. Not sure yet. That may be a down the road thing, after I've fully tested it out on the test server that's at school. 

At the very least, I'll finally be able to see all 6Tb of storage from the 3 Hitachi 2Tb drives! I'm also going to plug up the old Antec SATA "hotswap" drive bay in the other 5.25" location. This thing will allow me to move data in bulk directly from the Blackbird workstation to the file server. It has two "hotswap" drive bays one of which has a Hitachi 1.5Tb drive in it for exactly that purpose. This will allow me to move files at SATA bus speed which is WAY faster than even Gigabit Ethernet! So yeah..... I'm doing one of those moving forward by taking a step back things. The Stay tuned and see how this turns out.

Old School ThinkPad

I go through so many computers, that sometimes a machine will fall through the cracks. Although, I'll occasionally need to clean out "the crumbs", I'll also find that jewel as well. In this case, it was the titanium lidded Z61m that I had worked diligently on to bring back from "discarded project" of another ThinkPadder to become a "do-everything" mobile workstation. Unfortunately, it never fully came to fruition due to a locked BIOS. Now, I've dealt with other machines with the BIOS locked before, and in general it's not an issue, however this particular machine wasn't recognizing the wifi card. I tried a number of cards with the same results. It came down to that it was either a defect on the board with was highly unlikely, or that it was shut off in the BIOS somewhere. This is not a very good state of affairs for a mobile workstation! After a while it fell by the wayside, especially since around that time I fell under a proverbial avalanche of ThinkPads! On top of that, many of those machines were more updated (T61), or more powerful (T60p). So, it sat forlornly in the "boneyard" under the workbench. It even suffered the ignominity of giving up it's updated parts (T7200 CPU, 4Gb RAM, 80Gb SSD) to other "front-burner" projects. 

When things were looking it's worse, a plot-twist appeared. As part of my OTP (Old ThinkPad) Server project, I was reexamining my stock of IDE/PATA laptop drives and decided to clear them out while their value was high. I listed them on the ThinkPad forum, from which an acquaintance offered a trade for one of the 160Gb drives. Among the things he had to offer was a derelict, but working Z61m! A couple of nights ago, the working base of his Z61m got mated to my screen and other top parts. The parts box coughed up 4Gb of RAM that came out of my old X300, and a 160Gb Intel X18 SSD. 

Then this morning, after a BIOS "whitelist" hack, it got an Atheros 5418 "N" wireless card! This was the capper! The very reason that it originally ended up under the bench. Now, it can be a fully MOBILE workstation! Yeah, I gave up a nicer ATI Mobility Radeon GPU on the other board, but the reality is that, it's not something I'll really miss given what I'll be using this machine to do. What'll this machine be expected to do?

In a word..... "gruntwork", that's what. My primary portable computer is the uber-sleek ThinkPad X1, however, it's a sports car of laptops. You can haul tree branches in a Porsche, but you won't find it very enjoyable. The old red pickup (Z61m) of laptops, on the other hand, may not be very sleek, or up-to-date, but it can do pretty much anything...... not fast, or stylishly, but it'll do it without complaint.

 

Storage Is Driving Me Crazy!

OK; maybe this "Fisheye" view of the Fermi labs' data center is stretching it a bit, but I've gone a bit storage crazy lately. I guess, my little digital world at home is a microcosm of our data oriented world at large. I have a lot of data, and it seems to be growing at an exponential rate. The main source of the growth is my movie ripping project. At this point, I'm at about 325 films. This creates two issues. One is the "basic" file of the movie once the incription has been stripped away. It's a pretty big file. That's why I use Handbrake to crunch it down to a more manageable 1-1.5Gb file in an MP4 format. This gives me a relatively decent looking picture on a small screen such as a tablet or even notebook computer. However, I don't want to get rid of the original file, so I don't have to rip the thing again in the future. Of course, that leaves me with a lot of data to store. Just the MP4s alone add up to 400Gb of data..... and I'm not even halfway through my library!

As I'm accumulating this stuff, I've progressively felt a "space"-crunch. Given that my server had 2, 2Tb drives in it, plus a 3Tb backup, I'm not certain that's real, or just my head playing games with me! Be that as it may, I start adding drives at the end of the summer. Here's how it went down. I bought Hitachi drives whenever I could. Based on my experience and things that I've read, they seem to be the best bet on a $$$ vs. life-span equation. I used to be a Western Digital guy, but over time, my loyalty such as it is, has progressively moved over to Hitachi. Now, that they've been bought out by the big WD, I guess the issue is moot. In the last several months, I found a few good deals and bought 1, 2Tb, and 2, 1.5Tb Deskstar drives. The 2Tb one went into the file server and took the last spot on the HighPoint caching RAID controller giving it 6Tb of internal storage. The 1.5Tb drives have gone to live in the workstation to augment the 1Tb drive that was rapidly filling up. I've configured it where one of them is permanently attached (like the 1Tb drive), and the other residing in one of the two "hot-swap" bays. This will give not only quadruple the storage space, but will allow me the ability to use it as "removable mass storage". I can put LOTS of data on that drive; kick it out without opening the case, and plug it into the file server moving the data at SATA III bus speed!

As things like this seem to happen, more storage possibilities fell on me "out of nowhere". While discussing selling/trading a laptop drive with someone, he offered me a Toshiba Canvio, external hard drive case (with power supply) for almost nothing. Of course I took it! Actually, it's a clone of the 3Tb external that I have attached to the file server as a "backup". The interface is USB 3.0, so pretty quick. Now, all I have to do is find a deal on a big disk to go in it. Most likely, it'll be a Toshiba, as they seem to run specials on them regularly after Toshiba ended up with most of Hitachi's desktop drive manufacture capacity during that sell-off. I'm not real certain what I'd do with another 2 or 3Tb external drive, but you know what they say: "you can never have too much storage".

As if the portable side of my digital life was feeling left out, things started hopping there as well. While looking for drives, I ran across a 2.5" Orico USB 3.0 drive enclosure for cheap ($12). So, I bought it and put a spare 500Gb drive in it. This thing gave me the ability to move large amounts of data around quickly due to the USB 3.0 interface. Very convenient when both my brother-in-law AND I were ripping our movies and need a good way to consolidate the files on one drive. The almost 400Gb of movies fit on there great.

WAY better than what had been my one and only USB 3.0 device; the iOmega SSD Flash drive. While it's super fast with a 1.8" Intel X18 SSD in it; the storage size of 80Gb wasn't big enough to do anything serious. Essentially, it's just a big flash drive.

Right in the middle of all this, I started working on my OTP (Old ThinkPad) Server project. An outgrowth of it was to use my Lacie Porsche Design external drive enclosures.The only issue here was that not only was the enclosure IEEE-1394 (Firewire) interface, but internally, it's IDE/PATA! After digging around, I was able to find that I had a Seagate (I know, I know...I had it, so what're ya gonna do?) that came out of an old machine. Now I need to find another one, (hopefully, this time, a non-Seagate) for the it's twin. While working on that project, I learned from another "ThinkPadder" that you can buy an UltraBay 2000 adapter that will take SATA drives. This will give me the ability to put in any size I want in the internal bays of the A31 up to 12.7mm in height. I believe the largest capacity of that physical size is 1.5Tb. However, I'll go with a Seagate 500Gb drive that came in a machine I was given when they upgraded. I know; another Seagate, but it's hard to turn down free!!!

While all the storage madness was going on..... I filled out a survey. "What you talkin' about Willis!?!" OK, I didn't just fill out a survey, but wrote a review too, on my "new" X1. In return, Lenovo sent me a coupon for a promotion to get an F800, Multi-Mode storage device for half off! What is it? It's a 1Tb USB 3.0 external hard drive with it's own battery (which can charge other devices like phones), and a built-in access point. You might have also notice the Ethernet port as well. And you'd be right! It can function as a network "bridge" as well! Hard to tell from this picture, but imagine an regular 2.5" portable drive, but fatter.

That's 7! I've added 7 terabytes of storage in the last month....and I'm not even through. I'll probably add another 2 or 3 over the course of the next few months as well. I'm a little be astounded myself.