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!