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Just realized I never posted this.

Around Christmas time I got myself a rack and I also ended up getting some old equipment that is end of life and basically going to fail any minute, but still looks cool.


Some blog posts here about it:

http://www.redsquirrel.me/2010/12/finally-...erver-rack.html
http://www.redsquirrel.me/2010/12/server-rack-update.html
http://www.redsquirrel.me/2011/01/bought-m...tom-server.html
http://www.redsquirrel.me/2011/02/fired-up...open-filer.html


Tonight I mapped a LUN through iSCSI and will leave it on my main server. That one enclosure will always be on and be used mostly for backups.

I'm doing decent in the disk space department.

[root@borg ~]# df -hl
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda3 433G 12G 400G 3% /
/dev/sda1 190M 25M 156M 14% /boot
tmpfs 3.8G 48K 3.8G 1% /dev/shm
/dev/md0 3.6T 2.1T 1.4T 62% /raid1
/dev/sdf1 917G 716G 155G 83% /mnt/rembackupdisk
/dev/sdi1 2.0T 199M 1.9T 1% /sanmnt/e1v1
[root@borg ~]#



The LUN is /dev/sdi1

My main data store is /dev/md0



Since it uses lot of power I'm not sure what I will do with the other 3 enclosures. I will keep them for spare parts and that's about it, I think. The drives are IBM specific so I can't put my own drives in it, which kinda blows.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:5391, old post ID:39883

That is insane. So what can be done with this aside from backups?

I wouldn't know how to work half that stuff but dam it looks like it would be hella fun to toy with once it's all hooked up.

Learning experience for sure

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:5391, old post ID:39885

Since the SAN enclosures are very old, I can't really use it for anything else but backups and messing around/learning. Basically if I lose it, not a huge loss as I have other backups too. As those drives die, I can't add more space since it wont take standard consumer grade drives. I've been trying to research to see if there's a way around that limit though. It's basically a limit IBM puts to make it so you have to spend tons of money instead of just buying any drive.

Also been toying around with it more or less, playing with Open Filer which is what is installed on that 1U server. It was surprisingly easy to set all that up. Literally plug and play. I figured it would be more involved. I put the fiber card in the server, plugged a fiber patch cord from the server to the enclosure, boot up, and I see all the drives.

At one point I powered up all 4 enclosures, that was a lot of hard drives I could see.

Eventually I want to build my own SAN though, so it is more expandable and less proprietary.

This case:

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?...N82E16811219040

With decent components and a good SATA card, and I'd be set. No cash now though.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:5391, old post ID:39886

How much is the coin difference on the drives. I'm wondering if they may be more reliable then the standard drives you can normally pick up.

Biggest question is how much space you got kicking over the 4 enclosures total?
May be time to download every movie, television show and song ever made and start streaming to your living room....
And my place too

Edit: Just seen massive moth on your blog. Reminds me of when I was a little kid and couldnt get into the apartment building because of one that size on the door.. For real 2x the size of an average bat.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:5391, old post ID:39887

The two top enclosures are 400GB drives and the 2 bottom ones are 250GB drives. So without taking raid into factor that is 18TB. I did a raid 10 with the top enclosure so it's about 2ish TB.. I added a couple hot spares.

The 400GB drives go for a few hundred bucks so really not worth it to replace. They are "enterprise" grade but according to Google, this does not mean much. They actually use lot of consumer drives in their setups.

And yeah that moth was HUGE. I let it in the house for my cat to play. Was funny.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:5391, old post ID:39890

Got my rackmount case and rails so I converted my main server to rackmount. No more servers on the ground now. This is really coming along.

I'm done spending cash for now.

Racked up:


A view of my full rack:


Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:5391, old post ID:39905

i think it would be cool to set up a bunch of led's in that thing and make them blink on and off to the different servers per connetions to that server.

it'd look like an disco light stand at high use times for the servers.






Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:5391, old post ID:39906

You should see that SAN at the bottom when I turned all 4 enclosures on and started a format. Was pretty cool. All the blinky lights.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:5391, old post ID:39910

Oh and some updated pics. Made a few changes and rewired it all with cat6

I should have gone with 2 footers and not 1 footers, but managed to get them to reach. Won't be so much a problem once I get myself a 24 port managed switch then I can just plug them all in and go by port number and vlan / enable / disable as needed.




Cable management not the best, but I do want to improve it, not sure on how yet, but I want a decent cable management system of some sort. I really like those panduit conduits that go on sides, might do something like that, or do something more custom. No more money yet so it's staying this way for now. I don't want to start tie wrapping like a mad man, knowing this is temporary.




And full rack view, probably the last time for a while till I change stuff.



Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:5391, old post ID:39911

wires don't look bad. or messed up
you should see behind my tv and stereo unit in the living room.
its got two vcr's 2 dvd players 2 stacked stereo units.
one tv and one cable box all connected to each other with
a/b switches. what a mess

then the desk here 3 monitors, 3 keyboards, 3 mice, 3 towers, 3 speaker systems.
one battery backup, one printer, two usb hub's one vcr
think of them wires. none tied up at all. what a mess.

one computer don't work too lazy to fix it
half of each of the stacked stereo units don't work one vcr don't work

but you think i'm going to mess with the wires to unplug the ones that don't work?
you nuts if you think i'm doing that until the day i move from here.

Archived topic from Iceteks, old topic ID:5391, old post ID:39913