This thread might just be the kick in the pants I needed to swap in 3 3TB drives into my server that have been collecting dust since April, but here's the current setup.
Hardware
CASE: Rosewill Blackhawk Ultra
PSU: XFX ProSeries 750W XXX Edition
MB: SuperMicro X7DWN+
CPU: 2x Intel Xeon L5420
RAM: 16x2GB Nanya NT2GT72U4NB1BN-3C DDR2 FB-DIMMs (32GB total)
RAID CARD: Areca ARC-1680ix-16 w/ 4GB ECC DDR2 DIMM+ Backup battery
LAN CARD: 2x Intel PRO/1000 PT Dual Port Server Adapter
SOUND CARD: Creative Labs Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty
SSD: SanDisk Extreme 120GB
HDD1: 6x 3TB Toshiba DT01ACA300
HDD2: 2x 3TB Seagate ST3000DM001
HDD3: 4x 1.5TB Seagate ST1500DM003
HDD4: 1 2TB Hitachi HDS722020ALA330
Waiting to replace some drives: 3 more Toshiba DT01ACA300
Software and Configuration:
This server is running Windows Server 2008 R2 currently with two hardware raid-6 volumes.
The 2TB replaced a dying 1.5TB Seagate, thus 500GB is being wasted there.
Current total usable capacity to OS is 22.5TB from 32TB worth of drives installed.
Usage:
System runs Windows Server Update Services and I have all my other windows machines get Windows
updates through it and save bandwidth/download times every patch tuesday. Machine also stores all my
media (movies, music, TV shows, other videos) as well as other things I download. I tend to keep every
version of NVIDIA and AMD video drivers I download, every Java JRE/JDK update, every LibreOffice and
OpenOffice I download, etc. Also a large collection of ISOs for various operating systems, etc. Also has
installers for various games that were downloaded from download helper apps or DRM free humble bundle
purchases. I also have a large collection of software from my brief access to MSDN-AA. The system also
runs a Ubuntu Server Guest under Hyper-V which mounts the Windows Server host via NFS for /home and
/var/www.
Backup:
Currently only relying on raid-6 to save me. Have enough blank BD-R disks that I could archive
most of my movies/TV shows at some point in the future.
Additional info:
This machine idles at about 330watts and even with the 3 extra Antec spot coolers temperature alarms
will sound if I use this machine for heavy CPU workloads. Fully Buffered DIMMs are horrible power
sucking heat generators. Besides the Onboard NICs, I use additional network cards and have this
machine connected to a managed switch with a link-aggregation-group as well as dedicated connections
for the VM and RAID card. One additional CAT5 cable for the KVM Transceiver. Theres no good reason
i have the sound card installed other than the fact the motherboard has no audio and I wanted the case's
front panel connectors to actually all be wired up properly.
Photos:
Inside the server
Machine in its native environment
Out of band management to Areca RAID controller
Storage under OS