Home Virtualisation Server Migration

Oshino Shinobu · May 15, 2021

Finally got round to moving my home server over to a more suitable case so figured I'd document the process a bit. The server's used as a file server for my main storage while all my other computers use only SSDs for local storage, as well as a hypervisor for various VMs running functions like Domain Controller, VPN, Network controller, certificate authority, AV management server etc.

First, the old server case, it's just a normal PC case. Believe it's an NZXT source 210 or similar. Been working okay but it's a pain to build in when adding or removing hard drives. It's also pretty loud as it has a mix of fans, some of which are pretty poor, as well as a poor layout for cooling in general.

Disassembly starts, removing the PSU and HDDs first

Drives are out. Closer look at the PCIe cards. Asus XG-C100C 10G RJ45 NIC, a PCIe M.2 NVMe adapter and an Nvidia GT710.

Disassembly's not too interesting, so onto the new chassis. I really don't care for RGB and find gaming builds pretty boring now days, I keep mine clean and simple. Server stuff is much more interesting to me now, so many cool features.

The case, Logic Case SC-415H. 4U standard depth with 15 3.5" drive bays.

The case isn't very expensive, so considering how much you get for your money, I'm not even going to test the included 9 fans (6 x 80mm and 3x 120mm). Replacing all of them with Noctua Redux fans for quietness.

3x 120mm hot swap fan bays in the middle and 4x semi-hot swap 80mm fans at the front of the drive bays. 2x 80mm fans at the back.

Hot swap fans are pretty cool. Much better than RGB.

Drive bays unscrew and the entire assembly rotates up for easy access. Also a 6 way fan hub on the bottom powered by molex. Won't be using this though as I want to control all the fans via PWM.

The fans at the front just slide into place. Not quite like the middle fans, but still quicker to swap out than screws.

Time to start swapping out fans. Front 80mm and rear 80mm fans fit perfectly. 120mm fans are a bit loose so I'll screw them into the middle wall. Shame I can't use them as hot swap, but I doubt I'll be changing them that often and I don't want them to be rattling when loose in the housing.

Drives going in. Got plenty of free space so leaving some room between the drives for better cooling.

Just moving everything over so not much to show. Everything connected and rigged up for testing.

All the storage pools and volumes are showing okay, nice.

While setting up the fan curves, managed to get the system booting headless so can remove the GT710 now. Less power draw and less sources of heat so nice. Cables are a bit messy. The SSDs are just shoved into the drive bays for now. I plan on getting some 2.5" to 3.5" adaptors so I can put the SSDs neatly into the drive bays and sort the cables then.

Top panel on. It fouls on the cooler a bit, so will probably need to replace that at some point. Open to suggestions for a suitable cooler for a 4U case.

Big peel. Satisfying.

And finally, in to the rack. It's really heavy now so It's a bit of a fight to get it onto the rails properly.

Full specs:

Case: Logic Case SC-415H

CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2690 v3 (12c24t)

CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO

Motherboard: Asus X99-A

RAM: 128GB DDR4 2133MHz ECC RDIMM.

NIC: Asus XG-C100C 10G RJ45

PSU: Corsair AX860

Drives:

2x 1TB NVMe

3x 250GB SATA SSD

1x 1TB SATA SSD

3x 4TB HDDs

1x 6TB HDDs

1x 8TB HDDs

I'm thinking of getting one of Asus's 4 slot NVMe PCIe cards and replacing all the SATA SSDs with 3 more Terabytes of NVMe storage, I'm also running out of space on some of the drives so I'd like to start expanding with 10 or 12 TB drives, though availability and pricing's pretty bad at the moment.