Small Homelab and Media Server rebuild and upgrade

[Anghammarad]

Hi all, 

 

I had a small homelab and mediacenter machine in the living room for a long while. 

 

It started back when my wife was still with me and we upgraded our machines from C2Duos to Core I5 3570k machines.

 

So an ABit Fat4lity FP IN9 SLI went from wifeys pc case into the "new" chassie.

 

           

 

As can be seen it is a small office midi tower.

 

It started out with the above mentioned Mainboard, a C2Duo 8400, a gf 560 and 8 gb ram DDR2 800. Spinning harddisks with 500 gb each.

I did install XMBC and started copying movies and series onto the HDDs. It worked like a charm.

 

The first upgrade was the handdown of a 250 gb crucial sata ssd as boot drive, an upgrade from windws 7 to 10 and a dvd rom.

 

The board died a little due to aging caps, still fixable but I bought a Asrock Z87 Extreme 4/TB and upgraded to a 4460 and 16 gb ram. This then gave me the opportunity to run hyper-v and play around with several services and installations like ubuntu, debian, centos etc... 

 

Then I got 4x Seagate Ironwolf 4tb drives that I made into a raid 5 with intel rapid storage and really started pumping all cd and dvds onto the machine. Went from XMBC to Kodi... and still tinkered with some hyper V setups.

 

I then realized the I5 was a little too overwhelmed when running Hyper-V machines permanently so I upgraded it to an I7 4770S and 32 GB ram. 

Still havin windows 10 for the base OS. Added another 1g NIC for better networking with Hyper-V.

 

After migrating to the I7 the raid gave me the middle finger and I got an IBM 5015 Megaraid for ~ 70 bucks, a chache battery for ~30 and some cables for another 20 euros.

 

When you get such an old controller it might need some firmware updates and current drivers. 

 

Here is where some problems started. But I managed some GoogleFu and got the right downloads and informations to get the server software running on windows 10. After that finding the right upgrade rom and whipped it onto the controller. Now the 5015 could use 4tb disks instead of max 2 tb per drive. Raid created and the backup put back on the raid from an external 12 tb usb drive. I love O&O Autobackup =) 

 

Now was the time for a new case... the old one wasn't build for that... 

 

before: 

 

 

 

here everything outside:

 

 

 

Finally all was ready to move into the new home. 

 

 

Done! Sadly no place for the bluray drive anymore... but I set the limit to a cheaper case under 100 bucks...

 

Now, in a little while 4 more 4 TB drives will be added. I already got them on the shelf... this time 4 WD Red 4tb.

 

The current Hyper-V Ubuntu Server is located on the second SSD with Docker, Portainer, PiHole.

 

I will add a C-ICAP Squid with Clam-AV later, as well as a WAZUH Container. perhaps adding a local Nextcloud as well as addition to my hosted one. 

 

To get the IBM 5015 up and running you first need to get drivers and controller software:

look for a file called ibm_sw_msm_13.04.04.00_windows_32-64.zip. This is a full version able to run on windows 10. Haven't tried 11 so cant guarantee it will work there as well. You cann then update to a higher V13 and finally to the latest V15.

 

To get the Firmware rom download the firstzip file from this post: https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/ibm-m5015-experiences.397/page-10#post-80857

 

Inside are several roms, pick the right one to flash the controller using the MegaRaid Controller Software V15 you got installed earlier. and off to the races it is.

I'll add another fan in the front, I got a silentwing somwhere gathering dust. it's completly new but couldn't locate it. bummer.

Looks a lot better now, still not perfect but better and still space for the 4 more drives.

Partslist:

 

Case: Aerocool Cipher

PSU: Cooler Master V550 full modular

Mainboard: AsRock Z87 Extreme 4 TB

CPU: Intel Core I7 4770S

GFX Card: Gainward Phantom GTX 560 (still got a Phantom 760 here, may swap it in)

Ram: 32 GB DDR 3 1600

Drives: 1x Crucial MX300 250 GB, 1x ADATA SU630 240 GB, 4x Seagate Ironwolf 4TB Sata drives configured as Raid 5

Raid Controller: Avago/IBM Megaraid 5015 with BBU added and SAS to SATA 4 way splitter cable.

 

OS: Windows 10 professional current build 64 Bit

Hyper-V: Ubuntu Server LTS 22.04

 

Services: Open Kodi, PiHole, XAMPP, ...

 

More to come.

 

 

Cheers

Ang

 

[Anghammarad]

And the next iteration for this small cutie. 

 

Due to the Cipher being a nice case for 8+ 3.5" HDDs it has a drawback for me. The drives aren't dcoupled from their mounting cages. So the now 8 drives inside make the case humm to a level where it is distracting for having it in the livingroom. If I had the same drives as SSDs I really wouldn't care, but sadly even though having a nice job and having gotten the december gratification, didn't sway me to buy 8 4tb sata SSD drive but to stick to the 8 spinning 3.5" ones.

 

So I went out and did what I often did when building a new machine and grabbed my still favorite bigtower case the Fractal design Define XL R2. This will now be the fourth one here at home. Well it definetly has no rgb bling to it, or what I call "Ninja RGB" (TM by me).

 

Grabbing my tools I'll head over to make the tower move. I'll post pics at a later date due to working on LTE right now, because some numb nut set the buildings fibre box on fire. Provider told It'll take 1-3 weeks to get prermission from firedepartement and police to start fixing it. So all ~50 flats are right now cut of from cable tv, telephone or internet... 

 

 

With this out... let me start ^^

 

Cheers

Ang

[Anghammarad]

And back with the livin... or online... after 2 Weeks of only LTE and even that broken due to a faulty antenna outside from the provider, today the fiber is getting into the xmas spirit again and started glowing. 

 

 

Server gone... *poof*

 

 

 

So first here is the old new case with its 8 drives:

 

 

 

The reason why I wanted to swap out the case again were the dual drive cages. Even though the space is enough, cooling too, those cages have no hdd decoupling, so the vibrations with 8 HDDs were way to noisy to have that machine standing in its place, next to the TV/Receiver etc.
 

 

So out everything has to go...

 

 

 

The ADATA SSD got swapped with a MX500 1 TB, due to having only 240 GB space for the hyper-v virtualization.

 

So the new case is a Fractal Design Define XL R2:

 

I already plugged one of the cages out to rotate them 90° . In the beginning the case comes with 3 fans, one in the front, one in the back and one on the bottom.

The bottom one needed to move, else the drive cages can't be moved to where they should go. So out it went and got moved to the front, so that 2 of them are now blowing cool outside air through the drives.

 

 

 

 

Cage turned, first connections made:

 

 

 

And both cages in:

 

 

 

And everything connected up:

 

 

 

Partslist:

 

Case: Fractal Design Define XL R2

PSU: Cooler Master V550 full modular

Mainboard: AsRock Z87 Extreme 4 TB

CPU: Intel Core I7 4770S

GFX Card: Gainward Phantom GTX 560 (still got a Phantom 760 here, may swap it in)

Ram: 32 GB DDR 3 1600

Drives: 1x Crucial MX300 250 GB, 1x Crucial MX500 1 TB, 4x Seagate Ironwolf 4TB SATA drives configured as Raid 5, 4x WD Red 4TB SATA drives configured as Raid 5

Raid Controller: Avago/IBM Megaraid 5015 with BBU added and SAS to SATA 4 way splitter cable.

 

OS: Windows 10 professional current build 64 Bit

Hyper-V: Ubuntu Server LTS 22.04

 

Services: Open Kodi, PiHole, XAMPP, ...

 

 

Right now I'm sifting through all the stuff to remove double files, when done I'll rebuild the backup and add services to hte Linux VM like Nextcloud, WAZUH, and other stuff.

 

If you want a little guide how to set up the Hyper-V with the additional NIC, let me know. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Anghammarad]

So after quite some 7+ Years running 24/7 the Board decided only to use 2 of 3 PCIE Slots... Trying several different Bios versions, only the gtx 1060 and raid controller, or a network card and raid controller, or 1 network card and the gfx card, but not each of those three are working... 

 

With that out of my fingers, another "ugrade" is happening. The parts arrived I'm going to pick them up. so if everything works well:

 

Old Things to go :

 

ASRock Z87 Extreme TB4

32 GB DDR3 

GF 1060

LSI Megaraid

and all the other stuff inside

 

New things gooing in:

 

Aorus B550 Elite AX V2

64 GB Mushkin DDR4 3200

GF 1060

AMD Ryzen 5700X

LSI Megaraid

and all the other stuff inside like hdds, ssds, bdrom etc...

 

Lets start... 

 

First the new pieces: 

 

 

And the good old machine... chuff chuff it could... until... lately... 

 

Saying goodbye while

 

putting the new warrior together:

 

 

 

Now put into it's home:

 

 

 

And back onto its place:

 

 

Firing it up and:

 

 

 

 

After a quick session in the bios: 

 

 

loking good... but well that was where it looped... 

 

So back into the bios it was, disable trusted computing, and it was back booting up into windows. mind the old installation.

 

So what to do now?

 

Open up the device manager and in set the hook on "show hidden devices" ... and start removing all that are "foggy", then removing all the software for the old board, install the drivers, queue up a bios update and off we go to another reboot.

 

Well all looks nice but the Hyper-V environment. wouldn't start. So back into the Bios it was, and let me tell you, the Gigabyte Bios is bad from the menus and tabs... after a few minutes back and forth I finally found the vt-d version of AMD IOMMU etc. and reenabled it. Got disabled after the bios update.

 

One boot later Hyper-V was back up again. 

 

So right now FTP Server, KODI, Linux VM with Docker runniing NPM, WAZUH, PiHole, Portainer and Wireguard and the machine isn't even breaking a little sweat. The old one was becoming slow as soon as wirrguard was active.

 

Swapping out the GF 560 with the GF 1060 will decrease the idle wattage down a little over 100 watts. The new PSU is 80+ gold, instead of 80+ bronze as the one before. 

 

One drive got disconnected while putting the psu cables inside. So that is why one drive pool is degraded. It should be done with it's rebuild in a few hours. 

 

 

Now I'm puzzled about the next update... we'll see.

 

 

Cheers

Ang