Are You Looking For A Less Expensive Norco 4220 / 4224 Alternative? - Page 6

I wonder if Google is recycling their old server farm...lol

If I were a hobbyist / modder I would try to make a custom plate out of acrylic.

Finally got around to disassembling this sucker. Damn there are lots of screws...

Litlgi's right. Debulking the innards on it suddenly makes it no longer tank-like, and magnificently roomy.

Drilled one hole for the Norco back plate and realized what a piece of crap Ryobi I have. I thought it was going to explode...

Question for Litlgi -- when you say you used cardboard for your mobo and standoffs, in what capacity? Was it to help mark the drilling spots?

BTW, just wanna say again how much I've appreciated your help on this thread.

I probably would've cut off a finger and/or blown up my house without your guidance.

I went ahead and bought one of these myself on Sunday. Thanks for the heads up. They went fast - there were only 4 left (of the 1.83 GHz Xeon) after I bought mine... I noticed one of you (or perhaps somebody over at [H]ardforum) bought 3!

I wish this thing supported VT-d - it would open up a lot of with regards to running it as a VM server. I think Hyper-V is the only one (VM server) that supports disk pass through with out VT-d or the AMD equivalent. Just curious, anybody got their's supped up with a 6 core Opteron (or two) yet? According to Micrcosoft, WHS 2011 only supports a single CPU socket with up to 4 cores and 8 gigs of RAM. I know the single CPU socket and memory limitation has been confirmed, but my Google-fu is failing me on whether WHS 2011 is limited to 4 cores or could use all 6 (or more, depending on the CPU) on a CPU with more than 4 cores. Can somebody with a 6 core Opteron open up task manager and see if it's showing all 6 cores? Or 12 if you went the dual cpu route (this shouldn't work, but it would be a pleasant surprise if it did!).

I think one possible work around for dual CPU systems would be to run WHS 2011 as a guest in Hyper-V and create a vCPU and assign all 8/12 cores to it. I THINK WHS 2011 would see this as an 8(or 12) core CPU. This is/will be my first go around with virtualization technology (well, I did play around with Virtual box for a day or two once), so I'm not sure exactly what is all possible on this hardware. I'm thinking about getting a pair of low voltage Xeon quads and 16 gigs of RAM and finding out I think I'm going to take the Tool Time approach. Even if you can't use more than 4 cores in WHS, there are quite a few other cool things I could think of doing with a VM server with dual quads. Assuming Hyper-V will still give good I/O performance with out VT-d - I still haven't figured that out either!

Those that already have a WHS 2011 server, what kinds of cool stuff are you guys doing with it beyond serving up Blu-rays and DVDs? I was thinking about getting a security cam (Logitech B700e, maybe) and a PoE router and running something like Blue Iris. Could covert my side door where all my packages are delivered and my drive way where I park my Jeep (sadly, no garage at this place). Maybe an instance of Torchlight 2 as a pseudo-dedicated server when it's released? Perhaps a Minecraft server as well? Just a couple of ideas I had.

Yep, I bought the last one. Wish I had seen this sooner so I could've jumped on the cheaper ones, but this is still a hell of a deal. No way I could put together a hot swap 24 bay server chassis for that kind of money on my own. I think I'm just going to leave the unit as is since I'll be putting it and my current server in my basement - so no need to worry about fan noise.

Question about the power supplies though... could I get away with just plugging in 1 or 2 of them, or should I have all 3 plugged in at all times? I'm assuming they're redundant, I just don't have a whole lot of outlets to spare.

I do already have a strip where I'm planning to put it, with some other things taking up all but two outlets. I think maybe I'll just relocate some of that stuff or replace the redundant power supplies with a single one. Thanks for the info.

You can use ESXi with raw device mapping. This will allow you to pass through individual disks just like with Hyper-V. I've been running WHS v1 through Hyper-V on Server 2008r2 and just switched to ESXi. I'm getting much better performance on ESXi with the same hardware. So you could run ESXi with those servers, and still pass through the disks.

As a side note I wonder if you can hack WHS to run on more than one core. I know you can modify the settings to allow you to install on a smaller drive than Microsoft wants, I wonder if you can hack it to allow multiple sockets. Probably not just something to think about. I don't know how ESXi handles multiple sockets since I don't have any systems with multiple sockets. It might be possible to just assign 12 cores and a single socket. I don't know why you'd need that much for WHS though. Mine is running very nicely with 4 cores, which in this case I assume is 2 cores with hyper threading. Good luck.

ESXi 4.1 free is limited to 6 cores, regardless of the number of sockets, with a 256GB memory limit.. ESXi 5 free is limited to 1 socket, no core limit, and only 32GB memory. So there's not much to gain from a second proc if you want to run ESXi.

Mine came yesterday. Talk about great shipping and packing! I had to laugh when the UPS guy brought it up using a hand truck. I swapped the RAID cards for three 3WARE 9500S cards, then installed 2008 R2 on it. I only needed the chipset, ES1000, NIC, and the 3WARE software. The OS downloaded the right 3WARE drivers, too - makes setup very easy. I don't think it's loud - but then again, I work with servers all day and I'm used to the fans. I already bought a set of quad core Xeons for it for $67 - can't beat that with a stick!

Now all I have to do is slowly buy 1TB drives and rent space out to my friends!

I believe ESXi 5 free isn't limited on CPU sockets or cores, just on the 32GB of physical memory (the searching I did showed unlimited CPUs/cores for version 5).

I still want VT-D support (and dual hexacores) so I'm planning on ripping out the internals of at least one of my servers.

How did I miss this over here??

You guys will not be disappointed in these servers for the price. Mine has been rock solid with absolutely zero issues running unRAID. I did try Esxi 5.0 on the AMD version and it loaded it fine however you will not get hardware pass through which is necessary for unRAID. I will say though that it was my first attempt at using esx and I could have missed something critical in installation.

Ordered one before they sold out. Lots of good info in this thread. Thanks for your contributions, Litlgi74. Scheduled delivery Friday, have SilenX 60mm fans on the way to start quieting this thing. Adding a pair of E5450's for some more horsepower. Probably Norco fan bracket next.

I waited a tad bit too long to jump on this and they were gone. Will be on the lookout for the next set of servers when they come along. Great write-up and good information that haven't worked with server class equipment..

EDIT: I guess they got a couple in and I was towards the top of the list, so just be patient. Now waiting for it to get here to start the project.
Edited by TViewer2000 - 7/13/12 at 11:09am

I've considered CPU improvements but don't know if it's worth it. The performance and power consumption on newer stuff is a lot better than this gear. I'm thinking about running Nexenta on mine and a the single dual-core Xeon is more than enough to saturate a gigE link, provided I bump the RAM a bit. Don't know that switching to a single quad, or a pair of either would be worth the expense and resulting power consumption. If you want transcoding power you're far better off with newer gear, or so I'm led to believe.

That and I don't know how well the chipset would handle virtualization services.

The problem I ran into with doing a lot of virtualization on this server (aside from the cost of DDR2 FB-DIMMS) was that most of the hardware from this era was designed when virtualization when just starting to be taken seriously in the enterprise, so there is limited support compared with newer hardware. I had wanted to setup ESXi and run some form of Solaris for ZFS, but it was not possible to get the hardware to pass through to the VM.

Ultimately, between the desire to consolidate systems in the house and have greater flexibility for future expansion, I'm doing a pretty substantial upgrade of the server in the next couple of weeks (actually replacing everything but the chassis and hard drives). I'll post pics as that progresses. Also, not sure if maybe I missed it in the thread, but the back window and fan wall can be purchased directly through Norco (the site is "IPC Direct", but it shows up on the card as Norco): http://www.ipcdirect.net/servlet/Detail?no=341 http://www.ipcdirect.net/servlet/Detail?no=258

I'm thinking it might be worth using illimos (opensolaris) as the host OS and then run virutalbox VMs within it. ZFS for the discs and then CIFS for network shares. This would take over for a w2k8r2 server doing the job now.

I've used that IPC link to order a backpanel, thanks!

What's the skinny on an appropriate power supply for this many drives? If I ran VMs I'd lean toward a redundant pair, especially with ZFS as it caches a lot in RAM.

Welp, I did it--ordered 2x E5-2620s, a Supermicro X9DRI-F-O, and 32GB of DDR3 FB EEC RAM to replace the internals of one of my servers. Still need a PSU and 3x IBM m1015s, and fans for the fan plate and back window, and something for the boot drive (maybe small SSD). Oh yeah, and at least 11 3TB drives to start (RAID-Z3).

And a Procurve 2810. And 1000 feet of Cat6. And a patch panel.

To go in my new 12U rack.

Gonna be a fun summer!

That's not far off of what I'm doing, except I'm only going with a single E5-2620 and the Supermicro X9SRLF-F-O. Also going to use an M1015 with one of the Intel SAS Expanders. Won't quite be splurging on that many drives though!

lol I have no qualms or worries about cutting into human flesh, but trying to drill these standoff holes correctly is practically giving me a panic attack.

Sounds like a sure-fire recipe for accuracy.

Measure twice. Cut ... wha?

OK. Inane question time.

In your first post, you reference these standoffs, which are 6-32 x 4 mm outer, and M3 inner dimensions. But then, in assembly piece number 13, you say that you should use 2 standoffs for each hole.

The problem I'm having is that they can't be stacked/ screwed into each other more than a mm, because they have different diameters (outer vs inner). Wouldn't you need the standoffs you referenced on top, and something like these to be attached to the case? This way you could screw one standoff completely into the other?

Or am I just an idiot (certainly a strong possibility)?