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Maybe the wrong thread, but is there a USB device that will connect to a server via VGA/DVI and USB or PS2 connectors so you can manage a headless server without a monitor or keyboard/mouse in the event of ethernet going down?
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Feb 9, 2012 22:49
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I wish but unfortunately it doesn't seem to exist. The way I finally got around it was moving to ESXi so that if my storage VM crashes, I can use the vSphere Client to console it. Of course, if ESXi crashes...
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Feb 9, 2012 22:52
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FISHMANPET posted:huge image. That's nice and all, but put timg tags around that poo poo.
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Feb 9, 2012 23:00
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IOwnCalculus posted:I wish but unfortunately it doesn't seem to exist.  Seems like it'd be a pretty good idea. Ah well.
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Feb 9, 2012 23:05
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Oh I completely agree. If it existed and was reasonably priced, I'd have one. Headless boxes are enough of a pain at home where at least I have the cables and poo poo to hook it up to another display, it's another pain altogether when I have one stashed at my mom's for backup purposes and I don't have all of that available there.
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Feb 9, 2012 23:08
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IOwnCalculus posted:The way I finally got around it was moving to ESXi so that if my storage VM crashes, I can use the vSphere Client to console it. Of course, if ESXi crashes... How are you doing this? I was thinking about setting up a virtualized FreeNas box for home use and directly passing the disks to the VM. I'm trying to reduce physical boxes at home.
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Feb 9, 2012 23:24
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I've been meaning to write this up for a little while. I'm using some components I bought from kill your idols, namely a Intel DQ67SWB3 motherboard and an i5 2400 processor. I also threw in 16GB of RAM, two Intel PCIe gigabit NICs (the onboard isn't supported in ESXi and while there is a community-supported driver for it, I was having issues with it), and an old PCI SiI 3512 two-port SATA controller. I installed ESXi 5 to a 4GB flash drive, which the whole box boots off of. I have a 160GB SATA drive hanging off of the 3512 which contains the actual ESXi datastore (basically, the hard drive images of my m0n0wall, fileserver, and some other VMs). I then used VT-d to pass the onboard SATA controller directly to the fileserver VM (Ubuntu 11.10), and plugged in the six 1.5TB SATA drives I had in my old fileserver. Two are connecting using eSATA-to-SATA cables to make use of the two rear eSATA ports. These drives and the controller they're attached to show up natively within the fileserver VM and I was able to easily pick up the md-raid array that was on them. I'm using two NICs because I also have my m0n0wall VM running on this - one NIC is connected to my cable modem, the other to my local network. As an extra bonus, when the time comes for me to move past 1.5TB drives and get onto Solaris/ZFS, I have a PCIe x16 slot sitting there waiting to drop a LSI card into, pass directly through to a Solaris VM, and connect my new 3-4TB drives to...I won't need to set up a temporary physical box to migrate the data to.
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Feb 9, 2012 23:49
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This is kind of why IPMI supporting motherboards are worth getting as well, but ESXi itself is just fine as a headless machine with nothing for management besides the vSphere client in many home setups. I suspect you could get an IP KVM to fulfill a lot of the graphical console requirements as well. The problem with a USB monitor around now is that it requires a bunch of drivers to get working. See this monitor for an idea of what use cases it really hits (not many). Maybe in the future with Thunderbolt it'll be possible to have hotplug monitors instead of having to drag out a standing monitor or use a rackmount 1U KVM, but that won't be cost-effective for several years out I'd say.
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Feb 10, 2012 00:19
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I don't think BlackMK4 was talking about a USB monitor - ideally such a "USB KVM" would connect to the host laptop/desktop via USB, and would connect to the computer being consoled by VGA or DVI for video, and USB or PS/2 for keyboard and mouse. The computer being consoled wouldn't need any special drivers at all, it would just look like a KVM to it. It would basically be a USB video capture device along with some hardware/software that lets the host computer act as HID to the consoled box. IOwnCalculus fucked around with this message at 00:45 on Feb 10, 2012 |
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Feb 10, 2012 00:42
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D. Ebdrup posted:That's nice and all, but put timg tags around that poo poo. Ah gently caress, posted from my phone and forgot that I should modify the link to show the Large thumbnail. Sorry, fixed.
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Feb 10, 2012 00:42
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FISHMANPET posted:So I got my second 5-in-3 enclosure installed and all wired up.
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Feb 10, 2012 02:48
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adorai posted:What case did you start with? http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811147125 Though it's discontinued. Looking now, all the cases with 9x5.25" bays are insanely expensive (hundreds of dollars), and my case was only $50 plus shipping.
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Feb 10, 2012 04:17
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Way back in the day, I bought one of these that had 12 bays for pretty cheap on a deal. It looks like 12 bay cases are like $200+ now holy hell. I still use it today, but drat is it heavy. Aside from the paneling all the insides are steel.
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Feb 10, 2012 05:34
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FISHMANPET posted:So I got my second 5-in-3 enclosure installed and all wired up. Out of curiosity, how much were your enclosures?
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Feb 10, 2012 05:38
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PopeOnARope posted:Out of curiosity, how much were your enclosures? This is the big enclosure: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817994028 The one I just got was $135 with rebate (if I send the rebate in) but when I got the other one a year ago it was $110. The 3 in 2 above (with two mirrored system drives and a hot spare) was $73.
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Feb 10, 2012 07:32
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So it's about time I created my own permanent home storage solution, as the last one I had moved out with my roommate. I was originally going to use this as a dual htpc/fileserver, but I've been hearing great things about this, and figured that would allow me to just use the parts below exclusively as a fileserver. Here's what I got to play around with:
Obviously my first priority are harddrives, and I was thinking about three of these in Raid 5. The motherboard has only 4 SATA ports, so I wouldn't have much room for expansion unless I decided to build an entirely new machine, but I'm not worried this any time soon. Secondly, I need to actually decide on the OS. Linux with software Raid 5? Windows Home Server 2011? I've spent the past several hours playing around with FreeBSD and some zfs stuff on the good word from the first 10 or so pages of this thread - even got sabnzbd working as well. But I haven't read through everything, so the opinion of 2012 may be a different from 2008. What's the recommendation these days, based on the hardware available to me?
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Feb 10, 2012 10:06
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BlackMK4 posted:Maybe the wrong thread, but is there a USB device that will connect to a server via VGA/DVI and USB or PS2 connectors so you can manage a headless server without a monitor or keyboard/mouse in the event of ethernet going down?
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Feb 10, 2012 11:29
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FISHMANPET posted:This is the big enclosure: Out of curiosity, why would you bother with those 3 when you can get a Norco 4020 for a few bucks more?
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Feb 10, 2012 23:54
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Or alternatively, the Supermicro CSE-35 for about $30 less per enclosure?
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Feb 11, 2012 00:18
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PopeOnARope posted:Out of curiosity, why would you bother with those 3 when you can get a Norco 4020 for a few bucks more?
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Feb 11, 2012 00:44
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At the time I built the server, I lived in a 1 bedroom apartment and didn't have a place to put a rackmount server, so I went with what I did. I had to put it in the living room, so the appearance mattered. Thats why I didn't use the SuperMicro enclosure (which I already had one of in white) because I couldn't get a matching 3-in-2. I now live in a 2 bedroom apartment, and if I built it now I would use the 4224. For certain my next build will be a 4224, but at that point in time what I built made the most sense.
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Feb 11, 2012 00:58
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Ah, the almighty wife approval factor. I've worked around that these days by completely hiding mine in plain sight (stuffed into what used to be DVD storage in my living room home theater center).
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Feb 11, 2012 06:30
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I'm looking to build a new desktop that will include a SATA/SAS backplane (SFF-8087). Not a rackmount server, a DESKTOP. Does anyone know of any alternatives to this SUPERMICRO? I'm not too excited about spending $650.00 on a case. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811152166
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Feb 11, 2012 21:09
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evil_bunnY posted:Not USB. ILO/iDRAC cards do this over ethernet. I think the newest Intel NICs support KVM over IP. poo poo, I'm scaling way down for when I move back into the dorms and I really was hoping for a mini-itx footprint 'server' in addition to my laptop.
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Feb 12, 2012 02:00
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Can anyone with the HP Proliant Microserver chime in here? I just received the package with the microserver from newegg, but I noticed that one corner of the tape packaging was opened and the little flap under box was pushed in, like someone stuck their hand inside the thing or took something out. I noticed the server was there intact, and I have the manual and the US power cable (and nothing else). I looked online on youtube at various unboxings and apparently these things are supposed to come with two cables (one is supposed to be where the flap opens on the top of the box). Mine obviously is missing this cable, but I'll be damned if I know which cable I am missing. The box / manual are no help as they do not provide a list of what should be inside the box. Online I can't find any other information. Any US goons buy this thing? what cables am I missing here?
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Feb 12, 2012 02:42
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As far as I remember you have everything it comes with.
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Feb 12, 2012 03:04
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Galler posted:As far as I remember you have everything it comes with. Odd, I wonder why the other dudes online had two cables...maybe one was for the UK power or something? I'd call NEWEGG to ask, but have no idea what to ask for.
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Feb 12, 2012 06:13
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I looked at some unboxing videos on youtube and as far as I can tell the only time there's an extra cable is if it's the UK/Euro model which comes with both an UK plug and an Euro plug. If you're in North America then you just get the one power cable. I wouldn't worry about it. e: vvv No kidding. Galler fucked around with this message at 09:51 on Feb 12, 2012 |
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Feb 12, 2012 06:36
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Do you really need MORE power cables? God knows I have too many of the things.
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Feb 12, 2012 09:39
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IOwnCalculus posted:I've been meaning to write this up for a little while. I'm using some components I bought from kill your idols, namely a Intel DQ67SWB3 motherboard and an i5 2400 processor. I'm a bit annoyed that I didn't buy a motherboard that supports VT-d.. After some of my 2TB disks started crashing i decided to rebuild my fileserver and it seems ESXi 5.0 runs fine on it. But since I'm missing VT-d i can't passthrough the SATA controllers. Has anyone been running raw device mapped storage for a while? There's a shell trick that lets you raw device map local disks: http://hughnote.blogspot.com/2009/08/raw-disk-mapping-of-local-storage-on.html I did this to connect the old linux server disks to the new VM and it works fine, the big question is if a failed disk will crash the entire ESXi host, if it kills the VM or if it gracefully handles the missing disk and lets me hot plug a new disk into he vm.. I think i'm just gonna experiment a little with pulling some old small disks to see how it deals with it 
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Feb 12, 2012 12:11
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Galler posted:I looked at some unboxing videos on youtube and as far as I can tell the only time there's an extra cable is if it's the UK/Euro model which comes with both an UK plug and an Euro plug. If you're in North America then you just get the one power cable. Ok thanks thats what i figured. I just hate it when I get half opened boxes through UPS and I don't know when I am missing something. God I hate UPS. poo poo happens more than it should.
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Feb 12, 2012 16:06
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e: resolved
poverty goat fucked around with this message at 17:57 on Feb 16, 2012 |
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Feb 12, 2012 23:57
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error1 posted:I'm a bit annoyed that I didn't buy a motherboard that supports VT-d.. After some of my 2TB disks started crashing i decided to rebuild my fileserver and it seems ESXi 5.0 runs fine on it. But since I'm missing VT-d i can't passthrough the SATA controllers.
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Feb 13, 2012 10:52
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I did some testing and ESXi is actually pretty good at keeping VMs running even if data stores or mapped devices become inaccessible. It kinda sucked that once you lose all paths to local storage you have to reboot the whole host to clear up the dead paths, often with a hard reset since the vmkernel takes forever to time out on the failing IO requests. In other words you really want to have a proper RAID controller if you run a home ESXi server, not just single disks on a dumb SATA controller. When i pulled a drive and replaced it i never got ESXi to reinit that target without a reboot. I went back to linux and KVM. I'll set up mdraid once i have enough disks, probably. Or i could try mapping whole disks into a freebsd VM and set up raid-z
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Feb 15, 2012 07:26
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I've set up a software RAID5 array using my onboard AMD RAID; thus there's no battery for the RAID controller, though the computer has a UPS. I have questions regarding write cache settings to failure proof the array as much as possible: 1.) I presume that the lack of a battery for the RAID controller and the fact that it is software RAID would mean that if windows freezes/crashes for some reason data in the write cache would be lost, even if power never goes out. Is that correct? 2.) I have the option of disabling the write cache per drive (though it is enabled by default). I assume this is the cache physically on the drive, in which case the risk of data loss is not unique to the RAID configuration (though I imagine that the implications of this could be worse in the RAID5 array). Should this be turned off? Write performance is not a huge sticking point so long as I can write faster than my cable can download. 3.) There's conflicting information in google about whether or not to enable NCQ for the drives. Is there anything to know here beyond benchmarking the array with and without NCQ to see which comes out on top? e: I'm aware of the limitations of software RAID5 and that it's not a backup solution, etc. The array houses a bunch of media that is not irreplaceable, but annoying to replace and too much to back up in a reasonable way. poverty goat fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Feb 16, 2012 |
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Feb 16, 2012 17:48
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N40L is at the 'egg for $270 shipped now; not as good as the $250 a week or so ago, but still good. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16859107052
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Feb 19, 2012 05:17
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Crossposting from Home Networking Megathread. Hopefully some of you goons can help with a problem I'm having.Odette posted:I posted some time ago about having a NAS directly connected to my PC via gigabit ethernet while my PC uses wireless. Odette posted:Yeah, that's what I thought. EDIT: Disregard this post. I am going to buy a switch tomorrow. Needed one anyway ... Odette fucked around with this message at 03:10 on Feb 22, 2012 |
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Feb 22, 2012 01:56
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I asked around in this topic a while back, but I never got around to actually buying a NAS back then, so I thought I'd ask for updated opinions. I'm looking for a home NAS to invest in, probably a 4-bay device so I got plenty of room to expand later on. I'm currently thinking of going for two 3TB RAID1-setups, but I'm not entirely sure about the need for that redundancy yet for anything but absolutely vital stuff. Anyways, two things to start off: I've got it in my head that a device with Wake-On-LAN is better than one without, because it'd use less power when not in use and would spin up only when actually needed, so the drive would last longer. Am I right in thinking this? Secondly, how has the price of hard disks evolved after the disaster in South-East Asia? Three months ago, I was told prices were spiking, but I can't really tell if they've gone down since then or not (haven't paid attention closely enough to tell).
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Feb 22, 2012 13:25
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Going the custom-built route is pretty cheap. The first post in this thread has some fairly useful information. I wouldn't recommend RAID1 at all because it has no redundancy. If a drive fails, your data is gone. Regarding price of hard drives, here's a graph showing the price change in the last year or so. Note: The price is in NZD, and we pay a bit more for everything over here. Now that I think of it, there's probably a thread just for the hard drive crisis somewhere. 
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Feb 22, 2012 14:40
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Odette posted:Going the custom-built route is pretty cheap. The first post in this thread has some fairly useful information. I wouldn't recommend RAID1 at all because it has no redundancy. If a drive fails, your data is gone. I think you mean RAID0. RAID1 is mirroring, so if one drive goes tits up you've got the second with all your data.
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Feb 22, 2012 14:45
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