Case Mod - In Progress Coolamasta's Home NAS & VM host build

Aggregation must be supported by the chipset and the management software. I'd be surprised if on-board hardware would support it.

 

God, and I thought the N40L was overkill for a home NAS!

 

Nice. Really nice! I've got to build a new VM server for my Exchange box and a couple of other things - this gives me ideas...

Tom - I've an N40L in the pipeline as a replacement for my home NAS - I might add a new RAID controller though, perhaps!

 

I appreciate the answer, and I figured that would be the case.

 

Cheers bud, I run a test domain at home and have a mixture of PC's, Laptops and HTPC's about so I have servers running AD, Exchange, DNS, DHCP, etc but also have a small VM test lab set up that I use to play with different versions of Windows doing various testing etc.

Thanks mate, it took me longer to sort the cables out for optimal air-flow etc than it did to put the hardware in and configure it haha

If they are Intel Pro 1000 NIC's then you might be in with a chance, make sure you have the full Intel software management pack installed, open the properties of one of the NIC's then click the Configure box then if they support it you will see a 'Teaming' tab then you can create a team and the wizard is quite helpful if you have never done it before.

But before you do this make sure you have a switch that can support 802.3ad for a proper Link Aggregation, you can use Adaptive Load Balancing if your switch doesn't support 802.3ad which is not as good but still better than a single gigabit link

Lol, its waaaay more than just a NAS

Cheers mate, I replied to your PM, hopefully that info will help you for your new build

 

Thank You I appreciate you taking the time to answer my question.

 

Small update - my home NAS has had a few upgrades recently, I took the 4u rack case I had originally (see early thread pics) I removed the front locking door and then cut a hole in the left side to match the right side and made some brackets up to hold another drive cage so I could get 6 x 5.25" drives in the front panel as opposed to the standard 3.

The front was a bit scratched up and I was just going to re-paint it but I found some spare carbon fibre effect vinyl wrap kicking about so thought I would give it a try and if I didn't like it I could always rip it off and paint it but I think it came out OK
Its now packing 24TB (8x3TB) but 1 is set as a hot spare and the are configured in Raid 5 which gives me total usable space of 16.2TB with speeds varying between 400-600MB/s read and write

I decided to re-build it after running out of storage space (had 5 x 3TB Red's in there before) so I have added some more 3TB Red's and replaced the LSI 9260i Raid controller with a Dell Perc H700, the new spec is:

• Customised 4U Rack mount case
• Asus P8H77-M Pro s1155 Motherboard
• Intel i3 2120 CPU @ stock 3.3ghz with stock cooler
• 16GB Kingston Hyper DDR3 RAM (4 x 4gb) @ stock 1600mhz
• Seasonic G series 360w '80 Plus Gold' PSU
• Dell Perc H700 8-port Raid controller with 512mb Cache & BBU
• 8 x Western Digital 3TB "Red" (Raid Edition) Hard drives
• Icy Box Tray less 5 Bay HDD enclosure
• Icy Box Tray less 3 Bay HDD enclosure
• Crucial M4 60GB SSD for OS & Plex DB
• LG combined BluRay & DVD-Ram drive
• Intel Pro Dual 1000 PT PCIe Server NIC in 2GB Teamed mode (802.11ad)

 

All going to be stripped down soon as im moving to another room in the house and as much as the 16U home made rack has done me proud its just taking up too much real-estate and wont fit in the other room so time to downgrade so smaller kit and then decide where to put it!

I am thinking about either under the stairs and building a small rack into there some how or just doing away with rack mount stuff and just chuck it into a couple of mAtx tower cases, will keep thread updated if anyone is interested.

Also if anyone fancies the 16U rack shown in pics above in a month or 2 let me know

 

Keep it going, I got also a lil Gameserver with my friends but everything is stuffed in this: http://www.cooltek.de/powered-by-jonsbo/c2/126/c2