I acquired an old Proliant DL145 G2 1U server last Friday. The price on it was so attractive I figured I would try to see if I could install WHS and get it to run with 30 drives.

The Proliant has 2 Opteron Duel Core 2.2 Ghz Processors can handle 16 GB of RAM or 8 GB per processor. It has 2 PCI-X ports on the riser which I will use for eSATA connections which I will explain later on that thought process. It has 2 Gigabit ports and a 10/100 port (Not sure what to do with that but its not important to me right now).

What I am planning on doing is building a hard drive enclosure with 6 Sans Digital Hard Drive Racks with the intake fans positioned on the outside wall of the enclosure. There will be 3 racks per side and the drives will be connected to CFI-B53PM Cards 1 per rack. I will be using 90 degree SATA/Power Cables to Straight SATA/Power cables to make the connections from the drives to the PM Cards. The power for the PM cards and Drives will be supplied by 2 power supplies (Yet to be determined) which will be positioned to both corners to the rear of the cabinet. Each PM card will be cabled to the rear of the cabinet using SATA/eSATA connection cables which will then connect to the PCI-X Cards in the Proliant (Still Need to find a 4 port and 2 port eSATA card to handle and support JOBD and PM functions. The enclosure will also have a series of fans in the front to bring in additional cooling capacity and exhaust fans in the real and vents on the side to handle excessive positive pressure that may be generated from the front and side fans. I may also install a 1/2 ht DVD Drive in the Proliant but right now I can connect an external drive to handle that task or pop the case open and connect a full ht drive to the existing IDE Cable.

Currently I am looking to build the drive enclosure which will the Proliant will sit on top of and will be supported on 4 legs with a shelf above 4 casters to support a UPS. Currently I figure the entire assy will be about 36" in ht but it might be higher depending on the UPS I select to protect my new toy. While I would prefer drive trays it occured to me that I hardly ever remove the drives so if I needed to do that then I just lift the Proliant off the drive case and open the top and can access the drives that way. A minor inconvience but what I am after is mostly to have something that can grow with my needs.

So here is where I am at now. I installed WHS on the Prolient it went very smooth but I had two issues which I resolved over the weekend with the Drivers for the Gigabit Ports and the System Interupt Controllers. Piece of cake there. The fans are loud as hell when they run at full speed but when they settle down its managable for me but for some I know it would be an annoyance but I have no plans on changing them out because they keep the unit nice and cool.

Now I just need to find a 2 port and 4 Port eSATA cards to work with my CFI-B53PM cards. I currently have only 1 Hard Drive Rack and 1 CFI-B53PM card to play with along with some older SATA Drives no longer in use but are good enough to test the setup with. I have installed 2 1TB WD Green Drives in the System but will change them out for 2 TB Drives so they are there for testing purposes.

I did purchase a 2 port PCI eSATA card with a Sil 3124 Chip but it appears there is an issue with that card firing up when the system boots that I need to troubleshoot. Either I got a bum card because it will not read the ROM on the card or its just not compatable with the PCI-X architecture but it should work because PCI-X is backwards compatable. Now I have no intention on using that card in the end its just I wanted to test my other downstream toys this weekend but its not happening right now so I have to rule out that card or the settings in the Proliant BIOS.

The Proliant also has a PCIe port but to use it I would have to purchase a riser kit from HP. At this time I am going to see if I can get the PCI-X ports working since they already exist and I have 2 to work with where as the PCIe would I believe only provide me with 1 port and I need 2 to provide me with the 6 eSATA connections I require to make this happen.

As for the WHS OS I installed it off an evaluation copy MS sent me 2 years ago its suppose to be a 120 day evaluation but as Alex pointed out thats only 30 days now so I have less then 30 days to prove out my setup so I can proceed with the cabinet fabrication and begin ordering the 5 remaining racks, PM Cards, fans, power supplies, casters, steel, UPS and I have to figure out the cabinet filtration and if I want to also install Drive LEDS or not because WHS Disk Management when you setup the wireframe properly will aide me in finding the drive(s) in trouble but for now I am undecided if I want to build an LED Board or not.

Well thats my current project which put a fire under my hind end when I saw the Backblade Storage Pod. At first I was going to copy their design but I did not particularly like how their drives were installed and felt they needed better support to handle the vibration of the drives other then rubber band type material and foam on the cover. So I thought about a file cabinet but soon the double walls presented a problem. Then I saw a Storage Cabinet but finding one that was affordable was out of the question and so I came full circle back to cabinet fabrication and this week I will see what I can get from our sister company and might end up with all Stainless Steel which is very nice but to damn difficult to work with but beggers can not be chosers and if I can get the plate and steel stock for free then I will take what I can get.

This is not really a DIY Build where you buy all the componets and put them together but its more like a DIY Retrofit where you take something not intended for a particular application and convert it to your wants, needs, desires and will to have something unique at the lost possible cost and I am well on my way to achieving that.

I welcome any suggestions and comments anyone wished to make. I will include pictures soon of my progress which will be slow but if I can finish before Vail comes out then I can run it 64 Bit but I will come up with a Vail solution which means my EX470's will continue to hold all my data and the Proliant will hold the data too so the EX470's are my insurance policy so to speak.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

Update:

Well I picked up a PCI-X 4 port (2 SATA and 2 eSATA) card today at Microcenter and installed it. Works perfectly althought the Proliant complains about the PCI ROM not being initialized which I will figure that out next. But the card worked and I connected a Sans Digital TRM4 to it and the test drives I installed in there showed up and I was able to add them to the storage pool.

Unfortunately I found out from Alex that the 120 Day Trial version of WHS would have to be removed and I would have to install WHS again but it was a test that cost me nothing. So I ordered the WHS OEM from New Egg just a few mins ago. I guess the next test will be to power up that CFI-B53PM card and connect it to the server to see how it works along with that Sans Digital 5 Bay Hard Drive Rack which I may do today but I think I would rather get some standoffs then apply the power to the card and attach the drives to see how it works out.

As it stands now I can have 22 drives in the system but in the next couple weeks I will order a 4 port eSATA PCI-X card so the server will be able to handle the full 32 drive compliment that WHS can support.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

Last weekend I installed the OEM Licenced version of WHS into the server and began moving drives to it so I could migrate my data from the EX470's to the new server.

A couple of days ago I did start moving the data but did not turn on the duplication because the drives needed to be freed up from the EX470's. Once I relocated the drives I turned on duplication and demigrator kicked in and I expected it to take days and days to complete its task but it was not the case it completed fairly quickly and while it was active there was no noticable impact on the server and the most it pegged the CPU was like 40% in the very beginning but that adjusted to like 5-10% which was a pleasant surprise.

Currently I have eSATA Drive enclosures connected to it until I build the enclosure. Problem with the enclosure is that even with no cost for the steel the other components and cables are making it hard to justify building the enclosure making the Norco Case once again very attractive.

While it would be cheaper to build a case design like the one used in the Backblade Storage Pod I simply do not feel comfortable with how their drive configuration is set up so I wanted to rack the drives but the cost of doing so ends up costing more then the Norco 4U 20 bay enclosure.

For the time being I have enough eSATA External enclosures to accomodate 17 drives 19 with the 2 installed in the Proliant so it buys me sometime to determine the most cost effective means to obtain something that will hold 30 drives and then again will I ever need 30 drives but there was a time when I could not envision having the amount of drives and capacity I have now but my fear is when I enter the Blue Ray areana it will just chew through drives and I have more plans for the server then just storing my media content because I want to host a website, email and a few other things too.

Now I have to figure out what if anything to do with my existing EX470's as I do not desire to sell them or allow them to collect dust so I will have to figure out a task for them to perform and they will be getting the 3.0 installed just because I want to see what its like and maybe it will breath some life into them.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

Recently I was out searching for PC3200 Registered ECC memory and the cost of such memory I found to be abit on the high side. So I frequented eBay and found some deals along with a couple of new matched pair of Optron 280 2.4 GHZ Duel Core Processors for my ProLiant. So in a week or so I will have an aditional 6 GB of RAM to install which will bring the RAM to 7GB, dedicating 4GB to one processor and 3GB to the other. I have been running with only 1 GB and as I add more things to my server its starting to have am impact as its using virtual memory to keep up which results in things running on the slow side. So the RAM will be the big help and then the processors will be the icing on the cake and allow me to move forward.

Some of the issues I have run into is the SSL Certificate and not being able to get a replacement for it from TZO because they tell me they do not issue them. So I am sort of running two domains on my 1 server. Since I can not stand that Certificate error I have allowed the Microsoft Domain to exist so I do not have to look at a certificate error when you utilize the https:// but my custom domain from TZO works well but only for http:// Since the two domains seem to co-exist together I decided for the moment why fight it and just let it be.

As mentioned before my custom enclosure idea keeps getting more and more costly. The idea behind the custom enclosure was to save money not to go broke. So now I am back to the 4U Norco Enclosure since its cost is very attractive. So for the moment I decided to take a break from thinking about the custom enclosure and keep my 2 4 Drive Portmultipliers active although I only have room for 2 more drives and I am still waiting on a new CFI-B43PM backplane board from Sans Digital which is on back order to convert an existing EX470 Case to become a 4 Bay Portmultiplier not because I need it but because I thought it would be cool for one of my EX470s but I might just end up using it on my ProLiant until I come to terms with what to do about having a large hard drive enclosure and its not because I need it but to have the capacity on hand for the day when I do need it. So I want my server to grow with me and thus the enclosure is key for that.

Because the ProLiant has 3 network ports 2 of them 10/100/1000 the other 10/100 and the drivers for the gigabit ports supports load balancing I thought how cool is that? So first you have to figure out what it is and how to configure it. So off I went to discover what load balancing is about and if you check it out with any search engine you get a wealth of information that only causes you to scratch your head. While I am no expert in Load Balancing it appears to be useful if you have multiple redundant servers and say if one goes down another will take its place. Atleast thats what I believe its about and it requires aditional hardware. While I have multiple servers I do not need them to run fully redundant and so I have come to the conclusion that I do not need it. I had thought what load balancing was for was for when you have duel network ports that it would sort of balance the network traffic between the two ports. So I have more to learn about how to properly use a server with duel gigabit ports. As for the 10/100 port, I connected it not sure if it does much but from what I have read it has to do with Configuring the Server over the network or some sort of interserver communications. So I have to read more about it because I really do not know.

What I do know is this ProLiant I recently acquired is working well and its probably too much hardware for WHS but better to have too much then not enough or basically just something that gets you buy for now. Oh yea I did install one of the 2TB Hitachi drives in it and it never goes above 30c so those little fans in the ProLiant do a great job of keeping things cool but when they kick into high speed the noise they generate can wake the dead and even when they are running normally they are on the loud side which would annoy most people but now I hardly notice the noise level unless they kick into high speed.

So right now I am waiting for the RAM and Processors to arrive which will improve performance greatly. I am happy with the Music and Video Streaming I am doing online. The few people who do use it tell me how well its working compaired to the EX470 which did well but when demigrator kicked in the streams would not run so well. Now demigrator can kick in all it wants and it has little to no impact on the servers performance and the most I have seen it tax my CPU's was about 40% then it dropped down to like 5-10% but the limiting factor right now is the thing needs more RAM which will be addressed very soon.

Lifes good!

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

The 2 AMD Optron 280 (OSY280FAA6B) Processors which are a matched set arrived today and I installed them in the ProLiant and they fired up perfectely. These are Duel Core 2.4 GHz Processors. What I pulled out were AMD Optron 246 (OSA248FAA5BL) single core 2.2 GHz Processors.

Here are some pictures for those interested.






I am hoping the RAM arrives tomorrow but its comming from 2 locations. I bought 6 GB of PC3200 Registered ECC. I am going to install 4 GB for on Processor and move the existing 1 GB and install the new 2 GB for the other processor to give it 3 GB of RAM. The server can handle upto 16 GB or 8 GB per processor but would only be able to access it in a 64 bit environment as most of you know. Still I will buy the remainder of the RAM in advance to have it ready when MS ever releases VAIL.

The only thing left is to come to terms with the main drive enclosure I keep talking about, to buy a PCI-X 4 port eSATA Card, a Slim DVD Drive and of course more drives as needed. Currently I am still using the TR4M and RSV4 4 bay units but only have 2 bays open for expansion.

I will post more as I move forward but for now I have to wait for things to arrive. Which will come first my RAM or my 3.0 Upgrade discs from HP?

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

Fascinating reading!

That 3rd network port of yours that you're not sure what is for, does it happen to say iLO by the port? Most HP servers over the last several years have this port. It stands for Integrated Lights-Out. It's a remote control feature in ROM, and it allows you to connect to your server remotely and control it, even if the server is crashed, hung etc. You'll see the power-on screens, rom boot messages etc when you boot the server.

When you boot up the server you should see a hotkey prompt that will allow you to configure the iLO ROM. There are also Windows tools that you can use to manage it. You will need to set up the security etc before you can use it. When you have it configured you can connect to it from a web browser and remote control your server through the browser.

For more information just look up iLO on the HP web site.

One of the manuals I have says its a LO100i 10/100 Mpbs LAN port for IPMI Management. Thanks for the information. There is an entire section in the Users Guide which describes its function as being independant of the OS and can be accessed either with the Serial Port or that Network Port. I will have to spend sometime tomorrow (well later today I guess) reading about it and seeing if its of interest to me. It used a CLI so its just a matter of getting to know the commands and the command formats to put it to use if I determine its something I could bennifit from.

So if my RAM doesn't arrive tomorrow I guess I will spend my time reading and playing with it.

Thanks for pointing it out to me. Had you not done so it would of been just sitting there waiting till I got real curious about it and started to make an effort to understand why its there in the first place.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

Hey Comp1962:

Give these people a call they have all kinds of Server mem and parts really good people!
Also have a inventory list you can look over changes pretty often
http://www.usmicrocorp.com/

Vette

Ya might want to rethink your ram.
I've got several of those in my data center and have never seen one with different size ram for each processor.
I'm fairly certain your ram is a single pool for both processors.
And you need to match the chip by the slot/bank in pairs.
i.e A0 skip some then A1, would be one pair, the B0 + B1 and so on.
But the ram pairs must match size/speed/etc... best if they are twins.

And seeing how WHS is 32bit it will only see 3gb, once vail hits or if you run 64bit 2003/2008 you can use all 6gb.
I forget what the max for that Mobo is but it's not endless seem to recall it being around 24GB.

Oh yeah that management port is called ILO (Integrated Lights out), when you booting up you will see an option to hit F8 to configure it.
It will need a fixed IP on your network.
Think of it as a ip based KVM, you can also do a port forward of an unused port to it's ip at port 80.
Then access it via a web browser. Just hit the IP you assigned and use the user "Administrator" and the password you set.
Make sure to set a password during config so you can use it.
Some Ilo's needed an "Advanced management pack license" to use you can buy them on ebay for $25-$125.

Its a nifty little thing to have it even allows you to remotely turn on or off the server.

One more tidbit, you can only use one of your network ports on most consumer networks.
Most end user routers/switches do not support teaming/trunking/pairing/bonding.
You can always try it but what usually happens one or the other will work but not both and you may get spanning tree errors under some instances depending on what services your running.

_________________
Current DIY server DL380 G6 2xquad core 2.8ghz 32GB rdimm ram 512mb 2xHP 410 raid with 2x sas expanders (2 X norco RPC-4220) 48 slots stacked with room to grow.
30TB (Movie/File/Music)Win 2012 essentials 64bit Storage spaces
Ex490 E6400 4gb ram

Thanks for the information. Yesterday the RAM arrived only one vender short shipped me suppose to get 4 GB (2 x 2 GB) and only shipped 1 2GB stick so I am trying to resolve that now. The other RAM Arrived perfectly and is in the server running now providing me with 3 GB of RAM. You are correct with the installation of Mached Sets. I have 2 manuals with it and I thought I had read in the manuals that each Bank was dedicated to each processor. So I replaced the 1 GB (2 x512) with the 2 GB ( 2 x 1 GB) and moved the original RAM to the other BANKS as outlined in the manual and it does show up at 3 GB so I guess I read something wrong and will have to review what I previously read. Guess thats what happens when your up all hours of the day as I am. The total amount of RAM my server can support is 16 GB and the RAM has to be installed with matched pairs. So what I will be purchasing in prepairation for VAIL is all 2 GB Sticks and I have venders selling new HP Branded RAM for reasonable prices.

I am going to take a break from that server for a few days and by the weekend I will review the manuals when I am not so tired

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

First,let me say that I'm not familiar with the HP motherboard but the supermicro motherboard is set up the same way as the HP. Each set of memory is destined for each CPU, howerever, the architecture of AMD's 280 is CPU to CPU communication and the total ram is used by whatever cpu needs it. They recommend, for best efficiency to have equal amounts of ram on each cpu but it is not neccessary. I populated in pairs with the same speed memory from the same vendor but they are not the same size(full height vs low profile). I have 8 gig of memory but with the current WHS it will only use 4 gig and show as 4 gig. I do have a mix of memory speeds but it is populated in pairs by speed. I have had no problems with memory.

_________________
HP EX470, 4 GIG, 4200+ EE SFF, WHS V1, Production
HP EX485, 4 GIG, E5800, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Transfer Server, Backup Server
HP EX490, 4 GIG, Q9400S, WHS 2011, Stablebit Drive Pool, Mediaserver
HP EX485, 4 GIG, Q8200S, WHS 2011, ITUNES Server

I just opened up one of my ProLiant Manuals to review the memory and it clearly stats that each bank is dedicated to one processor.

DIMM 1 to DIMM 4 - Assigned to CPU 1 socket (U22, the boot node)
DIMM 5 to DIMM 8 - Addigned to CPU 2 Socket (U11)

Then is goes on to indicate which which DIMM Slots to populate depending on a single processor or if your running 2 processors along with mentioning they need to be installed in pairs of the same type and speed of RAM.

All I know so far is the unit is functioning extremely well and everyone who is using it has commented on how well it runs and the impact of demigrator, Twonky and the other things known to cause WHS to slow down do not seem to have any significant impact.

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

Excellent, as they say the proof is in the pudding.
If it's working and everyones happy it can't be wrong.

_________________
Current DIY server DL380 G6 2xquad core 2.8ghz 32GB rdimm ram 512mb 2xHP 410 raid with 2x sas expanders (2 X norco RPC-4220) 48 slots stacked with room to grow.
30TB (Movie/File/Music)Win 2012 essentials 64bit Storage spaces
Ex490 E6400 4gb ram

That saying is very true. But just because its written doesn't always mean it works they way they say it does. Guess I will find out soon enough. Thing about it is if it doesn't then its still ok because I will be buying 2GB Sticks till I have 8 of them waiting for the day VAIL is released. Do I need 16GB of RAM? I don't know the answer to that but I remember when computers had 5K memory, then 16K, and as things worked there way up 1 MB and I remember putting 9 MB in an Amiga 2000HD and I was on top of the world using the extra RAM as a RAM Drive and thinking I would never need more then that. Who knows where it will all end. Maybe one day soon even 16GB will not be enough................

_________________
Exploring the possibilities!

Migrated from WHS2011 to WS2012E: HIGHLANDER

~ Norco 4220 Enclosure
~ Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD5
~ AMD Phenom II X4 995 3.2 GHz
~ 8 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
~ 3 Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8

Nah you can have an odd total amount as long as the Pairs match.
I have loaded 2008 64bit on 2GB no problem.
I think as long as your ram goes in, in pairs your golden.
Let me know if you have any probs I can look at my setups and see how their configured.
And the ILo stuff I can do in my sleep.

_________________
Current DIY server DL380 G6 2xquad core 2.8ghz 32GB rdimm ram 512mb 2xHP 410 raid with 2x sas expanders (2 X norco RPC-4220) 48 slots stacked with room to grow.
30TB (Movie/File/Music)Win 2012 essentials 64bit Storage spaces
Ex490 E6400 4gb ram