Well, did ya miss me?
Nevermind, I don't really want to know.
Either way, I'm back.
The assembly of Server #1 is all done and it's been up and running since Friday night.
Yesterday (Saturday) was spent installing the OS ( Small Business Server 2003) and the various databases and files it will need.
Configuring the OS was a real learning experience for me...certainly showed how little I know about software and the Internet.
Fortunately, my brother knew what he was doing and ultimately we were successful.
We won't know till the end of August how good this machine will be at it's job.
It gets taken to California and installed on August 10th and then my brother goes to China for two weeks before returning to California. That's when I'll find out how well it has done.
For now, it is just running the Sandra burn in suite non-stop, monitored by MBM5.
As of last night ( after 4 hours of the stress tests) it had maxxed out at 39C and seemed very stable.
I'll get a progress report Monday morning when he goes back in to the office.
I don't expect any real issues to pop up, the build went smooth as silk and the cooling is working better than I had hoped.
It's actually quite easy to achieve good aircooling when noise is not an issue.
The machine is not horribly loud, but certainly would be unacceptable for home use. Sitting in it's own airconditioned closet in California they won't hear it at all.
The Raptors were a revelation...not noisy at all and (seemingly) VERY fast.
I want some for Sprocket.
I do have a question for someone who has set up a SATA RAID 1 (mirrored) array though.
I set the Raid up in BIOS and indeed, during post it shows the drives as a mirrored set.
In Windows though, Disk Management only shows one drive.
Is there a way to confirm that we are in fact running a mirrored array?
On the old server (Server 2000 with a SCSI RAID set), Disk Management shows TWO C drives.
Rick ( my brother) said that with the SCSI drives he set up the RAID in Windows.
We couldn't do that with the SATA drives...we HAD to do it in BIOS.
Is this a feature of SATA drives or have we screwed up somehow?
Any info would be appreciated.
Anyway, here are some pics of the PC as it ended up...
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[img]http://img26.photobucket.com/albums/v78/clocker/mini-serverguts.jpg' width='200' height='120' border='0' alt='click for full size view'>
[apology]attach usual disclaimer about my terrible photographic skills here...[/apology]
As you can see, it was a pretty tight fit.
These cases originally held regular ATX boards not the modern extended type so the depth was shorter than I would have liked.
I wanted to mount the HDDs on the case floor, but they interfered with the video card, so this was my best alternate location that still allowed for decent airflow around the drives.
The 120x38mm Sunon fan on the front case wall ( barely visible...sorry) pushes a hurricane of air through the HDDs and past the video card. This air flows out the back of the case which has a lot of holes punched in it and is cool to the touch.
The stock 60mm AMD HS fan is mounted on nylon standoffs and blows over the southbridge and SATA chips at the bottom of the board.
An 80mm Sunon fan is on an adaptor and cools the stock AMD HS.
All fans are running on 12v.
Admittedly it is not as pretty as a home PC might be, but it is easily disassembled for maintenance which was more important in this case.
The wiring is not blocking the airflow at all...keep in mind that the HS and passive northbridge are getting fresh air from the sidepanel fan/duct (92mm Sunon) and don't rely on the front case fan for cooling.
So, there you have it.
Any info about the SATA RAID would be helpful.....
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