My brand new shiny HP Microserver arrived in the mail and I was excited to try it out. I had four 480GB OCZ SSDs to add to this baby server and wanted to get it up and running. Unfortunately, the HP Microserver is built for 3.5 inch drives. Luckily I found great solution. Newer Technology AdaptaDrive 2.5" to 3.5" Drive Converter Bracket. Attach your 2.5 inch SSD to this bracket, then attach the bracket to the HP MicroServer Drive Trays and you’re good to go. ...
If you’ve got a some hardware lying around for your lab, Windows Server 2012 may be a great solution for a home storage device. You can now do both block (iSCSI) and NAS (NFS) on the same server, as well as having an OS to install some management apps on it. In my lab, I use this management server to run Veeam for my backups, PRTG network monitor for bandwidth tracking, as well as using this server for both iSCSI targets and NFS mounts. ...
I recently purchased a Synology DS411slim NAS device for my home lab in order to quiet down my rack and start using up less power. Obviously to accomplish this I would need to fill it up with Solid State drives which have the added benefit of a large number of IOPS :) I screwed my four 480GB OCZ SSD’s into the drive cages and slipped them into the chassis. Really my only con for this device was getting the drives into the chassis. I did have to do a bit of wiggling to get them seated correctly. ...
My configuration is listed below if anyone is interested in the details. Similar designs have been done before by both Chris Wahl @Chriswahl and prior to that by Phillip Jaenke @RootWyrm who called them " Baby Dragons". I used their base config and made a few tweaks of my own based on pricing, part availability etc. Part List ESXi Servers - Quantity 2 Case: Lian Li PC-V351B MicroATX PSU: SeaSonic Platinum SS-400FL2 Fanless 400W RAM: Kingston 16GB (4 X 8GB) 240-Pinn DDR3 Unbufferred ECC Motherboard: Supermicro MBD-X9SCM-F-O CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2 Ivy Bridge 3.3GHz NICs: Intel EXPI9301CTBLK 1000Mbps PCI-Express, SuperMicro Dual Port Gigabit Card Boot: Kingston DataTraveler 101 G2 8GB USB 2.0 Local SSD: 64 GB Intel SSD Flex Server - Quantity 1 (Used for a Hyper-V server, VSA or 3rd ESXi Host) Case: HP Gen8 Microserver Storage: 4 480GB SSD’s from OCZ Storage Array Synology Array: 1- Synology DS1513+ Hard Drives: 5 1 TB Wester Digital Blue 7200 3.5 inch hard drives Networking Equipment Layer 3 Switch: Cisco WS03750G-24T Switch Firewall: Cisco ASA Wireless Router: Dlink Wireless N+ Router ESXi Server Notes: I’m not going to lie, when I saw these cases on Chris Wahl’s lab and had to have them. They look crazy sharp and I love the pull out Motherboard mounting option. There are other components in common but I have a feeling these were copied because of a similar taste for components and budget rather than lust! :) ...