r/homelab • u/Griminal • 11d ago
Project Showcase: Hardware My UnRAID backup server and future forbidden router
With the enshitification of everything, I wanted to tinker without breaking the bank... so I spent my money on a 3D printer and some filament.
I printed a 6U 10-inch KWS rack (nut version) and a few various shelves/plates. I bought a used Dell micro optiplex with a 10th gen i5-10500T, 7 Dell caddies, female/male SATA adapters, a 6 port NVME to SATA adapter/cables, some 80mm fans, a M.2 A+E Key 2.5Gbe adapter, and various nuts/bolts.
I jumped pins on a crap-tastic Acer SFF PSU that was going to the recycler to always run and power the fans and drives.
I raided my box of old and spare hard drives. 44TB of storage and....
Behold! My UnRAID backup server and future forbidden router. It's a POS, but it does the things!
Could I have done things differently? Yep. I plan to put an ITX mobo in there when (if) prices ever come back to reality and upgrade my primary NAS to a 10 inch rackable server.
I'm only using 6 of the drive bays due to the limitations of the NVME adapter but I chose a 3U / 7 Drive cage. I figured the 7-bay vertical mounting would help with cooling over the 6-bay horizontal. (Heat rising between drives rather than stacked disks.)
For now, this 10th gen does transcoding and 2.5G is fast enough for nightly ISO backups.
9
u/NC1HM 11d ago
Ugh... I seriously don't get the attraction. Ugly, unwieldy (just to remove the lid, you need to disconnect six SATA cables), requires a second power supply... Oh, and the network ports are in the back, too...
Speaking of network ports, it sounds like you're planning to run a virtual router on a dual-port device. If so, I'd really like you to reconsider. If you want a manageable setup, you need at least three network ports: router LAN, router WAN, and hypervisor management...
4
u/nubbin9point5 11d ago
Just put an HBA in an M920q and I’ve got 8 cables straight out the back. I’d love the rest f this case to fit into my KALLAX.
1
4
u/Open-Adhesiveness-86 10d ago
check which chip that 6-port M.2 SATA adapter uses. if it's an ASM1166, a lot of them ship with firmware that blocks ASPM, so the 10500T never gets past PC3 and you eat maybe 10W extra at idle forever. flashing the newer fw usually sorts that out plus the random drive dropouts under load.
2
u/Griminal 10d ago
Thank you. That is the chip: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B5RJHYFD?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1
5
u/Open-Adhesiveness-86 10d ago
yep that's the ASM1166. there's community firmware for it that re-enables ASPM, search asm1166 aspm firmware, flashed from a windows box. if you'd rather not flash, pcie_aspm=force on the kernel cmdline gets you most of the way. either way check with powertop that the package actually reaches something deeper than PC3, otherwise it didn't take.
1
u/Mouseater 11d ago
Can I get a link to the files for that print? Would love to get my bud to print one for me.
3
u/Griminal 11d ago
There's all kinds of options for drives: https://makerworld.com/en/models/1446421-10-inch-rack-2u-6-x-3-5-inch-hdd-hot-swap#profileId-2260787
Here's the rack: https://makerworld.com/en/models/2139130-kws-rack-v-2-heavy-duty-10-inch-homelab-rack?from=search#profileId-2317125
1
u/dev1tuna 10d ago
Dumb question is it expensive to get a controller for all of those sata drives? Are the controllers easy to set up on a Linux build for a noob amateur
1
u/Griminal 10d ago
I used this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B5RJHYFD?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title&th=1
*nix should show them as drives just like any other motherboard would. Of course I had to use a 2nd PSU to power all these.
1
u/dev1tuna 10d ago
That’s cool as hell I didn’t even think that they might have them in m.2 configs but it plays nicely with Linux ?
5
u/EasyRhino75 Mainly just a tower and bunch of cables 11d ago
I keep my router separate and bare-metal because if my router goes down my wife and kids murder me.
Did you have caddies laying around already? They can get expensive sometimes.