My version of "gravitsapa"
Background
Good afternoon!
Our family has not watched terrestrial television since its foundation, and this year will be 9 years old! But we consume various media information, at first all this was stored on a home computer, and was output to a TV via HDMI. With the growth of the media archive, as well as after the advent of children, the convenience of viewing began to rapidly decline to zero. And three years ago, I finally matured to collect a home media server. At that time, the basic requirements for the media server chassis were as follows:
- the possibility of placing the case "flat"
- Width (taking into account the previous paragraph - height): no more than 20 cm (otherwise it will not climb into the wall)
- Internal compartments 3.5 "- at least 5
- External compartments 5.25 "- at least 1
Based on these requirements, I chose: Silverstone LC20B : I was glad
that you can normally insert not 6, but 7! Standard-height hard drives into the internal basket 3.5. This saved me at some point.
Having estimated that when deploying RAID6 on 7 2Tb hard drives I get 10 Tb of storage space, I hoped that I would close my storage needs for 5 years. Naive :-)
10 Tb ended last fall, in principle, 2.5 years is a good time, but you need to look for a way out On New Year's holidays I began to study experience. As a result, I’ve been very came up with the idea of “Gravitsapa.” He decided to do something similar himself, but not immediately rush to do, but pre-design.
Definition of housing requirements
The first requirement is the number of hard drives. To make a case for 10 or even 20 pieces - it makes no sense, so choose a range of 40 - 60 pieces.
I don’t know about you, but my experience shows that stationary buildings standing on the floor tend to not move for years and, accordingly, dirt accumulates at the location. And assuming the size of the "beast" and its mass, I really want to not have to hire a crew of movers to move it. Therefore, the second requirement is that the housing should be easy to move.
Further, it is natural that assembling such a server and not providing it with protection against surges and power outages is nonsense. Taking into account the previous requirement, we define the third one - the case must have a place to accommodate the APC Back-UPS 1500VA UPS (currently used), as well as a place for an additional set of batteries (I can buy it in the future).
Based on the requirement for the number of hard drives, the cooling problem is relevant. Or rather, the problem of servicing the cooling system. We define one more requirement: maintenance of the case cooling system should not lead to its analysis. Ideal - without stopping the server.
Probably one of the main requirements is the ease of server maintenance. For example, adding or replacing a hard drive, adding RAM, etc.
Well, the dimensions remained. I would like the case not to turn out a cube with a side of a meter, but more compact.
To summarize.
Requirements:
- Number of hard drives: 40 - 60 pcs.
- Ease of movement
- Possibility of placement in the APC Back-UPS 1500 VA UPS enclosure (tower version) with a set of additional batteries
- Server Maintenance Convenience
- Ability to service the cooling system without stopping the server and disassembling the case
- Compact body sizes possible
Housing project
general information
I used SketchUp ( http://www.sketchup.com ) to create the enclosure . The project itself can be picked up here for health.
Here's how the server case “assembled” looks:
By the way, this is the seventh version.
General concept
Some of the previous server options are presented below:
After analyzing the v1, v2, v3 cases, I realized that the bottom-up cooling system is not suitable, because openings from below do not allow optimal placement of the rollers, and the overall dimensions of the structure increase. Therefore, I chose the “front-back” scheme. Naturally, I had to abandon individual baskets for hard drives. Version v6 suited me, but all these opening doors (4 pcs.) Were worrying. Therefore, I took as a basis one of the previous options and reworked.
Opening part - upper:
The case itself without the upper part and side wall:
Power supply is provided by two 750 W power supply units. There are 3 shelves in the case for placing motherboards and additional equipment.
"Basket" for Winchesters
Based on the first and sixth requirements, it was optimal to place 48 hard drives in 4 groups of 12 pieces:
Cooling system
The cooling system consists of two 12 fan units. in each. A filter is installed in front of the unit responsible for blowing air.
Fan block assembly:
Fan block disassembled:
In the end
I really want to hear constructive criticism because this is my first experience in designing my own building. And at the same time I want to ask for advice on manufacturing. I don’t want to manually cut plywood (I have experience in making a dollhouse), because hemorrhoids is still one, so I want to order laser cutting. I live in Astrakhan and have not found organizations here that carry out such work. Therefore, I ask for advice, maybe someone came across laser cutting? What is a normal organization? I understand that at least it will be Volgograd, but in principle, if the contractor cuts everything according to the drawings and transport workers to Astrakhan, it can be located even in Moscow.
Thanks in advance.
UPD
Honestly, I didn’t want to write, but apparently I would. I specifically wrote this post in the do-it-yourself thematic community hoping that I would be spared comments like “why the hell is the goat button accordion ...”, “but I have ...”, “but look, there is already a ready-made case / solution / hi-end class product. " With the same success I could write in LJ. It's a shame, honestly.
I will answer questions that are not directly related to the topic of the post:
1. "He will eat!" Will be. How much he eats - so much he eats. The issue of energy savings is not yet worth it.
2. "Why so much?" Necessary. Consider me a top-sided porno cider .
3. "There are ready-made solutions!". They cost a lot of money that I’m not ready to spend (I mean the server rack on casters), and there’s nowhere for me to put such a professional solution.
4. "And home?". Fully support.
I repeat once again - I am NOT going to immediately buy 48 screws. I am going to buy more as needed. Moreover, 9 already exist. 7 - in the case, 2 in the external baskets. The question is in changing the CURRENT system, and not creating from scratch.
Sorry, if someone hurt.