Home Storage OpenSolaris based Server from AMD dual-core older PC

Tuesday Apr 21, 2009

After upgrade of my home PC to AMD quad-core Phenom I got left some relatively powerful hardware:

Asus M2NPV-VM mATX motherboard with 2GB orf667Mhz DDRII and Dual Core Athlon X2 5400+ 65W

Normally I am selling old parts, but now I was wonder if I can build cheap OpenSolaris ZFS based file server from it.

This entry is part of HW for Virtualization

So first digging on internet to see it this is possible:

Home Server hardware configuration

Cheap Solaris Server with ZFS - Round 2

Thread: Cheap ZFS homeserver.

6600281 nv_sata: /etc/driver_aliases needs additional nv_sata entries for M2NPV-VM MB

Looks good, lets try it:

So final configuration is:

• Asus M2NPV-VM mATX motherboard ( MCP51)
• 1 x 160GB Sata II Seagate T-lite (Thinner drive)
• 3 x 500GB Sata Maxtor drive with 32MB cache
• 1x DVD Writer (Cheapest IDE SONY NEC one)
• Optional: Second NET interface = Realtec Gigabit Ethernet PCI card

Planned Disk Partitioning

• On 1 x 160GB drive (24GB OpenSolaris?, 24GB Fedora 9, Rest about 100GB sparse partition, now ext3)
• On 3x 500GB ZFS raidz for 1 disk failure protection

Assembly

• To enable Sata II 3.0Gbit speed it was neeed to remove small white jumpers from drives.
• Two 500GB drives are in Drive Cage near 80mm FAN, one 500GB is in floppy slot, 160GB drive (T-lite one) is up on 5 1/4 bay in 3.5" drive position

Colling is 80mm fan with temperature sensor, 2x 60mm Super-Silent Long-Life fans

Upgrading Setting up BIOS

1. It's goot idea to upgrade to latest BIOS (1301), you can use USB stick with FAT FS.

2. Go in BIOS and set some usefull settings:

• Disable Parallel port
• Disable Serial port
• Disable Sound
• Disable Firewire

• Enable SMART on drives
• Enable Power Now or Cool on Quiet

3. See FANs and temperature info in BIOS, so we have idea what we can see in OS monitoring.

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Posted at 01:45AM Apr 21, 2009 by natiku in Virtualization
Tags: opensolaris storage virtualbox vmware