Kristian Toms Weblog: Kristian Toms Weblog

Over the past month the hardware I have ordered for the Home Server has arrived and so last weekend was the time to put everything together.  As a reminder my initial BOM is here this has changed slightly based on pricing and technology availability.  When thinking about this project I wanted to make the server small and as quiet as possible. I did not realise at the time the implications of this, the Chenbro ES34069 case is perfectly formed but extremely tight especially when you are wanting to use all of the motherboard expansion like I was planning to. 

I purchased the Chenbro from www.x-case.co.uk and there support is excellent however at point of delivery the case arrived missing the card reader and riser card (The card reader was later supplied but would have helped at time of install) One thing I cannot stress enough is that you have to install the components in the correct order other wise you will find there is not enough room to manoeuvre within the case. The order is in the excellent manual.

The install order is as follows:

1. Remove Front Bezel
2. Remove Motherboard Cage
3. Check power supply and all SATA cables
4. Extend the FAN Cables if you desire to control the chasis fan's from the system board or external controller
5. Install Motherboard back plate
6. Install Motherboard
7. Install 2.5" Drive or in my case the Compact Flash to IDE reader
8. Install Chenbro Card Reader
9. Insert Motherboard Cage and screw into place
10. Attach power and SATA cables to motherboard
11. Install PCI SATA Controller and attach cables
12. Install Slim DVD Drive
13. Replace front bezel after removing pop outs for DVD drive
14. Install the 3.5" Drives in the caddies
15. Replace cover
16. Power On

At Power On I was presented with a SATA RAID BIOS in a hung state only discovering a single SATA drive.  Some quick research showed that the firmware was out dated and that I had to flash the BIOS on the card. I will document the learnings and the work around in a later post as the story deserves an entry to itself.

At the time of build and being keen to start building without all the components I finished the build without the DVD drive and moved onto the Solaris build retrofitting the drive once I had salvaged it from its original home.

Pictures of the server are below the iPhone is used to show scale.

The final BOM and stores for procurement are listed below:

Currently I don't believe this list is optimal and in fact I would probably go for a different motherboard manufacturer with 4 SATA ports included and potentially fan less; hen this server would be ideal. especially as this would reduce the need for third party controllers and potentially be cooler and power efficient.  An extra network port or wireless integration would not go a miss as this would then allow this server to become my home router and content filter as well as providing the storage.  

I will document the OpenSolaris UBS stick creation and the install tomorrow.