I bought one of these, so I thought I'd share my experience so far: #1) I should have gotten the 16GB version (was only $16 more when I ordered) #2) the CPU heatsink had the wrong orientation (was perpendicular to fan airflow, blew the fan shroud right off as soon as it powered up :) #3) the HD screw mounting holes have been changed for high capacity drives (6+TB, I believe) so I could only use two screws on my 14TB drives (screw and grommet technique works well) #4) IPMI works (pw root/root) *but* Java client for remote viewing is a problem (I couldn't get it working on Windows 10) #5) BIOS defaults enable VT-d, so I didn't need to change anything for my use case #6) ProxMox installs without trouble, all hardware including Intel NICs supported (just need to add "intel_iommu=on" to grub config, for hw pass through) #7) added a PCIe x1 2-port SATA controller using riser cable, for system (ProxMox boot drive) #8) I installed TrueNAS in a VM (why I should have gotten the 16GB version), and passed through both the LSI controller (handles 8 of the drive bays) and the regular SATA controller (handles other 4 bays plus 2 more ports) #9) on first boot TrueNAS updated the LSI firmware (from 13->20) #10) at idle, with only SSD system drive, power consumption was 35W. After adding 3 14TB WDs, power consumption was 68W under load (which matches similar results of 10W per USB enclosure for the WD drives). I believe TrueNAS has some options for power savings and idle drives, will experiment. #11) I added a 10Gb Solarflare S7120 (riser card), which works great. However, I didn't expect that adding it would disable the two onboard Intel NICs (maybe a BIOS setting?). This might explain his trouble with the onboard NICs and TrueNAS. #12) build quality is excellent! Fans spin up loud, but then throttle down to "audible but quiet". Temps are very good (Xeon running at 40C under load), LSI and SATA controller heatsinks just warm to touch. PSU is labelled 400W 80+ Gold (but lshw reports "product: FSP500-701UP"?). I'll be using this as my shared storage iSCSI server. I only put ProxMox on it so I could manage it along with my ProxMox cluster from a single web page (also, I'm not familiar with FreeBSD, so having a "Linux layer" underneath TrueNAS gives me some more power in dealing with the hardware, just in case). I installed the "iSCSI over ZFS" patch for FreeNAS/TrueNAS in ProxMox, which works great - so once my initial configuration of TrueNAS is complete, I'll only use it for monitoring purposes (ProxMox can do everything else). Was going to buy another 16GB of RAM, but it cost $73, so I decided to order another entire Chenbro with 16GB (and no CPU) for $120 instead - and just keep it for parts :O
For those who may need it, the NIC issue is with the BIOS, not TrueNAS. In "Advanced" -> "Onboard Device Configuration" change the "Dynamic Onboard LAN Control" to "Disabled". When this is "Enabled", the BIOS will automatically Disable Onboard NICs when the BIOS detects an installed NIC card. I'm currently running the same 10Gbe card in the video along side the onboard LAN, with no issues on TruNAS 12.0-U1
I wonder what comes first, TrueNAS sees this and fixes the driver for this NIC, Jeff mod's this chassis for ATX and a different FLEX ATX PSU, or all the Chenbro NR12000's go out of stock on eBay?
I just bought one a few days ago, price went up a bit. The one I got had mangled rack ears but I was able to bend them back. Waiting for ram to be delivered to actually boot it up and start having fun
They also have a 1u dual LGA 2011 gen 1 called the “hyve Zeus” for around $100 barebones. It’s the size of a switch, with 2x 2.5” bays. I had a cluster of 3 of them for esxi, and they were surprisingly quiet
I am looking at these servers as options for my home. You're saying they are quiet but Craft in his video reviewing them is saying it's very loud. Not sure what to choose at this point lol
Therapist: "So, tell me, why do you think you are ... strange?" Me: "I am watching young(er) men building servers and putting them into racks... and enjoy it..." :P Having worked in the industry for over 20 yrs, pushing a lot servers in myself, I can feel what you felt... :D
Wait, you got that for $120 with shipping included? The seller basically paid YOU to take it off their hands? This is one of the few channels on TH-cam where you can proudly say you are showing off your rack.
@@JoeyBaby47 oh sweet innocent child, there is plenty of places with memory that is writeable without any HDDs attached. You have to think lower level.
@Joe Never happened. It's been investigated by every single agency with any kind of skin in the game. Plus, do you really believe a state agency could slip in an IC that exfiltrates data, change board traces and layout without SuperMicro's knowledge (boards are X-Rayed and examined quite regularly as they come off the line), and pass security audits with every company and 3-Letter-Agency in the US which constantly looks for this type of traffic? Or do you think Bloomberg, which has zero evidence nor an example, made up the whole damn thing?
Just built a 1U server for replacing an old (and slow) HP Microserver. I saved myself over $1,100 doing it myself. One of your other videos about building rack servers inspired me to build it. Thanks!
I'm glad I saw this video when I did. I had just bought a Fractal Node 804 and was going to build a new NAS in it with the guts of my daughter's previous Dell workstation. Then I realized there would be more modding than I wanted to do (any at all was going to be too much) to adapt the front panel pins of the case to the board. I bought one of these with the E3-1230v2 instead so I'll build something else in the Node 804 later. My wife was happy that I "saved" money by doing it this way.
AWESOME find! I like this storage chassis, especially as a single storage node. The only downside I see is that it only has 1 PCIe full size slot. I built my TrueNAS (OK it was still FreeNAS when I built it) around a Dell R520 that I added an external RAID controller (flashed to IT mode) to connect to my disk enclosure (NetApp DS4243), and I am also running a Mellanox ConnectX 3 NIC. But I think I may pick up a couple of these to run as additional storage nodes, the price is awesome!
Literally bought one of these servers with an E3 1230 V2 for a home NAS. The server with the CPU and 16 GB of RAM was $174 shipped. Picked it specifically because of this video. Nice find!!
According to a friend of mine that used to work for amazon, AWS Glacier uses very similar servers to these in their storage datacenters. 1U whiteboxes slap full of internal platter drives, no hot swap. Just the MIN/MAX strategy on storage density with little concern towards any other features. I personally prefer a nice used poweredge or proliant for a home server but if AWS uses setups like these, it is proof there is a VERY valid use case.
If your onboard nic isnt working make sure its enabled in the bios and that the dynamic setting that turns off the onboard nic if another network card is detected is disabled.
Bought a $200 low end NAS and this is a much more appealing solution (4 bay vs 12 bay) if power consumption is not a concern. I may just return the unit and go with this instead. Thanks mate.
I just built my first home server and actually went with a ITX build 8 bay case because my rack isn't deep enough for a server mounted option like this. Great Build
Sweet. I saw this while researching NAS solutions for the house. I don't have a rack (yet), but after watching this I couldn't pass it up. Got everything home now, the server just arrived. I shelled out for the one with 16GB of memory. The drives go in pretty easy, though I can see how the last two rows are difficult if you populate them both. The only thing I'm missing is.... the 2.5" SSD I know I have somewhere. It's gone MIA. Last time I saw it was when I extricated it out of Son's room (after a discussion about respecting people's property). I guess I'll be out looking. Anyways, server is well labeled. The MAC addresses for the two 1Gb/E are labeled right on the RJ-45 connectors, as is the management port. The labeling of the SATA bays is on the underside of the cover, and the individual SATA connectors are labeled as well. Looking forward to getting TrueNAS on there. The screws and rubber grommets he linked work great. I dropped some $ on new WD Red Plus drives. I want to know they're known good drives. I don't want to have to think about it for the next long while. Already registered the drives to make sure they are new. Anyways, so far so good, pretty happy.
Wow, quite a rarity to find so many drive bays in (A) a 1U rack and (B) reasonably priced one too. Thanks for the share Jeff, I'll be checking out your links
Just because you have to pull the server out and remove the enclosure does not "no hot swap" a server make. You could absolutely still ESD secure yourself, and make sure the server is mounted with an appropriate run length of cabling to accomodate being pulled partially out on a rack rail for online maintenance including hot swapping disk drives.
Worked in Africa for 10 years. Talk about beer. The local beer had such a strong formaldehyde smell and taste. I was told that it keeps the Malaria mosquitos away.
Reading about a similarly branded server, if it detects any network card it will disable the on-board network ports. Apparently this can be changed in setup. Worth checking into if you haven't already.
That is nice and cost efficient NAS for home user. Btw seller raised the price to $133... For an additional $67 one can get higher spec for more hardcore home user. Supermicro 6017R-73THDP+ with X9DRFF-7TG+ mainboard, which supports dual Xeon E5 v2 processors and 16 slots of DDR3 registered dimms (can easily go 512GB ram for faster cache than SSD).
$120 doesn't include the drives, of course, but that's still truly insane at that price. VERY interested to hear what kind of throughput you can get from this thing!
You could have gotten an additional hard drive in there with the 2x 2.5" mount, but then again, not sure how many sata connections you have available. I may have to duplicate this build as I can always use more storage.
Could you give a tour of your garage server install? What are the temperature ranges in the garage? And how is the dust and critters on your server install? Thanks! (I am in Florida so I feel a garage server would overheat)
High Availability, storage is single point of failure. The most critical part that should be available always. Like your videos.. but I want to see a 2 node GlusterFS cluster for storage or a 4 node CEPH Cluster if you're using Unix-based OS's for your solutions. Outside of that I highly recommend S2D from MSFT. I have a 2 node hyperconverged cluster for storage (40 TB RAW, 20 TB usable) and virtualizing my directory controllers. That storage is shared out via SMB3 to two compute nodes in a cluster setup for high availability on compute. My only single point of failures are power source, switch, and gateway to internet.
Wonderful video! I really like your content. Out of curiosity, do you know how much electricity it would cost to run one of these? I needed a small server and was debating if I should self-host or rent a VPS, and I concluded that a VPS makes a lot of sense because of high electricity prices.
I would have mounted with foam double-sided tape... It's crazy how much used hardware is available due to the lease / replenish cycles of enterprises. Great build.
You really need to shock mount the drives in this server. Vibration in racks can add up and cause HDD failures. In fact, most enterprise drives are rated for how many you can run in a 42U rack safely. In this case, the grommets would be $20 well spent.
Hmm... didn't think to use shelves instead of rails for servers. I was already planning to buy a set for my UPS, so I'll have to consider the same instead of rails for my NAS and ProxMox server since it appears to be a HELL of a lot easier to install. Plus they're servers I largely don't touch except to clean out dust. Right now nothing is in a rack as I'd been putting off putting everything back into the rack after moving because I wanted to get them on rails, as they weren't previously. Instead I had a couple 2x4s under the UPS to support its weight, and then everything was more or less being supported by the UPS. Bad setup, I know...
Jeff, try solving your onboard ethernet ports not being found by going into the BIOS>ADVANCED>Onboard Device Configuration> turn off Dynamic Onboard LAN Control. That lan control will disable the 2 gigabit ports when it detects an add on NIC.
@@CraftComputing I'm also curious for the IMPI console over the java viewer. Under chrome/edge it doesn't want to let the .jpnl download. It likes IE and launches the applet but gives a fuss and ends. I'm assuming it's like the old iDRAC 6 and below where you have to mess with the allowed ciphers in Java.
For me, the NICs were detected but there was no link until I plugged a cable into the IPMI also. I restarted a few times in there too, but either way, working for me now too!
Well i just bought one, and a pair of the 10TB wd red plus drives at Newegg for half price. Gonna be a while before I fill this thing but hopefully it’s good
@@proskater1223 worked great without an HBA. You get all the cables you need ready to go. The only real sticking point is how monstrously long it is. Jeff has a rack he probably got at a great bargain. If you go looking, though, be prepared to spend real dollars on a full-size rack that can handle this thing. Or, get the server, scrap the case, and pop it all into a smaller box. Or, get a vertical rack mount bracket. Or make your own rack. Just don’t expect any old bargain rack to work for it.
Thankyou for this video, certainly makes you wonder why more people aren’t buying this hardware for home use. At this price point it’s almost worth we having this as a drive graveyard or backup server, especially if it can be programmed to turn on, backup to, then turned off! One thing I’d love to see included is what the power consumption of the unit is please?
Wow I needed a cheap server solution for storage using 3.5" to replace my Dell R610 because it only takes really expensive 2.5".... and I see your video.
Base fan curve resulting in network card on pcie slot overheating. I just bumped the base to 60% fan to hopefully fix.... it was overheating at idle after an hour or so in a cold basement.
I notice the truenas (bsd) doesn't scale the fan speed based on the CPU temperature, so a CPU stress test will not speed up the fan. Both Windows and Ubuntu are able to scale the fan speed properly, it might be the freebsd telling BMC/BIOS to take control the fan speed but forget to actually control it. The IPMI console redirection is totally broken for me, maybe I just get a bad unit.
Had seen these a little bit ago but didn't want to buy one just to spend time and money finding something that worked for drive mounting; might have to get one now
Hello Jeff, at the 7:10 mark you state that truenas does not recognize the onboard nic's there is a setting in the bios that turns off the onboard nic's if an external pci nic is installed. if you disable this feature you will have 4 nic's to work with. i have one of these running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and had the same problem
I do wonder if you could get some x4 ribbon cables in underneath that PCI-E riser. If you could - you could even upgrade to NVME cache with some clever routing.
ive seen Proxmox vm support pxe boot, would be pretty amazing to setup a FreeNAS / Proxmox server for a business to power thin clients. I personally would like to setup my home computers to run diskless with something like ccboot.
I know this is late, I personally put a e3-1260L in mine, little 45W part (compared to the 80W of other chips) and still 4 cores/8 threads with 3.3ghz boost clocks (2.4 base) great for a storage server if not a little too strong
Mine just came in today and the built in ethernet ports were recognized just fine by the em driver in truenas, so now I have a spare dual port intel nic on hand that I didn't need to buy. Oh well, ill find something for it to packetize someday. I did notice there are options in the bios to turn on and off the nics, so, might want to double check to see that they are enabled on yours.
Good article and video. I, too, bought this server unit shortly after the video was posted. I did get a number of the components that was suggested (the IronWolf SSD drives, the HP 2-port SFP+ network card, PCIe 1U Riser, Rubber Grommets, drive mount screws, a Mikrotik SFP+ router, etc. As I have 10 2 GB Drives (8 of which are less than 1 year old), I am looking ahead to getting larger drives. Does this unit support drives greater than 4 TB? I saw that 4 TB drives were used. Are there any limitation with larger drives (greater than 4 GB).
I have to ask what is actual use for your home lab? I don't know if I missed it and you've talked about it before. Sure you have critical services running on it -- and I still need to build out some of your cool examples. For the most part what we use at home can be built with a single box and a couple of Pi's. EG, I'm a DBA, and I'm using old hardware as a single proxmox server and and an old desktop I found in the trash as a TrueNas box. I only have proxmox running so I can experiment with ansible., Everything else I do is on a Pi, and a Synology DS1019+.
Ok, I bought the Chenbro NR12000 server. Problem is that the HDD mounting holes are close together but the mounting holes on my HDD are further apart, so I cannot load any of the 12 drives I bought into this chassis. Is there some sort of adapter plate to convert between the hole spacing?
Cool video! But eek! Didn't you close the air intake of the power supplies of the 2 lower servers by putting them on top of each other? I would have left some space between them just to be sure...
Cool build. I always buy old xeon servers for this use. I prefer openmediavault to truenas. I usually buy old dell servers, but my setups don't have nearly the drive bays yours do.
I just received my Chenbro NR12000 1U 1x 8m QUAD CORE E3-1230v2 3.3GHz 16GB RAM NO HDD from the seller you purchased your unit from. I am interested to know why you state the inboard 1gb ethernet ports don't work? I was able to use the on boards in proxmox, Ubuntu server and truenas. All I had to do was set a static route for 0.0.0.0 to my gateway and boom, everything is awesome.
I am running proxmox on this same unit and am having trouble getting the 10G NIC that you recommended up and running. If I boot the unit with the NIC installed I loose all IP access with the unit. Have you run into this before?
Hey buddy. Do you have a link where I can find the same server box/rack for the 1u. I purchased the same one and now I’m looking to install it on a much cleaner area. I like your rack. Thank you in advance.
Jeff, any recommendations for what to do with 13 400GB seagate drives that aren't being recognized by a SAS9211 adapter but are being recognized by sata on motherboard? Have you found a reliable sata adapter for PCIe?
Man... I wish we have the same hardware available at these prices in Brazil. Nevertheless, I enjoy every video that you make, especially putting a server together.
Sandy Bridge era Xeon. Ouch. I have been looking for a good solution for my current FreeNAS, now TrueNAS setup, which has 12 drives in it. But I'm also looking to keep the total number of physical machines down. Which means, as much as I dislike it, I'm using TrueNAS as a hypervisor for production VMs. All testing VMs live on the Proxmox machine.
Back in the day when I was a homebrewer, all the competitions required that you submit two bottles of your entry...just in case something bad had happened to one of them. Given it's in a dark bottle, it wouldn't have been a case of being lightstruck, but who knows? If you ever try a second bottle of that beer, and it's just as bad, then it's probably the beer.
Would drive height matter? I have a few shucked WD Easysrore drives that can be a pain to fit in certain HDD caddies as they're a tad taller than other drives I own.
I bought one of these after watching your video. My only issue is how to mount a SSD in the case. I'm guessing that there is a missing piece that mounts in front of the power supply, because one of the SATA cables is routed there. If you know the part number, would you mind passing it on?
in your video which I really enjoyed and I'm acquiring the materials for my own build I was wondering if you could point me in the direction of the disk mounting brackets that was shown or is the rubber grommets sufficient the brackets were silver in color and were arched in shape thanks I'm learning a lot from you keep up the great work
Well damn, might just have to get one of these myself. Just got a dell 5810 to use as a VM server and was wondering what I might want to build for storage.
Am I correct in that in order to use all 12 drive spaces, you're going to need to also buy a sata/SAS HBA? would it be better in this case to buy a 4-port sata pcie card (and use the rest of the sata on the board) or a sas hba (not using the sata on the board at all)?
That's a pretty compact indeed. Maybe i should get one instead of my current bulky 4U. Need at least 2 working pcie slots though (10gb mellanox ethernet and broadcom 9361-8i hw raid)
I bought one of these, so I thought I'd share my experience so far:
#1) I should have gotten the 16GB version (was only $16 more when I ordered)
#2) the CPU heatsink had the wrong orientation (was perpendicular to fan airflow, blew the fan shroud right off as soon as it powered up :)
#3) the HD screw mounting holes have been changed for high capacity drives (6+TB, I believe) so I could only use two screws on my 14TB drives (screw and grommet technique works well)
#4) IPMI works (pw root/root) *but* Java client for remote viewing is a problem (I couldn't get it working on Windows 10)
#5) BIOS defaults enable VT-d, so I didn't need to change anything for my use case
#6) ProxMox installs without trouble, all hardware including Intel NICs supported (just need to add "intel_iommu=on" to grub config, for hw pass through)
#7) added a PCIe x1 2-port SATA controller using riser cable, for system (ProxMox boot drive)
#8) I installed TrueNAS in a VM (why I should have gotten the 16GB version), and passed through both the LSI controller (handles 8 of the drive bays) and the regular SATA controller (handles other 4 bays plus 2 more ports)
#9) on first boot TrueNAS updated the LSI firmware (from 13->20)
#10) at idle, with only SSD system drive, power consumption was 35W. After adding 3 14TB WDs, power consumption was 68W under load (which matches similar results of 10W per USB enclosure for the WD drives). I believe TrueNAS has some options for power savings and idle drives, will experiment.
#11) I added a 10Gb Solarflare S7120 (riser card), which works great. However, I didn't expect that adding it would disable the two onboard Intel NICs (maybe a BIOS setting?). This might explain his trouble with the onboard NICs and TrueNAS.
#12) build quality is excellent! Fans spin up loud, but then throttle down to "audible but quiet". Temps are very good (Xeon running at 40C under load), LSI and SATA controller heatsinks just warm to touch. PSU is labelled 400W 80+ Gold (but lshw reports "product: FSP500-701UP"?).
I'll be using this as my shared storage iSCSI server. I only put ProxMox on it so I could manage it along with my ProxMox cluster from a single web page (also, I'm not familiar with FreeBSD, so having a "Linux layer" underneath TrueNAS gives me some more power in dealing with the hardware, just in case). I installed the "iSCSI over ZFS" patch for FreeNAS/TrueNAS in ProxMox, which works great - so once my initial configuration of TrueNAS is complete, I'll only use it for monitoring purposes (ProxMox can do everything else).
Was going to buy another 16GB of RAM, but it cost $73, so I decided to order another entire Chenbro with 16GB (and no CPU) for $120 instead - and just keep it for parts :O
Thats a terrific find. The fact that at 1U the fans don't wail like an unending horde of evil banshees on a night out gets triple bonus points.
Hell, my R520 TrueNAS server spins up pretty freaking loud and it's 2u!
How loud did he say the fans were?
For those who may need it, the NIC issue is with the BIOS, not TrueNAS. In "Advanced" -> "Onboard Device Configuration" change the "Dynamic Onboard LAN Control" to "Disabled". When this is "Enabled", the BIOS will automatically Disable Onboard NICs when the BIOS detects an installed NIC card. I'm currently running the same 10Gbe card in the video along side the onboard LAN, with no issues on TruNAS 12.0-U1
"it's new server day". This got me so excited to see what you planned
Agreed
lol
Congratulations! your AC duct is now grounded :P
You have no idea how hard I laughed at this comment
Might actually not be a bad thing since airflow can cause static electricity to build up!
@@NickyNiclas True. Not laughing at the benefits just made me laugh because of the fact that it's being "grounded" the way that it was in the video.
I literally said the same thing LOL
And the server is induction cooled too, yeah?
For anyone wondering the default IMPI user/pass is root/root . Also the interface is DHCP out the box.
THANK YOU!!!
I wonder what comes first, TrueNAS sees this and fixes the driver for this NIC, Jeff mod's this chassis for ATX and a different FLEX ATX PSU, or all the Chenbro NR12000's go out of stock on eBay?
Oh god this is a Chenbro chassis? I'm getting PTSD from hearing that word...
@@viperhalberd They just went up by $42.00.............
FYI nic works fine on truenas
I just bought one a few days ago, price went up a bit. The one I got had mangled rack ears but I was able to bend them back. Waiting for ram to be delivered to actually boot it up and start having fun
The verdict is in! They are officially sold out.
I just keep telling myself "I don't need it. I don't need it. I don't need it." Hopefully I'll be able to convince myself 😬
No you won't. Neither will I
you totally need it. 1U 12 bay is a crazy awesome addition
@@pgplaysvidya true, but I already have a Define R5 I'm getting ready to fill up and I've an extra 1900X kicking around, so... 😬
Doesn't have use for a server, bought one last year XD
2x xeon 5650
128GB ECC
6x 2TB SAS HDD
1x 480GB Ironwolf SSD
Fun to tinker with though
Get your wallet out. You need it!
They also have a 1u dual LGA 2011 gen 1 called the “hyve Zeus” for around $100 barebones. It’s the size of a switch, with 2x 2.5” bays. I had a cluster of 3 of them for esxi, and they were surprisingly quiet
I bought two of those. Video coming shortly :-)
@@CraftComputing please include power usage testing on those servers.
I was hoping you would :)
I am looking at these servers as options for my home. You're saying they are quiet but Craft in his video reviewing them is saying it's very loud. Not sure what to choose at this point lol
Therapist: "So, tell me, why do you think you are ... strange?"
Me: "I am watching young(er) men building servers and putting them into racks... and enjoy it..."
:P
Having worked in the industry for over 20 yrs, pushing a lot servers in myself, I can feel what you felt... :D
Wait, you got that for $120 with shipping included? The seller basically paid YOU to take it off their hands? This is one of the few channels on TH-cam where you can proudly say you are showing off your rack.
you're actually paying the via the endless quantity of backdoor/spyware embedded in the hardware.
@@sluflyer06 How would that be accomplished if/since it comes with no drives?
@@JoeyBaby47 oh sweet innocent child, there is plenty of places with memory that is writeable without any HDDs attached. You have to think lower level.
@@sluflyer06 I've heard of some Supermicro motherboard where this allegedly happened, but I never read any confirmation of this.
@Joe Never happened. It's been investigated by every single agency with any kind of skin in the game. Plus, do you really believe a state agency could slip in an IC that exfiltrates data, change board traces and layout without SuperMicro's knowledge (boards are X-Rayed and examined quite regularly as they come off the line), and pass security audits with every company and 3-Letter-Agency in the US which constantly looks for this type of traffic?
Or do you think Bloomberg, which has zero evidence nor an example, made up the whole damn thing?
Just built a 1U server for replacing an old (and slow) HP Microserver. I saved myself over $1,100 doing it myself. One of your other videos about building rack servers inspired me to build it. Thanks!
I'm glad I saw this video when I did. I had just bought a Fractal Node 804 and was going to build a new NAS in it with the guts of my daughter's previous Dell workstation. Then I realized there would be more modding than I wanted to do (any at all was going to be too much) to adapt the front panel pins of the case to the board. I bought one of these with the E3-1230v2 instead so I'll build something else in the Node 804 later. My wife was happy that I "saved" money by doing it this way.
AWESOME find!
I like this storage chassis, especially as a single storage node.
The only downside I see is that it only has 1 PCIe full size slot.
I built my TrueNAS (OK it was still FreeNAS when I built it) around a Dell R520 that I added an external RAID controller (flashed to IT mode) to connect to my disk enclosure (NetApp DS4243), and I am also running a Mellanox ConnectX 3 NIC.
But I think I may pick up a couple of these to run as additional storage nodes, the price is awesome!
Literally bought one of these servers with an E3 1230 V2 for a home NAS. The server with the CPU and 16 GB of RAM was $174 shipped. Picked it specifically because of this video. Nice find!!
According to a friend of mine that used to work for amazon, AWS Glacier uses very similar servers to these in their storage datacenters. 1U whiteboxes slap full of internal platter drives, no hot swap. Just the MIN/MAX strategy on storage density with little concern towards any other features. I personally prefer a nice used poweredge or proliant for a home server but if AWS uses setups like these, it is proof there is a VERY valid use case.
I've been needing something like this; thanks for making the video and doing all the research!
My 1U almost never is on. I can here it in the room above, my kids' bedroom, like an F14 ready for a cat shot.
If your onboard nic isnt working make sure its enabled in the bios and that the dynamic setting that turns off the onboard nic if another network card is detected is disabled.
Bank account hurting now after purchasing one of these plus 2 Hyve Zeus for the lab. Thanks for the info, Jeff! 👍
Bought a $200 low end NAS and this is a much more appealing solution (4 bay vs 12 bay) if power consumption is not a concern. I may just return the unit and go with this instead. Thanks mate.
Hello! By my calculations a ton of empty space (air) would take up 37,278 cubic feet.
I just built my first home server and actually went with a ITX build 8 bay case because my rack isn't deep enough for a server mounted option like this. Great Build
Sweet. I saw this while researching NAS solutions for the house. I don't have a rack (yet), but after watching this I couldn't pass it up. Got everything home now, the server just arrived. I shelled out for the one with 16GB of memory. The drives go in pretty easy, though I can see how the last two rows are difficult if you populate them both. The only thing I'm missing is.... the 2.5" SSD I know I have somewhere. It's gone MIA. Last time I saw it was when I extricated it out of Son's room (after a discussion about respecting people's property). I guess I'll be out looking. Anyways, server is well labeled. The MAC addresses for the two 1Gb/E are labeled right on the RJ-45 connectors, as is the management port. The labeling of the SATA bays is on the underside of the cover, and the individual SATA connectors are labeled as well. Looking forward to getting TrueNAS on there. The screws and rubber grommets he linked work great. I dropped some $ on new WD Red Plus drives. I want to know they're known good drives. I don't want to have to think about it for the next long while. Already registered the drives to make sure they are new. Anyways, so far so good, pretty happy.
Wow, quite a rarity to find so many drive bays in (A) a 1U rack and (B) reasonably priced one too. Thanks for the share Jeff, I'll be checking out your links
Just because you have to pull the server out and remove the enclosure does not "no hot swap" a server make. You could absolutely still ESD secure yourself, and make sure the server is mounted with an appropriate run length of cabling to accomodate being pulled partially out on a rack rail for online maintenance including hot swapping disk drives.
Worked in Africa for 10 years. Talk about beer. The local beer had such a strong formaldehyde smell and taste.
I was told that it keeps the Malaria mosquitos away.
Reading about a similarly branded server, if it detects any network card it will disable the on-board network ports. Apparently this can be changed in setup. Worth checking into if you haven't already.
That is nice and cost efficient NAS for home user. Btw seller raised the price to $133... For an additional $67 one can get higher spec for more hardcore home user. Supermicro 6017R-73THDP+ with X9DRFF-7TG+ mainboard, which supports dual Xeon E5 v2 processors and 16 slots of DDR3 registered dimms (can easily go 512GB ram for faster cache than SSD).
Oh dear friend when you hold your glass and wave it over the server, a fright takes me.
I was waiting for him to spill a bit into the server.
Relax... I'm a professional.
Nice ! Wish I was able to pick one of those up in the UK .... Anyone had any luck ?
Wife is going to be angry again...
@starshipeleven I'm selling a 2u so maybe I will get away with it. "but I cut it in half..."
@@AlexJustesen Half the size, half the price!
After some moar years married, she is happy when he _is_ in the garage, playing with his toys... I promise :D
$120 doesn't include the drives, of course, but that's still truly insane at that price. VERY interested to hear what kind of throughput you can get from this thing!
Any idea on where this can be gotten now? eBay is a wasteland now… it’s like this item no longer exists. :(
I to would like to know
Very tempting, I have been looking for a budget NAS build on a server build.
You could have gotten an additional hard drive in there with the 2x 2.5" mount, but then again, not sure how many sata connections you have available. I may have to duplicate this build as I can always use more storage.
Could you give a tour of your garage server install? What are the temperature ranges in the garage? And how is the dust and critters on your server install? Thanks! (I am in Florida so I feel a garage server would overheat)
This works with UNRAID right out of the box no issues. On board nic works fine. Internal usb headers nice touch.
High Availability, storage is single point of failure. The most critical part that should be available always.
Like your videos.. but I want to see a 2 node GlusterFS cluster for storage or a 4 node CEPH Cluster if you're using Unix-based OS's for your solutions. Outside of that I highly recommend S2D from MSFT.
I have a 2 node hyperconverged cluster for storage (40 TB RAW, 20 TB usable) and virtualizing my directory controllers. That storage is shared out via SMB3 to two compute nodes in a cluster setup for high availability on compute. My only single point of failures are power source, switch, and gateway to internet.
Wonderful video! I really like your content.
Out of curiosity, do you know how much electricity it would cost to run one of these?
I needed a small server and was debating if I should self-host or rent a VPS, and I concluded that a VPS makes a lot of sense because of high electricity prices.
I would have mounted with foam double-sided tape... It's crazy how much used hardware is available due to the lease / replenish cycles of enterprises. Great build.
My first hack server used cable ties
You really need to shock mount the drives in this server. Vibration in racks can add up and cause HDD failures. In fact, most enterprise drives are rated for how many you can run in a 42U rack safely.
In this case, the grommets would be $20 well spent.
Great video, and I LOVE the music during assembling the HDs. Well done.
Hmm... didn't think to use shelves instead of rails for servers. I was already planning to buy a set for my UPS, so I'll have to consider the same instead of rails for my NAS and ProxMox server since it appears to be a HELL of a lot easier to install. Plus they're servers I largely don't touch except to clean out dust. Right now nothing is in a rack as I'd been putting off putting everything back into the rack after moving because I wanted to get them on rails, as they weren't previously. Instead I had a couple 2x4s under the UPS to support its weight, and then everything was more or less being supported by the UPS. Bad setup, I know...
I love those server build ups. Cheers from Brazil.
Jeff, try solving your onboard ethernet ports not being found by going into the BIOS>ADVANCED>Onboard Device Configuration> turn off Dynamic Onboard LAN Control.
That lan control will disable the 2 gigabit ports when it detects an add on NIC.
Iiiinteresting! Thanks for the advice!
@@CraftComputing I'm also curious for the IMPI console over the java viewer. Under chrome/edge it doesn't want to let the .jpnl download. It likes IE and launches the applet but gives a fuss and ends. I'm assuming it's like the old iDRAC 6 and below where you have to mess with the allowed ciphers in Java.
@@CraftComputing have you been able to try that out?
For me, the NICs were detected but there was no link until I plugged a cable into the IPMI also. I restarted a few times in there too, but either way, working for me now too!
Well i just bought one, and a pair of the 10TB wd red plus drives at Newegg for half price. Gonna be a while before I fill this thing but hopefully it’s good
Did you get the 10TB drives to work on the motherboard or did you use a HBA?
@@proskater1223 worked great without an HBA. You get all the cables you need ready to go.
The only real sticking point is how monstrously long it is. Jeff has a rack he probably got at a great bargain. If you go looking, though, be prepared to spend real dollars on a full-size rack that can handle this thing. Or, get the server, scrap the case, and pop it all into a smaller box. Or, get a vertical rack mount bracket. Or make your own rack. Just don’t expect any old bargain rack to work for it.
@@Pyrichia what is the server depth?
@@Dmkjr right around 36” from the rear of the front faceplate to the absolute end of the server chassis and any bits sticking out the back.
Thankyou for this video, certainly makes you wonder why more people aren’t buying this hardware for home use. At this price point it’s almost worth we having this as a drive graveyard or backup server, especially if it can be programmed to turn on, backup to, then turned off!
One thing I’d love to see included is what the power consumption of the unit is please?
Found it in the comments - 80w at idle
Nowhere to put them. I think If making 1Us quiet was easy they would go for a little bit more.
I’ve been meaning to dip into server racks by setting up my own FreeNAS server! I also love a beer, I’ve found my new favourite channel!
Wow I needed a cheap server solution for storage using 3.5" to replace my Dell R610 because it only takes really expensive 2.5".... and I see your video.
Base fan curve resulting in network card on pcie slot overheating. I just bumped the base to 60% fan to hopefully fix.... it was overheating at idle after an hour or so in a cold basement.
I came for the build and stayed for the music. Pretty damn cool vid bro😎
I notice the truenas (bsd) doesn't scale the fan speed based on the CPU temperature, so a CPU stress test will not speed up the fan. Both Windows and Ubuntu are able to scale the fan speed properly, it might be the freebsd telling BMC/BIOS to take control the fan speed but forget to actually control it.
The IPMI console redirection is totally broken for me, maybe I just get a bad unit.
Had seen these a little bit ago but didn't want to buy one just to spend time and money finding something that worked for drive mounting; might have to get one now
47 sold in last 24 hours :DD
Hello Jeff,
at the 7:10 mark you state that truenas does not recognize the onboard nic's
there is a setting in the bios that turns off the onboard nic's if an external pci nic is installed.
if you disable this feature you will have 4 nic's to work with.
i have one of these running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and had the same problem
Thanks, I didn't know I wanted to buy my Christmas gift for myself already.
I do wonder if you could get some x4 ribbon cables in underneath that PCI-E riser. If you could - you could even upgrade to NVME cache with some clever routing.
ive seen Proxmox vm support pxe boot, would be pretty amazing to setup a FreeNAS / Proxmox server for a business to power thin clients. I personally would like to setup my home computers to run diskless with something like ccboot.
Every time I watch this channel I want to get another server for my homelab!! Thanks for sharing
So took the plunge to buy one yesterday. Going use it to replace an old HP Microserver. I am wondering if this system will take a E3-1265L v2.
Any worthwhile CPU upgrades available for this motherboard?
I know this is late, I personally put a e3-1260L in mine, little 45W part (compared to the 80W of other chips) and still 4 cores/8 threads with 3.3ghz boost clocks (2.4 base) great for a storage server if not a little too strong
Jeff Great video...I see CPU and memory specs but just curious what manuf/model motherboard came in that server? Thanks!
Mine just came in today and the built in ethernet ports were recognized just fine by the em driver in truenas, so now I have a spare dual port intel nic on hand that I didn't need to buy. Oh well, ill find something for it to packetize someday. I did notice there are options in the bios to turn on and off the nics, so, might want to double check to see that they are enabled on yours.
Nice. Quick. All information that you Need in this short time. High Quality content.
Good article and video. I, too, bought this server unit shortly after the video was posted. I did get a number of the components that was suggested (the IronWolf SSD drives, the HP 2-port SFP+ network card, PCIe 1U Riser, Rubber Grommets, drive mount screws, a Mikrotik SFP+ router, etc. As I have 10 2 GB Drives (8 of which are less than 1 year old), I am looking ahead to getting larger drives.
Does this unit support drives greater than 4 TB? I saw that 4 TB drives were used. Are there any limitation with larger drives (greater than 4 GB).
I love New Server Day. It's my favorite Day.
I have to ask what is actual use for your home lab? I don't know if I missed it and you've talked about it before. Sure you have critical services running on it -- and I still need to build out some of your cool examples. For the most part what we use at home can be built with a single box and a couple of Pi's. EG, I'm a DBA, and I'm using old hardware as a single proxmox server and and an old desktop I found in the trash as a TrueNas box. I only have proxmox running so I can experiment with ansible., Everything else I do is on a Pi, and a Synology DS1019+.
Hello,very interresting, Im missing the part where to install software or what to do before you can reach it on the network.
Ok, I bought the Chenbro NR12000 server. Problem is that the HDD mounting holes are close together but the mounting holes on my HDD are further apart, so I cannot load any of the 12 drives I bought into this chassis. Is there some sort of adapter plate to convert between the hole spacing?
this server ticks every box for what I want in one may end up buying one my self.
This is one of those golden videos! Great find brother thanks for sharing.
I can't seem to find this anywhere. What would you recommend these days for a new homelab to get a jbod or something like this for a proxmox setup?
Cool video! But eek! Didn't you close the air intake of the power supplies of the 2 lower servers by putting them on top of each other? I would have left some space between them just to be sure...
I can't wait till I get a bigger house.. so I can actually have a server rack...
same
Currently running for $162 on ebay --- still are a great deal for 12 drives of storage on the cheap
How have I watched 20+ of your videos and not subscribed yet?!? That's on me! lover your content!
Cool build. I always buy old xeon servers for this use. I prefer openmediavault to truenas. I usually buy old dell servers, but my setups don't have nearly the drive bays yours do.
I just received my Chenbro NR12000 1U 1x 8m QUAD CORE E3-1230v2 3.3GHz 16GB RAM NO HDD from the seller you purchased your unit from. I am interested to know why you state the inboard 1gb ethernet ports don't work? I was able to use the on boards in proxmox, Ubuntu server and truenas. All I had to do was set a static route for 0.0.0.0 to my gateway and boom, everything is awesome.
Density is great but so is proper cooling and access. How are you going to keep those drives at operating temp?
I am running proxmox on this same unit and am having trouble getting the 10G NIC that you recommended up and running. If I boot the unit with the NIC installed I loose all IP access with the unit. Have you run into this before?
Hey buddy. Do you have a link where I can find the same server box/rack for the 1u. I purchased the same one and now I’m looking to install it on a much cleaner area. I like your rack. Thank you in advance.
Jeff, any recommendations for what to do with 13 400GB seagate drives that aren't being recognized by a SAS9211 adapter but are being recognized by sata on motherboard? Have you found a reliable sata adapter for PCIe?
I just bought one of these and I am liking it so far hat are the max drive capacities you can use. My servers onboard NICs did work and they are 1gig.
Man... I wish we have the same hardware available at these prices in Brazil.
Nevertheless, I enjoy every video that you make, especially putting a server together.
What kind of beastly SATA controller did that board have to support 12 drives? It must have had a secondary controller, no?
Sandy Bridge era Xeon. Ouch. I have been looking for a good solution for my current FreeNAS, now TrueNAS setup, which has 12 drives in it. But I'm also looking to keep the total number of physical machines down. Which means, as much as I dislike it, I'm using TrueNAS as a hypervisor for production VMs. All testing VMs live on the Proxmox machine.
Wish I could find one of these. I need to build a NAS for my rack.
Back in the day when I was a homebrewer, all the competitions required that you submit two bottles of your entry...just in case something bad had happened to one of them.
Given it's in a dark bottle, it wouldn't have been a case of being lightstruck, but who knows?
If you ever try a second bottle of that beer, and it's just as bad, then it's probably the beer.
Would drive height matter? I have a few shucked WD Easysrore drives that can be a pain to fit in certain HDD caddies as they're a tad taller than other drives I own.
Anywhere to find these still? The ebay link leads to nothing
I bought one of these after watching your video. My only issue is how to mount a SSD in the case. I'm guessing that there is a missing piece that mounts in front of the power supply, because one of the SATA cables is routed there. If you know the part number, would you mind passing it on?
Hey Jeff could we get an updated link for this server? I'm dying to get one
in your video which I really enjoyed and I'm acquiring the materials for my own build I was wondering if you could point me in the direction of the disk mounting brackets that was shown or is the rubber grommets sufficient the brackets were silver in color and were arched in shape
thanks I'm learning a lot from you keep up the great work
Awesome find! Can you do a quick update on the 10g card and how you plan to connect it since you had to use the 1g big card in the riser?
Yep! Follow up video coming shortly.
@@CraftComputing Can you just tell us what card you used (trying to order)? Thx.
The 10Gb card is listed in the video description.
@@CraftComputing, Is there a way to get the card to work with win server 2019?
How do you use the management port on the back of this box? Is it ethernet or serial? Is it like HP ILO/Dell iDrac or something else?
Well damn, might just have to get one of these myself. Just got a dell 5810 to use as a VM server and was wondering what I might want to build for storage.
Am I correct in that in order to use all 12 drive spaces, you're going to need to also buy a sata/SAS HBA? would it be better in this case to buy a 4-port sata pcie card (and use the rest of the sata on the board) or a sas hba (not using the sata on the board at all)?
Followup question - could you swap the motherboard for something much more modern/efficient?
That's a pretty compact indeed. Maybe i should get one instead of my current bulky 4U. Need at least 2 working pcie slots though (10gb mellanox ethernet and broadcom 9361-8i hw raid)
How many watts is the included power supply?? Thanks