My Next Case...

So it's time to start saving the pennies. I've found what I think is the ideal case for my unRAID set up.

The Cooler Master HAF STACKER 935 is two stacked cases -with the ability to add on even more. With the default config, it has the potential to hold 20 x 3.5" drives plus a 2.5" (using a 5-in-3 in the 5.25 bays) and with an additional 915 unit, could be pushed to an insane 29!

Here's a a somewhat lengthy but detailed unboxing and review video that gives a good idea of this units potential;

System Power Consumption

Following a question over at unRAID forums, I popped a Watt meter onto the system and have the following readings;

• 250W at boot
• 160W no VMs running, unRAID array spun up
• 120W no VMs running, unRAID array spun down
• 160W VMs running, unRAID array spun up
• 135W VMs running, unRAID array spun down
• 240W Heavy Usage  (2x Live TV  & One recording in progress, 2x Music Zones active, some general data access from array)

The system is averaging around 160W, peaking at 240W. Considering my previous unRAID ran at a constant 160W for data storage only, I'm pretty happy with this as I've folded in at least two additional machines to this rig.

Virtual Machines running on unRAID 6

More Case Mods

Following the little bit of case surgery previously noted, the migration of my production unRAID server to MediaServer8 required a little more gentle persuasion.

With unRAID version 6 beta 4 available, I thought it was time to transfer all my data from my old dual Xeon system. I had 8x 1TB data drives in the old server plus 1TB parity and 500GB. However, MediaServer8 currently only has 8 motherboard SATA connectors (plus a 2x port PCIe hard that's running recording and timeshiftimg drives for ArgusTV/MediaPortal).

So I needed to remove 2x data drives from my array. This is not such a big deal as I plan to upgrade drives to 4TB units over the coming months. I duly copied the data from the drives with least data and removed them from the array.

I ran a parity check on the old server and with all well, removed all the HDs. I downloaded unRAID 6b4 and, having saved my config directory, reformatted my MediaServer8 USB key, installed unRAID and copied back my config directory.

Whole House Audio - Step 2

Some time ago, I wrote a post on the foundations of a cheap DIY whole house audio solution. I haven't really progressed that idea much until this weekend when I got back to it.

I still have my squeezebox and squeezebox radios even though they're now discontinued. I also still have the Logitech Media Server driving them and Triode's plugin providing access to a premium Spotify account. Now with the unRAID system up and running, it was time to create a VM to act as MusicServer.