I’ve acquired a everything I need to start my set up and I’ve been playing with it for about a week now.
The HP server is great so far, except for the noise. I know enterprise servers are probably designed with no thought given to noise levels, but Jesus, this thing is ridiculous. During the entire minute-plus POST process, the six fans run at their maximum speed of something like 12,000 rpm. It’s loud. If I was near a rack full of them all day, I’d definitely be wearing some ear protection. Once the fans settle down to 35-40% when the thing is idling, they’re bearable, but still too loud to have on an open shelf in the office. I’ve decided to make a redneck “rack” to suspend the server and the switch vertically in the office closet. I’ll be making it this week, so I’ll be sure to post some pictures. In other news, the server turned out to take 3.5″ drives, not 2.5″, which really pleases me. I found some used 3TB HGST SAS drives and got six of them, plus some drive trays. I’ll be doing a RAID 6 array, so I should have 12TB of total storage while being able to recover from two drives failing simultaneously.
I got a Cisco 3560G 48-port switch to connect everything. I decided I had to update it, and killed it somehow. The flash memory appears to be wrecked. I used the web admin page to try to update it, and that image might have been too large for the flash memory. I tried to format the memory and install a new OS over the serial connection, but I had no success. So I bought another switch. The same model, but this one has already been updated to the latest supported version of IOS and it has a one year warranty. I won’t even be thinking about updating this one.
The SFF HP desktop as a router is coming along just fine. I dug up an old hard drive from a MacBook Pro I flipped a few years ago to use as the storage for that. At 250GB, it should be more than plenty. The system came with only 4GB of RAM, so I ordered another 4GB stick that should be in this week. I could probably get by on 4GB, but why not double it for like $12? I installed an HP NC365T NIC to give that computer a total of five gigabit ethernet ports. I’ll be using the built in port for the Proxmox admin console, then three of the four ports on the HP card for pfSense and Pi-Hole. I also need to get a VPN running, and I’d like to use WireGuard, which I may be able to do right in pfSense. If not, I’ll get a third VM going on this router box to handle VPN duties and use up the last ethernet port.
I’ll be running some wires to get wired internet and cable TV from the basement to the second-floor office. It shouldn’t be too difficult, but I’ve never run wires on the outside of a house before. Theoretically, all I need to do is add a couple holes to the area where the electric service and cable/fiber connections enter the house from the outside, put the wires through there and then drill a couple holes in a wall of the office. I’m hoping to not have to terminate my own ethernet cables because it’s a real pain. Monoprice has some outdoor rated cables with RJ45 connectors already attached for a great price, so I’m going to try to drill a hole big enough to let the connector through. The coax cable for the TV signal is no problem though, I’ve used compression-fit connectors on those a million times.
I’ll be ordering all my cables early in the week, so hopefully I can get drilling on the weekend.