Final hardware steps in putting Rebma, the main fileserver out at
Corwin's, into its new case. Old case didn't cool well enough with this many drives,
this case is built for it (and hence sounds like a jet engine spooling up
when started; luckily it lives in a machine rack in the laundry room).
Beyond Conventions server build. New case, more drives, old motherboard etc. Ran into some trouble with the controllers interfacing to the drive backplane in the new case, had to locate and order some "reverse" SAS splitter cables (to combine 4 SATA ports to one SAS connector on the drive backplane).
Which worked, and this shot shows FreeNAS recognizing the drives for the first time in the new case.
I/O actually occurs. And the access lights even work.
Don't argue with me, stupid piece of silicon!
Shutdown before we go get the final set of parts; more Molex splitters, SATA extenders, and anchor pads and cable ties I guess (Corwin being out of cable ties).
The space between the drive backplane and the fans is a bit tight, annoying to work in. LOTS of connections there, 6 power connectors, 15 fan connectors!!!, plus of course the 3 SAS connectors. Plus various things we don't understand and aren't using.
The bend to get the cables from the SAS reverse splitter was a bit of a problem. Luckily that shrink-wrap with the label on it would slide up the cable a bit.
And 4 to the add-on card. How long an extender do we need? About 6 inches.
All extended, tied down, and hooked up!
All extended, tied down, and hooked up!
It's even fairly neat between the fans and the drive backplane.
Powered on, all 10 drives worked. Was able to recover the previous RAIDZ2 array (not that we needed to). And found, once it was up and running, that my server at home was successfully sending replication images to this one as before, without having to adjust anything.
