Project Fileserver

My old server was getting on in years and wasn’t really fit for the future. Modifications had occupied me with time-consuming data migrations. This should stop. So I started to develop a new expandable server.

At first I had defined my goals and noted the following points:
– cost-effective
– fast
– very reliable
– power saving
– expandable
– extremely quiet

I noticed “Fractal Design Define R6 Blackout” on the case. It is soundproofed and can hold 6 HDD’s. In addition, many ventilators are available for proper cooling. Link: Fractal Design Homepage for Define R6 Blackout

In a further step I looked for a power supply and here I decided on “EVGA SuperNOVA 550 G2, 80+ GOLD 550W” relatively easy. This one’s really quiet.
Link: Product Webside of EVGA 

At home I still had the mainboard “GA-H87-HD3” from Gigabyte lying around and this was used. Link: Product Homepage 

As the existing CPU fan was loud, it was replaced by “Thermalright HR-2”. A large fan is located in the housing nearby and this is very quiet and ensures optimum cooling. You find more details on Thermalright Webside

I got a small SSD for OpenMediaVault. This allows the system to start up within a minute. For more information, please visit the WD website

For my data I got two 10Tb Seagte IronWolf hard drives and set them up as RAID0 (Mirror). Information can be found here. I also got another one for my 6TB HGST hard disk and set it up as RAID0. Together these hard drives run under OMV as LVM and I can expand them if a needed.

After everything was assembled, I installed Windows 10 to perform a BIOS update. After that there were some optimizations in the BIOS. When that was done, I installed OpenMediaVault and completed the setup.

The entire system consumes about 50 watts. The Seagate hard drives are very economical, but the HGST aren’t, but I can live with that. At some point these will be replaced. About 12 watts go to the HGST drives.