Rc-help Server Build

[RandyDSok]

On iDrac.... the last I knew you were unaware of or didn't recall which version you had updated it too... since iDrac6 v2.92 is the latest shown as available for download for your R710 server... you should be good on that front. I think that is all of the firmware related things that may be always running... but I'd check with Matt to see what he knows just to play it safe. To be a little more specific... I thought it was a good idea to have the BIOS fully updated and any server management components in firmware that are accessible through the management port.

I saw the "Lifecycle Controller" stuff but was unaware of what it performed... So just guessing, I suspect it just provide utils to manage those OS and/or provides utils that can be operated from within those OS. Example... I know Robert is using Vmware for his VM's... he is able to completely backup and restore them from the management port if needed from bare metal without needing to completely reinstall the OS portion manually. That is a supported feature because he is using a supported OS...

If you were looking for some type of utils for your server for Unraid... they ( or someone else ) would have to provide it since Dell isn't and is unlikely since the R710 is an old server.

 

[Tony]

Yea, I thought you could update the iDRAC higher than I had it. But further reading, when I'm not Dog ass tired, showed that I was fully updated. And as you said, the BIOS is also updated to the latest. And to mention something that you had said, I think in the stream, I forced that update, risking bricking the server, because I had already been told that they would refund my money, all they wanted was the drives back. Not the server...

I have vmware, ESXi 6, so I could put it on there, but I really like unRaid since it is way more user friendly. But, if I can run something that helps manage the server easier, I may just say okay and stick it on there. Maybe I can run unraid within an ESXi VM lmao. Yea, a vm in a vm to create more vm's. This is getting a little complicated lmao.

I will have to check to see what is available for unraid though as far as support for the server. I suspect not much.

 

[Tony]

So setting up the restream server on the new server is a little more complicated than I thought it was going to be.... go figure

 

[RandyDSok]

I saw that you'd started streaming... but was unable to join today. I was at my niece's celebrating her 34th birthday, my bro-n-law's 60th birthday and... my parents 69th anniversary ... That was good and all of that, but I think my niece's son who is now 3 weeks old, pretty much had everyones attention.

 

[Tony]

Yea, I tried to do a test stream with the new server setup, and it was giving off weird errors. I should have saved the errors, but cleared them to do more testing, then just shut the server down. And now, with everything we had going on today, I have forgotten what the exact errors were. It's definitely a config error though. Just need to find it.....

 

[Tony]

Been a few days since the last update so figured I would share what I have been up to

I am still transferring files to the shared drives on the server. I am on the last folder... Videos.... This is by far my largest file on my computer, and soon, the server. It will take quite a while to upload this file but once it's done, I will run a final check by trying to copy all files once again and hitting skip when it prompts me about duplicate files. It will take a while, but it will keep me from forgetting any files. Because once this is done, I will be formatting the drive in my computer, so it needs to be right.

I have also installed my own cloud server on there. This way, no matter where I am, I can not only access the server files that are shared, but I can also write new files to it. This is going to be a LOT better than emailing myself pictures that i have taken with my phone. Now, I can just move the pictures to the folder on the server and pull them with my computer. easy. My next step is to have my phone backup all photos to the cloud server that way I can skip one of those steps. This is almost my favorite feature lol.

Because of electricity costs I am not running this server 24/7. It is only on when I need it on right now. At the end of this month, the stupid 'peak' rates will stop and I will have a little more flexibility.

And I am still looking into the restream server issue, but I think I will just use the server that is on my computer. It's very light on the system so no reason not to. Have to deploy the KISS method on this one...

And just a fun fact. I have over 18,000 video files lmao. Yea.....

 

[Tony]

So to add to the update above, I figured out why I couldn't get ZoneMinder working... I was using a URL for a completely different camera system haha. Put in the correct URL and guess what... yea....

And when all cameras are recording... CPU 100%... So if I want to use this server for my security cameras, I'm going to have to 1. win the lotto to pay for the energy consumption and 2. install the second CPU to take up some slack which would make #1 even more prevalent.... No ZoneMinder for me....

 

[Tony]

So sitting here thinking.... Right now there is no way I can fire up a live stream to take some more votes, but I can't because my network is saturated. However, my 48 port switch is technically 48Gbps, 1Gbps for each port. My server has 8 1Gb ports and IF my desktop computer had more than 1 1Gbps port, I could map it so that the file transfer works on one line, and my stream could be on another line. Hell, I could set up 3 lines for the data transfer and one for the stream if I had a 4 port NIC. Of course I could only saturate 2 of them with the speed of the spinning drives.... I'm at 46% usage on my drive right now so if I had two lines, I could saturate the disk and transfer files as fast as I possibly could. But, stuck with one line because 1. it's hot as hell outside and I"m not running any more lines and 2. I don't have enough cat5e to run more lines across the house lol.

 

[Tony]

Alright, I now have auto backup and upload of photos from my iPhone to the server setup. This is going to make things a lot faster. Now I need to create some folders for the wife.

 

[Tony]

Just a little update on what is going on with the server. I have transferred all of the files that I"m going to transfer over. I have tried to do a test to see if all of the files are on there, but it is taking way too long. I just don't have that kind of time to invest in this thing. So the files that are on there, are the ones that are going to be on there. The ones that are on my computer (8TB drive) will soon be deleted.

I have also moved all of my folders (documents, downloads, pictures, videos.....) to the server so when I move or download something on my computer, it will always go to the server. The only one that is not on the server is the desktop and that is so I can move things to the desktop and know I'm working off of the SSD. When I'm done, I just move them to the proper folder and boom, they are on the server.

One issue with this is, I actually have to turn on the server to access them. And the server is only on when I need it on and not all the time. So this could be a bit of a pita to stick with. Thanks to electricity costs, I don't want to run this thing all of the time.

 

[Tony]

And good news, the two single NIC's that I have (one came as a "management" port that I replaced with the iDRAC and the other was a mistake from an ebay seller when I ordered a server fan), are both showing up in unraid. I have already put in the code to tell unraid to release them, and they are available to any VM that I have running. I will be assigning one of them to the pfSense VM and removing the other one. I just wanted to make sure the "management" NIC was not loaded with a custom firmware that kept me from using it as a normal NIC. After all, there was a custom "0.0.1" bios on this friggin server lmao. So yea, makin' progress. Now I just need to win the lotto to keep this server running at all times.

 

[Tony]

Next chapter has begun. I FINALLY finished moving all of the files and stuck the 8TB drive into the server. I'm still not sure if I'm going to leave it in the position that I put it in, which is a Parody drive for the server. Basically, it IS THE backup drive for the entire server. If it dies, I can replace it. If another drive dies, I can replace it, and I won't lose any data. But I'm starting to run short on space on my 8TB data drive, so I may need to just make this another data drive.... I just dont' know lol. I'm hoping that I can come into some money and get one of those 10TB drives to stick in here as a data drive and replace probably the 1TB cache drive which is pretty much useless in this setup. And, if I do that, I can just dedicate 2TB to the surveillance cameras and pull that drive out as well. So I will have 2 free drives for larger drives. And quite honestly, I could pull out the SAS drives and put the RCH Backup Server on the larger drives as well, which would open up 4 bays. Mmm, 6 10TB drives.... A man can dream lmao.

 

[Tony]

I forgot to mention above that the Parody drive is having to 'rebuild'. It is saying it's going to take over 16 hours to rebuild that one drive lol. Maybe I should just make it a data drive lmao.

 

[RandyDSok]

The word is Parity... not parody


Copied from Google...





par·o·dy
/ˈperədē/
noun

1. 1.
   an imitation of the style of a particular writer, artist, or genre with deliberate exaggeration for comic effect.
   "the movie is a parody of the horror genre"
   synonyms: satire, burlesque, lampoon, pastiche, caricature, takeoff, skit, imitation, mockery; More
   
   • 
     
     

verb

1. 1.
   produce a humorously exaggerated imitation of (a writer, artist, or genre).
   "his specialty was parodying schoolgirl fiction"
   • 
     
     

Tip
Similar-sounding words
parody is sometimes confused with parity

 

[Tony]

hehe

 

[Tony]

So would you believe me if I said I did that just to annoy you? lmao

 

[RandyDSok]

I'm not going to buy that...

... I prefer to say you just can't learn even after being corrected before... LMAO

 

[Tony]

Maybe I was making a "Parody" of a "Parity".... Ever think of that? lmao

 

[Tony]

That could have ended badly....

So I decided to not use the server as a primary file server. I decided to pull out the parity (see, I always know how to spell it, sometimes) drive and put it back into its case. So I did. It is a USB3 drive and my router has a USB3 port. I plugged it in and found out it uses smb1 or whatever that protocol is that is no longer used in windows 10, I believe for samba. And guess what, Linksys doesn't support version 2 of that protocol which windows requires. So I was forced to put DD-WRT on it, which in reality, is not a bad thing. I love that firmware.

So I went through the process of setting it up not realizing it takes the system a minute to see the drive and start showing it on the network. I made so many changes in that time before realizing this fact lol. But, I had it on there and it was time to do a little speed test.

I connected my laptop up via ethernet and started a rather large file transfer. The data rate was between 600Mbps and 700Mbps which is not gigabit, but it is good enough for the girls I go out with. So I decided to leave that drive there and move my files, yes again, to that drive rather than keeping them on the server.

So electricity costs went down, and I fired up the server to move some files. I did this via the iDRAC while laying in my bed and figured I would watch a little Plex from the server while I was there. So I waited for it to start up, and waited, and waited... about 10 minutes later I decided to fire up the monitor that was connected directly to the server to see what was going on. I figured since I put the unraid server to "sleep" (S3 mode), it was having a hard time waking up. But NOPE, that was not the issue.

I am greeted with the message that the raid configuration on the H700 is missing a disk. Duh.... And that it "had cache information that was needed for the controller". This was bad. The drive had been formatted and the data was gone. So a lot of research went into the next step.

You can hit f2 and go into the page where you can select to manage the cache. And the ONLY way to get it going again was to delete the stored cache. But it said it would affect ALL virtual disks, not just that one. This is why I spend the next hour and a half researching what would happen, and got absolutely nowhere. But, I figured if it went wrong, I would have another nice empty drive to use for more files since there was no way I was getting them back. And deleting that cache was the ONLY option I had.

So I hit delete, it warned me about data loss, and I hit Accept.

Talk about some puckering moments! Once I did that, i backed out of that menu and it prompted me to hit ctrl+alt+del to restart the server. So I did. And I waited to see what would happen when it got to the raid card configuration. To my surprise, it went there, then moved on, and a little while later, the UnRaid screen came up. I came in to my laptop and waited and about a minute later, I was on the UnRaid desktop. And unraid was not even tossing an error over the missing disk. That part was weird.

So yea, maybe this server stuff really isn't for me. Seems I create more issues than solutions....

 

[RandyDSok]

FYi...

Windows 10 can support Samba v1 still if you wish... Go to the Control Panel-> Programs and Features-> Turn Windows Features on or off... and enable ( place a checkmark next to ) SMB 1.0/CIFS File Sharing Support... and restart the system. Enabling this should allow other OS's and older versions of Windows to still share files on a Windows 10 computer.