Ryan Banham's Storage Server

Ryan Banham was kind enough to send me pictures of his mostly completed storage server. He is currently setting up the hardware RAIDs and doing stress/design testing.

Also, here are some tips/notes from Ryan that might be helpful...

1 - I realized just now that mine doesn’t really like to be moved. It acts up when moved and the RAID cards have to be reseated. This may have to do with the bottoms of the cards sticking out the case and the general flexibility of a fully loaded case. It may be a good idea to build in place instead of build and move the pod.

2 – With reference fan setup cooling is more than adequate. Surveying the drive temp status via SMART shows they are under ideal thermal range with an input temperature of 72F. The same for the main board environment too. It runs under heavy load about 15 degrees lower than its max temp. The CPU under full load for days will never get outside of 25-30 degrees below throttling temp. Due to this I went with a quieter lower power intake fan set. The drives stay under load about 25 C and everything else is well under thermal limits too.

3 – With only one power supply there is a gaping hole in the back of the case. I have built a plexi cover that I will install soon to keep crude large objects out of the case like a hand or tool. I have thought about putting an exhaust on it. Say a 80 or 90mm PWM fan powered from our board.