Home built ESXi (6.7) whitebox. It hosts several VM's, the file server being one of them. The file server runs SnapRAID + Drivepool on top of Windows 8.1 WMC VM. Still need to migrate over to Windows Server or a Linux OS - I used to use WMC for Digital HD CableCARD recording to serve to the HTPC's over the network, but I've since switched to IPTV.. just haven't had the time to migrate the OS.

Norco RPC-4220 4U Rackmount Case
1000w Corsair RM1000 Power Supply
Asrock Rack EP2C612 WS Motherboard w/ IPMI/KVM
2x Intel Xeon E5-2667v3
64GB (8x8GB) Samsung DDR4-2133 Registered (8x M393A1G40DB0-CPB)
1x Intel Pro 1000 Dual Gigabit PCIe Ethernet Adapter
3x IBM m1015 SAS Controllers Flashed to IT Mode
2x 250GB Samsung Evo 850 SSD's (VM Datastore)
7x 4TB Western Digital SSHD's
10x 2TB Western Digital Green HDD's
3x 1TB HGST HDD's
5x SFF-8087 to SFF-8087 cables
3x 120mm Arctic Cooling F12 PWM Fans (HDD Wall)
2x 80mm Arctic Cooling F8 Rev.2 PWM Fans (Rear Case)
2x Noctua NH-U9DXi4 PWM CPU Fans

Server is in the bottom 4U, same setup but an old picture which shows an older version of ESXi and different hardware on the monitor before I upgraded.

I'm not even sure about the specs, some kind of Sempron with 2.5 Gb of RAM. Whatever I had lying around, in the largest case I could find. Two sets of RAID-1 arrays, first array is two 1TB disks for my Youtube stuff, the other array consists of two 2TB drives for everything else. All SATA, one of the drives is a WD RED and the other is a WD black, the other ones are I think Seagates. I put in extra cooling for the drives, and I really have to recap it, five caps are bulging badly - I have the caps too. You know what, right after I'm done editing the video I'm working on, it'll get powered down and I'll replace them.

I was running Openfiler on it, now it's NAS4Free - redundant network ports set for load leveling. It's nothing fancy, but it has been very reliable for the last... I don't even know, 5 years?

I also have it hooked up to a UPS which autoshuts down if there's a power outage (20 min countdown) and the system emails me if there's anything amiss.

It appears the system itself doesn't know what it is 😜

SERVER
Same OS and Case since 2007

Usage:
Plex Server
File storage

Would like to run Windows VMS on it for game compatibility testing but the virtualization included with FreeNAS currently only works well with linux and passthrough not supported yet.
The SSD are intended for the VMs.

OS
FreeNAS

PROCESSOR COOLER
Noctua NH-U9 TR4-SP3, Premium CPU cooler for AMD TR4/SP3

MEMORY
4x Supermicro Certified MEM-DR432L-SL03-ER26 32GB DDR4-2666 LP ECC REG DIMM

MOTHERBOARD
SUPERMICRO MBDH11SSL-I Rev 1.01

PROCESSOR
AMD EPYC 7351P 16-Core

ADDON CARDS
ASUS Hyper M.2 x16 PCIe 3.0 x4 Expansion Card V2 supports 4 NVMe M.2 (2242/2260/2280/22110) up to 128 Gbps for Intel ...
Intel Ethernet Converged Network Adapter X540-T1 10GBE

CASE
SUPERMICRO CSE-743T-650B Black 4U Case 11 Bays
Supermicro CSE-M35TQB 5-in-3 Hot Swap SAS/SATA Mobile Rack (Black)
Replaced case fans with Noctua Fans

POWER SUPPLY
Supermicro 1200w ATX12V Power Supply - 1 kW, 1.20 kW - Internal - 110 V AC, 220 V AC (PWS-1K25P-PQ)

HARD DRIVE
13x Seagate IronWolf Pro 16TB NAS (ST16000NE000)
1x Supermicro 64GB 520 MB/s Solid State Drive (SSD-DM064-SMCMVN1)
4x Samsung 970 EVO Plus Series - 1TB PCIe NVMe - M.2 Internal SSD (MZ-V7S1T0B/AM) for ASUS Hyper M.2 x16
1x Samsung SSD 970 EVO 2TB - NVMe PCIe M.2 2280 SSD (MZ-V7E2T0BW) for onboard M.2

OFFSITE Rotation
1x QNAP TVS-672 6 Bay 6x16TB w/ QNAP QXG-10G1T Single-Port (10Gbase-T) 10GbE
1x QNAP TVS-670 6 Bay 6x16TB w/ QNAP QXG-10G1T Single-Port (10Gbase-T) 10GbE
1x Synology DS1512+ 5x16TB 1GBE
1x Synology DS211+ 2x12TB 1GBE
1x Synology DS713+ 2x12TB 1GBE

Currently have a box in my closet full of 4-12TB drives I need to do something with.....

• Cooler Master Stacker STC-T01
  • Enermax 550W PSU
  • ABIT IC7-G motherboard
    • 4 GB DDR SDRAM
    • 3.4 GHz Pentium 4 (Prescott) with Zalman CNPS7000-Cu HSF
    • Highpoint RocketRAID 454 PCI
      • 1.9 TB storage in eight (8) 320 GB IDE HDDs in removable MB123AK trays
        • Windows 2000 Server
    • Matrox Marvel G450 eTV AGP
    • Integrated USB 2.0, FireWire 400, Ethernet
  • Lite-On SATA BD-RE drive
  • 3.5" floppy drive

Comparing to you guys, I'll be looking super lame. But I can't be bothered to have a separate PC as a NAS server. Therefore I use Synology DS218+, with 6GB RAM and 2x4TB (WD40EFRX) WD Red drives in RAID1.

Srandista wrote on 2020-05-02, 18:46:

Comparing to you guys, I'll be looking super lame. But I can't be bothered to have a separate PC as a NAS server. Therefore I use Synology SD218+, with 6GB RAM and 2x4TB (WD40EFRX) WD Red drives in RAID1.

No worries. If it does what you need it to do and does it reliably, it's fine . I personally scaled up as I realized that performance was not what I wanted with the boxed solutions . Additionally, these tend to go EOL rather quickly so no security updates after a while . Finally, a stripped down embedded Linux was too limited .

I had no requirements other than reliable storage and a small footprint . Compared to some of the others my setup is minimalistic, but it is what I need and I am happy with it . It is also upgradeable if necessary .

114TB UnRaid server:

https://imgur.com/a/u74RyIR

The Specs:

CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2697 v2 (12c 24t)
Mobo: Asus P9X79 LE
RAM: 48GB (6x8GB) of 1333mhz DDR3
GPU: PowerColor PCIE x1 AMD Radeon HD 5450 512mb
LAN: Aquantia AQtion 10G Pro NIC (The RealTek 1gbps NIC is also used for most network and internet access, the 10gbps is only directly linked to my workstation without a switch.)
Storage Controller: LSI 9201-16i
Power Supply: 650w SuperNova P2 Platinum PSU

Total UnRAID array capacity: 114TB

-Pentium M (Dothan) @ 2.66GHz
-2GB DDR2 RAM
-26TB of main storage drives+ 26TB backup drives.
-Ubuntu 16.04

Most of that storage is used for BD rips. The 1080p movies use 15-40GB each; 2160p UHD movies run at around 40-70GB.
On my movie watching rig, every compression artifact shows. I don't bother with any kind of real time transcoding, so that single core P-M and its beastly 2GB of RAM still provides more than enough powah! 😀

Not NAS .... DAS!

1x mini ITX home server in a not some comon unbranded chinese itx/amiga (2008-2009) case \
i7-3770T
16gb ddr3 kingston
500gb ssd
10G NIC
Win Server 2019
External IP KVM

1x MediaSonic ProRaid eSata RAID array with 4x 12tb IronWolfs in Raid 10 22TB (possibly soon to be RAID 6 due to marginal returns 30ishTB)

i hear asrock will have itx prosumer mini itx x570 board with an onboard BMC/out of band management which would be nice upgraded from a java powered one i have that requires super old java. also ryzen would be a nice upgrade assuming it doesn't MELT due to lack of real cooling

My WD MyCloud NAS died. If you get a NAS make sure you mirror your drives. Or at least make a backup copy on another drive of your important files.

That’s my 2 cents.

^^^ That's what I have set up, but I will also do a backup as I plan on salvaging the 80 Gb boot disk and mirroring it onto a USB drive so I can boot from that instead.

Just a Lenovo/Iomega ix2-dl with 2 x 2TB WD Red NAS HDDs in RAID1 with access via shared folders (for my main PC) and FTP (for my retro machines with networking capability). It basically contains backups of critical documents/files/books, archived floppy/CD images of my retro games and all the ripped albums from my music collection. 2TB have been more than enough for the last few years since my photos are in the cloud and I don't have any video content (I rarely watch any new movies nowadays, mostly classic pre-2000 stuff once in a while and some series via streaming).

In the past I also used to dedicate a ton of storage space for different software development resources such as tools, compilers, IDEs and technical documentation, but I have pretty much abandoned programming as a hobby and keep it limited strictly to work, so that's another factor why my storage requirements have diminished.

TheMobRules wrote on 2020-05-04, 03:23:

Just a Lenovo/Iomega ix2-dl with 2 x 2TB WD Red NAS HDDs in RAID1 with access via shared folders (for my main PC) and FTP (for my retro machines with networking capability). It basically contains backups of critical documents/files/books, archived floppy/CD images of my retro games and all the ripped albums from my music collection. 2TB have been more than enough for the last few years since my photos are in the cloud and I don't have any video content (I rarely watch any new movies nowadays, mostly classic pre-2000 stuff once in a while and some series via streaming).

In the past I also used to dedicate a ton of storage space for different software development resources such as tools, compilers, IDEs and technical documentation, but I have pretty much abandoned programming as a hobby and keep it limited strictly to work, so that's another factor why my storage requirements have diminished.

I liked my IX2-DL except for the fact that drives would get a bit too warm for my taste in it (55 Celsius) and throughput was sometimes lower than expected (damn indexing service (SVCD) or something like that was bringing CPU and I/O to its knees on occasion).

Currently running this little Raidon SL3650-LB2 I got for free with 2xHGST 2TB SATA drives I bought used off Ebay for $50 each in 2014. They're still going strong, but the NAS burned out its (completely inadequate - my fault) external power supply not long after I got it so I put it away for a few years. I dusted it off about 10 mos. ago and have mainly been using it for media (my own personal Youtube archive), backing up my Steam/Gog/Epic store library, and large installers I could download again if I needed too.

Lately I've been thinking about upgrading it to 2x6GB or 2x8GB, and using it for a second layer of redundant backups along with its media serving duties, but due to the price difference between SATA & SAS gear at those sizes it'd actually be cheaper to build a dedicated FreeNAS PC, hence my other thread. I really like the tiny form factor of this thing but its fan is noisy, its drives are even noisier, and I don't entirely trust it since it's pretty old (2010) and I had that PSU issue once already.

Fortunately if it dies, I can hook the drives up to any PC running Linux and read them - it's running MDADM internally and the drives are XFS. HUGE plus in my book.

^^ forgive the dust in this pic, didn't realize it was that bad. Stupid black devices...

Since 2014, a HP ProLiant N54L G7 with 5*4TB RED WD and 16 GB of ram. It's got Freenas and the pool of drives is configured with ZFS.

As a home office solution, this is a quiet, reliable, fairly cheap and fast enough solution for our needs. Most important folders are being backed up regularly.

I'm always amazed what you can tinker together. I have only a Synology DS918+ with 4x10TB (WD100EFAX) in a Raid 5.
My main usage is a Plex Server and File Storage for my video projects.

No fancy stuff on my side, an HP Elite 8000 with a Celeron 420, 1TB hdd, Windows 7 Pro and burnt USB ports (none of them work). It was free, so I can't complain.

wiretap wrote on 2020-05-02, 15:40:

https://imgur.com/4fY8sVB.jpg […]
Show full quote

Now that's a nice rack!

double entendre 1/2 intentional, but seriously knew I wanted a rack, now I want to light it!
pretty sure blue lighting is a legit form of active cooling.

As for Storage, I like retro
ProLiant 1600 Duel P3 600 running NT4 in RAID 5 which gives around 1TB of storage
More important stuff is also on a more modern/boring "Archive PC" using software raid 1+0

Yes, 10 degrees cooler with blue lighting. 🤣

The lighting is hooked up to a Raspberry Pi, it changes color based on server load. I just have it monitoring via IPMI for overall server CPU load and it goes from Green to blue to yellow to red based on the load.