I didn’t see much in the way of review info on the
NORCO RPC-450 4U Rackmount Server Case
. On top of that, the pics almost always showed a microATX motherboard installed, which was nice for having lots of room left. However, I had an Extended ATX or EEB motherboard that I wanted to get into this thing so it was little bit of a gamble when I ordered it. I’m pretty happy with the results although there are caveats and some tight areas. Without further ado, the review:
Newegg shipped this thing double boxed and it arrived in fine condition. I don’t live very far from the New Jersey distribution warehouse and I’m lucky enough to get stuff from them within a day or two.
The RPC-450 comes with 2 big 120mm fans up front. Once you remove those you can slide out the drive cages. What’s cool about this is that the drive cages are kind of like 5in3′s. As you can see in this pic the space could support 3 5.25″ drives vertically but with the cages installed there are slots for 5 3.5″ drives. The 2 cages slide in and out using the same locking tabs you’d use for drives.
On to the motherboard installation. The EEB size motherboard really does fill the space. Making matters worse, the fans and heatsinks for the dual xeons are located way up at the front of the motherboard. Here you can see how close one of the fans is to the frame:
In this pic you can see my thumb 
and also how close the installed optical drive is. If the fans are any taller you aren’t getting the optical drive in.
You can see here that this fan problem also means you can’t put more than 2 hard drives in the middle cage. Anything below that and the plugs would interfere with the fans:
Just an overhead shot. The power supply fit easily and didn’t get in the way. I didn’t get my hands all hacked up either like is common when I’m working in some cases. Most of the edges really are rolled.
So, in the end, it works. If you have a smaller motherboard you’ll have almost no problems. I got a second case for my Unraid setup and that used a MicroATX motherboard. Lots of space and the cooling has been excellent. The same setup in a Coolermaster CM690 had the 1TB Hitachi drives hitting 40C+. In this case with the 120mm fans blowing right across them I’m usually in the high 20′s on the Hitachi and only occasionally does it hit 30C. That’s a lot of piece of mind for the life of my drives.
All pics are here http://picasaweb.google.com/mdgeek/NorcoTekRPC450# although the rest are fairly blurry.
I’ve ordered some rackmount cases from Newegg finally. They should be arriving today and I’ll try to make a point of posting some pictures with my success (or otherwise!). I’m getting the Norco RPC-250‘s since they have plenty of space for motherboards and drives and also include two big 120mm fans in the front. I’ve been running some of the Hitachi 1tb drives in my Unraid and they tend to get a little warm. My plan is to give them a little more room and hopefully some more cooling.
One of the cases will have a slightly older dual xeon transplanted into it. I have a small concern about the spacing on this but the case is advertised as supporting EEB or Extended ATX motherboards. We’ll see and I’ll post pics. The cpu heatsinks are pretty huge and the processors are all the way at the front of the motherboard. Could be tight vertically. This box will be the ESXi server and will run a couple of different things such as some websites (this one) and some customer VM’s for VPN’s. It’s nice to have a known working config in a VM that you access at the “console” when you need to connect to a non-split-tunnelled VPN. Also avoids VPN client conflicts.
Once again, I’ve moved the in house phone system. I was running into problems with the virtual version I had running for the last couple of months. It worked pretty well most of the time but the clock was continually out of sync and that caused other problems on occasion. We had one instance of the server rebooting in the middle of a call. Not cool. Good thing it’s just at home.
I’m sure there’s a way to make it work with the proper VMWare tools and a good bit of tweaking but it’s just not worth my “time”!
So, I downloaded the freshest copies of TrixBox CE and chan_sccp_b. Again, I followed the steps here and had no problem getting everything installed. Remember to change the IP address for the server in the xml files in the tftpboot directory and also in the sccp.conf file in /etc/asterisk/ and then reboot the whole thing. Reloading Asterisk didn’t seem to be enough. Not sure why that is. Restart your phones and you’re good to go. Oh yeah, in my case I had to change the SIP related IP’s on my 1760 gateway also.
After all of the struggles in the past with the sccp channel it’s amazing to me how far it’s come. It really is pretty easy now. It sure would be nice if they could build a GUI module for the configuration though. In time perhaps.
Part of my motivation to do this is to fix the clock problem, but I also plan on getting a little more complex by adding some VoIP based connections to the world. So far I’ve only had the single Verizon analog line. I think I’m going to start by getting an inbound number from Gizmo5. They’ve built in integration with Gizmo5 now and it’s pretty easy to set up. I’ve been testing the outbound calls since they give you $2.00 in free calls at 1.9 cents/minute for signing up. The quality’s been excellent! The only problem has been that my parents don’t answer because they don’t recognize the number. Buying the inbound number should fix that.
What I really need is a small form factor TrixBox CE server. Something along the lines of what Digium is offering in their Asterisk Power Appliance. Something cheap that can handle <10 phones would be a real sweet spot.
We recently got Verizon DSL for my grandparents and stuck an older iBook in their house so they’d be able to see pics of the kids and such. They had been using a Ceiva frame for years and loved it but the plan was set to expire and the frame had always been kind of crappy as far as the screen went. Old dual scan LCD. Blech.
So, upgrade to a nice 14″ LCD and it’s much easier for them to see. However, that meant we needed to get some broadband in their house. Verizon DSL was running a special for the first 6 months free and then it’s only about $20/month after that. Nothing lightning fast but a lot better than dialup.
So, for Christmas day I drove them home and tried to install everything. No go. The Westell 6100f immediately tries to install some software on OS X. No problem, I download it and then try to run the install. I don’t know what version it’s designed for but it ain’t 10.5.6. I could never get past the initial install screen.
So I called Vz, was hung up on once, and then got someone that had a clue. Basically he had me turn off the automatic program download which I have to wonder but I think it might also turn off PPPoE. I don’t care, it worked. So here’s what he had me do in case someone else wants to get around the crappy software.
Go to: http://192.168.1.1/verizon/redirect.htm and login as admin:password. Click on the only button on the page, “disable”. Go back to http://192.168.1.1 although I don’t know that this is necessary. Then close Safari and restart it. Should let you through to the internet now.
By the way, I’m using Picasaweb to show “hidden” albums using the RSS screensaver included in 10.5. Really slick!
December 21st, 2008
scott
If you’re seeing this, you’re looking at the new server!
This is what I’ve been doing for the last couple of weeks. I’ve been moving several of the sites I manage to a new virtual host. In my basement!
Hopefully I can generate enough interesting traffic to put this connection to the test.
More later!
Well, it works. But I can’t find a way to get the fans to do anything but go at full blast. That might be ok for a noisy data center but it’s not ok for my basement.
Flipping back to Server 2003 and VMWare Server so I can install the HP drivers. Argh.
Simple note about losing the NIC when you copy a VMWare guest. If you “copy” the image it creates a new MAC address. Ubuntu 7.10 figures you installed a new NIC and it sets up ETH1. That means ETH0 stops working.
Ok, so I found this post and it led me 70-persistent-net.rules as the culprit. Swap the MAC around and it’s good to go!
I’ve been waiting for Sage to bring out a new extender for months. I’ve been prepping the DVD library, getting the network ready. I just didn’t want to move too far ahead unless they had the HD Extender back. It’s back and better! Not much better but good enough for me. I placed my order immediately and it should arrive by Friday or possibly next Monday. I’ll report back once it’s set up.
One of the things I want to test is using the Hauppauge HD-PVR to record DirecTV to a backend Sage Server. The tricky part is that I want the Sage Server virtualized. I’m concerned about latency and interrupts on the USB passthrough but in theory it should work. I might get to that this weekend with a borrowed HD-PVR.
I also ordered a HD Homerun on Black Friday, my only Black Friday purchase. Got it for $50 off! Sweet.
Finally, the system is starting to take shape. Whole home entertainment, here we come!
…it really means it! I tried to install on a machine with 1gb of ram over the weekend. No, I’m not planning on leaving it that way. I just want to start with some prep and I’ll be buying ram later.
Turns out, when you have shared memory for your video card it takes up enough that ESXi won’t even install. Yep, even cutting it down to 64mb wasn’t enough. I found a note on a forum where someone trimmed it down from 32mb to 16mb shared and it worked.
So beware! For as “light” as it supposedly is it won’t even think about working in anything less than 1gb of ram.
Intel is showing off a really slick twist on the tablet PC at a conference this week. Gizmodo has something about it here. They are calling it the UrbanMax and to me it looks perfect! I’m not sure the funny rounded edges look right but I love the concept. In fact, the HP TC1100 I picked up a little while ago is very similar. Same form factor when deployed even if the unwrapping is done a little differently.
Hopefully a manufacturer will run with this soon and I’ll have the opportunity to be pissed about how expensive it is!
