Fullmetal NAS

Prehistory

What only cases were not on Habré and in these your Internet. Iron was rearranged to everything from factory buildings to toasters. It all boiled down to something like the following: let's do it on the mother with atom - process, minimize the noise as much as possible, shove it into a small case and place it on the table where it will rustle with a wand, or conversely we confuse it with the old iron Something in the toilet / closet / closet.

Well, on the atom, I was not going to collect anything, since I simply do not have it. I preferred the second option, it suited me more, but I do not have such a toilet where I could put all this and the option was a little different.
')


Idea

Actually, I was pushed onto this idea by a bag of cement that had been lying in my corridor for a year and a half, after repair and no one had stolen it, and a fireproof closet that God knows how the wind brought, lay in the country. All this reminded me of the boxes that many local networks use for switches.

True, they are made of fairly thin iron and screwed somehow to the walls (while I was working as an installer, I saw a lot and cut off “meat” from the box walls and broken crowbars, and the grinder they were cut no worse than sausage). So it was necessary to take something thicker and screw it to the wall in the common corridor, let it make noise for itself there.

"Well, chyumadan wait ..."
Something is thicker, it is a safe or a fireproof case, it was too huge in the country house, and therefore another is needed. This animal was found in the local police department, the benefit of the local "bins of the motherland" are full of such decommissioned "sacred metal."



Here in this form I got a locker, 100,500 layers of peeling paint, a rolled-up lock, in general, all the pleasures of life. But 5 mm steel.

Rip off the paint.





Lubricate the loop, put a new castle, admiring ...



“- Something you, chyumadan is thick…” There is a lot of space, little functionality.
Cut off 1/3 of the box together with the back wall of the grinder.
Unfortunately, there was only one sheet of metal in the household with a thickness to match the box, and then with the gaps, well, okay, everything is not visible early behind.

Cook a new wall. After the box was much thinner, ugly ears remained at the back wall.



Cut off. The abrasive disc took the metal very badly, it was necessary to cut with a diamond cut, on each side it took about an hour.



Stuffing

Box found, it remains to decide what to do next. You can of course just bring there the power and network from the router, put the system unit in the closet, forget about it for a long time. I decided all the same to go the other way and make an armored system. Place the stuffing on the walls of the box itself, close the ventilation openings with grills, and bring the power and start-up to the turnkey housing.

NAS does not require distemper capacities, and an old train will do, but even with it there are problems. Everything except the mother and mother was found quickly enough, but I could not get these details. I was already desperate, but then a friend appeared with a trivial request to fix his computer and about a miracle, an old system officer was lying around in his garage.

An autopsy revealed that everything is not so bad. The old computer turned out to be equipped with n4 - 2.8 GHz percent, a mother with a RAID controller and sATA connectors (by the way, in the host computer, which I repaired, turned out to be even weaker than percent, well, to whom does it matter now).



With the help of 2 corners, a handful of bolts from the children's designer, a soldering iron and a drill, we modernize the power supply unit for new needs. We transfer the power socket to the top wall and fasten the corners.

The extra ventilation hole from the old power socket without long thinking is sealed with a mega epic sticker, everything is now officially power supply pumped and diced by Kaspersky.



Also in the bins of the homeland were found 2 old system units, they were safely dismembered, and part of them put into operation.

The shield of one of them became a mount for the mother, and the baskets of both were amputated and joined into one.



Two sliding hinges were attached to the top of the basket (as in the desk drawers). I thought that this is the best mounting option, which provides quick access to the basket and good airflow.



A support bar was attached to the bottom of the basket for a more secure fit and reduced vibration.



Ventilation and other holes

For ventilation, it was decided to make 2 square windows, under a 120-mm cooler for cooling hard drives and 80-mm for the power supply. Why a window, and not to say to drill holes or cut through the "gills" with a grinder?

Well, because it’s less hassle, I don’t have the art of cutting the grinder, and it’s quite difficult to drill holes (I have already seen such craftsmen, the first rows are nothing, and then “hello from a big hangover ...”).

We cut!



By the way, cut a square hole with a round disk, a small size, is quite problematic.





We close the outside with a large ventilation grill, and from the inside with a fine mesh. Everything is beautiful and reliable.
With holes for electromechanical locks, I also had to suffer, drills with a diameter of 22 mm needed to install a lock on the farm did not turn out, and to pay 500 re for it was frankly strangled by a toad.
I had to drill the "daisy".



And boring it.





All other bolt holes for fixing mothers, hard drives and other equipment were drilled, and then they were threaded with a tap (since thick walls kept bolts securely and made it possible to drop the nuts).



The protruding tips of the bolts were cut off, so I achieved a “clean” rear wall, which made it possible to closely move the box to the wall and subsequently tighten it with anchor bolts, like this.



At the same time, any bolt can, if desired, be unscrewed for replacement or repair of equipment.

Pro wires

I think many people know that from the shield the wires enter the apartment not through magic, but through special cable channels. True, in many old houses they are clogged with construction debris and their further use is associated with a great waste of time and Fairy (according to many of my familiar installers and personal experience, this is the best detergent for cable pulling).

Ringing the wall and finding the cable channel, pulled the wires through the shield in the apartment. This allowed to get rid of external wiring and vandal attacks on the wires.

Final stage

We sort everything back, we paint. I painted the outer side with Hammerait (why them? For 2 reasons, I consider it the best paint for metal and I had it), with internal gray paint on metal. The door was painted using a stencil ( more about painting the door ).



We give dry paint, begin assembly.
We display 2 locks (1–220 networks, 2 - power and reset) and 3 indicators (1–220 networks, 2 - power, 3 - hdd) to the outer part of the case.



Fasten cooler.



We lay out and fasten the wires. (By the way, I do not advise taking Nevsky Fastener fasteners, terribly oak).



We finish the assembly, push up to the wall, connect the electricity, tighten the anchor.
Everything can be run!

That's what happened in the end.







A few words about OSes.
I used FreeNAS (which has become almost the standard for self-assembled NAS).
There was an attempt to use a version of 8 branches, but it seemed to me still very raw and it was decided to return to a stable 7.

At the moment, only one hard test. How will the money, buy it.

Thanks for attention!
PS See the rest of the photo tools and assembly .