My version of "gravitsapy"

Prehistory

Good afternoon!

Our family doesn’t watch television from the very beginning, and this year it will be already 9 years old! But we consume various media information, at first it was all stored on a home computer, output to a TV via HDMI. With the growth of the media archive, as well as after the appearance of children, the convenience of viewing began to plummet to zero. And three years ago, I finally matured to collect a home media server. At that time, the main requirements for the housing of the media server were as follows:

• the possibility of the location of the body "flat"
• Width (taking into account the previous point - height): no more than 20 cm (otherwise it will not climb into the wall)
• 3,5 "internal compartments - at least 5
• External compartments 5.25 "- at least 1

Given these requirements, I chose: Silverstone LC20B :

I was pleased that in the internal 3.5 "basket you can normally insert not 6, but 7! Hard drives of a standard height. That saved me at some point.
')
Having estimated that when deploying RAID6 on 7 2Tb hard drives, I get 10 Tb of storage space, I hoped that I would close my storage needs by 5 years. Naive :-)

10 Tb ran out last fall. In principle, 2.5 years is a good time, but we must look for a way out of this situation. On the New Year holidays began to study the experience. As a result, I really liked the idea of ​​Gravitsapy. I decided to do something similar myself, but I didn’t immediately rush to do it, but to design it first.

Determination of housing requirements

The first requirement is the number of hard drives. Making a case for 10 or even 20 pieces makes no sense, so we will choose a range of 40 - 60 pieces.

I don’t know about yours, but my experience shows that stationary cases standing on the floor have a tendency to not move for years and, accordingly, dirt accumulates at the location. And assuming the size of the "animal" and its mass really want to not have to hire a brigade of movers to move. Therefore, the second requirement - the body should be easily moved.

Further, it is natural that collecting such a server and not providing it with protection against surges and power outages is nonsense. Taking into account the previous requirement, we define the third - the case should have a place to accommodate an APC Back-UPS 1500VA UPS (currently used), as well as space for an additional set of batteries (maybe buy in the future).

Based on the requirements for the number of hard drives, the actual problem is cooling. Or rather, the problem of servicing the cooling system. We define one more requirement: maintenance of the cooling system of the case should not lead to its analysis. Ideal - without stopping the server.

Probably one of the main requirements is the ease of server maintenance. For example, adding or replacing a hard drive, adding RAM, etc.

Well, left dimensions. I wish that the case did not turn out to be a cube with a side in a meter, but a more compact one.

Let's sum up.
Requirements:

1. Number of winchesters: 40 - 60 pcs
2. Ease of movement
3. Possibility of placement in the APC Back-UPS 1500 VA UPS case (tower execution) with a set of additional batteries
4. Server maintenance convenience
5. The possibility of servicing the cooling system without stopping the server and parsing the case
6. Whenever possible compact body sizes

Housing project

general information

I used SketchUp ( http://www.sketchup.com ) to create the corpus. The project itself can be picked up here , use on health.

Here is what the server housing looks like in its entirety:

By the way, this is the seventh version.

General concept

Some of the previous server options are presented below:


After analyzing the cases v1, v2, v3, I realized that the “bottom-up” cooling system is not suitable, since the holes in the bottom do not allow optimal placement of the rollers, and the overall dimensions of the structure increase. Therefore, I chose the scheme “front-back”. Naturally, we had to abandon the separate baskets for hard drives. The v6 version suited me, but all these opening doors (4 pcs.) Caused fear. Therefore, based on one of the previous options and reworked.

Opening part - upper:


The body itself without the top and side walls:


Power supply is provided by two 750 W power supply units. In the case there are 3 shelves to accommodate motherboards and additional equipment.

"Basket" for hard drives

On the basis of the first and sixth requirements, the placement of 48 hard drives in 4 groups of 12 pieces was optimal:

Cooling system

The cooling system consists of two fan units of 12 pcs. in each. A filter is installed in front of the unit responsible for blowing air.

Fan Assembly Assembly:


Fan assembly disassembled:

At last

I really want to hear constructive criticism because this is my first experience in designing my own body. And at the same time I want to ask advice about manufacturing. I don’t want to manually cut the plywood (I have experience in making a dollhouse), because hemorrhoids are still the one, so I want to order a laser cut. I live in Astrakhan and have not found organizations that perform such work here. Therefore, I ask for advice, maybe someone came across a laser cut? What is a normal organization? I understand that at least it will be Volgograd, but in principle if the performer cuts everything according to the drawings and transports them to Astrakhan, then it can be located even in Moscow.

Thanks in advance.

UPD.
Honestly, I did not want to write, but apparently I would have to. I specifically wrote this post in the thematic community “Make Yourself” hoping that I would be spared from comments like “why the hell goat bayan ...”, “but I have ...”, “but look already there is a ready case / solution / hi-end product. ” With the same success could write and Learn. It's a shame, honestly.

I will answer questions that are not directly related to the topic of the post:
1. "He will eat!". Will be. How many will eat - so much and eat. The question of saving energy is not yet worth it.
2. "Why so much?". Need to. Consider me to be the top side-porn .
3. "There are ready-made solutions!". They cost a lot of money that I am not ready to spend (I mean the server rack on rollers), and I have no place to put such a professional solution.
4. "And home?". Fully supported.

I repeat once again - I am NOT going to immediately purchase 48 screws. I'm going to buy more as needed. Especially since 9 are already there. 7 - in the case, 2 in external baskets. The question is to change the CURRENT system, not the creation from scratch.

Sorry, if someone hurt.