2014 January

 

 The spider is born, or Arachnids in your firewalls

January 29, 2014

Over the years I’ve heavily complained whenever my media-server/firewall  linux server dies. Since I also use this box for my own personal development/code, it’s become a real pain when it dies.

This is usually due to a hard drive failure incident. I’ve now gotten gatvol of this, and decided to get a new system.

I did go a little bit nuts on the HDD redundancy side this time, and also — a bit crazy with the design.

One of the principal requirements was a zero-noise policy. Having fans spinning in my study (whilst quaint, and steampunky) has become overbearing. Most of my “live” wall-based PC decorations sleep when they’re not used (thank you Wake-On-Lan) but the box that controls this all is typically always alive, and has to be accessible all the time.

Meet the spider:

Components:

  • Mini-ATX Mobo: Gigabyte GA-Z87N-WiFi
  • CPU: Core i7-4770k 3.5GHz
  • CPU Cooler: Zalman FX100 (fanless)
  • SSDS: 2 x Samsung MZ-7TE250 250GB’s
  • HDDS: 2 x Seagate ST1000DX001 hybrid 1Tb drives
Dilly and I welded the thing together in about six hours. Angle-iron ftw!

The spider final welded construction