Nice!

I made the first attempt to setup one of the R210s but... ah, the first hiccup: installing the hard drive requires a special type of screw that, according to the documentation, "Screws are supplied along with the hard drives ordered from Dell."

:mad:


What has happened here is that the eBay vendor discarded the hard drives in order to sell the unit... and discarded the mounting screws along with them.

:mad2:

At this time I am working out a combination of "aftermarket" screws along with plastic or rubber washers that should serve as a replacement.

Prolly no help in this instance, but, Fastenal.

Got one here in town, they're grrrreat!

You know it's a total embarrassment to me that this is taking so long!

Anyway, now that I have some much-needed time off, getting this done will be a priority.

Here are the screws that vex me. It's really the washers that are difficult, because they're meant to grab onto the metal edges of the hard drive brackets:

http://cellar.org/2013/screws1.jpg

Through Fastenal and research, I found out that your standard hard drive screw is a #6-32: the #6 indicating the girth of your screw, at .1380 inches. And 32 indicating 32 threads per inch.

Your standard hard drive screw is either .15" or .25" After some research, I found that Dell specifies that the screws above are "6-32X0.225 Philips Headed Screws". (They have specified the depth in decimal fractions of an inch.)

If you Google "6-32X0.225 Philips Headed Screws" you will find that the top results are all Dell-related. Because they are all included on the list of parts you get when you buy a hard drive from Dell.

The stinkin' bastards, creating a solution that's not industry standard, and then getting every ounce of profit they can from their enterprise customers. Oh I'm used to it, this is how they make money etc, but you have to pay twice the amount at Dell buying a hard drive that will be used for these servers.

So here are the Dell hard drive brackets, and you can see where the rubber washer thingie - not really a washer, it's meant to slide into the bracket and hold the drive in place:

http://cellar.org/2013/screws2.jpg

http://cellar.org/2013/screws3.jpg

And the brackets then fit neatly into the Dell servers. Which we want to be a solution that will last a decade. So we don't want to just put layers of duct tape in there.

I have four of the screws, so maybe the answer is just to buy 6-32 3/8" screws at Fastenal. They don't have to be Zinc Indented Hex Washer-head Phillips Machine Screws, but that would be nice. And then maybe I could carve out the right size of rubber to just sit around the screw and keep it in place.

If anyone has any better ideas... remember when thinking about this, vibration is our enemy. It can lower the life of the hard drive, it can weaken the SATA connector, all kinds of shit can go wrong.

vibration may be your enemy, but the hard drives are likely to be vibrating on their own. the only other moving piece is the family of fans that lives in the server, right? isolating them would help too.

I have a couple local places that have METRIC F*CKTONS of crap like this, but I can't get there today, sorry. Next time I'm in that neighborhood, I'll look around. I should probably have your phone number or something to contact you immediately, because I'd be happy to get the parts for you here. The place I have in mind is called REPC, they recycle pcs and related gear, including rack mount enterprise style stuff like this. I wonder if you called them if they could help.

Screw that. I'm calling them now.

more thinking out loud while on hold please look at images here for ideas

https://www.google.com/search?q=rubb...w=1440&bih=754

Maybe one of those putty products that hardens into rubber or silicone when baked? Like Sugru?

Dell customer support technician online now looking for that part.

do you have a part number I could send him to fetch?

Do you have a place that sells rubber/silicone hoses handy? I've made po man's grommets/rubber washers from an appropriately sized hose end a few times.

chat session finished.

I discovered that the part number for the screw is R9445. They cost two bucks each. How many do you need? The fellow sent me this picture of the screw. Attachment 43804

I said, what about the washer/grommet? He said the screws would work without them. UT, what do you think?

That is not the screw. Compare to my image above. In mine, half the screw is not threaded.

And it's really the washers that are needed.

I feel for you man. The chat people are pretty useless.

Might I add thanks for the effort!

you're welcome.

about the screw in teh picture from the tech. Do you think that screw would work with just the flat low profile head of the screw snugging up to the narrow end of the keyhole on the enclosure? giving a very nearly flush profile to the whole assembly?

I don't know, I'm not there. Yes, I can see that the screws are substantially different. but I can't tell if that difference is unimportant for holding the drive in the enclosure. That's your call.

about the screws.

you said 6-32 was the size of the screw. Ok, so any 6-32 screw will fit properly? And the third value was the length of the screw, right? so, 0.15" long or 0.25" long, but Dell specifies 0.225" long, is that correct?

Why not get the 0.25" and either washer up the head or nip off the leading threads by the amount req?

As for the grommet, didja look at the other long image link I posted? it looks like they had some rubber grommets of exactly the same shape you show in your post.

Yes, if we can find the right grommet, I can just order #6-32x3/8" Zinc Indented Hex Washer Head Phillips Machine Screws at Fastenal, and put the grommet on that.

Dell's spec may have been to use with a different hard drive rail that they offer in other configurations. These screws really are 3/8".

The word "grommet" may be the key... I didn't think of it as a grommet but that's clearly what it is.

What you have is a shoulder bolt, it's only threaded part way either to keep it from going too deep,and hitting something it shouldn't, or to keep from squeezing something too tight... or both.

The bracket shows a big hole Siamese with a little hole. logic would dictate you pop the screw/plastic thingy, into the big hole and slide the sucker over to the small hole, easy peazy. But, if you look at the bracket, each end would have to slide in the opposite direction. Crap. That tells me maybe the Siamese holes are for two different applications. Looks like the small holes are what fits your stuff.

6-32 is as common as stars in the sky, so are rubber grommets, I've got a shitload of both. Are you going to be home tomorrow?

I think what happens is, you slide the grommets in from the big hole, then slide them over into the little hole. Then you put your drive into place, and then put the 6-32 3/8" through the inner grommet hole, into the hard drive.

I will be home tomorrow morning, waking up around 9, tomorrow afternoon I may go out for errands and whatnot, and then away in the evening. Thank you.

I'll get hold of you.

Check these folks out http://www.earsc.com/hddtechniques.asp

http://www.earsc.com/pdfs/shldBlt2.pdf

Those are perfect, unfortunately they are manufacturers and don't give any retail links. :(

OKAY! Thanks to a visit from xoB and his handy coffee can of grommets and screws, both disk drives are now mounted in the server!! Thanks xoB!!! :)

Aaaaaaaand it doesn't boot. :(

Back to the documentation...

OH! It doesn't boot because the monitor doesn't find it when auto-configuring which input it thinks is "on"

Replace monitor, system boots! Starting configuration.

Always another hitch dep't. Or rather, always the *next* hitch*, because getting these things done is simply hitch after hitch.

I want to run the two drives in a RAID 1 configuration (mirroring), and the system BIOS has allowed me to create a "virtual disk" showing both drives as one single drive, in hardware.

Unfortunately the first choice of operating systems, Centos, does not recognize the hardware disk controller's wishes and wants to install to the physical disks. If we were lazy, we'd just give up and forget the RAID idea. But we're not, so the project stops for the day with more research is needed.

I expect it will be a case of getting the controller's drivers into the mix as a part of the installation process.

Why cant I get just one screw. Believe me I know what to do....

Ah. The PERC 100 RAID controller only works under Windows.

dammit gaw dammit

Very well, we must proceed with SOFTWARE RAID. Less than ideal... but screw it, we must proceed.

That's why I left as soon as the screwing was done, I don't do kinky booting stuff... unless maybe if you get me drunk first. :haha:

I have a margarita here with your goddamn name on it. Also a small letter sized package, no ricin/anthrax/cooties though. Come on over and get them both.

You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? You talkin' to me? Then who the hell else are you talking... you talking to me? :haha:

I'm aiming for Sunday for server installation day. Don't know if it'll make it. This installation has been harder than it should be!

The following will be Greek to 100% of you, but I know you wanted to read about it!

I chose CentOS for a Linux distribution because it supports long term security updates. The installation has not gone perfectly so far. Because this server doesn't come with a DVD drive, I decided to try booting it from USB flash drive, and the details for setting that up are pretty arcane.

(Here it sits on my coffee table, where I had to put it in order to get to a wired ethernet connection, since my router is in my living room and I only had a 10 foot cable. The gibberish on the screen is part of me trying to solve the Flash drive boot problem in longhand.)

http://cellar.org/2013/serverinstall1.jpg

It's been many hours trying to convince the system that it should install, because the point where it generally fails is about 15 minutes in, with a lot of keyboard and mouse input needed to get there.

I may try setting up a Windows-based PXE boot which can install software over my local intarwebs. Or I may see if the system can boot from a USB DVD drive. I dunno let's see.

Urrgh. Good luck... my experience is, if it doesn't like a USB flash drive, it won't like the USB external drive.

Well actually the external DVD is working! The server BIOS picked it up as an external DVD and treated it differently than just another drive. That's what got in the way of the flash install.

Good to know I'm part of the 100% for a change

It's installed and boots. This pretty much guarantees installation Sunday, and all I have to do in the meantime is... uh... migrate everything Cellar-related with all necessary network configurations to this server, and then it'll be ready to not only slide in place in the cage, but also become the actual Cellar server.

And then the database server work begins!

Oh. Waitaminute, I don't like this default partitioning scheme at all!

*fume* *fume*

The Cellar: Are You Being Served?

The first server is in the cage in Wilmington, and is live on the Internet, but I haven't set it up to manage cellar.org yet. That is tonight or, more likely, tomorrow as the final configuration is done.

You won't need to worry about any downtime... once it's ready, I'll just tell the Internet about it, and you'll all gradually shift to the new system.

Good job honey! Did it take long?

Yah it took about 45 minutes and that included whining because the monitor that didn't work at home also didn't work in the cage. I had to run up to the car and get the other monitor.

OK! It looks like it's be a little while longer, because the Cellar code is for the version of PHP on the current system.

This MAY mean that we have to go to an entirely different version of the forum software before moving! But don't panic just yet.

Thanks for all your hard work, Tony. You're awesome.

:thumb2: ~it is my humblest pleasure~ :thumb2:

I was speaking too soon then, and I think it *may* be working just fine and you may be reading this from the new server.

You ARE! You are reading this from the new server.

You will find that the system is a tad more responsive. A lot of how responsive the Cellar seems to be is due to the network; a little is due to how fast and/or crowded the server is at any particular time.

We are still using the old database server, and still on my plate is setting up one or both of the remaining servers (were you keeping score?) to do that duty. I want the Dell 2950 to be the database server because it can have up to 6 disks in it. The remaining Dell 210 can be a backup to the main server.

Because we are still using the old database server, the Cellar will still be a little unresponsive overnight EST when the system is being backed up.

So far things are going great! Except for at about 2am EST, you will find the site more responsive. The Chinese spammers are still trying to register accounts, and this is about half the activity on the server, and it is happily handling the activity.

WOOHOOO

Maybe it's my imagination, but it seems faster. Doing some administrative stuff, like seeing the currently active users, was painfully slow before.

Brilliant Tony! You know your shit sir.

tw knows his shit, I only know Linux.

Outstanding. Wish I knew you were down this way, we could have gotten breakfast lunch or dinner depending. Perhaps next time. Seriously from your place to Wilmo, you are within 200yds of my place.

From Rt 52 right off 95?

You drove way past me. I'll correct to you were within a few miles of my house as you drove down 95. But DE/PA Ave is still only 15 mins from me and close to where my GF works. I'm in that area often. Were you near the Lexus dealer by chance? I had a consult with someone there last week. And was back again when my parents bought a new car. Also, the Union street Ale house is right there and a great place to grab a bite.

ETA - I'm closer to the rt92 exit.

J lives down on the waterfront, I'm down there alla time now.

Seriously, we NEED to do lunch soon. Well after my monthly event on Wed. But later this week or early next week. Lets make it happen. Maybe at the Union Street Grill.

Thanks for posting that photo
 

The screw you picture is most likely the one for POWEREDGE servers.
Looks like the ones in our poweredge. Those are described by Dell on the delivery receipt as 6-32X0.225 philips head screws.

During the THAILAND FLOODS and resulting DRIVE SHORTAGE we had a member of a RAID fail and Dell could only offer 90 day warranty "refurbished" used drives for something in the neighborhood of $600.00 each. I went outside and found some RE4 drives for <$150 but needed extra screws to mount to perform the procedures of imaging to new array instead of subbing in different type to existing.

I ended up buying some HOT SWAP drive caddies from eBay for $12.00 that included those screws. Looks like I only paid $4.00 for the caddy that does not fit my server to get the $8.00 worth of screws I needed.

Twice the amount... sometimes four times the amount. Thanks for commiserating cobeal!

I have been putting off the database server:

My big client, who is paying for much of the costs of the cage where the servers live, is getting flaky. They may end their project. If they do, we will have to leave the cage and return to standard co-location.

If that happens, we will have to put everything on one server to save costs, and discard the idea of having a separate database server.

That may have to happen anyway. The tip mug has not been filled in many moons and things are going to have to change. (I assume that is my fault, for being ornery and driving people away, but whatever.)

You're a pantywaist. I can drive more people away, any day. http://cellar.org/2012/bwekk.gif

My big client has renewed their commitment to the cage. It's good news!

The DB server goes in Sunday. This will lead to a bit of down time. I expect to start at about 10pm EST.

Yay! (Not because of the downtime, but because of the cage renewal. Two servers enter, one server leaves!!)

The server move did not happen last night as I was busy with other things and had driven too much already! It will happen this upcoming week.

This (DB server switchover) happened months ago and I only just now remembered to mention it!

But it was a good thing because the OLD server, which I'd been using for backup, just failed in the same way the original Cellar server did.