0x0014 - Xserve Storage Upgrade

[@mikeyX101]

It sounds like a nuclear alarm.

[@skinwalker69420]

no an air raid

[@adam7868]

mine is a late 2006 xserve, the serial port is for communications with the ups and for a command line

[@walterb.9290]

Adam7868 i

[@dashtesla]

Also I think the IO there should be changed the PCI could take fibre channel and ethernet for iSCSI and he could setup the storage remotely rather than having local pool.

[@AdamLop314]

Yup +1 this is exactly what that is Modern serial ports are now Ethernet ports basically Gj Adam

[@aayt02]

Druaga2 confirmed.

[@kennysboat4432]

ikr

[@MrVitalic85]

He must be his brother or a relative , they talk almost the same way.

[@ScienceAlliance]

accurate

[@SKHelios5100]

Lol

[@JarrodCoombes]

The issue you are running into is a LBA support issue. That is the 48bit that they were talking about online. You would need a firmware update to be able to use >2TiB drives, which upgrades you to 64-bit LBA support. But it gets more complicated than that. Once you have the hardware that supports >2TiB via 64bit LBA you then need an OS that supports partitions greater than 2TiB via GUID partitioning, thankfully most OSes have caught up and support this, but can be an issue in older systems (Windows 7 or earlier, Ubuntu 14 or earlier etc). Most people get caught up on the OS issue, and never realize that they are dealing with a hardware issue. O, lastly, using the SATA from the optical probably won't solve your issue, it more than likely not to support anything bigger than 2TiB. You'd need a PCIe hard drive controller with it's own BIOS to get bigger drives internally. Though a external drive that is bigger than 2TiB would probably work fine, as the USB to SATA bridge it uses would handle the 64bit LBA support.

[@jangelelcangry]

+ Jarrod Coombes "Most people get caught up on the OS issue, and never realize that they are dealing with a hardware issue." That reminds me when support tells you to update your drivers so your computer can post.

[@armpitdew]

48bit LBA supports addressing up to around 128PB (binary) or around 144PB decimal. This would be a problem with 32bit LBA limitations in the controller.

[@Mikeywil0003]

that serial port is likely to be for a UPS. Tons of UPS units used serial ports up until recently. Some older switches also use a serial port to configure them.

[@TechTangents]

This is for anyone who feels compelled to find trays on ebay. Firstly, I have already bought some that showed up after I recorded the video(as I mentioned in the description...). To anyone referencing this chart www.indx.co.uk/xserve/ , I do not believe what it says about 2009 compatibility. He clearly only owns a 2008, and even the drives that came with the 2009 are list as only "Probably compatible". If you are looking for some drive trays for your own 2009, try these: www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=p2050430.m570.l1313.TR0.TRC0.H0.X607-4364.TRS5&_nkw=607-4364&_sacat=0 I was able to put a 2TB SATA drive in those.

[@HarmonicaMustang]

The redundant power supply is an optional extra. The 2 additional drive bays are an optional extra. Sounds like Apple to me.

[@SenileOtaku]

Well, my IBM X3200 has 4 front-load SATA bays, but only 2 drive rails. And I think the only reason it had two rather than one was it may have been configured for RAID 1 (I wiped the original 80G drives 7 or 8 years ago). And as an HMC you would have thought it would have included the RSA II, but didn't have that either.

[@nickwallette6201]

Servers are typically ala-carte. There are some Apple-isms in this product for sure, but the optional redundancy is not really one of them. What if you use a SAN? Or need DC supplies?

[@bdhale34]

@@nickwallette6201 The main applism being no support for hard drives even as large as the ones low end budget consumer PCs from 2006 can use.

[@stevearkwright]

Benjamin Hale: Technically, that’s not specifically an ‘Appleism’ as the firmware isn’t theirs - it’s actually an Intel Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI), so it’s Intel’s fault for failing to tweak and publish further updates to the firmware to allow larger hard drive capacities than 2TB (for 6TB total). What *is* an Appleism is that Apple were guilty of the same laziness producing more firmware updates for the Xserve RAID arrays: maximum IDE drive capacity was originally 500GB, then 750GB with a firmware update - yet they never did any more after that, which is really annoying. I know the firmware is proprietary (for both Xserve + Xserve RAID), but you would have thought that some bright programmers somewhere would’ve taken a previous firmware update apart then programmed and tested a new one that would give these fantastic machines the ability to use hard drives of any size. After all, OS X’s Disk Utility doesn’t seem to care about hard drive size, so why would the firmware?

[@423FGFDFHFHV]

The drive trays from G5 will work with 2000 and 9 Xserve.

[@zizzu549]

Will it fly at some point?

[@Hacker22ify]

did you format that 5TB drive as GPT or MBR since MBR cant format larger than 2TB

[@superslammer]

He said in the video once, that it was showing a GpT partition.

[@stevearkwright]

Well, I think that’s where you’ve hit it - IIRC, the Xserve (even this final generation model), only accepted up to 2TB capacity.

[@MarkParkTech]

Serial ports are extremely common in the datacenter. Especially when it comes to networking gear. It would actually be strange if it didn't have a serial port.

[@SudosFTW]

So what about about a 2x m.2 to PCIe card? that might be a bit better off down the line.

[@nathanhamman418]

While more expensive, you can actually get a 4x m.2 card i think its made by asus and its a 16x so it has plenty of bandwidth

[@FennecTECH]

you have no idea how useful a serial console is in a server setting. we pass a TTY out to all those ports and use a netbook to run a terminal emulator.

[@jaguarke069]

Gotta love that fan noise!

[@arranmc182]

have you not tried partitioning the lager driver on anther system then popping it back in the server to see if it can see multiple partitions as you could just make 2 x 2GB & 1 x 1GB partitions.

[@johnDingoFoxVelocity]

There is a limited size you can use with certain xserves the drive sizes are as follows. 1. 1x 80 gig hard drive 2. 2x 80 gig hard drive 3. 1x 120 gig hard drive You are limited by the firmware of the mac efi.

[@johnDingoFoxVelocity]

And the sizes increase to a max of 2tb

[@stevearkwright]

@John Dingo-Fox: Yeah, I think you’re talking about the earlier generation Xserve G5 there. The 2009 model here takes up to 2TB drives (but that’s the limit).

[@johnDingoFoxVelocity]

@@stevearkwright yep

[@Deadhog_Rage]

if this is druaga2 and druaga1 is... a channel then who's druaga... ...0?

[@beenisweenis3186]

WHO IS IT TELL ME REE

[@hammersamatom8055]

48-bit limit would limit the storage to 256 TB. Same with modern memory in processors. The 2 TB limit actually seems to be a BIOS limitation of ye olden days of BIOS and early UEFI implementations.

[@armpitdew]

you are forgetting to mutliply by the sector size of 512 Bytes.... 48-bit limit is 128PB

[@hammersamatom8055]

@@armpitdew Yea, you're right. Forgot about sector size. I was thinking RAM when I did the math. Thanks for the correction!

[@digital0ak]

The serial port is a common interface on racked equipment. They tend to be my preferred way to connect.

[@IsoMacintosh]

It also surprisingly appears on modern motherboards, my Z370 am4 mobo has serial but it's a header instead of an actual port.

[@binaryguru]

Serial port would be used for Out-of-Band access. For example, have a dial-up modem attached so be able to access and diagnose problems even when the network equipment has failed.

[@helloimash]

I'm watching this in 2021 (look, I dunno... okay?) and cracking up laughing every time you do the "chhrr" radio noise yourself. Love it.

[@hmmmyes6934]

is this druaga1's xserve?

[@RGD-Audio-Repairs]

dang dude, No redundancy? id never risk putting my previous data on a single drive with no Mirroring...

[@vladnex1052]

Call Linus Just make sure he doesn't drop it

[@lucasberredooo]

VladNex LOL

[@deunicorn]

Haha

[@solarstrike33]

LTX foreshadowing...

[@sparkie5571]

I'm finding it extremely trivial to install Linux on my 2008 (A1249) Xserve but you seem so boot to it no problem. Could you guide me on how to do so?

[@stevearkwright]

If something is extremely trivial, that means there’s nothing to it. Check your install media: I’ve a horrible feeling that, even though the Xserve 2008 is 64-bit, the boot EFI is 32-bit. Really, though, try Linux Mint (latest version), 64-bit, Cinnamon, taking specific care that your DVD/USB isn’t corrupted or formatted incorrectly. Good luck!

[@MarkParkTech]

I know it's been nearly a year, but 4TB 2.5" SSD's from Samsung are just now becoming relatively affordable. They should be pretty close in price to what that 2TB drive would have cost in 2017. They've got bigger ones coming soon. I would recommend holding out for about 3-6 more months unless you're nearing capacity already.

[@MikheilGhvinianidze]

I am surprised that you owned the server, knew how to use Linux, and at the same time you did not know about Western Digital's Black drives. How the hell! WD is the only brand that I trust when it comes to mechanical storage. WD's Black line is not really recommended for 24/7. For 24/7 Operation WD RED(NAS) is recommended, or the Purple(Surveillance), or the Gold(what ever the Enterprise means). I personally would not run WD Black without fan blowing on it.

[@talos86]

I use an 1Tb WD black in 24/7 beside my m.2 Evo 960. Its a 10 years old, sata2 modell. During its ten year of service, i never experienced any issue. In 10 year i blew up 4 Samsung HDDs and 2 Seagate. Not a single WD. I have 2 Green and a Blue too.

[@runninggames771]

Yeah that's not going to make any difference unless your running this in a real data center. A wd black will work fine for 24/7 in his home use. The fans in that server blow plea ty of air over the HDD.

[@dorinxtg]

Same problem is happening on old IBM/HP servers. It's the RAID controller which cannot accept any disk bigger than 2TB. You might want to remove your USB 3.0 card and insert a good LSI card, make sure to have a long Mini SAS cable to connect from the card to the backplane.

[@stevearkwright]

THAT is an excellent suggestion and sounds perfectly logical. Have you (or anyone else) ever heard of this being attempted? Would *love* to know!

[@HeffeJeffe78]

Almost all 1U servers from every manufacturer have serial ports for remote (headless) access to non-GUI setup, recovery, etc. Apple uses the serial port in a similar manner, giving you a BSD tty on the port for system management without a GUI. It's not for any other purpose.

[@AmanOU2be]

"I don't live the Mac Life." (Buys a used enterprise grade server)

[@stevearkwright]

Yeah, I felt a tad ashamed for him when he said that: it’s a dreadful thing to confess. Even worse when you’re about to lay hands on the 2009 ultimate generation Xserve with top-of-the-range dual processors (the fastest Apple provided for this machine). If you’re not a Mac person, don’t say so. Pretend instead. Jeezus.

[@BIGTONE-lc4vd]

what adapter are you using for ssd in your drive sled?

[@electrohacker]

2.2 Tb limit just like the old LSI controllers

[@rodriguesl1947]

12:00 AND THIS, IS TO GO EVEN FURTHER BEYOND [XSERVE NOISE]

[@KOSMOS1701A]

I can feel the fan sound in my brain!

[@stevearkwright]

That’ll freshen things up!

[@IcicleFurry]

your server is louder than our recovery power mamager.

[@nathanhamman418]

The WD black is only really surpassed in performance by the gold drives, though red and purple have higher durability

[@bluef1sh926]

12:03 iSiren - an air ride siren solution for your company, from Apple

[@CommodoreFan64]

Damn that thing is loud, If I had this in my house my g/f would have a shit fit because of all the noise, so my home network just has a USB 3.0 3.5in 2TB WD Green drive setup attached to my D-Link N Wireless router lol! Edit: to note I've personally have never had any issues with WD Green drives, but I guess I've just been lucky.

[@BIGTONE-lc4vd]

What I have researched is most of the time only a 2tb will work in the xserve however there is some type of hack that will allow 3tb per bay. still doing research on that

[@jarhead5354]

It is not the formatting of the drive. You will find the larger drive will work, you need to change the jumper on the drive to adjust from SATA3 to SATA2 reporting. Toshiba's site should have the jumper config for this adjustment.

[@TheDecguy]

To complete the insanity maybe get an old XRaid to go with the server. Lots of room for additional drives. Just kidding but I do love the old XServe.

[@AO554]

May I ask how you did that MOTD on your startup? I like that

[@tyttuut]

I have a very similar external drive, and when I pulled out the drive, it was also a black drive. Neat!

[@AronBezzina]

I realise this was a few years ago, however, if you still use the server my I suggest trying a server raid controller and or a NAS setup in iSCSI mode

[@teh_supar_hackr]

What do you use your server for, and how long have you had it?

[@MaximNightFury]

Firewire isn't just an apple thing... My HP laptop has a mini Firewire 800 port

[@chief8886]

so, this may be a dumb question, but why is does the xserve only read a maximum of 2tb drives?

[@eduardoavila646]

Donek yt Its related to its chipset i think, it cand adress more than that. Just like some pentium 3 computers that cant get more than 1gb of ram or more than 40gb hdd

[@CoolFire666]

It's fairly common for older SATA controllers to not support drives over 2T.

[@griffin8062]

Because the server uses MBR by default which has a maximum of 2TB

[@superslammer]

stop saying its a GPT limit. Its not. Unlike MBR that limits each partition to only 2TB in size, each partition in GPT can hold up to 2^64 blocks in length (as it is using 64-bit), which is equivalent to 9.44ZB for a 512-byte block (1 ZB is 1 billion terabytes). (From wikipedia)

[@stevearkwright]

It’s an EFI Firmware limit. Done at a time when drives larger than 2TB didn’t exist.

[@David-wh8zs]

What's about that wacom related script? Btw: you don't have to have root privileges to reboot from the local console, only from SSH.

[@FastDeathbycat]

What are you running to get the login message with the drive map? It's cool stuff.

[@TechTangents]

It's my own custom login message. I like to have something more informative in there.

[@PiddeBas]

You can just add any command or text you want to the end of your .bashrc file, and it'll show up when you login

[@walterb.9290]

Can you tell me what USB 3.0 PCIe card you have in there that actually works ? I found a few but the all have a power connector on it. They don't seem to work. Thanks !

[@TechTangents]

This is the one I used: amzn.to/2nEfDip Keep in mind I'm using linux not Windows or Mac, so the driver situation is different.

[@walterb.9290]

Thanks !!!

[@MrVitalic85]

Is akbkuku druaga brother? They both have similar voice.

[@C4FF31N3]

My desktop computer is built off a dell workstation from 2014, and not only does it still have serial, it has ps2, and a floppy controller

[@eabernardes]

I have a Dual Xserve 2009. What is the biggest processor I can put? Xeon X5570?

[@griffin8062]

X5690

[@stevearkwright]

Someone may have even put in a better/later pair of 6-core Xeon’s than the X5690 by 2021!

[@eabernardes]

@@stevearkwright Obrigado

[@McCuneWindandSolar]

I have a xserve but i'm not much of an apple fan. I got mine gave to me. would like to find a mother board that I can use the processors in. and replace the motherboard with a mother board to use windows based OS on.

[@stevearkwright]

Ah. Replacing the Xserve logic board with another intended for Windows (or any other OS), has never been done successfully. However, why go to all that trouble? Xserve will happily boot into Windows, Windows Server, Linux or any UNIX system.

[@thysonsacclaim]

Serial ports are still common on servers.

[@VSigma725]

Hey, I finally found something louder than my Power Mac G5!

[@LastGunslingerTull]

I know this is late, but you can cheat a little with the drive bays. Take out the drives, and very carefully cut a slot through the back plate large enough for a SATA or SAS connectors, and get either a PCIE SAS HBA for it, or a SATA PCIE with 3 or 5 slots. Take a 3.5in sata or sas or 2 2.5in SATA or SAS drives and hot glue 4 rubber stoppers on the bottom of each drive, then mount the drive inside the slot and push the cables through the hole you cut. Get WD Gold or Ultrastar drives, they'll last the rest of your life.

[@ThePressurizer]

Wait a minute, is that a wacom tablet to your right? Are you an artist as well as a tech-wiz? I daren't believe it!

[@TrialMacameau]

If it's on a server, it's not really needed to put a Jumper to tell the drive it's a Master or a Slave drive... System will detect basically any drive if there's no Jumper in there.

[@ferrari2k]

I am a bit confused as to why you would set up a S-ATA drive like that in the first place... They are 1 to 1 connections, there is no master/slave like back in IDE days,...

[@TrialMacameau]

@@ferrari2k Modern systems I meant... old systems I can understand it but modern systems don't need a jumper because they are all connected via a SATA port on the motherboard.

[@LadislavAlexa]

For drives larger than 2TB you need update SATA/SAS controller firmware. :-)

[@DaveMelton]

Loved the additional commentary. It was awesome!

[@svinye5545]

A friend gave me an old ibm server . the only problem with it is that some capacitors have popped and the two power supplies are dead.(plus scsi harddrives might be dead)

[@stevearkwright]

That’s friends for you. Replace the capacitors, pick up power supplies off eBay, good to go. Suggest installing latest version of Linux Mint to see what’s going on with it. Good luck!

[@adrianmardianto7681]

Server playing C Major Scale with their fans

[@ducks4039]

Xserve does allow hot-swappable drives ;)

[@stevearkwright]

Yes, I noticed that. Hot-swapping Xserve drives in OS X Server is standard practice. Perhaps he didn’t know how to do that in Ubuntu?

[@davidknoll]

That thing is gonna take off

[@TrialMacameau]

Been a while I have watched this video and I noticed something concerning server hardware : Some Drives don't need a jumper for Master/Slave hence why you wouldn't be able to use the full 5tb of drive and resorted to use the 2tb WD Drive

[@stevearkwright]

That’s not the reason. It’s down to the 2009 Xserve firmware. Drives larger than 2TB didn’t exist when it was introduced.

[@Gartral]

hey akbkuku, I stumbled onto your channel from The 8-Bit Guy's channel, random vid recommendation from KZbin! Anyway, the MBR (Master Boot Record) limit is 2TiB, so that's something to watch for, the GPT (GUID (Globally Unique IDentifier) Partition Table) limit is.... lots more... I can't remember off the top of my head... so you're running into issues with the kernel in Ubuntu Server not liking your GPT drives because... well.. I'm not sure really. I'd have to get with you and have you run a few commands to identify the underlying issue, but my suspicion is that the kernel isn't configured correctly to handle large-format HDDs because it was installed on a non-GPT formatted drive... this can be corrected for but is a mild pain! reply here if you decide you want to message me and I'll help out!

[@nickwallette6201]

The 2TB limit is from 32-bit LBA. The ATA spec defines it as 48-bit, but nobody uses 48-bit integers so a lot of software / drivers / controllers truncated the address down to 32-bit rather than extending it to 64-bit. 2^32 * 512 (byte sectors) = 2TB I have a USB 2.0 IDE/SATA interface that can't read >2TB drives even though my Linux kernel can. A later USB 3.0 model of the same product can read then fine. So it could be the SATA controller on the Xserve, or the controller's driver, or the kernel. But if it's a recent release (last 5 years or so), I would blame the hardware first. Especially if it mounts large USB disks without issue.

[@moth.monster]

Wow! That's a lot like the old server hardware I'm currently using as a main tower pc rig because it was cheap on ebay is, spec wise. Cool!

[@nucflashevent]

It's too bad the Xserves never found their niche. I think Apple made a mistake by never focusing more on "Mac OS X Server" as a separate OS. I honestly couldn't see them ever being ever to displace Linux for a myriad of reasons (and good reasons I should add) BUT they could have given "Windows Server" a run for its money...but seeing as how Windows Server really is a niche in itself, I'm better Apple really just couldn't be bothered to try and move from 3rd place to 2nd place knowing they'd never be in the 1st ("1st" being Linux, etc.)

[@XeonProductions]

reminds me of my storage server, it's as loud as like 5 hoover vacs running at once.

[@stevearkwright]

Most are like that. In a big server room, it doesn’t matter - you send people in with special noise-cancelling headphone sets with built-in microphones.

[@giantm2323]

the sound at boot at 13:00 reminds me of the monolith scenes from 2001

[@DyoKasparov]

Oh man I love that old Seagate logo

[@wskinnyodden]

2tb hard limit on efi bios...

[@nosch43]

most servers do the fan speed test at boot, my dell server does the same thing

[@nosch43]

actually I typed that too soon.

[@stevearkwright]

No, you’re quite right. They do. It’s part of the runtime diagnostics.

[@MirkWoot]

haha.... i was thinking.. that isn't too loud.... ok.. YEP, it is.

[@clayhudson8892]

why don't you use nvme pcie ssd's?

[@WaimateTV]

Sounds like the inside of a plane taking at the start

[@danieldegeorges9993]

Was that druagas from the video where u Skype in lol

[@christopherhurley2570]

Why wouldn't you just get any old PCI-E Sata/SAS controller card? I'm sure they're cheaper and of course offer more than one single sata channel. lol. **edit** This is before i saw that POS failing to recognize drives larger than 2TB, which wouldn't be a limitation on any standard sata/sas controller card. Here's hoping you stop making terrible decisions, ROFL i just heard you say powerline ethernet.. sorry

[@benmmaddog]

how do you have your server mounted ?

[@TechTangents]

It just sits on a shelf

[@Redspl]

idk if someone suggested this, but you can get an mSATA->SATA adapter and route it to the second bay! :3

[@MACMASTER01]

Yep raid controller can only allocate 2TB of a drive. I had a 4 TB and it could only format to 2TB. I love Apple but raid limits suck no matter what you use.

[@anton41]

Reminds me of my Mac Pro 2010 windows upgrades. I have that same pcie card.

[@joen1835]

Use parted, fdisk has a 2tb limit.

[@ferrari2k]

Doesn't matter if the drive cannot be recognized by the hardware. This sounds like a hardware problem to me. 2.2TB limit :)

[@HuntersMoon78]

My Dell Precision 490 Workstation can get a bit noisy but not that damn loud.

[@yokailover]

Looked over at my Dell R520 as it yelled "What's all the damn noise from???"

[@LoganDark4357]

Is that a custom welcome message? Can I have it? :P

[@dskehn]

Sounds like a fighter jet!

[@hanro50]

You could try adding a file server to this

[@CA.papaBear]

13:16 I am predicting that the USB 3.0 Card "bothered" the computer because of a power grounding (or power delivery) issue due to the second card being present. (I will modify this comment after done watching the result/outcome of said event.) EDIT: Nope, turns out that the computer did not like the drive... darn it.

[@MrLordschaft]

The cooling Sounds like the AMD Stock CPU cooler... Idea for another Video: Decreasing noise from the xserve.

[@TechTangents]

Aside from liquid cooling with externally mounted radiators, that just isn't possible. The amount of air(CFM) moving through the server needs to be extremely high because there isn't a lot of volume in it. So there will always be a lot of wind noise. I could try putting sound dampening baffles on the intake and exhaust, but it's effect would be limited. Plus that would only mitigate the problem, not solve it.

[@destrierofdark_]

Do you still believe in that meme?

[@LifeOnHoth]

enterprise servers are meant to be sitting in a rack, inside a server room - not on the desktop. There's simply no way you can reduce noise in these, and why would you? If you buy servers of this format, you know what you are getting. :).

[@faustodeleon2937]

can i put a gpu and play?

[@nilswegner2881]

fausto De leon sure, but why would one want to do that? This computer is not meant to be used as a gaming machine but as a powerful server that can run things way beyond gaming. So why waste all this power and play games on it. For gaming you can buy a gaming machine. The Xserve is also way to overpriced to do this

[@seamusmac777]

I'm slightly disappointed! I was hoping this might have been a G5 Xserve! Still a cool video though!

[@dum_cat]

How about about 14TB segate drive

[@kcinplatinumgaming2598]

I used to work inside server rooms but never heard them being that loud lol sort of ear popping

[@stevearkwright]

If you’ve ever run Sun Microsystems hardware, the Xserves were almost equal in terms of decibels. Not a problem in a server room/datacenter though - that’s what you expect.

[@SanAltGaming]

Aaand of course the storage controller in these is apple proprietary so it's not like you can upgrade it. You could try getting a used SAN storage device if you are really serious about your storage. Oh, and if you want your server to boot normally while the external drive is missing you could remove it from fstab and use a cron job that runs at every reboot to mount it. Not best practise, but your whole server is not best practise so that shouldn't be a problem. ;-)

[@geekjoe1044]

I honestly always wanted an Xserve for aesthetics. But Jesus I could never deal with how noisy that thing is. I'll stick to my PowerEdges.

[@kryptoniurn]

12:44 i think this is a jet engine :/

[@ryanwakebradtelle8682]

The reason it looks super cheap is cuz even though you have a 1-terabyte Samsung SSD your likely to have empty space in the drive.

[@Butterchicken-v9r]

You seem to know a lot about these would be good to be in contact. I can’t get mine to detect more memory and I know it’s working

[@stevearkwright]

Re-seat your memory chips and make sure they’re the correct kind for your server.