Move Over Mini-ITX, Here Comes The gigaQube 209
Jim Ethanol writes "Since there's been a lot of interest lately in Mini ITX based servers I thought the Slashdot crowd might enjoy checking out Project gigaQube. The gigaQube is a modified Cobalt Qube 2 server appliance with 240 Gigabytes of storage running NetBSD's Mips R5000 based Cobalt port. Cobalt Qube's are quiet, cool looking little (7.25 x 7.25 x 7.75 inch) servers that when modified, make a powerful home server solution. They also seem to have achieved 'fetish' status in Japan. See some gigaQube action shots here, or check its vitals here."
old news (Score:2, Informative)
I'd rather have a Mini-ITX -- and I do! (Score:4, Informative)
The gigaQube is smaller, but my Mini-ITX file server is small enough for me. It's also extremely quiet.
Details:
It's a VIA EPIA-M motherboard, with a 1 GHz "Nehemiah" core. It has two IDE controllers onboard, and I used an IDE controller PCI card to get another available controller for the third drive. The case is a common Mini-ITX case, almost a cube shape, which I got at the Fry's Electronics in my area. One drive is mounted in the (only) hard drive holder in the case; one drive is mounted in the 3.5" external bay; and one drive is mounted in an adapter bracket which is mounted in one of the two 5.25" bays. I actually have one 5.25" bay free, but I don't need it for anything. I use the 100 Mbit Ethernet jack on the motherboard for hooking the server up to my net, and I have Debian GNU/Linux (stable branch) installed. It's a sweet little server.
steveha
Err no. (Score:5, Informative)
If you really must have a cube form-factor, there are cuboid cases around the same size at www.mini-itx.com
Simon
Nano-ITX (Score:5, Informative)
The 866BASE [compulab.co.il] gets a P3, 2 ethernet ports, and the usual interfaces on a 91mm x 96mm board.
Plenty of opportunities for packing a nice computer into a small case.
Re:Quiet PCs (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.lex.com.tw/index1.htm They make nice powersupplies. No fan, just 12v -> atx adapters. They require a 12 volt AC/DC adapter. No Fans, no noise.
The mini-itx boards can be passively cooled. The 533 mhz version is. Some special cases use heatpipes. Then the only noise is the harddisk (if you need one, booting via the ethernet adapter is also an option!)
Re:Missing IO/Features (Score:3, Informative)
This cool little Qube has been out for Years. It predates USB1&2, 802.11x, Bluetooth, Divx;-), and decent audio better than the sound-blaster standard. But the Qube series was never meant to do any of these. It was meant for a SOHO web, mail and document server.
Unfortunately after Sun bought Cobalt they gave up on MIPS.
A Great toy for those of us with processor 'fetishes'
Oh yes... The Qube does have of what you mentioned!
Toy value only (Score:3, Informative)
I can't get it to recognize any drive other than the one that it came with.
It has no IO other than the network and the drive controller.
Even if I could get the thing to boot, it apparently won't work with any kernel besides the 2.0.36 custom kernel that it came with.
There is a restore CD that you could get at one time, but you have to get the thing to boot via TFTP before you can even think about using the restore CD. Or else you have to format the drive a certain way with a certain version of ext2fs, and then un-rpm the restore stuff, which does not
appear to be complete. I'm not even sure you can still get the restore cd ISO's anywhere. The Qube archive has always looked like a patched-together, incomplete effort.
What's the "Special Sauce" RPM anyway?
You can hardly us any PCI devices at all. Most PCI ethernet cards won't even work. PCI video isn't possible either. Even if the bus could support it, there are power issues.
The MIPS chip on a Qube2 doesn't outperform a P-75. You are severely limited in your choice of RAM chips.
There is supposedly a BSD port for the box, but nobody on the cobalt list has ever reported much success with it. It's certainly not something you can do with a cookbook example.
So the Qube is enough of a pain, that I just keep it on a shelf. I'd maybe consider fitting an ITX board into it, but I don't want to mess up the toy value by cutting up the case.
Re:Mini-ITX IDE and PCI (Score:3, Informative)
0) IDE peformance sucks when two drives both want to use the same controller.
1) According to a Linux software RAID web page I read (but I'm not sure where; lost the URL so I can't tell you) when an IDE drive fails, it can confuse and hang the controller it's connected to. If you only have one drive per controller you don't care, but if you have two drives on one controller, one drive can fail and it can "take out" the other drive (at least untily you reboot to un-hang the controller). Since RAID can survive the loss of one drive, but not two, you really want just one IDE drive per controller.
Note that if you want to do SCSI RAID, you can just hang all the SCSI drives on one controller. But with IDE it's one controller, one drive.
I understand your data is striped across 3 drives, and you can afford to lose one - what RAID "version" is that?
RAID 5. If you connect N drives in RAID 5, you get N - 1 drives that can store data and 1 drive that's "wasted" to the redundancy. So my RAID 5 with three 120 GB drives has 240 GB of usable space, the same amount as the gigaQube.
You could always just use RAID 1, with two drives in a "mirror" (both drives kept in perfect sync). Then the single PCI slot will still be available.
You could even do something wacky like building a Linux software RAID that includes an external drive plugged in to one of the high-speed USB connectors, or one of the 1394 (FireWire) connectors. As long as Linux can recognize the device, you should be able to RAID it.
I seriously considered putting a stack of external boxes next to my server: Linux software RAID with hot-swap ability! But you pay a lot more for a 120 GB drive in an external enclosure than you pay for just a 120 GB drive, and each external enclosure will have a cooling fan and I didn't want the noise.
Good luck with your projects.
steveha