Building budget/simple use home server, opinions?

[Roliath]

I need a good storage solution for my house to share out movies and music, to 2 laptops and 2 pc's. I'm looking to keep this running 24/7, so low power consumption would be ideal.

So far I spec'd this out from newegg:
COOLER MASTER Elite RC-330-KKR1 Black SECC ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 350W Power Supply - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119118)

ASUS M3A76-CM AM2+/AM2 AMD 760G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131376)

AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core Processor Model ADH4850DOBOX - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103255)

G.SKILL 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model F2-6400CL5D-2GBNQ - Retail (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231098)

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST380815AS 80GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - OEM (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148231)

Total before shipping $230.95

I've used the case/psu combo in the past (build for my brother's den) so i'm am partial to it. The board, cpu combo would be new to me I haven't ran an amd system since my opteron 175.But I hear good things about the board and cpu for simple server needs. I don't need 4gb of ram, nor a big OS drive. System will run headless and optical drive is not needed (will be installing via external usb dvd drive).

System will run 4 1tb drives and hardware raid 5 on a perc5/i. The operating system is what has me confused, i hear great things about WHS and being able to basically add drives for storage easily without having to expand an array. This would save me some cash as I wouldn't have to buy another Perc + BBU. Or I can simply go the Server 2003 route and set up a simple network share.

My main goals for this box will be ftp, torrents, and sharing my data out to the family.

What would you do in my shoes, anything you would change / add hardware wise. Would WHS be beneficial in my setup? I have no experience with it nor do I have a copy so I would have to add that to the build price. Server 03, I already own.

Thanks in advanced for any advice.

[Archer75]

I use WHS and I like it. I have 11 drives in my server, all data duplicated. Drives vary in size from 250gb all the way up to 1tb.

[nitrobass24]

$100 would be better spent towards WHS than a perc5 IMO.

WHS will allow you to expand as needed and is really fast, and safe compared to R5.
It will also let you use TS gateway, and backups for your home comps.

[Adidas4275]

well WHS doesnt mirror the information at the time of upload... so if your drive crashes prior it duplicating your file the information is gone.


I am running WHS with my RocketRaid 2220 running raid 5.


I like WHS and i like RAID.... i will be running RAID 6 next.... with WHS

[Syndacate]

EDIT: Wow, I did not read the entire post thoroughly, though I still maintain the following:

May I suggest something like this, where you're not getting completely boned in price, such as this 320GB drive for only 10 dollars more:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148316

My desktop (soon to be server) is 6 years old, and it's rocking a 200GB/120GB, 80 was outdated even back then...

[Roliath]

EDIT: Wow, I did not read the entire post thoroughly, though I still maintain the following:

May I suggest something like this, where you're not getting completely boned in price, such as this 320GB drive for only 10 dollars more:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148316

My desktop (soon to be server) is 6 years old, and it's rocking a 200GB/120GB, 80 was outdated even back then...
wow, I can't believe how i overlooked that.
thank you for the recommendation!

[Bookmage]

WHS sounds good like a good fit here. Specially for a windows shop... since the mobo has 6x sata slots, you could even skip the perc5 and run the drives w/o RAID since WHS doesn't need it. The mobo/cpu combo is fine for this and fairly power efficient. You could even add more hard drives as needed and WHS would make use of it without any expanding/growing raid array issues.

The automated backups is one of the biggest benefits of WHS. Saves me the hassle of hunting down cds/isos and reinstalling everything and then customizing the whole thing to fit my needs. Also allows me to autobackup the family's computer without them knowing it. So next time, their system dies/crashes, I can restore w/o a hassle.
I've also started letting them store files on the shared drives.

I do wish the drives were more space efficient, but ill settle for having my data scattered across all the drives if the system dies.
FWIW, my WHS is an athlon64 s754 w/2GB DDR and 20 drives on supermicro 8port sata controllers. cheap and works since bandwidth isn't an issue for afterhour backups on a 100mb network. I'll need a new mobo for the GB/IPv6 network upgrade in the future though...

I would toss the PERC5 into low wattage itx system and run 2k3/openfiler/linux on it as a file server or web server or something else that needs the [H]ardware raid... but that's me...

[Trepidati0n]

well WHS doesnt mirror the information at the time of upload... so if your drive crashes prior it duplicating your file the information is gone.

That is like saying...well, someday I might have a brain aneurysm...so I might as well work in a hospital. :rolleyes: Please come up with some reasonable evidence of this failure mode occuring. Really....please. To justify a RAID controller for that failure mode just doesn't make sense.

[Thrus]

Yes it would need to be justified in order to be an argument, but the person building the system has the right to be aware of a hole in the sugested setup compared to what they were thinking of. Not saying that it is a concern but it is hard to have to much knolwedge of the flaws in the system that you are looking at.

[DougLite]

well WHS doesnt mirror the information at the time of upload... so if your drive crashes prior it duplicating your file the information is gone.


I am running WHS with my RocketRaid 2220 running raid 5.


I like WHS and i like RAID.... i will be running RAID 6 next.... with WHSIf a drive dies during a rebuild, you're hosed there. Personally, I'd take my chances with WHS's storage pool with duplication before relying on a single RAID array. RAID, regardless of level, does not protect data. RAID is a limited tool designed to reduce the impact of physical disk failure, and is best viewed as an uptime tool.

[Roliath]

Good info, i'm ordering parts next friday. I wasn't able to use my Perc in my i7 box so I can use that in this system for no extra cost.

[mikeblas]

What do you figure your overall power draw will be, Roliath ?

[Roliath]

What do you figure your overall power draw will be, Roliath ?
I have a friend with the exact same combo minus motherboard, 740g instead of 760g and he has a dedicated 3450/3550 (one or the other) and with 5 drives his system only pulls 197watts at full load.

Drives are WD 750's, not sure if he has them in a raid though.

I don't expect it to be too high, however I shall know in about two weeks. I don't know what OS drive i'll be using yet though, nor what OS. I'm hearing the good things about WHS, but I 2003 is stable and reliable for me.
I do like the ease of backup potential though. But in all reality my backup method works well now.

[Roliath]

Can WHS, lets say I run 5 1tb drives, and 1 os drive (size doesn't matter in this situation).

Could I have data pooled onto 2 drives, and duplicated onto 2 other drives, and leave the last 1tb drive as a hotspare or such?

[mikeblas]

Rats. I was hoping to build something like that for less than 150 watts, particularly with the 45 watt CPU. I guess I might not use such a fancy video card, but ... Thanks for the data point!

[skitlets]

Can WHS, lets say I run 5 1tb drives, and 1 os drive (size doesn't matter in this situation).

Could I have data pooled onto 2 drives, and duplicated onto 2 other drives, and leave the last 1tb drive as a hotspare or such?

I'd like to know about this as well. Does WHS put all drives into a single pool?

I was thinking of building a server with WHS to backup my computers as well as store media. Can WHS duplicate data stored on itself? That way I can unload all the movies I have from my desktop to the server, while also maintaining a backup of those movies.

[Adidas4275]

I use WHS and I like it. I have 11 drives in my server, all data duplicated. Drives vary in size from 250gb all the way up to 1tb.

If a drive dies during a rebuild, you're hosed there. Personally, I'd take my chances with WHS's storage pool with duplication before relying on a single RAID array. RAID, regardless of level, does not protect data. RAID is a limited tool designed to reduce the impact of physical disk failure, and is best viewed as an uptime tool.


When I rebuild arrays I have the opportunity to backup y data prior to rebuild. With WHS you do not know when it decides to mirror the data.

I like WHS, but I dont like it's parity ability.... I love it's remote access DNS, image backup and addin ability.

I like RAID 5/6 for parity with a removable backup device.

[Asposium]

I'd like to know about this as well. Does WHS put all drives into a single pool?

I was thinking of building a server with WHS to backup my computers as well as store media. Can WHS duplicate data stored on itself? That way I can unload all the movies I have from my desktop to the server, while also maintaining a backup of those movies.

Does WHS put all drives into a single pool? Yes

from my desktop computers I map to a share. I see the entire server data pool as one drive. vista has issues with the remaining free space. win7 seems okay.

Can WHS duplicate data stored on itself? if the server has > 2 hard drives, and folder duplication is enabled, then as data is copied to the server it will be placed onto two physical drives.

[prostuff1]

Take a look at unRAID (http://www.lime-technology.com/joomla/). It gives you the parity protection of a RAID 5 but without some of the pitfalls.

You can expand the array very easily with any size drive (assuming it is smaller then the parity drive)
Each drive has its own Rieser FS on it so if more then one drive in the array is lost you only lose the data on those two drives and not the rest. If you lose 2 drives in a RAID5 your pretty much screwed.

Some of the automated features of WHS seem great but I can't stand the way it protects the data, If you want to protect the whole thing you essentially have to have double the storage and are doing a RAID1.

Also check out the unRAID forum (http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php) and unRAID wiki (http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php/UnRAID_Wiki).

[aldamon]

Rats. I was hoping to build something like that for less than 150 watts, particularly with the 45 watt CPU. I guess I might not use such a fancy video card, but ... Thanks for the data point!

My WHS rig pulls 75W - 85W idle. Not sure what it is under full load because it's rarely under full load. I can barely hear the thing running.

The fanless 7300LE is a real gem. Only pulls 10W according to this chart:

http://mark.zoomcities.com/images/gfx/GFXpowerchartby3d.png

Corsair CMPSU-520HX 520W
MSI P35 Neo Combo F
Q6600 @ 2.4 GHz (1.6 GHz idle with EIST)
GeForce 7300LE (Fanless model and underclocked with RivaTuner)
1TB Hitachi SATA
250GB WD Caviar SATA
160GB WD IDE
DVD-RW
2GB DDR2
120mm fan on cooler
120mm fan exhaust
80mm fan intake on HDDs

[[LYL]Homer]

Rats. I was hoping to build something like that for less than 150 watts, particularly with the 45 watt CPU. I guess I might not use such a fancy video card, but ... Thanks for the data point!

Completely do-able.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1034288010#post1034288010

[skitlets]

Does WHS put all drives into a single pool? Yes

from my desktop computers I map to a share. I see the entire server data pool as one drive. vista has issues with the remaining free space. win7 seems okay.

Can WHS duplicate data stored on itself? if the server has > 2 hard drives, and folder duplication is enabled, then as data is copied to the server it will be placed onto two physical drives.

Ah thank you! Exactly what I was looking for. I am also assuming I can specify which files I can enable folder duplication for?

[MrMitch]

Ah thank you! Exactly what I was looking for. I am also assuming I can specify which files I can enable folder duplication for?

you can specify the folder, all files in the folder get duplicated. So you can chose by folder, but not by individual file.

Another nice thing I want to point out, unlike raid, where if the controller dies you need to find another identical controller and hope to get data, your drives will be standard NTFS drives, so if the system dies, you can pull out the drives and hook them to a standard Vista/XP/W7 box.

[veritas7]

Hate to budge in, but in WHS when duplication is enabled, do you see duplicate files or are they hidden (by default)?

I don't want to get confused by the copies of my movies/tv shows I am planning to store on my future build.

[criccio]

No, you don't see any duplicates. If fact, you don't even know what is on what drive unless you install a 3rd party plugin.

All you will see is your shares.

[nilepez]

How much CPU do you need for WHS? Does it now integrate well with Windows Media Center? Does it play nicely with XBMC? My ultimate goal is to make a system that uses as little power as possible, without compromising performance. With that said, I have an old Athlon 64/MB that I could use (though I suspect it's a power hog these days). Eventually I'll probably replace my e4300 desktop with something newer, though it seems like overkill for WHS, from what I can little know.

[ServiceInteract]

Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST380815AS 80GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive - OEM (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148231)


Personal preference for me is WD but for $4 more than this seagate and double the storage, it might be worth looking at.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136075

[aldamon]

How much CPU do you need for WHS? Does it now integrate well with Windows Media Center? Does it play nicely with XBMC? My ultimate goal is to make a system that uses as little power as possible, without compromising performance. With that said, I have an old Athlon 64/MB that I could use (though I suspect it's a power hog these days). Eventually I'll probably replace my e4300 desktop with something newer, though it seems like overkill for WHS, from what I can little know.

Sticky: Windows Home Server FAQ
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1390750

[Asposium]

Homer;1034359404']Completely do-able.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1034288010#post1034288010

a link to my thread

i'm so proud :p

[mikeblas]

Homer;1034359404']Completely do-able.

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1034288010#post1034288010

That thread discusses watts per terabyte, which is a pretty meaningless ratio; you must've missed my previous posts in that same thread.