Anyone using a seperate computer for a media server?

[EnderW]

I've been thinking of moving my RAID5 array to a seperate computer. I'm concerned about the speed being slower, and having problems when watching videos or playing music.
Anyone have experience with this?

Helpful tips or things to avoid?

 

[hokatichenci]

My workstation used to basically also double as the fileserver for my apartment, the only time I ever noticed problems was over weak wireless connections. Just make sure you're running 10 or 100mbit and have DMA working and you probably won't run into any real problems.

 

[unhappy_mage]

100 mbit is overkill for playing movies, even DVD. Maybe with HD-DVD this will change, but I doubt it - even the highest quality DVDs are only 10 megabits. Divx rips can be down to a megabit or so. As for music, even flacs are only around an average of a megabit. You should be able to serve five or six streams simultaneously without a problem.

 

[EnderW]

any disadvantages I should consider?

 

[unhappy_mage]

Well, you'll need a monitoring system (email or something) to make sure if a drive drops from the array or something you'll notice. Copying files to or from the array will be markedly slower over ethernet, but I don't find it a problem at all. If there's something that really needs the IO bandwidth, like say taking backups or unpacking a big rar file, it can run on the server directly, and avoid delay.

 

[nightelfmaster]

There arn't too many diadvantages, but the advantages are enormous.
If you upload all your media onto another server, your hard drive will be free to do other things in the background. It also provides a centralized area to throw ur files and read your files from. The only disadvantage that I can possibly think of is somewhat slower file-copy transfer rates because of the 100mbit lan. Anyways, almost nothing needs to use 100mbits for streaming video. Even with new stuff like blu-ray and HD-DVD comes out, the still won't saturate the 100mbit connection when streaming.

 

[EnderW]

I don't think the copying over will be a big problem. I'll probably just keep everything local until I've got it nice and organized, then start a big transfer when I goto bed or something.

 

[EnderW]

I think I'm gonna use the motherboard, CPU, and RAM from an old Dell
P4 1.7GHz, 768MB RAM

put it in a different case, and hook it up with a quality PSU

thoughts?


edit:

here's a couple pictures of my $12 case and hotswap bay

 

[banGerprawN]

I think I'm gonna use the motherboard, CPU, and RAM from an old Dell
P4 1.7GHz, 768MB RAM

put it in a different case, and hook it up with a quality PSU

thoughts?


edit:

here's a couple pictures of my $12 case and hotswap bay

Friggin' sweet?
Hotswap for the win, mang.

 

[xorvious]

I went to a fileserver for all my home storage about a year ago, would never go back to having everything on my 'main' computer.

Pros;
Central data storage, I can get to my files from any of the many computers in the house, also a central location to back up data.
I dont have to have my 550 watt gaming rig heating the room just to play mp3s downstairs, saves money in electricity
Runs 24/7 managing my torrents and always there to log in remotely to

Cons;
Hard to get used to not having all my precious files on my local hard drive
Had to upgrade to gigabit to avoid having to wait for anything

Specs;
Abit KG7-r
AMD XP2400+
1GB PC2100
IBM deathstar 40G boot drive
2x WD 160 gig in RAID 0
Intel pro 1000 ethernet card
generic USB 2.0 for backup to a external 200 gig
SMC 8 port Gigabit switch w/jumbo frames

 

[PorkCharSui]

2x WD 160 gig in RAID 0

Please tell me you have a backup solution... I'd be scared to leave my data on something like that. You should consider RAID 5 or something.

 

[scotlandrocks]

Please tell me you have a backup solution... I'd be scared to leave my data on something like that. You should consider RAID 5 or something.

Raid 5's not for backup, its for redundacy. As long as you make proper backups you don't have anything to worry about with raid 0.

For the server bit tho, you don't have anything to worry about unless your going to have heaps of computers streaming movies or something. i've had three computers streaming movies of my server 100 mbit and never had any problems. Only thing that you'll have to get used to is when moving large files to the server isn't as quick as you'll be used to.

 

[hity645]

Another Con to having a file server (at least for me)

Everything will end up on there at some point, and if your at a LAN or take your PC somewhere...you either won't have it or it'll be extra luggage to cart around.

 

[xorvious]

Please tell me you have a backup solution... I'd be scared to leave my data on something like that. You should consider RAID 5 or something.

generic USB 2.0 for backup to a external 200 gig

I use Karen's replicator to copy/backup files so I can easily access the files on the backup from any other computer should the server go down. Although if someone had a spare 160 (or 4) and a raid card to hook me up I'd be RAID 5 all the way And I would STILL use a backup hard drive, as it was said before, RAID does not = Backup.

 

[PorkCharSui]

Obviously RAID 5 isn't backup, but it is sure of hell more reliable that a huge ass RAID 0 array. I just cleaned up from a drive dying in a RAID 0 array of mine, and I would have been much happier with a RAID 5 setup if a similar event occured.

Luckly I made some DVD-RW backups about a month before the crash so all is not lost, except my time dealing with the damn thing.

 

[Slacker]

That's what my roomates and I have done. We moved all the media from our 4 computers onto a RAID 5 array on our server (currently 3 400GB RE2 drives, but we have online capacity expansion so we'll be adding another 1 or 2 soon) It's nice because as soon as I download a new TV, MP3, movie, whatever I just throw it on the server and everyone in the house has easy access to it. We're running gigabit, but both my computers are only on 100mbit at the moment 'cause we didn't have enough ports on our switch. I never really noticed a difference, except when copying multiple gigabytes at a time. We sometimes have 3 video and 2 mp3 streams at a time and we've never had any problems with speed.

Unfortunately since all our media is in one place we could potentially lose it all. I know how much everyone stresses backup but the RAID array as it is now costs over a grand. We're all poor college students and I don't know of any cheap backup solution that would handle 1-2TB of data. Almost everything on there we got from the internet, so it's not like we couldn't get it again given enough time and effort.

 

[DougLite]

If you saw my thread in General Mayhem, one of the servers in it has three 200GB drives that store music, pictures, and a variety of other things that I use throughout the house. With Gigabit Ethernet in all of my servers, speed is pretty good.

I spent less than $200 getting my network to all Gigabit. Look in [H]ot|Deals if you need cheap Gigabit parts, there are $40 8-port switches with Jumbo Frame support, $20 Intel NICs and $12 SMC NICs.