Best storage solution?

[DracZ]

Hi all, lately I've been doing some research with regards to revamping my home setup.

Right now I live in a 3 bedroom apartment with the following setup:

Living Room:

HTPC / Media Fileserver
- Q6600 / 8gb RAM / 20TB~ Storage
- Each disk is running standalone, no parity / backup etc
- All media, mixture of SD / 720p / 1080p
- Connects directly to receiver, plays movies directly through XBMC etc
- Occasionally streams media to 2 other PC's in the house / mobile devices
- Handles downloads through sabnzbd / bittorrrent (and seeding)
- Runs 24/7
- Connects to network via a Netcomm NP204 200Mbps Powerline Adapter, to a Netgear WNDR3800 router / gigabit switch.

Room 1:

My Work / Gaming PC
- 2500k / 16GB / 10TB~ Storage
- Each disk is running standalone, scheduled backups to portable drives
- Primarily work / personal files including quite a number of RAW files (photography is my other hobby), and backup ISO's of games / programs.
- Connects to network via a TP-Link USB Wireless N adaptor (latency / throughput doesn't bother me that much on this PC because it's quite standalone and doesn't draw many files from other PC's within the network)

Room 2:

The Other Half's Work PC
- 3470k / 16GB / 4TB~ Storage
- Each disk is running standalone, no parity / backup etc
- Connects to network via the Netgear WNDR3800 router / gigabit switch directly

Everything else in the house connects via Wireless N - phones / tablets etc.

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With the ever increasing storage needed I feel I need to revamp my setup to something with *some* redundancy in place, however here's where I need some advice:

1. Is it really that much better running a HTPC / fileserver separately? For my current living arrangement I really don't have any other location to store the fileserver, so effectively they would be running right next to each other. Downloads / seeding is usually running 24/7 via my current setup.

2. With redundancy on the new file server SnapRAID looks like it makes the most sense with the type of files I have. What would be the best way to set it up assuming all the drives are pooled? I'm assuming that when it is creating a snapshot - all reads/writes have to be stopped? (aka no downloading during that time?)

3. With the current way the network is setup, is there enough throughput to have a central fileserver connected directly to the gigabit router, and serving the other 2 PC's in the house? Assuming there's no way to run a Cat 6 cable directly to the router, and that Wireless N / EOP are the only other methods.

Or is it still best to keep those files on each respective PC and do scheduled backups via external drives for example? Since these files are small / ever changing, I'm not sure SnapRAID would be the best solution.

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Basically what I'm looking for is advice on best practices applicable to my situation, any and all help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks all

 

[drescherjm]

What would be the best way to set it up assuming all the drives are pooled?

Do you really need your htpc data to be pooled?

I'm assuming that when it is creating a snapshot - all reads/writes have to be stopped?

Reads are fine. Writes and deletes may be a problem during a sync or scrub. Writes are not a problem if they are new files that were created after the sync/scrub started. Other writes and deletes are a problem when you delete a file before or during the scrub/sync that snapraid did not process yet or is in the process of processing.

1. Is it really that much better running a HTPC / fileserver separately?

I assume the main goal for most is noise. Keeping the server out of the living room. Then there are also users who want to run a windows based HTPC with zfs or linux based storage. For the 9.9 years that I have run my linux based HTPC most of the storage was on the main HTPC backend although with mythtv you can have multiple HTPC backends and multiple frontends.

Or is it still best to keep those files on each respective PC and do scheduled backups via external drives for example? Since these files are small / ever changing, I'm not sure SnapRAID would be the best solution.

Snapraid is not a generally backup solution. Its designed for data that tends to be be added to but individual files do not change much.