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Building File Server

P

piker28

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 2, 2007
Messages
183
Hello everyone, I was hoping to get some help for building a small file / backup server for my work. I am aware that this is simply for a form of redundancy and not a true backup.

We are looking to work with what drives we have currently and expand in the future. So what we want is Raid 5/6 and the ability to rebuild an array without shutting down the server.

My small parts list below. All the parts have to be new so I am struggling on what Raid Controller would be the best option.

case -Norco 4224
cpu - Intel Xeon X3440
mobo - supermicro X8SIL-V
ram - 8 gb ddr3-1333 ecc
ps - thermaltake 850watt

Any recommendations would be appreciated.
 
Which Thermaltake 850W PSU did you choose? Some of the Thermaltake 850W PSU are pretty shitty and some are pretty good.

What's your budget for the RAID controller?
 
Lynnfield is a discontinued socket for server duty. So if there are any upgrades needed you will be stuck with absolutely no upgrade path. Go with either socket 2011 (ideally) or if you can't avoid it 1366 (older but still supported).
 
The price for controller is sort of up in the air. But max would be 1k, I am hoping for cheaper.

Did not know thermaltake was not good. Model SP-850M
 
A few more questions you should answer.

SAS or SATA disks?
What size disks?
How much performance do you need? (Saturate gigabit ethernet? Faster than that?)
Preferred OS
 
piker28 said:
Did not know thermaltake was not good. Model SP-850M
Click to expand...
Yeah IIRC, that's not one of the good ones. Just to be clear: Thermaltake's Toughpower PSUs are very good. The rest of their series aren't though. I would go with go with the Seasonic X750:
$156 - Seasonic X750 Gold 750W Modular PSU

Probably overkill but meh, it's a good PSU.
 
piker28 said:
My small parts list below. All the parts have to be new so I am struggling on what Raid Controller would be the best option.

case -Norco 4224
cpu - Intel Xeon X3440
mobo - supermicro X8SIL-V
ram - 8 gb ddr3-1333 ecc
ps - thermaltake 850watt

Any recommendations would be appreciated.
Click to expand...

FYI I have this exact partslist available in F/S forum - or maybe thats what you were referencing. http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1724082

Its currently installed in a Norco RPC-4224 which is also available but not yet listed. For hardware RAID you can't go wrong with latest/greatest Areca which is the 1882 series.
 
Get yourself an Areca 1882i, an Areca Battery Backup Module and an HP Expander. Newegg usually sends out a 20% off RAID card coupon about once a month to their email specials list. This will allow you to dual-link the controller to the expander and still give you 24 internal connections for enough SAS/SATA drives to fill your Norco.
 
hotcrandel said:
A few more questions you should answer.

SAS or SATA disks?
What size disks?
How much performance do you need? (Saturate gigabit ethernet? Faster than that?)
Preferred OS
Click to expand...

They will be Sata disks.

It will be more of a backup server as opposed to peple constantly pulling data off of it. So doubt I would saturate a gig line.

We would probably run Server 2008 R2 on it.
 
If it were linux I'd say just use a regular expander card and MDADM, would easily saturate gigabit, probably closer to 300MB/s+ read and 200MB/s write minimum.

Win2k8r2 doesn't support raid6 in software to my knowledge :(
 
Keep in mind signaling voltages for SAS and SATA disks are different, SAS disks have a wider acceptable voltage range for signaling. Adding SAS expanders, backplanes and more cabling length can add complexity to your system where these voltages can be toxic. (Thread from the past). I'm not sure how much truth there is too it because I haven't done enough testing myself, but I think that the simpler you can make your system the better.
 
I'm kind of looking at the same thing, but I'll be running linux on mine. Is there a better option then getting 3 of the SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8's? I was kind of hoping to have few cards in there since they need a PCIe slot.
 
Got ya. Thanks for the clarification Joe. Guess I need to find a board with at least 3 PCIe slots now.
 
JeffBlair said:
Danny, from what I'm seeing that one only has 8 internal ports as well.
Click to expand...

True. But that IBM M1015 does support the ~$250 HP SAS Expander which will let you attach another 32 hard drives.
 
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