Desperate File/Media Server help

daphatgrant

daphatgrant

Fi-yah!
Joined
Jun 15, 2003
Messages
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I desperately need some assistance, I've been trying to get a fully functional server for a little over a year now and I'm about at my wits end. I don't know how many hours I have sunk into working on it and I'm no farther ahead right now than I was a year ago.

Here's a quick background

Bought Norco 4020 case
Abit IC7-G
P4 2.8C
2GB PC3200
(7) 1TB Black drives
Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 64-bit PCI-X133MHz SATA Controller Card
PCP&C 750 Watt PSU
WHS

Built system, it worked great for about a month then acted flaky a couple times. 3 months in the PSU burns up (literally). I replace the PSU with another of the same type. System acts fine for a month and then starts giving me "no system disk found".

I began to think that the poor reliability was caused when the PSU shit the bed so I promptly ordered new guts, Abit IP35-Pro, E6400, and 4GB DDR2 6400 everything else stayed the same. All this worked fine for about another month when I started getting the same error, "no disk found".

I had left it off for about 3 months as I was too pissed to mess with it until last week. I bought (2) 2TB Black drives and another SATA controller card (same kind as before). I tried installing the OS on the IC7-G setup and had no luck, I switched over to the IP35-Pro setup and it took the OS just fine. I can now get it to see the drives but there is no longer any reliable support from Abit in regards to the IP35-Pro board. This combined with the fact that it's a royal pain in the ass to get the system to recognize the controller card.

So what am I asking for is suggestions on what to buy to own a functional server. Fuck all my current parts excluding the case, HDD's and PSU. what do I need to buy to own a functional file server? At this point I am 100% fine with ordering a new board/chip/ram/controller card in order to get this to work. I have over 600 DVD's store on this (all my own, I store them on the server so I don't have to keep 600 DVD's in my living room) and have spent $1,100 on HDD's alone and all I have is a paperweight to show for it.

I'm sorry about the long thread here but I'm about at the end of my rope in regards to patience, amount of time I am willing to put in, and financial willingness to continue.

So here's the cliffs

Cliffs
- My server related life sucks ass.
- Please recommend me a board / chip / ram / controller card.
- The case can accommodate 21 HDD's including the OS drive.
- Parts to use:
(7) 1TB Black drives
(2) 2TB Black drives
Norco 4020 case
PCP&C 750watt PSU


Thanks a ton if you actually read this and thanks a ton more if you respond.

Thanks :)
 
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I'm not looking for anything amazing the simple software "raid" that WHS provided was fine for me. I'm looking for a setup that will keep a duplicate of whatever I have on it, again software duplication is fine.
 
The general consensus for fileserver hardware seems to be:

Mainboard: Supermicro X8SIL-F
CPU: Intel Xeon X3430 or X3440 (depends on if you want hyperthreading), an i3 is also possible
RAM: 8 GiB Kingston unbuffered ECC (2x 4 GiB, leaves the upgrade to 16 GiB open)
HBA: 2 LSI 1068e or SAS2008 based controllers (e.g. Intel SASUC8i or LSI 9211-8i)
HDD: Samsung 2TB F4EG, you don't need 7200rpm drives (WD Caviar Black) if you store DVDs, except if like 20 users access them simultaneously
Use a high quality PSU like Corsair or Seasonic, 750W if you fully populate the case.

Some may suggest using only one controller and an HP SAS expander. Personally I don't like the expanders.
If you use reverse breakout cables you can get away with using 2 controllers and the mainboard ports.
 
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omniscence said:
The general consensus for fileserver hardware seems to be:

Mainboard: Supermicro X8SIL-F
CPU: Intel Xeon X3430 or X3440 (depends on if you want hyperthreading), an i3 is also possible
RAM: 8 GiB Kingston unbuffered ECC (2x 4 GiB, leaves the upgrade to 16 GiB open)
HBA: 2 LSI 1068e or SAS2008 based controllers (e.g. Intel SASUC8i or LSI 9211-8i)
HDD: Samsung 2TB F4EG, you don't need 7200rpm drives (WD Caviar Black) if you store DVDs, except if like 20 users access them simultaneously
Use a high quality PSU like Corsair or Seasonic, 750W if you fully populate the case.

Some may suggest using only one controller and an HP SAS expander. Personally I don't like the expanders.
If you use reverse breakout cables you can get away with using 2 controllers and the mainboard ports.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the response :). From what I can gather that's a parts list running around $700. I'm just curious if I need something that advanced for DVD storage and playback?
 
That partlist sounds more like something needed to run ZFS. It wouldn't be a bad build to make a ESXi box to run WHS in though.
 
The problem is you are using a cheap P4 board from about 7-8 years ago.

I'd definitely recommend a system with good capacitors and transistors, and definitely don't skimp on the PSU. Keeping the PSU with one 12v rail is a good thing for this kind of setup.
 
daphatgrant said:
Thanks for the response :). From what I can gather that's a parts list running around $700. I'm just curious if I need something that advanced for DVD storage and playback?
Click to expand...

You already tried go the cheap-hardware-path. If you have to buy a new board in any case, why not just get reliable server hardware. You will need a board with at least 2 x8 physical slots for the controllers or 1 x8 and 1 x4 for the expander alternative. The suggested board further offers 2 Intel gigabit controllers. I can only say good things about Supermicro boards except that their IPMI solution is a bit inconvenient. If you don't need VT-d functionality you can use an i3-540 with said board. RAM is as cheap as ever, I just ordered an 8 GiB upgrade for my server and 8 GiB for my laptop.

Cost-wise, the most significant thing is to fully populate the case with drives and these at the same time are the components with the lowest life expectancy. The F4EG drives have almost the lowest cost per GB and offer decent performance and low power consumption/noise. To connect 20 drives you need at least 2 x8 controllers. An alternative would be the ARC-1300ix-16, I don't have any experience with this. You may be able to get 1068e based cards for less than 100$. Never ever buy some no-name PSU for a server, I cannot comment on PCP&C quality, those are not available where I live.
 
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Red Falcon said:
The problem is you are using a cheap P4 board from about 7-8 years ago.

I'd definitely recommend a system with good capacitors and transistors, and definitely don't skimp on the PSU. Keeping the PSU with one 12v rail is a good thing for this kind of setup.
Click to expand...
I started out with those older parts, after the PSU burnt up I switched to an Abit IP35-Pro, C2D E6400, and 4 GB Corsair 6400. PCP&C is a premier PSU manufacturer, here's the [H]'s review of the PSU I bought.

omniscence said:
You already tried go the cheap-hardware-path. If you have to buy a new board in any case, why not just get reliable server hardware. You will need a board with at least 2 x8 physical slots for the controllers or 1 x8 and 1 x4 for the expander alternative. The suggested board further offers 2 Intel gigabit controllers. I can only say good things about Supermicro boards except that their IPMI solution is a bit inconvenient. If you don't need VT-d functionality you can use an i3-540 with said board. RAM is as cheap as ever, I just ordered an 8 GiB upgrade for my server and 8 GiB for my laptop.

Cost-wise, the most significant thing is to fully populate the case with drives and these at the same time are the components with the lowest life expectancy. The F4EG drives have almost the lowest cost per GB and offer decent performance and low power consumption/noise. To connect 20 drives you need at least 2 x8 controllers. An alternative would be the ARC-1300ix-16, I don't have any experience with this. You may be able to get 1068e based cards for less than 100$. Never ever buy some no-name PSU for a server, I cannot comment on PCP&C quality, those are not available where I live.
Click to expand...

Thanks again :), I'll start on a new shopping list.
 
daphatgrant said:
I started out with those older parts, after the PSU burnt up I switched to an Abit IP35-Pro, C2D E6400, and 4 GB Corsair 6400. PCP&C is a premier PSU manufacturer, here's the [H]'s review of the PSU I bought.
Click to expand...

Yeah PC P&C doesn't manufacture PSUs. Like Antec, Corsair, and Silverstone, PC P&C just selects a PSU design from an actual PSU manufacturer (EnHance, Flextronics, Seasonic, CWT, etc), modify/tweak it to their liking, and then send the tweaked/modified PSU design back to the PSU manufacturer along with orders for that PSU design.

Also, PC P&C is no longer a premier PSU company. Their current PSU lineup is nowhere near as good as their past designs let alone newer designs sold by Corsair or Antec. Even the Silencer 750 PSU you have now is near 4 to 5 years old, which is a long time in the PSU world.

Anyway, here's an alternative build:
$120 - Intel Core i3-540 CPU
$280 - Supermicro X8SI6-F
$51- Kingston 2 x 2GB ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1333 RAM
$100 - SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 PCI-Ex4 8 Port SATA Controller Card
$32 - 2 x 3ware SFF-8087 to Multi-lane SATA Forward Break-out Cable
---
Total: $583 plus tax and shipping.
 
Danny Bui said:
Yeah PC P&C doesn't manufacture PSUs. Like Antec, Corsair, and Silverstone, PC P&C just selects a PSU design from an actual PSU manufacturer (EnHance, Flextronics, Seasonic, CWT, etc), modify/tweak it to their liking, and then send the tweaked/modified PSU design back to the PSU manufacturer along with orders for that PSU design.

Also, PC P&C is no longer a premier PSU company. Their current PSU lineup is nowhere near as good as their past designs let alone newer designs sold by Corsair or Antec. Even the Silencer 750 PSU you have now is near 4 to 5 years old, which is a long time in the PSU world.

Anyway, here's an alternative build:
$120 - Intel Core i3-540 CPU
$280 - Supermicro X8SI6-F
$51- Kingston 2 x 2GB ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1333 RAM
$100 - SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 PCI-Ex4 8 Port SATA Controller Card
$32 - 2 x 3ware SFF-8087 to Multi-lane SATA Forward Break-out Cable
---
Total: $583 plus tax and shipping.
Click to expand...

Thanks! :D I didn't realize what a breakout cable was until I saw that pic, got it now. If you can't tell I am rather new to all this so I am doing quite a bit of learning as I go along so I really appreciate the assistance. From what little I understand with the board/controller you linked I can attach 18 drives, 10 on the board and an additional 8 with the controller card. 16 stoarge drives should be more than fine for me with 2 and even 3 TB drives becoming regularly available. I guess in the long run I've already dumped $1,100 on HDD's so what's another $600, lol.

Thanks to everyone who responded in this thread so far it is appreciated more then you know. I can always count on the [H] :D.
 
Actually you get 22 hard drives with that setup. There are six SATA ports on the motherboard. In addition, the motherboard comes with two SAS ports as well as two SFF-8087 to Multi-lane SATA Forward Break-Out Cables for those ports. So that's 14 hard drives alone coming from the motherboard. That SAS controller adds another 8 SATA ports via those two 3Ware cables. That's a total of 22 hard drives with that setup.

Highly recommend reading this review of that motherboard as it clearly shows that the Supermicro motherboard comes with a lot of useful features and quality:
http://www.servethehome.com/supermi...ew-including-onboard-lsi-sas-2008-controller/

Also the motherboard that I recommended isn't the same as the motherboard that omniscence recommended. In fact the above review showcases the differences between the motherboard I recommended and the one that omniscence recommended
 
The question is if your backplane has miniSAS or SATA/SAS connectors. If it has miniSAS connectors you need a reverse breakout cables to connect the last backplane to the mainboard's SATA connectors.

EDIT: Okay, since it seems the case has SATA/SAS connectors, you will need two forward breakout cables.
 
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omniscence said:
The question is if your backplane has miniSAS or SATA/SAS connectors. If it has miniSAS connectors you need a reverse breakout cables to connect the last backplane to the mainboard's SATA connectors.
Click to expand...

He listed the Norco 4020 case. That case does not have any SAS ports on its backplane. It's just 20 SATA ports on that backplane.
 
Danny Bui said:
Highly recommend reading this review of that motherboard as it clearly shows that the Supermicro motherboard comes with a lot of useful features and quality:
http://www.servethehome.com/supermi...ew-including-onboard-lsi-sas-2008-controller/
Click to expand...

Just finished reading that article :eek:.

I think you've sold me on the MBD-X8SI6-F-O board.

So I guess what I am looking at now for a system is

Norco 4020 enclosure
750Watt PSU
Supermicro MBD-X8SI6-F-O
i3-540
8GB DDR3 1333
Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8
160GB WD Blue OS Drive
(8) 1TB WD Black drives
(2) 2TB WD Black drives

I'll be honest in saying that I'm a bit nervous stepping into the actual server world but I'm ready to make the jump.

So what's the thought on the above?
 
Make sure that the RAM you buy is actually compatible with that motherboard as it is a bit picky about what RAM it'll work with. The RAM I linked to earlier will work with that motherboard.
 
Danny Bui said:
Make sure that the RAM you buy is actually compatible with that motherboard as it is a bit picky about what RAM it'll work with. The RAM I linked to earlier will work with that motherboard.
Click to expand...

The ram that you linked is Model # KVR1333D3E9SK2/4G, the one I am going to buy is KVR1333D3E9SK2/4G so the only difference should be the capacity.

4GB - KVR1333D3E9SK2/4G
8GB - KVR1333D3E9SK2/8G
 
Hey, just checking back in to say thanks for all the help :). I now have a fully functioning 11TB file/media server :D.

I am now running:
Norco 4020
PCP&C 750watt psu
Supermicro MBD-X8SI6-F-O
i3-540
8GB DDR3 1333 (ECC server memory)
(1) 160GB WD Blue drive
(7, soon 8) 1TB WD Black drives
(2) 2TB WD Black drives

I am currently moving all my stored files (info is currently on both 2TB drives) to the rest of the HDD's and then the 2TB drives will be added to WHS and duplication will be turned on. This process so far has run quite smoothly and I couldn't be happier. I am a bit disappointed in the fact that I failed to notice that WHS is 32bit so I am only able to use 4 out of the 8GB's of ram, oh well, my screw-up.

Anyways I just wanted to check in and thank all of you for all of your help, this file/media server project has been in the works for literally years now and it is quite nice to finally have it running.

Thanks :D
 
Will do, it's been transferring files since the second it was setup, I'll try and get some tomorrow.
 
daphatgrant said:
I'm not looking for anything amazing the simple software "raid" that WHS provided was fine for me. I'm looking for a setup that will keep a duplicate of whatever I have on it, again software duplication is fine.
Click to expand...

daphatgrant said:
Hey, just checking back in to say thanks for all the help :). I now have a fully functioning 11TB file/media server :D.

I am now running:
Norco 4020
PCP&C 750watt psu
Supermicro MBD-X8SI6-F-O
i3-540
8GB DDR3 1333 (ECC server memory)
(1) 160GB WD Blue drive
(7, soon 8) 1TB WD Black drives
(2) 2TB WD Black drives

I am currently moving all my stored files (info is currently on both 2TB drives) to the rest of the HDD's and then the 2TB drives will be added to WHS and duplication will be turned on. This process so far has run quite smoothly and I couldn't be happier. I am a bit disappointed in the fact that I failed to notice that WHS is 32bit so I am only able to use 4 out of the 8GB's of ram, oh well, my screw-up.

Anyways I just wanted to check in and thank all of you for all of your help, this file/media server project has been in the works for literally years now and it is quite nice to finally have it running.

Thanks :D
Click to expand...

Glad it's working for you. Should you decide to change the OS, check out unRAID
 
Make sure to keep the data on your 2TB drives for a while in case something happens. Or you may decide to try out other stuff like unRAID or ZFS
 
daphatgrant said:
I am a bit disappointed in the fact that I failed to notice that WHS is 32bit so I am only able to use 4 out of the 8GB's of ram, oh well, my screw-up.
Click to expand...

The next WHS will be 64bit-only AFAIK.
There also is the possibility to use the upper 4GB for a RAM-disk and put the swapfile on it.
 
How would you use 4GB as RAMdisk if you can't address that space? 2GiB per process boundary still counts unless it was specially compiled where it could use 3GiB. As far as i know the 32-bit windows is limited to 2GiB userspace memory and 2GiB kernel space memory. Anyone can comment on that?

Not sure putting swap on a RAM disk makes that much sense though. Swap is memory that your VMM decided to be better freed and written to disk instead, now you're redirecting that back to RAM. Why don't you simply disable SWAP if you don't like swapping behavior? Besides, unless he does strange things his system shouldn't actively swap. Most of the memory would be in use as filecache instead.
 
http://www.tomshardware.de/foren/240612-26-vista-nutzen-disk

I'm too lazy to find an english reference, but most of the screenshots are actually in English.
It basically talks about how to use the excess RAM above 4GB as RAMDISK, it IMHO requires an PAE enabled kernel (which by itself does not enable more than 4GB of RAM on many versions of Windows). There is also a reference to Microsoft that states that every 32-bit Windows kernel with hardware execute prevention is also PAE enabled.
If this works with WHS is to be tested.

The pagefile on a RAMDISK is, while not as fast as plain RAM, still way faster than on harddisks. As for the sense of using the swap in place of RAM, I can say from personal experience with electromagnetic simulation software, that you can simulate models that do not fit into system memory if your swap is large enough. This will however be at the cost of orders of magnitude of simulation speed. If it really makes a difference for a file server is another story. Whatever, it is better than wasting the RAM.

Deactivating the pagefile is not a good idea for a system that will run 24/7. The kernel can run out of TLB entries due to memory fragmentation.
 
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The pagefile on a RAMDISK is, while not as fast as plain RAM, still way better than harddisks.
Click to expand...
Only if the pagefile is actually used. The days where we had a structural shortage of RAM memory is now gone and generally there is plenty RAM available for applications. The excess RAM is used as filecache instead. So why would you need to swap?

On BSD after a month of uptime no more than 16 kilobytes of the 2GiB swap is in usage. Windows might be more agressive with swapping though; writing memory regions of inactive (minimized) programs to the pagefile, even with enough free RAM available. You can indeed prevent this by using a RAM-swapfile like you suggest, but to me it seems much easier to prevent the swapping in the first place; let all apps including inactive ones stay in memory; there's enough RAM anyway.

On the other hand, if you can make at least some use of the otherwise wasted 4GiB RAM then i guess it's better than nothing. Too bad you cannot use that space as filecache though; that works great and you don't need to configure anything for it.
 
daphatgrant said:
Hey, just checking back in to say thanks for all the help :). I now have a fully functioning 11TB file/media server :D.

I am now running:
Norco 4020
PCP&C 750watt psu
Supermicro MBD-X8SI6-F-O
i3-540
8GB DDR3 1333 (ECC server memory)
(1) 160GB WD Blue drive
(7, soon 8) 1TB WD Black drives
(2) 2TB WD Black drives

I am currently moving all my stored files (info is currently on both 2TB drives) to the rest of the HDD's and then the 2TB drives will be added to WHS and duplication will be turned on. This process so far has run quite smoothly and I couldn't be happier. I am a bit disappointed in the fact that I failed to notice that WHS is 32bit so I am only able to use 4 out of the 8GB's of ram, oh well, my screw-up.

Anyways I just wanted to check in and thank all of you for all of your help, this file/media server project has been in the works for literally years now and it is quite nice to finally have it running.

Thanks :D
Click to expand...

I realize that this motherboard supports ECC memory, but the CPU (i3-540) does not, so what would the reason for ECC memory be in a setup like this one?
 
aamsel said:
I realize that this motherboard supports ECC memory, but the CPU (i3-540) does not, so what would the reason for ECC memory be in a setup like this one?
Click to expand...

Mainly compatibility. That Supermicro mobo does not play well with RAM not on the compatibility list for it.
 
daphatgrant said:
Hey, just checking back in to say thanks for all the help :). I now have a fully functioning 11TB file/media server :D.

I am now running:
Norco 4020
PCP&C 750watt psu
Supermicro MBD-X8SI6-F-O
i3-540
8GB DDR3 1333 (ECC server memory)
(1) 160GB WD Blue drive
(7, soon 8) 1TB WD Black drives
(2) 2TB WD Black drives

I am currently moving all my stored files (info is currently on both 2TB drives) to the rest of the HDD's and then the 2TB drives will be added to WHS and duplication will be turned on. This process so far has run quite smoothly and I couldn't be happier. I am a bit disappointed in the fact that I failed to notice that WHS is 32bit so I am only able to use 4 out of the 8GB's of ram, oh well, my screw-up.

Anyways I just wanted to check in and thank all of you for all of your help, this file/media server project has been in the works for literally years now and it is quite nice to finally have it running.

Thanks :D
Click to expand...

Why the ECC memory using an i3-540.
That CPU does not support ECC memory.
Just wondering?
 
With the appropriate server chipset (3400/3420) the i3 processors do support ECC memory (but not i5 or i7) (unbuffered only).
 
ChrisBenn said:
With the appropriate server chipset (3400/3420) the i3 processors do support ECC memory (but not i5 or i7) (unbuffered only).
Click to expand...

Did not know that, thanks.
Boards like the Supermicro seem to just have DSub for video out.
Is there a good server board with HDMI, or is it just easier to add a video card?
 
aamsel said:
Did not know that, thanks.
Boards like the Supermicro seem to just have DSub for video out.
Is there a good server board with HDMI, or is it just easier to add a video card?
Click to expand...

Just easier to add a video card. But why do you need HDMI on a server?
 
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