File server/VM/network server build suggestions

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darrenster

Weaksauce
Joined
Nov 28, 2009
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Hi all,

I'm looking to build a machine to serve multiple purposes for the best price. I have two main goals: file server and VM server (running VMware workstation). The file server is only going to be used for backup purposes. For the VM part I'm considering running pfsense, web server, and maybe a few other things, probably at most 3-4 virtual machines.

This is what I'm currently looking at getting:
1x Western Digital Caviar Blue WD1600AAJS 160GB
2x Western Digital Caviar Green WD10EARS 1TB (I have a 3rd one in my NAS server I'm getting red of)
3x Intel PWLA8391GTL 10/ 100/ 1000Mbps PCI PRO/1000 GT
1x CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V
1x G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
1x GIGABYTE GA-P55-USB3 LGA 1156 Intel P55 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
1x Intel Core i3-530 Clarkdale 2.93GHz LGA 1156 73W Dual-Core
1x EVGA 256-P2-N711-LR GeForce 7200GS 256MB

I'm not quite sure of the os yet either Win XP or Win 7.

Right now I'm looking at a total of $718 including shipping.

Ideas? Suggestions? Thanks!
 
You are going to want a good bit more of RAM. I'd go with at least 8GB. Are you going to use any sort of RAID card or just use the onboard? Is the file server going to be in a VM?
 
The Core i3 has onboard video. So just use a motherboard based on the H55 chipset in order to use the onboard video. No need to get the P55 mobo + video card.

HDD wise, once you factor in shipping, the price of that WD 160GB is pretty pretty shitty. For $9 more you can get a hard drive with three times the storage space and four times the speed:
$55 - Western Digital WD5000AAKS Hard Drive.

Are you planning on overclocking?
 
the file server is going to run on the host machine. i would like to try freenas but i dont want to dedicate a machine to it functions and not sure how to implement it in a VM environment

no RAID in the initial design. this may chance in the future

4gb of ram should be enough to start with. I'm able to run about 12vm machines just fine on my desktop with 3gb of ram, granted they were mostly small linux distros.

the 160gb drive is just for the os, nothing else, and that size is still overkill. I will consider the WD5000AAKS.

no plans for overlocking.

i do need a motherboard that has the capability for 4 network interfaces (including onboard)
 
You could look into RAID because you may run into slow downs because you have multiple virtual machines hitting the same disks, especially since those disks will also be used as a file server. A RAID card will help get the most speed out of the read/writes. Way better than software RAID and onboard RAID.

If you wanted to run a Win2008 VM and have enough RAM for your host OS you need more RAM. Virtual machines need some memory overhead. Win7/Win2008 both really want at least 2GB of RAM to run nicely.
 
I recommend the following setup:
$190 - Supermicro MBD-X8SIL-F-O Intel 3420 mATX Motherboard
$113 - Kingston 2 x 2GB ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1333 RAM
---
Total: $303 plus tax and shipping.

That Supermicro motherboard already has two Intel NICs along with enough PCI-E ports for a RAID card and additional NICs. The motherboard also supports IPMI and KVM over IP. $190 is a fair price for all those features. That Kingston RAM is the cheapest set I could find that'll work with that motherboard
 
I never heard of KVM over IP, how does that work?

There are several mentions of RAID here. I understand the concept, but never set one up my self. What RAID type should I use for this system?
 
darrenster said:
I never heard of KVM over IP, how does that work?

There are several mentions of RAID here. I understand the concept, but never set one up my self. What RAID type should I use for this system?
Click to expand...

Just easier to quote an entire wikipedia entry:
KVM over IP (iKVM)
KVM over IP devices use a dedicated microcontroller and potentially specialized video capture hardware to capture the video, keyboard, and mouse signals, compress and convert them into packets, and send them over an Ethernet link to a remote console application that unpacks and reconstitutes the dynamic graphical image. This KVM over IP subsystem is typically connected to a system's standby power plane so that it's available during the entire BIOS boot process. These devices allow multiple computers to be controlled remotely across a wide area network, local area network or telephone-line using the TCP/IP protocols. There are performance issues related with LAN/WAN hardware, standard protocols and network latency so user management is commonly referred to as "near real time". And, remote KVM over IP devices offer much smaller matrix frameworks.
Access to most remote or "KVM" over IP devices today use a web browser but proprietary viewer software can increase performance. A consideration of the viewer software relative to a browser based application is the area of ActiveX or Java security. Well formed implementations can be found across the major vendors today, yet there are many entry-level implementations that may not be as robust when it comes to security, performance and reliability. Important to note is that many of the stand-alone viewer software applications provided by many manufacturers are also reliant on ActiveX or Java. In addition, each major manufacturer is free to use various licensing mechanisms, some based on numbers of target devices, some based on numbers of users, and some based on numbers of sessions. In comparison to conventional methods of remote administration (for example Virtual Network Computing or Terminal Services), a KVM switch has the advantage that it doesn't depend on a software component running on the remote computer, thus allowing remote interaction with base level BIOS settings and monitoring of the entire booting process before, during, and after the operating system loads. Modern KVM over IP appliances or switches typically use at least 128-bit data encryption securing the KVM configuration over a WAN or LAN (using SSL)
KVM over IP devices have been implemented in many different ways. For the graphics capture portion, PCI based KVM over IP cards use a variation of a technique known as screen scraping where the PCI bus master KVM over IP card would access graphics data directly from the graphics memory buffer. In these cases, the PCI card must know which graphics chip it is working with, and what graphics mode this chip is currently in so that the contents of the buffer can be interpreted correctly as picture data. Newer techniques such as those used by OPMA management subsystem cards and other implementations obtain the video data directly from the graphics chip using the industry standard DVI bus. There are also a variety of ways to emulate the keyboard and the mouse remotely, but newer implementations emulate USB based keyboards and mice using the management controller.
Click to expand...

Probably RAID 5 or RAID 10.
 
darrenster said:
There are several mentions of RAID here. I understand the concept, but never set one up my self. What RAID type should I use for this system?
Click to expand...

I suggest RAID 10, but you'd need to have 4 disks. If you used 4 1TB drives, a RAID 10 would give you the storage of 2TBs. Each disk has a copy of it in case one fails and performance is increased because there is two disks used for storage. If you want to just get performance and don't care about the chance of failure or want to buy 4 drives, go with RAID 0. It combines the two drives as one and increases performance but fault tolerance isn't there.
 
Who is your ISP? I'm interested in a virtual pfsense. I've tried it awhile back and FiOS just didnt like it. It mysteriously knew when I had the virtual one connected. I tried for a good two weeks. Even stumped the people on this forum. Let us know how you make out.
 
jadams said:
Who is your ISP? I'm interested in a virtual pfsense. I've tried it awhile back and FiOS just didnt like it. It mysteriously knew when I had the virtual one connected. I tried for a good two weeks. Even stumped the people on this forum. Let us know how you make out.
Click to expand...

Did you have promiscuous mode enabled on all your virtual networking(switches/adapters)? That's the only change I've had to make. Also, if you were using a Host OS and not ESX, did you have TCP/IP disabled for your WAN interface in your Host OS so it wasn't taking your only DHCP lease?
 
Yep, did all that. Works perfectly fine though with my physical pfsense. I don't wanna hijhack this guy's thread. I'll make a new thread one day if I try it again. Just was curious as to what ISP he had, maybe my problem is ISP specific. I never tried it while I was on Comcast.
 
Who is your ISP? I'm interested in a virtual pfsense. I've tried it awhile back and FiOS just didnt like it. It mysteriously knew when I had the virtual one connected. I tried for a good two weeks. Even stumped the people on this forum. Let us know how you make out.
Click to expand...
My ISP is Comcast. If you run Windows and have VM workstation. For each NIC you want to dedicate to a VM on the host machine, under the NIC settings everything should be unchecked except for VMware Bridge Protocol. Then assign the interface to the proper Virtual network in VMware and you should be all set.




Thanks for all the support so far, this is what I'm now considering. The only change is the 1TB hard drives. The 4 hard drives will be configured into a RAID 10 array. I'm going to try the on board RAID controller first to see how it works out before I invest in a RAID controller card.

The Supermicro motherboard doesn't have the features I want.

1x Western Digital Caviar Blue WD1600AAJS 160GB
3x Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB (One is in my NAS server which I'm taking out)
3x Intel PWLA8391GTL 10/ 100/ 1000Mbps PCI PRO/1000 GT
1x CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V
1x G.SKILL 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800)
1x GIGABYTE GA-P55-USB3 LGA 1156 Intel P55 USB 3.0 ATX Intel Motherboard
1x Intel Core i3-530 Clarkdale 2.93GHz LGA 1156 73W Dual-Core
1x EVGA 256-P2-N711-LR GeForce 7200GS 256MB

OS will be windows 7 for memory support and "future proof"

Looking at a total of $878 including shipping.

If there are any other suggestions, shoot them my way.

Now to find a case...
 
darrenster said:
My ISP is Comcast. If you run Windows and have VM workstation. For each NIC you want to dedicate to a VM on the host machine, under the NIC settings everything should be unchecked except for VMware Bridge Protocol. Then assign the interface to the proper Virtual network in VMware and you should be all set.
Click to expand...

I did all that to the T. It was just so weird. Whenever I hooked up the virtual one it gave me some odd WAN IP and blocked every incoming port. I however was using HyperV as I have Server 2008 R2.
 
I did all that to the T. It was just so weird. Whenever I hooked up the virtual one it gave me some odd WAN IP and blocked every incoming port. I however was using HyperV as I have Server 2008 R2.
Click to expand...

you should prob start a new thread, now you got me experimenting, i haven't actually tried the vm psense with comcast yet
 
HAH! as i stated before I tried this before and posted about it a few months ago. Never resolved it, just gave up. One day I'd like to to revisit this and I will start a new thread. Definitly let me know how you make out. Maybe its ISP specific. In theory this SHOULD work and it SHOULDNT be isp specific. But who knows. Keep me posted :D
 
Well, i got it working, i had to call comcast since i kept ending up on the comcast activation page. after talking to tech support a virtual pfsense router works just fine.
 
Thats awesome!

I was reluctant to call VZ because my pfsense would route to the internet just fine. My problem was that EVERY incoming port was blocked. In order to get an answer I'd more than likely have to ask why I was worried about port 80, 21, 25, and all those other ports we shouldnt be bothering ourselves with on a residential account :D
 
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