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Fileserver Build Complete

M

ModBoyzz

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 29, 2004
Messages
215
Hey all,

I've been browsing the forums for quite some time now, and I just love this place. It could be because of the informative posts or the lack of kiddie posts? :D

Anyway, she's nothing special, but she sure does get the job done. :)

Specs:
P4 3.0E
Gigabyte / 865 PE chipset
1 GB Mushkin 3200
5x 300GB Seagate's
HighPoint RocketRAID 1820A
Antec Sonata II w/ 450 watt p/s (soon to be replaced)

Pictures Here if your interested.

Please dont mind the Cable management, as I'll be changing the case very soon.



Quick question for you guys,

I decided to create a smaller partition for the windows install within the array. But theres one thing I dont understand, Why do you usually throw the windows install on a seperate array? I understand that in the case that a drive failed within the array, having the hard drive containing the windows install on a seperate array (raid 1) would allow you too boot into windows. But isn't the server useless without the data? If the server's main purpose is to serve files, and not anything else, would my statement be correct?

Speaking of which, I need to repartion as I gave the windows partition a little too much. :D

Thanks in advance....
 
Looks good! Already used 400GB, it looks like ;) Done any benchies or anything on it?

 
unhappy_mage said:
Looks good! Already used 400GB, it looks like ;) Done any benchies or anything on it?

Click to expand...


Thanks m8, About the benchmarks, I havent run any yet. Could you recommend any good ones? I know of Sandra which I'll go ahead and run tonight. I'll post my results afterwards. I'm curious myself on how this raid controller is performing with these drives. Also considering I'm running it in a pci slot, not pci-x. I hope its not holding me back that much (as far as performance is concerned).

I'm a click away from ordering this case and throwing in another 2 drives. 1 as a hotspare. But I might need to upgrade my power supply to a 550-600 watt. Do you think my 450 can pull it off?
 
looks good - is there time yet for it to be converted to Linux?

/linuxevangelism

but yeah, i envy you....that would be kickass to take to a LAN or something because you could run games + Fileserving on it at once
 
ndruw said:
looks good - is there time yet for it to be converted to Linux?

/linuxevangelism

but yeah, i envy you....that would be kickass to take to a LAN or something because you could run games + Fileserving on it at once
Click to expand...


Hehe, that was one of the main reasons I built it . For Lan's (which is why i orginally went with the sonata II case, which i now regret). Throw it on the network and let everyone nail it. And game away with my workstation :D .

About linux, ya know, I spent days debating whether I was going to throw RHEL 4 or Server 2003 on it. I definitely wanted RHEL, but I'm pretty new to Linux, and I heard of people having to rebuild the Raid Controller drivers for linux. So that kind of threw me over to Winblows. But my original plan was linux. :( If I could switch right now, I'd do it in a heartbeat. Thats the only thing holding me back.
 
Just HDTach or IOMeter for me. Nothing fancy, just try the short test for HDTach and 32k 100% sequential reads or writes for IOMeter.

As for power supply, I always recommend large Enermax or PCP&C supplies for fileserver rigs, and this is no exception. I'm using this, but you'll probably want a dual-rail supply instead. The Liberty is a good one. I'd tend to buy the power supply before the case, but that's just me. Any idea what budget you're looking at?

 
unhappy_mage said:
Just HDTach or IOMeter for me. Nothing fancy, just try the short test for HDTach and 32k 100% sequential reads or writes for IOMeter.

As for power supply, I always recommend large Enermax or PCP&C supplies for fileserver rigs, and this is no exception. I'm using this, but you'll probably want a dual-rail supply instead. The Liberty is a good one. I'd tend to buy the power supply before the case, but that's just me. Any idea what budget you're looking at?

Click to expand...

That enermax looks sexy.I would love a PCP&C but i know they run pricy. As far as budget, I'm pretty flexible, Preferably around 120 ish. I'd be willing to dish out more $ for a sleeved PSU. I'm pretty picky about wire management. I'm hurting right now with my current case.lol

I'll nab those benchmark apps tonight and give them a run. :D
 
Liberty is $117 shipped with a $15 MIR. Sleeved, and the cables are modular, so you only plug in the ones you use. Sounds like a good match all around.

Also, I don't know if you saw the Coolermaster Stacker. It's a god among cases as far as I'm concerned. 12 5.25 bays, so you can put a bunch of these in it and fit a *lot* of drives. That's my recommendation ;)

 
unhappy_mage said:
Liberty is $117 shipped with a $15 MIR. Sleeved, and the cables are modular, so you only plug in the ones you use. Sounds like a good match all around.

Also, I don't know if you saw the Coolermaster Stacker. It's a god among cases as far as I'm concerned. 12 5.25 bays, so you can put a bunch of these in it and fit a *lot* of drives. That's my recommendation ;)

Click to expand...

:eek: Now thats hawt. Definitely a killer combo. lol, I cant even stand up right now. It's that sexy.Do you think that SATA HDD Enclosure will fit in the Thermaltake Armor? Damn im stuck inbetween the stacker and the armor. hrmmm..

By the way,
Mage, thanks a ton for your time and recommendations. It's truly appreciated.
 
That puts my 3ghz 5-HD (1 terabyte) 2U multipurpose server to shame :D
Alright, not quite to shame but it looks freaking nice!
 
I think the TT would work, but I think it's a smaller case. I haven't heard as much about it as the Stacker, but I have heard good things about it. Maybe if you ask in Case Modding they can tell you more.

And you're welcome ;)

 
A friend of mine got the Armor case for his rig. It's pretty damned sexy, if you ask me. Plenty of room, and enough metal to hide wires, but not too much that it gets in the way. I've got a pair of the enclosures mage recommended, and they fit in all three of my desktop systems and my 4U perfectly fine, so I see no reason it shouldn't work in the Thermaltake case... You should note, though, that the fans that come with the enclosures are freakin' LOUD. Think Vantec Tornado loud. Think Vaccuum cleaner loud. Personally, I don't care, but if you're concerned with noise, I'd recommend looking into replacing them.

Edit: Well, I seem to have misplaced my digicam, but for the record, the fans are San Ace 92mm fans. Model 9G0912H204. 12V@.23A. And yes, they use the standard three-pin fan header, and can easily be replaced. (I swapped mine for 120mm fans)
 
I believe they're standard 92mm fans. And they connect via a normal 3-pin connector, so you should be able to replace it with just about anything. But since the description says 90mm, I'm not sure on that. Anyone with one want to grab a ruler?

 
unhappy_mage said:
I believe they're standard 92mm fans. And they connect via a normal 3-pin connector, so you should be able to replace it with just about anything. But since the description says 90mm, I'm not sure on that. Anyone with one want to grab a ruler?
Click to expand...
I would, but I'm all packed up to move. If ya still want to know in 3 or 4 days, I'll take a photo with a ruler.
 
ModBoyzz said:
Why do you usually throw the windows install on a seperate array?
Click to expand...
To avoid seeking. For a file server, it won't make such a big difference. For n application server or a desktop, it's a little more important.
 
for your windows partition, i wouldnt bother trying to reclaim 20GB at this point. how are you going to backup 600GB of data that you already ahve on it? lol

next time, 10-15 gigs will be sufficient for server 2003.

as far as your linux install, again, its a little late, as your half a TB of NTFS data will be useless to a linux system. however, if you want to test it out, i would recommend downloading your favorite distro, and just run thru the initial install up to where it looks at your hard drives. if you see one giant raid volume, then your good to go. highpoints are pretty widely supported, you might not have had a problem.
 
Sharaz Jek said:
for your windows partition, i wouldnt bother trying to reclaim 20GB at this point. how are you going to backup 600GB of data that you already ahve on it? lol

next time, 10-15 gigs will be sufficient for server 2003.

as far as your linux install, again, its a little late, as your half a TB of NTFS data will be useless to a linux system. however, if you want to test it out, i would recommend downloading your favorite distro, and just run thru the initial install up to where it looks at your hard drives. if you see one giant raid volume, then your good to go. highpoints are pretty widely supported, you might not have had a problem.
Click to expand...

I actually have 2 300 gig external hd's, + 2 250's in my workstation that I can temporarily move the files to. (In order to convert to a linux box). I'm kinda confused though, what do you mean by my NTFS data will be useless to a linux box? Does that really matter if I'm only transferring zip, rar, iso's, movies ,music to it? I ask because I currently have a FC5 box on my network that I backup files to, and I haven't had any problems.
 
no i just meant that the NTFS filesystem wont be useable on that box if you install FC5, and youll have to erase it and rebuild it all (along with proper file backups/migrations).

dont forget, that when you are transferring files accross a network, that source and destination filesystems are not an issue. however, if you were to insert a disk with a linux filesystem directly into a windows server, windows would not be able to read the disk (and vice versa).
 
Finally repartitioned and ran a benchmark. The results from the benchmark don't look too promising. Could be because of the PCI limitation. :rolleyes:

Pictures Updated!
 
100MB/s will just about saturate a Gigabit link which has a max capacity of 125MB/s (theoretically) Once you add in overhead and the fact that only server class NICS can really handle full gigabit well you are probably exceeding the capabilities of a Gig link. I would say your array is just fine pushing 100MB/s. Nice job.

What kind of results were you expecting?
 
Nostradamus said:
100MB/s will just about saturate a Gigabit link which has a max capacity of 125MB/s (theoretically) Once you add in overhead and the fact that only server class NICS can really handle full gigabit well you are probably exceeding the capabilities of a Gig link. I would say your array is just fine pushing 100MB/s. Nice job.

What kind of results were you expecting?
Click to expand...

Now im confused.:rolleyes: Gigabit has a max capacity of 125MB/s?
 
Average 95.6 isn't at all bad. And that's quite possibly PCI-bound; maybe some other data is being sent to the card and keeping it from ~120 MB/s one can get out of an empty PCI bus. Using a pci-x slot might speed things up, but in the meantime - think about what you're using the array for. You probably don't need speed for most of it.

 
Lazn_Work said:
Bit vs Byte.

1 Byte = 8 Bits

1000/8 = 125MB/s

==>Lazn
Click to expand...

and

100/8 = 12.5MB/s ? So if I were to drop to a 10/100 switch, my transfer rates would drop to this? Seems pretty low , doesnt it?
 
Yep, you got it... that's why i never beleived people when they scoffed at the idea of gigabit to the house. It is inevitable that as the size of files increases so will the medium that is used to transport them. We live in an on-demand world and people are impatient ;)
 
Sure, it'll happen eventually, but for most things 10/100 is more than enough. I bet your internet connection isn't even 10 megabits, but that's plenty for most things, right? Even "high-quality" DVDs are less than 10 megabits. 100 mbit ethernet is enough for most things - so far. I have my files stored on another machine and only have 100 mbit ethernet between the two, and hardly ever notice that they're even on another machine.

 
All,
Thanks a ton for all the replies and information. I now have a better understanding on the whole Bit vs bytes thing. :)

Now back to filling this baby up. :p
 
I guess it is one of those things where, once you go gigabit you'll never go back. Or... well... gigabit-ish speeds.

I can't wait 3 more seconds to download that ISO from my fileserver!!!! :D
 
That whole NTFS thing that somebody brought up earlier - would only be an issue if you didn't copy the data to another medium before you had formatted. If you were to keep your 30gb partition for windows and re-install *nix on it, you would be able to read NTFS partitions still, but write performance is slow and still bugged from my recollection.
 
Separate array for OS..Restores are alot easier if you don't have to rebuild the system first.
 
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