Gerage Server (help,parts,yes,no)

T

Tman

Gawd
Joined
Aug 10, 2004
Messages
945
First off I dont know a thing about servers but really want to and will try my best to become
more educated with them.

My interest is to build a gerage server in the new pool house that will be finished in two weeks
and have it store of the recorded TV, movies, music, photos, etc for use all around the rest
of the pool house and house.

Do you guys have any recommended system specks for me to do this?
 
Maxum Pc did a mod in which they took 2x 1.8 XEON processors and pin modded them
and OC'ed them to 2.4. Costing them only $500 about five months back.

I thought that this would be a great idea of how to learn to oc more, save some money,
and make an interesting work log.

Though.. I want to push it a little further. I would like to watercool them and oc them to 2.8
if at all possible. (all depending on how hot/well the run oced to 2.4)



Also.. what is the way to get the most storage for the cheapest price?
I was planing on getting 4x 500g HD's for 2TB of space
 
Tman said:
Also.. what is the way to get the most storage for the cheapest price?
I was planing on getting 4x 500g HD's for 2TB of space
Click to expand...
That's not it. You can get 3x300 for about the same price of 1 500 right now, so that'd give you 12x300=3.6TB for the same price. That'll draw more power, true, so if power is expensive where you are it's not a great idea, but in the short term it's a lot more storage space.

Dual Xeon LV rigs are usually cheap and overclockable, but last time I checked the LVs were hard to come by on eBay which was the primary source. A single Opteron with a workstation board (read: pci-x) will give you plenty of bandwidth, and if cpu power is a concern, a 175 will be more than enough for most tasks. It shouldn't be, though - file serving is really easy. A pentium 133 can saturate 100 mbit ethernet if the disks attached are fast enough.

 
thank you very much for your help.

Also.. the more and more I think about Opterons the more I want to get one. Since they are
such great OCers and come in a month or two going to really really really cheap!

I understand that the 300g's are cheaper then the 500g's. Though.. to get 12x300gs to get
3.6tb for the same price as the 4x500g is GREAT!!!

So say I am going to go with the 12x300g HD's, 2x Opterons OCed, etc what kind of parts
will I need/you suggest

Powersupply
Case
Ram
MB
Opteron
Raid Card

Thank you again for your time. I am a noob and it really bugs me that I have to ask
soo many stupid questions
:(
 
my fileserver works like a charm

athlon 2400
1gb pc3200
4x250gb sata

I bet you can get away with even less than that. Even with the web/mysql servers and stuff I have running on it, it never really hits 25% cpu usage and over 300-400mb ram.
 
Tman said:
So say I am going to go with the 12x300g HD's, 2x Opterons OCed, etc what kind of parts
will I need/you suggest

Powersupply
Case
Ram
MB
Opteron
Raid Card

Thank you again for your time. I am a noob and it really bugs me that I have to ask
soo many stupid questions
:(
Click to expand...
What's the budget on this build?
 
there is no set price
I would say about $2,000 grand give or take $400
 
So it's just a file server for your home?

Then you can get the cheapest single proc server you can find with a nice I/O subsystem and a good RAID card.

Why do you think you need to overclock it, or use watercooling? These are two things I'd never do in a server; they're just too unreliable.

What's the connectivity between the pool house and the rest of the nodes in your house?

What is your backup strategy?
 
Well, an appropriate power supply is going to run you about $200, and looks like you're set on spending $1200-1400 on drives
 
mikeblas said:
Then you can get the cheapest single proc server you can find with a nice I/O subsystem and a good RAID card.

Why do you think you need to overclock it, or use watercooling? These are two things I'd never do in a server; they're just too unreliable.
Click to expand...
What he said. A single opteron is plenty; get a board with pci express and an Areca card if you're looking for fast (you *must* have gigabit network with jumbo frames to notice the difference between "fast" hardware raid and "slow" software) or a Highpoint 16-port card (the 2240; you'll need infiniband->sata convertor cables or 4-in-3 things that take them) if speed isn't such a concern. For media storage, you needn't be concerned so much with speed; DVDs are probably the highest-bandwidth things you'll be using, so 2 MB/s is overkill ;) Once HD-DVD in whatever form comes out, that might go to 10 MB/s, but even a cheap software raid card will give you that.

 
ok.. the server and the two main HTPCs are going into the Pool House (should be finished
being built in 2 weeks. Painting now)

I CAD5ed the entire pool house and making all wires run to the gerage with lots to spair.
I made sure to keep all CAD5 wires away from any and all electrical wires so that no
interfearence would happen. (no idea if that mattered or not)

I burried a few CAD5 lines from the pool house to the Mian house about 3-4 feet down
incased in a really nice piec of PVC Pipe. (hope that was the right thing to do)

I still have to Wire the entire main house for high speed :/

I am also wanting to WIFI the both the pool house, main house, and pool area. Due to the
fact that both my grandmother, dad, and I have laptops.


Here is an examile of the house and etc
house2.jpg
 
As far as a straight file server..I cant see you going wrong with a p3 dually. Right now they are (coppermine) cheaper than anything else. A selecion of used scsi drives abound or a SATA raid controller wouldnt add alot of cost. I would be spending my money on Drives vs. CPU's. When you can remove graphics power and such form a build you only open more options IMHO.

If your hell bent on spending 2k by all means upgrade your cpu's. That said I didnt pick my user name for no reason. And if cost effective is your objective..then the coppermine dualy is damn hard to beat. A 603 socket setup isnt alot more...and even the 1.7's would be overkill at stock speed. YMMV though.

BTW what OS are you planning on running?

Ghettobox
 
Ghettobox said:
As far as a straight file server..I cant see you going wrong with a p3 dually. Right now they are (coppermine) cheaper than anything else. A selecion of used scsi drives abound or a SATA raid controller wouldnt add alot of cost. I would be spending my money on Drives vs. CPU's. When you can remove graphics power and such form a build you only open more options IMHO.
Click to expand...
For the amount of storage we're talking about and the application, SCSI is not appropriate
 
the thing is guys. I am just some noob of a kid. So all the help you guys give me is
greatly and happly taken :)

thanks


but.. anyone have any specks for me?
 
Vertigo Acid said:
For the amount of storage we're talking about and the application, SCSI is not appropriate
Click to expand...

Hence the allusion to a sata raid card if necessary. I mean to be honest this build could go one of 10 ways and work just fine. One could argue quite convincingly mind you, that a Xeon over 700mhz is not appropriate either unless you are serving HUNDREDS of clients. That said financially deals come around that can influence a build 180 degrees away form its original concept. To make a blanket staement that SCSI isnt appropriate seems very likely, but unsubstantiated.

We also dont know anything really about this build do we? We have a budget of 2k. No OS decisions. No idea if he is going to be doing any Encoding on this or STRAIGHT fileserver. No idea what type of space we have ? Rack? Tower? Nothing. No idea how many machines will be accessing this server. No idea for sound system or graphics requirements. Wireless or wired network?

Specs.

My build would be:

P3 Coppermine board. About $50
Dual 933 cpu's. $50
Coolers $40
Memory. lets say 512mb ECC..at full retail..$100
Codegen 4U case (current ebay special) $100
If wired network..you need a gigabit NIC...say $45 for a decent one. I prefer Intel or some such.
Wireless...whoever made your router is a safe bet. Lets say $50
Adaptec SATA raid card..$45
WD sata 300GB drives are $125
No one short of Production movie companies needs more than 4 of those. I call BS on anyone needing 3.6 TB of storage for their home video, TV, MP3 collection. You are either on the verge of being indicted by the FBI for Piracy, or living in your moms basement watching way too much porn.

Either way...2k is plenty. And one could argue either way what is appropriate or not.



Ghettobox
 
Parts list for network stuff, or for the file server? The network's pretty simple; Newegg has a cheap 8-port switch that does gigE and jumbo frames, add cat5 to length (I'd suggest using keystone jacks and wallplates, just for the look of it; a contractor can do this part if you don't like pulling wire) and the wireless access point of your choice.

The file server still has a lot of variables; software or hardware raid, enclosures or not, case size, processor type... once you tell us what you want a little more precisely, it'll make it a little easier to recommend stuff. This power supply should be good for whatever board you pick, though. You'll need some molex->sata power convertors, though, unless you use enclosures.

 
For a fileserver, why go for a split rail power supply? You're going to have a whole 12 output that is unusuable by your drives, and if he goes the P3 route the CPU won't be using any of it at all.
 
That's a good point, didn't think of that. I guess a PC Power and cooling supply might be a better choice for this. You can assume about 2A draw on the 12V line at startup per drive, so 24A with 12 drives. The PCP&C 510 supplies 34A.

 
First thing I have to say is that I am sorry for not being more specific and give you guys
more info.


Can you guys just please give me the specks for a good simple build that will very easly
alow me to store all of my videos, tv shows, music, and etc for me. That can be accessed
by other computers on the net work.

Lets say no set budget

OS:
MB:
Processor:
Ram:
HD's: (as much as possible)
Powersupply:
etc-

Thanks
 
Tman said:
but.. anyone have any specks for me?
Click to expand...
Nobody can give you specs until you nail down the requirements for your application. Otherwise, we're just guessing.

You don't need too much CPU, but you need good I/O bandwidth. How much bandwidth you need will depend on the quality (bitrate) of the music you'll serve, the quality of the video you'll serve, and the

If you do compression, you might want a bit more CPU if you're going to serve lots of streams. "Lots" to me would be more than five or ten.

What's CAD5, by the way? Do you mean Category 5? Did you use Cat5e, or just plain Cat5?

P3 boards are pretty cheap, and adequate (unless you're compressing), but I'd worry about the BIOS handling larger drives. If you know you'll use an add-in card for storage, that might not be a concern, but I also don't know of any P3 cards with 64-bit I/O; were there ever any PCI-X P3 motherboards?
 
Ghettobox said:
You are either on the verge of being indicted by the FBI for Piracy, or living in your moms basement watching way too much porn.
Click to expand...
Or, both! Hah hah!
 
My File Server:
SuperMicro 370DLi
2 x pIII 700
4 x 512Mb Reg'd ECC PC-133 (just cause it was laying around)
Adaptec 39160, ChanA: 18Gb SCSI boot. ChanB: DLT AutoLoader
3Ware 7500-8: 4 x 120Gb in RAID5 - For my 'data', 2 x 300Gb in RAID1 as a backup to the RAID5
Intel Pro1000/S

Crazy overkill for the small load i put on it.
Running 2003 for Volume Shadow Copy. ArcServe for Disk-to-Disk and Disk-to Tape backups.
 
Just to give you an idea, here's my config:
Supermicro 370DER+ with 2x866 p3's
2x1GB ECC (not necessary, just had it around)
Debian stable+2.6.11
Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 sata card, 3x300 Maxline 3's in Linux software raid 5
9gb scsi boot disk
dual onboard NICs

So you definitely don't need to spend $3k+ to get a decent machine - my total cost on this machine is $300 in the box, and $600 in drives and controller. Not too bad speed-wise, either. If you built a box like this with 8x300, you'd be set for life.

 
unhappy_mage said:
Just to give you an idea, here's my config:
Click to expand...

That gives us an idea of nothing. We have no idea what you use that machine for. And we have no specific measure of loads that Tman show his machine.

He hasn't even suggested how much storage he needs. Since the cost of the drives themselves can so significantly influence the cost of the proejct, how can we ever guess at what price he'll spend?
 
mikeblas said:
We have no idea what you use that machine for. And we have no specific measure of loads that Tman show his machine.
Click to expand...
First sentence: this is what I use it for:
Tman said:
alow me to store all of my videos, tv shows, music, and etc for me. That can be accessed by other computers on the net work.
Click to expand...
Second sentence: I don't know what that means. Rephrase, please?

The reason I posted specs is that I linked a Newegg wishlist earlier with $3k of equipment in it, and wanted to show that one could build a decent fileserver for far less than that. This same machine with 8 drives instead of 3 would cost a total of $1600, give or take.

 
My server just lives in the basement, right next to my ipcop and Belkin GigE switch. Specs?

Some random case
2xP3-733s
1GB RAM
4x350GB drives in no form of RAID (don't trust it enough).
Intel PRO1000MT GigE card.

What is it used for? Music is streamed to all comps. Movies = streamed. HDTV caps/rips = streamed, and any games/apps I'm not currently using/need the discs for = stored. Haven't had any throughput problems yet. All the parts were free 'cept for the Intel (bought 3 of those from FS/FT here) and the HDDs. You can find P3s, mobo and RAM in the trash. The thing that drives the server cost waaaay up is the # of drives, and probably the RAID card needed to run them all (I'm not a RAID expert, but from what I've seen, they aren't cheap thanks to the hardware XOR needed).
 
unhappy_mage said:
Second sentence: I don't know what that means. Rephrase, please?
Click to expand...

"Load" is the amount of work a machine is doing. "alow me to store all of my videos, tv shows, music, and etc for me. That can be accessed by other computers on the net work." is not an adequate description to decide how much processing or I/O load the machine will see.

"Capacity planning" is the act of estimating load, then specifying a machine (or architecture of interconnected machines) that's adequate to satisfy the demand of the load with the desired response time.

unhappy_mage said:
The reason I posted specs is that I linked a Newegg wishlist earlier with $3k of equipment in it, and wanted to show that one could build a decent fileserver for far less than that. This same machine with 8 drives instead of 3 would cost a total of $1600, give or take.
Click to expand...
"decent"? That machine might be vastly overpowered (if it's serving one 300 KB picture per minute, say) ; or, it might get crushed like a tiny little bug (if it's serving streams of movies, and music, and pictures to, say, a couple dozen clients).

Tman says he'll use this at home, so we can guess that he's not planning to handle streaming media to hundreds of users. But we don't know what his planned loads are, and we don't know what his backup strategy is. Until then, it's hard to give a recommendation of what machine may or may not serve his needs.

Is he relying on RAID for backup, or will another strategy be employed? How does that plan affect the load the server sees?

Perhaps the network ends up being the bottleneck. Maybe the machine needs to be not very beefy. Or, maybe it needs to be more substantial. Will he run IPSEC? Will he use software compression for the file system? Custom server sofwtare, or just NET USE to some SMB share?

For your system, what does "decent" mean, in throughput numbers? How does that compare to Tman's needs?
 
Vertigo Acid said:
Mike, it's a home media server. No need to go overboard on the analysis
Click to expand...
Yep. Similarly, it would be silly to do no analysis at all. Figuring out a usage pattern and backup strategy is hardly "going overboard". It's just getting the fundamentals down.

Tman is asking for "as much as possible" hard drives, and setting "no fixed budget". So, should we suggest a nice EMC rack? If there's no budget and he needs as much storage space as possible, that's the way to go, isn't it?
 
mikeblas said:
"decent"? That machine might be vastly overpowered (if it's serving one 300 KB picture per minute, say) ; or, it might get crushed like a tiny little bug (if it's serving streams of movies, and music, and pictures to, say, a couple dozen clients).
Click to expand...
I think you may be underestimating it. I can easily fill 100mbit network with it, even spread among a dozen clients. Yes, I tried this.
mikeblas said:
For your system, what does "decent" mean, in throughput numbers? How does that compare to Tman's needs?
Click to expand...
50 MB/s reads or writes, linear; about 25 MB/s when servicing 50 threads each trying to get 1MB chunks. I haven't done anything finer-grained because I don't care. In terms of Tman's needs, this qualifies it as a good media server - DVDs are about 1MB/s, so he can probably get up to 20 clients streaming DVD video before there are problems.

Finally, "And we have no specific measure of loads that Tman show his machine" isn't a sentence in English. Looking at it now, I think you meant something like "We have no idea what kind of workload Tman plans for this machine"; before it just made no sense whatsoever to me.

PS: Did you forget your coffee today? You seem a little confrontational... :(

 
unhappy_mage said:
Finally, "And we have no specific measure of loads that Tman show his machine" isn't a sentence in English. Looking at it now, I think you meant something like "We have no idea what kind of workload Tman plans for this machine"; before it just made no sense whatsoever to me.
Click to expand...

HardForm isn't known as a bastion of grammar or spelling, particualrly in this "Gerage [sic] server" thread. I dropped a "will" between "Tman" and "show", so your guess was very close.

unhappy_mage said:
PS: Did you forget your coffee today? You seem a little confrontational... :(
Click to expand...

I don't drink coffee (and I'm allergic to seafood, so WTF am I doing in Seattle?)

Sorry for the tone; it's just that I find these threads quite frustrating becasue they so rarely do any capacity analysis. The posters infrquently provide any details about what they want the machine to really do, and so on, but continue to demand specific recommendations about exact bits of hardware. I know you were just trying to help out, so I probably shouldn't have directed that response at you.
 
great googly moogly.

I didnt mean ot start a war here guys. I dont have any idea what OS, or needs this guy has. What I am pretty sure of is the average home user needs for a file server. That was behind my Idea of a dual P3 setup vs. something far more expensive or exotic. I mean to be honest with you a dual P3 will serve 90% of most peoples needs today and down the road. I/O bandwidth is a great topic to disscuss. That said I have several computers on my home net..and I cant drag down my server which is one serious POS.

We can argue anyting till the end of time. If this guy has a wireless network though...a damn P2 400 with a decent collection of drives is plenty. His network could be the bottleneck..not drives, or CPU's, or anything else. I find it funny that we are arguing over drives and CPU's and "appropriate" when we have no clue what type of transfer rates we'll be dealing with.

I stand by my specs..and agree with everyone elses too. ALL will do the job. The question is..what the hell are we working with? Until we get something more defininte..we are really just spinning our wheels in place.


YMMV


Ghettobox
 
Ghettobox said:
I find it funny that we are arguing over drives and CPU's and "appropriate" when we have no clue what type of transfer rates we'll be dealing with.
Click to expand...
If you reread my notes, I think you'll find that I'm not "arguing" and instead that I'm asking questions to get more details. We don't know what Tman wants with any actionable degree of certainty. unhappy_mage thinks the system he proposes is "decent", but gave no metric to explain at what load level it would be "decent", or help someone else (like Tman) judge its applicability to his own application.

I can't guess what the "average home user" needs for a file server. Was there are recent study or survey to figure out what that average is? Can you fill me in on it? Lacking that information, I'd guess that the avergage home user doesn't need a dedicated file server at all.

Ghettobox said:
Until we get something more defininte..we are really just spinning our wheels in place.
Click to expand...
On that much, I agree.
 
AGAIN: guys I am very sorry for not providing you with the correct info. I am also sorry about
saying a $2g budget then none at all.

I am going to try to give you guys some more info that I really hop helps. I feel really bad
about being this much of a noob. Thank you for your time and help.

Load
- Computers acessing the mucis, stored dvd's, TV shows, etc on this pc at one time will be a max of maybe 4.
- Normal use will be about 2 (while not always constant)

Budget
- Honest I do not have one. Though I really want to keep it to around $2,000. Since I am also
building 2x HTPC's, and maybe... a main pc.

System Specks
takeing a look to what I was thinking about before and what I am thinking now. It may be
the best idea to make it simple. Have one processor with a duel motherboard for latter
expanson. Still want 1g of ram. Large power supply for later upgrades, and for HD's
instead of 12x 300g's for 3.6TB why not go for 8x 300g for 2.4TB.

That way.. if I really do need all this extra stuff.. I can easly get it. Instead of shelling out
all the extra money that may ever be used?


OS
I have nooo idea. I really need help!

SYSTEM SPECKS
Processor:
MB: (2x CPU)
Ram (1g)
Power Supply: (good for 12x HD's, 2x Processors)
etc


Thank you guys very much
 
And I know that this is my 3xed time saying this.... but guys.. I really am sorry for being
such a nOoB and not giving you guys the right info and etc ;/

The last few days I have been online 24x7 trying to learn more and etc....
soo thanks for your help. You have no idea what it means :rolleyes:
 
mikeblas said:
unhappy_mage thinks the system he proposes is "decent", but gave no metric to explain at what load level it would be "decent", or help someone else (like Tman) judge its applicability to his own application.
Click to expand...
I later gave benchmarks; don't they apply? I can stream video from it (over SMB) at the same time as a few other people. Unless he's planning to play games from a network drive or something, I can't see him needing a whole lot of I/O bandwidth.
mikeblas said:
I can't guess what the "average home user" needs for a file server. Was there are recent study or survey to figure out what that average is? Can you fill me in on it? Lacking that information, I'd guess that the avergage home user doesn't need a dedicated file server at all.
Click to expand...
What I use mine for is storage of media. 130GB of Anime, 80 of Iso files, 170 of movies, 80 of TV shows, and a few other of miscellaneous stuff. I don't need a server, but it's convenient to have another machine so I can do things with Linux and Windows at the same time, and it's a convenient abstraction - things are "on the server" or "on my machine". Then when I reformat or whatnot, I don't end up deleting things that I wish I'd kept.

OP: Try looking for a pentium 3 board on eBay or a similar service, something like this or this. Make sure that it has 64-bit pci slots. Then find a pair of processors if the board isn't bundled with any, ECC/Reg pc133 ram, and buy the set. A PC Power and Cooling power supply should be plenty for 8 drives, and probably 12 too. I'd suggest the Supermicro 8-port card I mentioned above for around $130.

As for OS, any Windows Server will let you do software raid, or Linux. If you don't use these you'll need a different sata card. If you're willing to try something new, the people in the Linux subforum will be glad to help you get software raid going. In windows it should be a little simpler, but windows server editions are expensive. You would do well to choose before you get much farther.

This would be perfect, but it's too good to be true. Price will climb a lot in the next 2.5 days if I had to guess. Bid at least $100 if you're interested IMO.

 
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