Hardware for a fileserver?

T

Tolem

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May 27, 2010
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I want to move my fileserver off my VM machine because its not getting the throughput it needs and is also taxing all the other VM's.

Im being gifted a xeon server board (not sure what model, just that it takes DDR2 800 and a 775 socket processor and does not support ECC.

I will be putting my areca 1680 controller in it with 12-16 2TB drives in raid 6.

My question is how much RAM / Processing power do I need to do this on the cheap but also preform really well so as to not bottleneck my raid array at all?

I was looking at these two components so far:
Ram:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211188 4GB or 8GB?
Processor:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117127
 
Find out what mobo you have.

4GB of RAM will be enough.
 
That will probably be fine CPU power wise unless you are doing something like file system encryption. A pure file server doesn't need that much ram although an OpenSolaris or FreeBSD based NAS with ZFS is going to be a big drain.

If your motherboard does not support ECC, there's little reason to get a Xeon over a consumer part except:
1. If you are looking at an X3430, X3440 versus an i5 750 or a i7 860
2. If you are looking for a super low power chip variant (105w that one isn't)
3. If you are planning to have an ECC supported platform in the near future

Another thought is to sell your new motherboard + your old setup (not sure what it is) and move everything to a much beefier machine. The reason I say this is that if you can keep CPU utilization low enough/ get enough cores for virtual NICs to run well, you can essentially save yourself a lot of money on the networking end. I'm guessing if you have a fileserver VM that is "taxing all the other VMs" that VM is probably putting out at minimum 5-6gbps. Which basically means you need to add more than just an Intel Pro/1000 Quad on each server to make up for the loss of virtual networks along with 8+ switch ports.

Can you tell I've been through something similar recently :)
 
No reason to get that processor. Get a Q6600 for half the price. You don't even need one for ECC memory as on socket 775, that was dependent on the chipset, not the processor (I have ECC RAM with my Q6600).
 
Q6600 is an older 65nm CPU that consumes a lot of power when idling. There is no desktop class processor produced today that consumes that much idle power.

If low idle power is important, i would focus only on recently produced processors and chipsets.

Will you be using the system as a workstation or dedicated NAS? I.e. will the network speeds dictate your performance?
 
Its a dedicated NAS, and has 2 dual gigbit nic's (so 4 ports total) which seem to be enough. Id rather use this motherboard since it was free and not have to worry about selling anything on ebay.

So everyone seems to be saying a different thing about which processor to get hah, I found a x3210 on craigslist for only $120.

Im open to models that consume less idle power as long as you think it will be enough to keep dishing out the files
 
Any newly produced Intel or AMD should do (32nm/45nm). Those generally have very low idle power consumption. A quadcore would probably be recommended, as you probably can use the parallel processing power for something useful.
 
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