Hardware Raid for Movie Server

[Powerhouse2k]

I have a question for the hardware RAID Guru's out there. Currently I have a system setup as a Server (Vista x64), with two Seagate 1TB drives, and two 500GB drives. I use the Server for storing all my DVD's using Vista Media Center with MyMovies. I have 3 PC's throughout the house that connect to this Server to stream the movie content (including one connected to my Home Theatre).

So far this has worked out great, but the problem for me has always been Storage running out, and the speed of navigating through MyMovies and actually starting the movies (which tend to take 30+ seconds at times, longer if multiple machines are streaming movies). To fix these issues, I intend to put a 60gig OCZ Vertex drive as the boot OS (which should speed up scrolling and searching through the MyMovies database), and get a hardware RAID card to hopefully speed up the pausing before each movie starts. The RAID would also provide me with greater storage potential (as I have the motherboard SATA headers maxed out now), and allow me some redundancy should a drive go bad (I don't intend to re-rip over 600 movies). My thoughts were to get a RAID card that will do RAID 6 (for the added redundancy), with six 2TB drives (so it will be n+2 for a total of 8TB of data on 4 drives, with 2 extra drives for parity).

So far my choices for cards have come down to the following:

Adaptec 3805 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816103086

Areca ACR-1220 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816131004

Highpoint RocketRaid 4320 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115056

I chose these cards, based on the number of Drives that can connect to them (as I will be using 6 initially, but can expand to 8 drives in the future), and the price (as I want to keep it as inexpensive as possible).

So my questions for you all would be, am I missing anything by going with these cards vs. some other hardware RAID card? Will using a RAID card actually speed up launching of movies on multiple PC's? Should I switch from Vista x64 to Windows Server 2008 or even Windows Home Server? Anyone have experience with the above cards and Windows7 x64?

Please let me know your thoughts, as I don't want to make a mistake on a large purchase like this.

Thanks for the help.

 

[CrankyX]

So I do pretty much the exact same thing, except I don't use MyMovies with VMC. I just use the built in DVD Library and coupled it with DVD Library Manager (Via the Green button)

From a server standpoint I use an Areca ARC-1230 for 2 raid 6 arrays. One array uses 6 500GB WD Green and the other uses 6 1TB WD Blacks. I still notice the initial load time for the dvd library in VMC but playing, switching movies and fast forward are damn near instant. There is no lag once the DVD covers load. I have never used a highpoint card but my experience with Areca has been awesome, setup was easy enough, online raid expansion is a great feature and I have had no issues with day to day operation. OS wise it uses XP x64 and boots from a 150GB raptor (didn't feel like messing with limits on partition sizes) I just share the DVD folder and mount it as a mapped network drive on the VMC pc's. I am avidly looking into switching to Windows Home Server but ATM XP x64 does what I need it todo. I went with RAID 6 aswell for the extra parity and so far so good, one greenpower took a dump and I was able to watch a movie while the array was rebuilding.

I have been looking into reducing the lag time to load the library itself but from what I have read there isn't a good way, because the cover art is not cached anywhere and it reads it from the individual movie folders it's going to be slow.

A hardware raid card will speed up performance of playback and multiple streams (I have tested it with 4 and no issues arose for me)

That's my 2 cents let me know if you want to know anything else, good luck.

 

[geiger]

What are the specs on the Vista machine? How are you storing the movies(.DVR-MS, VIDEO_TS, ISO)?

I am running MyMovies on WHS with no raid and it works flawlessly. I have instant load times on my extenders.

 

[epimetheus]

IMO Raid isn't necessary for streaming movies, even HD. Most late model hard drives can push near 100MB/s by themselves. HD streams typically aren't more than 5-7MB/s. What good would RAID serve when gigabit networking is going to limit you to a 125MB/s theoretical max anyway? If it's protection against drive failure that you're looking for, then RAID is a fine choice, but if it's speed, don't bother.

 

[Neb]

IMO Raid isn't necessary for streaming movies, even HD. Most late model hard drives can push near 100MB/s by themselves. HD streams typically aren't more than 5-7MB/s. What good would RAID serve when gigabit networking is going to limit you to a 125MB/s theoretical max anyway? If it's protection against drive failure that you're looking for, then RAID is a fine choice, but if it's speed, don't bother.

I must agree with this; I use a WHS setup with WD green drives and have no issue streaming HD over the network

 

[epimetheus]

I've got a WHS setup with WD Green drives as well. More than happy with it.

 

[brandinb]

I recommend software raid and you save the money of the hardware raid controller for more drives. I also recommend very highly vista or server 2008 for the server os as they have the best network performance out of the box especially server 2008. Try dreamspark from microsoft for a free server 2008 license.

Also one point that everybody seems to ignor with software raid is the portability. you can take your raid drives from your server and plug them into any windows desktop and they are instantly recognized and you can get the data or even rebuild the array or whatever. When your hardware raid controller dies you have to buy a new one and pray..... unless you need super good speed and dont care about actual data security that software raid provides then hardware raid is fine but hardware raid is not cool for my purposes and i can easily max out a gigabit connection with 3 simple terrabyte drives in raid5 on software raid under server 2008 so that seems fine. Writes are not as good but i hardly write.


Also to help with performance issues you should load the server with a ton of ram. In my experience file servers with 8gb ram using server 2008 will provide stutter free perfect performance on huge files up to 6gb or so all in the server buffer. I dont think expensive ssd would help much on your performance issues.

 

[epimetheus]

Server 2008 and 8GB Ram is way overkill for a movie server IMO. Heck a single WD Green drive can in reality max a gigabit connection. I prefer the storage pool and selective redundancy features offered by WHS, and the shear simplicity in not having to screw with anything. It just works.

 

[farscapesg1]

I used to think that I needed RAID 5 for my file server at home, but after setting up WHS I am more than happy with it's duplication feature (along with all the other features and simplicity). Personally, I don't have that large of a DVD collection that if I had to re-rip them it would be a pain, but not enough of one to justify a RAID card. I only really duplicate the important stuff (documents, pictures, my daughter's cartoons.... just for sanity's sake ). Everything else can be fairly easily duplicated (TV shows, software, etc.) so it doesn't really warrant the hard drive space required for duplication...

As for performance, I haven't had any issues with starting up DVD rips TV recordings, AVI files, etc. I don't see where a performance increase from RAID would really be needed.

BTW, Microsoft doesn't actually support RAID in Windows Home Server. Some people have done it, but if you actually need support you will be SOL. But, for the $99 pricetag for WHS, it is hard to pass up when compared to a full server license....

 

[geiger]

For the cost of one of those raid cards you can easily get a WHS license, SM Jbod card, and decent NIC.

 

[Archer75]

Yeah, my WHS machine an mymovies on my HTPC results in instant load times.

 

[nitrobass24]

IMO Raid isn't necessary for streaming movies, even HD. Most late model hard drives can push near 100MB/s by themselves. HD streams typically aren't more than 5-7MB/s. What good would RAID serve when gigabit networking is going to limit you to a 125MB/s theoretical max anyway? If it's protection against drive failure that you're looking for, then RAID is a fine choice, but if it's speed, don't bother.

QFMFT

Also one point that everybody seems to ignor with software raid is the portability. you can take your raid drives from your server and plug them into any windows desktop and they are instantly recognized and you can get the data or even rebuild the array or whatever. When your hardware raid controller dies you have to buy a new one and pray..... unless you need super good speed and dont care about actual data security that software raid provides then hardware raid is fine but hardware raid is not cool for my purposes and i can easily max out a gigabit connection with 3 simple terrabyte drives in raid5 on software raid under server 2008 so that seems fine. Writes are not as good but i hardly write.

Software raid under windows sux....bottom line. If you ever have to write something to the array like say some new movies it will take hours.
Yes it has some portability, but so does HW raid. I just moved my array from one system to another no problems. Also WHS has portability...pull a drive and plug it in to a windows box and you can read/write to it.

Also to help with performance issues you should load the server with a ton of ram. In my experience file servers with 8gb ram using server 2008 will provide stutter free perfect performance on huge files up to 6gb or so all in the server buffer. I dont think expensive ssd would help much on your performance issues.

Seriously? 8gb? Were streaming movies here not launching a spaceship.
2gb is plenty for most mediaservers. Personally I run 4gb because i have quite a large collection, and MyMovies Database has become large in the process and SQLserver utilizes the ram. Helps when loading the covers over the network.

For the cost of one of those raid cards you can easily get a WHS license, SM Jbod card, and decent NIC.

Or more drives.

Personally if I were building a new Mediaserver heres what I would do.
I would use WHS. Single drive speed will almost saturate the gbe theoretical max of 125mb/s, and will surely max most onboard gbe controllers on consumer boards.
This way you dont have to buy a ton of HDD's at the same time, and you can use what you already have.
If you need more sata ports get a SM SAT2-MV8....8ports 100 bucks.
4gb of ram....Mymovies will use it, if you have a large collection. If not 2gb will work fine.

I use WHS w/ MyMovies and i have near instant playback on my HTPC's no stuttering even when playing multiple movies on multiple computers.....ive tested 4 at a time, as well there are only so many people in my house that can at a screen at any one time. When running 4 my loads, and fastforward/reverse was not as fast, but playback was no problem.

 

[georgexi]

i'm running WHS on a server with multiple 1.5tb drives. no RAID at all. streams HD movies just fine.
like others have said, for the price of that expensive RAID card, you can pick up multiple 1.5tb drives

 

[Powerhouse2k]

Sorry for the delay in replying everyone, I've been out of town for the past 5 days, but I do appreciate the info you have all given me.

So to answer a few questions:

1. The server is running on an Abit AN8-SLI board running a 2GHz Dualcore AMD low power 'Barton' CPU with 2Gigs of Memory. It has 4 SATA 3G ports (two 500Gig and two 1Terabyte drives) and an IDE DVD/CDROM drive. It has a ATI 4650 video card as well, since I have it connected via HDMI to a 42" Westinghouse TV.

2. All of my Movies are complete DVD Rips using Video_TS. I currently haven't ripped any of my Blu-Ray movies, as they take up way to much space. Of my DVD movies, I have over 350 on my Server.

3. Although I said Movie Server, in reality, I also store over 100Gigs of my CD music, as well as Family photos, and all the software I own on the server as well.

4. Now I haven't lost a Hard Drive yet, but I do worry about one going bad, and me losing the data. I've made DVD backups of the most important stuff of course, but restoring all that data, in addition to re-ripping all my movies (should I lose one of those drives) would suck major balls.

5. Wasn't really looking at the speed as much as I was looking at the HDD Expandability, as well as the added protection provided by RAID 6 (or maybe 5).


Windows Home Server has intrigued me, but its problems with RAID controllers were putting me off. Still, I may give it a try, does anyone know if its 64bit or just 32bit?

Also, I will probably be upgrading the memory on this system to 4Gigs total (too cheap not too). I am also interested in the SM SAT2-MV8, but read on Newegg that it is a PCI-X card that can work with PCI, but I was kinda wanting a PCI-Express card. Have any info on a good quality one?

Again thanks for all the comments guys, keep them comming.

 

[nitrobass24]

Well I don't know of whs not working with any raid controllers.
WHS is just a flavor if you will of win2k3 so if there are 2003 drivers it will work.

This version of WHS is only 32 bit
The next version will be only 64bit and based on 2008r2

Whs is the most expanible system I know of. It let's you use any size drive internal or external.

Supermicro also makes a pci-e version. Its the saslp-mv8

 

[pissboy]

3. Although I said Movie Server, in reality, I also store over 100Gigs of my CD music, as well as Family photos, and all the software I own on the server as well.

4. Now I haven't lost a Hard Drive yet, but I do worry about one going bad, and me losing the data. I've made DVD backups of the most important stuff of course, but restoring all that data, in addition to re-ripping all my movies (should I lose one of those drives) would suck major balls.

5. Wasn't really looking at the speed as much as I was looking at the HDD Expandability, as well as the added protection provided by RAID 6 (or maybe 5).

RAID is not a backup. RAID is not a backup. RAID IS NOT A BACKUP. I cannot stress this enough. If you have something important (photos) it should be on multiple media formats in multiple locations.

I ended up re-ripping over 3TB of media because I thought RAID5+spare would be sufficient. Then my controller thought 4 drives died on me, at the same time (bad cable).

 

[Adidas4275]

i agree raid 5 isnt a backup but almost no one here has a complete backup of their ripped DVD....

and most on WHS turn off folder duplication on their movies...


also the idea that a RAID card will cost you the same as 2 or more 1tb+ drives is FALSE.

Highpoint and Dell Perc/5 are both 2 good options.

I have 3 HP cards that I got for less than $200 for all 3. I have a 2 2300s and a 2400 that is 12 drives in 2 RAID 5s. with one 2300 as a backup.

I HATED WHS b/c of the mirroring backup, i could not afford 2x drive space of all my movies.

I now have all my movies in a RAID 5 so at a min i can deal with 1 drive failure... i even have a hotspare, so i can deal with 2 drive dying in a 24 hr period of time....


WHS is great for its addins and such, but i hated that i needed to buy Professional grade software for it since home versions wouldnt load since they see it as a Server 2003 OS.


I pay for Mozy Home backup at $60 a year for unlimited backup and i put it on my "server" which is running W7 RC for homegroup sharring and i can backup remotely all my computers on the network for $60 a year., serve my movies and have RAID 5 for 100's less than it would have costed me with WHS.


I like WHS and when i have the $$ to build another machine I will build a 1U WHS that is used for imaged based backups and remote access only and still have my movie server be W7 box.


also I can use 7MC to record TV when my HTPC is turned off and it is shared on the network to my other W7 computers.


WHS has great potential, but i doesnt fit all needs... i tried it as a VM and Host OS and did not get it to work for the best $ per GB

 

[sabregen]

I now have all my movies in a RAID 5 so at a min i can deal with 1 drive failure... i even have a hotspare, so i can deal with 2 drive dying in a 24 hr period of time....

This is only true is your RAID's auto-rebuild function (denoted by the creation of a hot spare) doesn't throw a bit error during the rebuild (re-calculation of parity) the RAID-5 set. If it does, you will lose everything. This is exactly what RAID-6 was developed for. I'm not saying that it's likely that you'll encounter a second error in the array, or that it will happen during rebuild. But, it does happen, and when it does, your single level of parity is FTL.

 

[nitrobass24]

This is only true is your RAID's auto-rebuild function (denoted by the creation of a hot spare) doesn't throw a bit error during the rebuild (re-calculation of parity) the RAID-5 set. If it does, you will lose everything. This is exactly what RAID-6 was developed for. I'm not saying that it's likely that you'll encounter a second error in the array, or that it will happen during rebuild. But, it does happen, and when it does, your single level of parity is FTL.

It is also much more likely to occur with higher capacity drives.

 

[Adidas4275]

This is only true is your RAID's auto-rebuild function (denoted by the creation of a hot spare) doesn't throw a bit error during the rebuild (re-calculation of parity) the RAID-5 set. If it does, you will lose everything. This is exactly what RAID-6 was developed for. I'm not saying that it's likely that you'll encounter a second error in the array, or that it will happen during rebuild. But, it does happen, and when it does, your single level of parity is FTL.

yep you are right, but it provides more uptime than no raid, and all my important info is synced between 3 PCs via dropbox and remote backup with Mozy.




my movies are the only data that is only on the RAID 5 array......

 

[Ockie]

I stream HD from WHS single pooled drives with no stuttering, stopping, or anything of that nature.

 

[Powerhouse2k]

Please note, I never said playing movies would stutter, I said that there is a delay when they first start, sometimes as much as 30 seconds. I have been working on my Server today, and believe this might be caused by Power Saving mode on the HDD (which is weird, as I set the Server to High Performance Mode). I'll test this over the next few days to see if this is indeed the reason for the delay (but I bet it is).

Believe me, I know RAID is not a BACKUP, but since I'm not backing up all the Movies I RIP, I was going to use the RAID as a kind of 'just-in-case' there is a HDD problem. The RAID 6 I'm looking at was just for the bit error possibility.

For you RAID users out there, do you set your drives to power down (go in power saving mode), or is this something that RAID setups can do? Also, if your RAID is setup for power saving, does this cause delays when starting movies?