• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Help Me Setup a Home Server

A

aviat72

Limp Gawd
Joined
Dec 19, 2010
Messages
508
I need some advise on setting up a home server.

Context:
My children have reached a point where they are using computers...

My six year old decided that the black screen with "Updating....." after he decided to shut-down was not good, and the best course of action would be to hard power off the PC :eek:. And then he felt that a similar action on a laptop with XP would be justified too. Took me a lot of time to recover; the desktop's OS hard-disk is showing some media errors and is not recovering ;(

My two year old also feels the need to drag laptops and tablets around the house so we can put on his favorite YouTube videos.

My wife wants a sleek looking computer (with no wires) which she can use to work with pictures and videos etc.(basically a Mac).

She also says you better have all my photos etc. backed up since the kids now know enough to cause unintended consequences

Context Technical
Our home is primarily a bunch of Windows based PCs on a home network and a tablet (Touchpad). I am planning to build a CustoMac to help my wife out.

I have been backing up on shared external hard-drives and in shared internal drives on different PCs (cross-backups) with once in a blue-moon DVD based backup for media.


Requirements
1. Would like to have a more robust solution with some build in redundancy (RAIDs).
2. It should be able to support both Windows and Macs
3. While serving media would be nice it is not a necessity; as long as we can browse pictures. We do not have a huge collection of movies etc. which we have to stream.

Resources Available
  • I have a bunch of legacy computers (e.g. Latitude D630 laptop, Pentium 4 Prescott Dell Dimension, Dell XPS 420 Q6600)
  • I have a MS Technet subscription so can play around with WHS, and also the professional Windows Server etc. before comitting.
  • Good amount of new hard-disks

Possible Solutions
  • WHS/Windows Server based: But can it serve Macs?
  • FreeNas: Does it allow restoration of PCs without too much pain like WHS does?
  • FreeNas AND WHS: Use WHS for doing PC backups;
    Run FreeNas for MAC and general Media sharing

What do you folks here suggest?
 
On the actions of your kids...the reason that happens is you allowed it to happen. Seriously, if you don't correct this now it will come back and bight you in the form of spending a shit ton more money on electronics or spending hours undoing a mistake. My SIL's are spending between $600-$1000/year replacing stuff their kids "broke". I have also stopped providing IT support to fix things. I know electronics are more rugged than ever, but they are not child proof.

As for a server. If you are a man with a family, I would highly recommend WHS 2011 with drivebender. It will do everything you need and allow a low level of effort on your part required. It does support MAC's. Furthermore with WHS2011 you can create a login for your children which will allow you to not only hide data on the server but also make it READ ONLY. It is all done with a nice GUI interface. However WHS + DB is not efficient on space usage (since duplication is pretty much RAID1). But, if you are not a datawhore...then it won't hurt the wallet too bad.
 
Stick with WHS v1. Don't trust your precious data to Drivebender or any of the other 3rd party add ons for WHS v2.
 
The kids have been told that the power button is not to be touched; they are good kids.

I would rather not use the 3rd party apps with WHS.

Now how exactly does WHS support MACs? Will MACs be able to see the WHS as a remote disk? What about the backups?
 
Last edited:
Context:
My children have reached a point where they are using computers...

My six year old decided that the black screen with "Updating....." after he decided to shut-down was not good, and the best course of action would be to hard power off the PC . And then he felt that a similar action on a laptop with XP would be justified too. Took me a lot of time to recover; the desktop's OS hard-disk is showing some media errors and is not recovering ;(

My two year old also feels the need to drag laptops and tablets around the house so we can put on his favorite YouTube videos.

My wife wants a sleek looking computer (with no wires) which she can use to work with pictures and videos etc.(basically a Mac).

She also says you better have all my photos etc. backed up since the kids now know enough to cause unintended consequences
Click to expand...
LOL!

I know children are the light of people's lives but damn, I'm glad I made the decision to never have any. :D
 
  • It seems that you can not use Lion with WHS without some more hacks :(

    http://www.wegotserved.com/2011/10/21/os-lion-apple-mac-windows-home-server/
    As many users know, Mac OS X Lion will no longer backup to a Windows (SMB/CIFS) shared folder when using Time Machine. Only HFS+J formatted USB drives and AFP shares will work. Luckily, an open source package exists that provides support for AFP and Bonjour on Windows Home Server, called Netatalk. Though it was originally developed for Unix systems, it is possible to load a very small Linux virtual machine (<384MB of space) which will host Netatalk, and be configured to run at startup like a service. Follow this guide and you&#8217;ll be able to backup your Mac once again to Windows Home Server
    Click to expand...
  • It seems FreeNas might be the best way of doing backups which are portable across Windows/Macs. But even there Apple is trying its best to disable it with Lion not supporting some older authentication standards to use legacy AFP services, a decision they luckily have reversed http://support.apple.com/kb/HT4700

  • Are there good backup software's available which work with FreeNAS or do people just use the Windows backup utility?

  • After hearing so much about ZFS I am tempted to try it out with RAID-Z. Any pointers are welcome.




On a different note, I really wish Microsoft learnt to write better documentation or introduction. Right now it is a mish-mash. They are trying to make it simple to use and keep technical details away form the end-user like Macs but often interrupt the presentation with technical details which the average user would have little idea about. So the worst of both worlds!
 
Last edited:
The latest netatalk supports the newer AFP protocol (which is what is required to get time machine support in lion). You can run this under FreeNas, though I don't know if it comes by default.
 
danman said:
Stick with WHS v1. Don't trust your precious data to Drivebender or any of the other 3rd party add ons for WHS v2.
Click to expand...

Please cite sources of cases where Drivebender has been destroying data.

I've been watching DB for a while now and have not seen anything since beta 2. Or do we want to start talk about how WHS fucked 1000's of people when it first came out?
 
Kids will be kids so why not try to remove the "power switch" for the time being.

1. All the recent hardware and PSUs can support a power up by the keyboard (you will need to read your motherboard manual to see how to set it up)

2. You have a home network and you have a router. This router may allow or if not possible may have a third source firmware such as DD-WRT that can allow the remote power-up of the computers on your LAN. The only bad thing here is that if you remove the "power switch" of all the desktop computers you will have to allow wireless access to your router control panel and this is a security risk - but this depends from where you live.

Regarding the home server - they are other solutions that are available - such as FlexRaid (free) or Unraid (free up to 3 drives).

The important thing IMHO is to have a small but low power (30-50 Watts) headless server running 24/7 hidden and locked somewhere in your home to keep the kids away.
 
Question: For RAIDZ1 I am thinking of putting four 2TB drives. I already have 2 Samsung 2TB Drives. There is that great Best Buy deal on Seagate 2TB drives right now. Would it be a problem for ZFS if I put these two pairs of drives in a single vdev? Or is it strongly recommended that I use the same hard-disks for all the four disks?

bcbgboy: I think that power thingy was one off. I am going to be building a ZFS Nas next.
 
aviat72 said:
Question: For RAIDZ1 I am thinking of putting four 2TB drives. I already have 2 Samsung 2TB Drives. There is that great Best Buy deal on Seagate 2TB drives right now. Would it be a problem for ZFS if I put these two pairs of drives in a single vdev? Or is it strongly recommended that I use the same hard-disks for all the four disks?

bcbgboy: I think that power thingy was one off. I am going to be building a ZFS Nas next.
Click to expand...

No issues with diff. drives.

Also, iirc, napp-it has an AFP plugin...install Solaris 11 Express and napp-it, and your nas needs are sorted.
 
davros123 said:
No issues with diff. drives.

Also, iirc, napp-it has an AFP plugin...install Solaris 11 Express and napp-it, and your nas needs are sorted.
Click to expand...

Thanks. By the time I got to the point of ordering it was all gone..
 
I think I was able to score some of the 2TB Seagate drives.

The next question is the hardware. I think I will go with new setup rather than reusing what I already have.

I will be getting an i5 2500k tomorrow from MC for my CustoMac build and get $60 off a Z68,P68 motherboard. What would be an appropriate setup for the ZFS NAS? I am thinking a microATX motherboard with a low end SB core. What do you recommend?
 
Something simple, a dual core system with 2-4gb of ram should be fine, if all that its doing is data backup/storage.

Core i3 maybe>?
 
Just to be clear: Are you using that $60 off mobo for the 2500K setup or whatever mobo you're getting from that $60 off deal will be used for the server?

CPU wise, the Core i3 2100 should work fine and is on sale from MC for $100.
 
Danny:
The i5 goes into the CustoMac along with an miniITX board (MC does not have any Z68/P68 mITX). I just want to use the $60 off to get a board which I can use for the NAS since she has rejected the microATX form-factor which I had originally planned to use.

Most probably will pick up the Gigabyte mATX board. I would rather stick with LGA 1155 for the flexibility it offers for the next years.

That Pentium 620 looks interesting. How does it compare with the i3 2100 for the ZFS serving tasks?

Intel Celeron G530 2.4GHz LGA 1155 Boxed Dual Core Processor
$39.99

Intel Pentium G620 2.6GHz LGA 1155 Boxed Processor
$59.99

Intel Core i3 2100 LGA 1155 3.1GHz Boxed Processor
$99.99

Intel Core i3 2125 LGA 1155 Boxed Processor
$159
 
Last edited:
The Pentium G620 should be ok for ZFS as well. But not sure what's exactly the difference in ZFS performance.

Yeah a Gigabyte mATX LGA 1155 mobo with four RAM slots sounds good.
 
The itch continues.

Can I virtualize and run both a ZFS-FreeNas and a WHS on the same box?

Can someone give me a pointer to a 101 type tutorial on what would be the most appropriate hardware software combo?

What I would like to do is have windows backed on WHS and everything else on the FreeNas.
 
Thanks Danny. I have zero experience with virtualization so it will be a long and winding road. The only thing I am concerned about is the hardware recommendation. It is talking about server boards and Xeons. I see too many $$ signs there.

I am not even sure how the whole virtualization thingy works. The previous WHS had its own drive management stuff while the new one relies on the hardware. Supposed I want to use the onboard RAID for the WHS and the ZFS RAIDZ for the FreeNas, how will the whole thing be setup? I am not getting the concept clear. Or will I have a FreeNas running and the WHS will use the server for storage?
 
aviat72 said:
Thanks Danny. I have zero experience with virtualization so it will be a long and winding road. The only thing I am concerned about is the hardware recommendation. It is talking about server boards and Xeons. I see too many $$ signs there.
Click to expand...
Well that kind of hardware does have a higher chance of success for virtualization and such.
aviat72 said:
I am not even sure how the whole virtualization thingy works.
Click to expand...

Highly recommend reading this FAQ then:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1366895
aviat72 said:
The previous WHS had its own drive management stuff while the new one relies on the hardware. Supposed I want to use the onboard RAID for the WHS and the ZFS RAIDZ for the FreeNas, how will the whole thing be setup?
Click to expand...
As far as I know, you can't pass the onboard RAID array to the virtual machine.
 
ChrisBenn said:
The xeon stuff isn't really that much more expensive figure another 100 max (and maybe less) for motherboard/processor/memory for a xeon vs. non xeon setup. What's your target price range?
Click to expand...

As low as possible. That is the fun part ;) with the the right specs.
I was thinking of Windows Home Server to back up the PCs. Everything else will be on the ZFS-Indiana thingy anyway. I think I should be able to backup the PCs also with some of the free backup software (Windows 7 HP network backup issue; I hate MS for removing features which worked in previous OS). So WHS is not really needed. It is just that my tech net subscription is ending in two weeks and I have hardly made use of anything as I experiment and develop my home environment. So the itch to put the WHS somewhere.
 
You should grab keys off Technet before it expires, I believe you can still use those keys later to install the OS.
 
I have been exploring different options. In the beginning I will start with a basic ZFS based server. In the future I may run a VM on it, supporting multiple servers. Hence the hardware choice will be influenced by ESXi compatibility and Vt-D support.

The workload is not going to be high. It will be primarily for backups and occasional use of files. I will be replacing all the home laptops HD with 60GB SSDs so their local storage will be limited.

(1) HBA Needed?: My initial impulse is to go with a board which has a LOT of SATA ports and use those onboard sata ports to add hard drives. However most people tend to go with dedicated HBA cards. I was wondering what exactly is so special about these HBA cards which the on-board controllers do not have? If I can get a board with 8 ports, I should be able to attach 8 hard disks which should be sufficient for my tasks.

(2) CPU/Motherboard Consideration: I also read a bit about the AMD Fusion platform which has low power CPUs and was wondering whether it is going to be worth it going for them vs an i5 2500 + Q67 platform (primarily for Vt-d support)? But then I look at the performance comparison, and the horse power available on the i5 is amazing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Fusion#Processing_power

Even though i5 has a much higher TDP, the idle load power consumption is quite small. Somehow I feel that it is perhaps worth it to spend that little bit more and have the power to run more powerful stuff in the future.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/...core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/21

Thoughts?


(3) Virtualization: I have not found too many white box lists for ESXi 5.0. What are folks using now?

MrCrispy said:
You should grab keys off Technet before it expires, I believe you can still use those keys later to install the OS.
Click to expand...

Yeah, will do.
 
Last edited:
aviat72 said:
(1) HBA Needed?: My initial impulse is to go with a board which has a LOT of SATA ports and use those onboard sata ports to add hard drives. However most people tend to go with dedicated HBA cards. I was wondering what exactly is so special about these HBA cards which the on-board controllers do not have? If I can get a board with 8 ports, I should be able to attach 8 hard disks which should be sufficient for my tasks.
Click to expand...
Off the top of my head:
1) The ability to pass the entire controller via Vt-D to a virtual machine. AFAIK, you can't do that with current onboard storage controllers. However, even without Vt-D support or a seperate controller, you can still have individual drives show up in a virtual machine via Raw Device Mapping or something similar. Then the VM can use the drives however it wants to. But you get lower performance via that route IIRC.

2) The ability to use SAS expanders which will allow you to add the capability to support an additional 32+ hard drives.

3) Sometimes it's more cost-effective to buy a HBA than a mobo that has 8 or more SATA slots.

4) For some people, 6-8 SATA ports aren't enough and therefore a HBA will be needed to use/get additional hard drives

aviat72 said:
(2) CPU/Motherboard Consideration: I also read a bit about the AMD Fusion platform which has low power CPUs and was wondering whether it is going to be worth it going for them vs an i5 2500 + Q67 platform (primarily for Vt-d support)? But then I look at the performance comparison, and the horse power available on the i5 is amazing.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMD_Fusion#Processing_power

Even though i5 has a much higher TDP, the idle load power consumption is quite small. Somehow I feel that it is perhaps worth it to spend that little bit more and have the power to run more powerful stuff in the future.
http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/...core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/21

Thoughts?
Click to expand...
Go Intel. However do note that of the four actual Q67 mobos currently available on Newegg, only one has more than 4 SATA ports and that one mobo maxes out at six SATA ports.
aviat72 said:
(3) Virtualization: I have not found too many white box lists for ESXi 5.0. What are folks using now?
Click to expand...
Well a lot of people are using server grade motherboards and such since those have a higher chance of compability with ESXi.

Some sample ESXi related build threads to look at:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1640563
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1650366
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1641135

Yes similar recommendations/
 
Danny, thanks a lot for the links.

I need redundant internet connections for my office and so far my iPhone tethered was working as the backup connection (used five times in the past 2 years). I am thinking of getting a new iPhone 4S tomorrow (have a reservation at the Apple Store) and that may mean that my backup connection will no longer work.

So I might end up ordering a DSL backup connection BUT will now need a dual wan router. Which brings me up the issue of using a pfsense or other distro to run it. And then the whole thought process of running it on a virtualized sandybridge begins......

So now I am thinking a machine which does the following:

-> Runs a simple dual-WAN firewall router
-> Runs a RaidZ based file server for centralized storage and backups
-> Runs a WHS for Windows related tasks.

A single box running an i5 2500 type (or its Xeon version) Sandybridge will have more than sufficient power to do it. The question of course is whether it worth it to do it or perhaps keep the scope of the project limited...
 
It is certainly possible that setup a ESXi setup like the way you want as shown by these threads:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1637335
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1650703
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1626857
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1596200
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1612069

Depending on what motherboard you buy, you're looking at around an extra $30 to $100 for router capability (Extra NICs more or less) with that server and depending on how you setup the ESXi server as well.
 
Beta4Me said:
Why are you so keen to run a software router on your server?
Click to expand...

Well any decent dual WAN router is around $200. That is almost the cost of a full-fledged machine.

FWIW I have a DRDT compatible routers at home, the E2000 Gigabit from Cisco.

Also have a Trendent TEW652BRP (V2.1R is unfortunately not in the DD-WRT Database), and a Verizon/Westell 2501.

Was wondering if I could just use DRDT on the E2000 to use it as a dual WAN router. There is some documentation but it is very sparse. Goal is failover.
 
ZFS needs 1GB memory / TB managed + ECC Memory ... i5 doesn't care about ECC !

So is it realy safe to run OpenIndiana + Napp-it without ECC memory ??

Cheers.
 
OK. This server is finally getting built.

I have 5 2TB Seagate Drives. These are the retail version with the 5 year warranty. Plan is to create a 3+1+1 (one parity + one spare disk). For the time being I am not doing any virtualization.

I am using a Sandybridge Pentium G620. Motherboard is likely going to be a Gigabyte Z68 mATX board which I had picked up at Microcenter. It has six SATA ports.

I might just migrate it to something more Vt-D friendly eventually.

I picked up two PCIe HighPoint 620 cards which allow the addition of two drives each. I think that will be more than sufficient for my needs.

Now which OS should I use:
OpenIndiana
or
the Solaris Express
 
I tried running the live USB of Open Indiana 151a but could not get past the license message on the test Gigabyte Z68 motherboard.

The motherboard is very simple with Realtek network and audio chips, Six Intel Sata ports, and USB ports driven by the Intel controller. It has an ITE IT8728 sensor chip. Not sure which chip is causing the problem :(
====
Disabled the USB3.0 and some other controllers on the BIOS and I got into the GUI :)
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top