Help with CPU/Mobo +? for media server

J

j.yonke

Weaksauce
Joined
Jan 28, 2008
Messages
109
I have decided to build a stand alone file server for all my music and videos. I will be using samba with Ubuntu server 10.10 streaming to an Acer Revo with XBMC. I already have the following.

1. LIAN LI PC-Q08B
2. "generic" 450w modular PSU
3. 2x512mb OEM HP DDR2
4. 250GB Maxtor sata HD
5. 1TB Hitahi 7200 RPM HD

I plan on maxing out the case with 6 2TB hard drives in the next year or two, and will be doing it with a to be determined PCI sata card since most mITX boards have 2 maybe 4 sata ports. I can not decide if I should go the Intel Atom route, or I also have an older AMD X2 4000+ lying around that I could reuse. The only thing I will be using this for (at the time being) is a simple filer server, so the low power usage is a plus over the long haul. The X2 gives me some more CPU grunt if I never need it, but at that point I think I would be better off just assembling another home server if I need the power. The most intensive task this will be used for is streaming compressed 1080p video and it will NOT be transcoding anything.

Here are the 2 boards I have been looking at. Any thoughts/input is appreciated

Atom

AMD
 
Building a cheap server, you may want to think Athlon II X2 260. Power consumption is more than the Atoms, but the D410/ D510's associated NM10 chipset is really bad for servers.

If you can, swing for a dual core Atom D510. 64-bit and basically twice the processing power of the D410 for only a tiny bit more power consumption.

If you really wanted, something like a Supermicro X7SPA-HF might be interesting except that it uses SODIMMS. 6 onboard ports (ICH9R instead of NM10 SATA), dual Intel LAN, IPMI for a kernel freak-out, and a PCIe slot too. It is way more than a cheap D410 board, but it has way more built in and you can basically expand the thing to run 20+ drives with the PCIe port there while still having dual LAN ports. Just a thought.
 
An Atom will have enough power for streaming and Gbit Samba transfers, another vote for the Supermicro board.
 
That SuperMicro board it tempting, but way out of my tiny budget I set for this build. So no one has any love for the older Athlon X2 4k+? I figured it would provide a little more grunt than any Atom cpu at the moment, and be at around the same cost.
 
....oh man you just made my day by finding that Supermicro board... ive been looking for something like that!
 
Atherton213 said:
....oh man you just made my day by finding that Supermicro board... ive been looking for something like that!
Click to expand...

Just as a FYI they have announced the D525 variant but I cannot find them in stock anywhere. Not that it is a huge difference, but they are probably going to be available soon.
 
i have a 20TB file server...i went with an AMD64 5200+ 4GB DDR2 memory. i went with stuff i had laying arround. and i am happy i did. as you find more fo your file server to do. like Live transcoding you will really see how slow the ATOM setups are. now if your Buget is Tiny i would really think hard about using what you have laying arround.

the most important parts are the PSU and Hard drive controller.

Here is a link to my server specs.
 
Nerdydave said:
i have a 20TB file server...i went with an AMD64 5200+ 4GB DDR2 memory. i went with stuff i had laying arround. and i am happy i did. as you find more fo your file server to do. like Live transcoding you will really see how slow the ATOM setups are. now if your Buget is Tiny i would really think hard about using what you have laying arround.

the most important parts are the PSU and Hard drive controller.

Here is a link to my server specs.
Click to expand...

1. You should try Firefox. It underlines spelling mistakes for you. Although it doesn't seem important, it helps when people search the forums to have things like "for", "around" and "budget" spelled correctly.
2. The Data Storage Systems forum has a LOT of information about people who have large storage servers. You will see, through threads and the search feature, that many people here have done a similar setup to your using hardware lying around before realizing that moving to a flexible, expandable setup makes a lot of sense. For example, my first Windows Home Server had around 17-20TB (2TB disks were not available at the time) and was based off of mostly consumer parts, save for the Adaptec RAID controller. I ended up having to re-build about a year later and now have a system pushing over 70TB with plenty of room to grow. Bottom line, it would have actually been cheaper to spend the money up front.
3. You *really* want to use a BBU with your 1880i. Without BBWC you are basically wasting money on a high-end RAID controller.
4. For this particular user a hard drive controller is likely irrelevant since Linux has a good software RAID solution if one is on a budget.
5. An AMD64 X2 5200+ will not handle Vail real-time transcoding despite being 2-2.5x as fast as the Atom D510 for things like x264 encoding.

Just some thoughts.
 
I got that awesome raid controller to move to raid later. It is also able to expand a raid array. I messed with raid before I went with single drives. I don't think the author should get A $1000 raid card like I did. I I really do think you should go with a raid card. Using a pci express raid card.

1. RAID runs a lot better on a dedicated card
2. A decent raid controller will put your onboard raid to shame
3. Software RAID performance sucks. And takes your CPU to process the raid
4. Linux is a freaking pain! Using windows is so much easer.

Your rebuild why? I can easy expand my raid array I can even upgrade the mb with outdoing much. My card supports HDD over 2TB. I have 10 of 16 and that does not include expanderds. I may go check why it cost you more then just setting it with room to growin the first place.

For the author what kind of compression you going to use on your movies? Or how many gigs per movie. At 14GB per movie your looking at around 50+ movies per 1TB. If you really lower the bit rate a bit to get the files to under 4GB you would get 200+ movies per 1TB
 
Nerdydave said:
1. RAID runs a lot better on a dedicated card
2. A decent raid controller will put your onboard raid to shame
3. Software RAID performance sucks. And takes your CPU to process the raid
4. Linux is a freaking pain! Using windows is so much easer.

Your rebuild why? I can easy expand my raid array I can even upgrade the mb with outdoing much. My card supports HDD over 2TB. I have 10 of 16 and that does not include expanderds. I may go check why it cost you more then just setting it with room to growin the first place.
Click to expand...

1. Certainly pros and cons to that approach (I use Areca, Adaptec, and LSI controllers so I have some perspective on that.) For example, does your card do triple parity RAID?
2. Onboard... Intel ICH or AMD RAID no question. Many server boards have onboard RAID controllers though. What $1,000 RAID cards do not do is de-dupe (WHS and ZFS do this for example).
3. Performance sucks. OK :) Any idea how much CPU it takes (on a modern CPU) to process reads/ writes at 2GB/s of throughput (about what the 1880 can do?)
4. OP stated Ubuntu 10.10. I do like Windows (in Hyper-V) hence why I use so many RAID controllers, but I am quickly becoming a fan of OpenSolaris-based ZFS setups.

You are right, it would have been cheaper to not re-use components and build it to give the system room to grow in the first place. I miscalculated the rate at which my storage needs would grow so I was maxed out with around 16 drives.

BTW an 1880ix-16 does have an onboard expander (see the second heatsink.) If you want to use external expander(s) to go beyond 16 drives, you may be better off selling that card and getting a 1880i + SAS Expander today. The net would be more ports and $200 less which would pay for a BBU. If you are outside of the return window for the 1880ix-16 then you are likely to take a few hundred dollar loss on the used 1880ix-16 after reselling on ebay. Not doing that research beforehand is a way that one can lose money by not planning ahead.

Then again, this may be all moot. Your Windows 7 PC that has shared folders specs say:
Controller card: Areca ARC-1880ix-16
Hard Drives: 10 x 2TB (single Drives no raid)
Click to expand...

So it seems like you are not using RAID and just have a $1,000 HBA.

My only caution was that before you start expounding boatloads of wisdom from your amazing server, you might want to consider the fact that this forum has a lot of knowledgeable people (odditory, treadstone, blue fox, sub.mesa, and etc.) and a lot of archived information regarding substantial setups (see the 10TB+ thread stickied in this forum.) There are people on this forum that started years ago with setups similar to yours and have navigated the upgrade process.

Since the OP already has a solid chassis, a Norco 3116, and is comfortable with Linux, my suggestion was solely aimed at someone looking to build a substantial server with lower power requirements based on Linux. My suggestions were not to debate the merits of your build which is doing something different than the OP stated.
 
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