Henchman24's WHS build - I need advice here guys

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Henchman24

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Jan 17, 2011
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Hi folks,

I've been planning to build a WHS unit for awhile, I've messed around with the software enough to be comfortable with it for my usage target, and have installed a few pre-built units from HP, Lenovo and Acer for clients who wanted them, so I have some experience with WHS.

This unit is for my home, and primarily will be used to hold all my media files, pc backups, run a Ventrilo server as a service, and that's pretty much it really. Some media files I want file duplication on, some I won't care whether it does or not.

I've tried to bone up on setup glitches/hitches/roadblocks....so I think I have a decent list of parts, but I would like some feedback on what I have picked so far. Bear in mind, this is a semi-budget unit, and I will be re-using some parts from my current HTPC *(all working fine) to round this out.

On with the list! (X) denotes parts I already own

Henchman24's WHS Parts List:

AMD X2 5050e CPU (X)
6150 based AM2 mATX mobo (X)
2G DDR2 667 ram (X)
1x Supertalent 60G SSD (X)(OS drive)
6x Seagate 1.5TB drives (X)(Storage Pool)
WHS OEM w/ PP3 (X)
Intel Gigabit NIC PCI (X)
---------------------------------------------------
Parts still needed

X Adaptec 2240900-R 4port SATA controller X - changed to:
Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8
2x 3ware CBL-SFF8087OCF-05M
LIAN LI PC-V354B - 1x5.25", 7x3.5", 2x2.5" bays mATX
Power Supply? - I need a reliable budget unit for now that can handle the load of being a media server to my XBMC HTPC, and a Ventrilo server.(This is pretty much the only usage scenario I need this box to perform, well that and PC backups)

* I'm leaning towards this power supply now due to price, reviews & recommendations:

Antec EarthWatts EA-500D
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371035
Click to expand...
If any of you can see problems with my choices, please let me know...although some things I cannot change right now due to finances(hard drives mostly).

Any suggestions for better/more compatible parts would be greatly appreciated, and I really need some advice on a PSU that won't break the bank, but handle the drives, etc.

Thanks ahead of time for any help, I know you guys have been around this block more than I so this was where I wanted to ask for help.

;)
 
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The only thing I would probably do is get a 4 gig kit for the ram unless you have 2 more slots then you can just get an extra 2. I know you can't address all 4 but if/when you go to Vail then you will have it since the prices are just crazy cheap right now. It isn't necessary, just a suggestion.

I don't know if I would put the ssd in the mix at all. I think it would really be wasted on this setup. For what you would be using it for and with the other hardware that you have, keep the ssd ready for something like your main rig as an apps drive or something. Again, this isn't a huge deal but I would just hate for something with the potential of an ssd be used for the os and then the rest not used and just thrown into a storage pool.

As for psu, you aren't going to need a bunch of power but obviously clean power is important. You could get away with a nice Corsair or Antec unit for something like that setup. You could probably even get away with something around the 430 watt range total, those were just two good examples I found quickly. Don't forget that you will probably need some molex to sata power adapters.

That Lian Li case is exactly the case I want to use for my next WHS build. It is a great mix of function and unassuming looks I want in a utility box.

As for the sata controller, I really am not educated enough on those to give any intelligent recommendations for or against that card. It may be the budget card to have or it may be the laughing stock of that area, I have no clue.
 
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Hey thanks,

The SSD is an older gen model that does roughly 120/70 mb/s, and it was a freebie to boot, no pun.
I figured this was an OK choice to house the OS as it won't have to be a speed demon or anything, and maximizes the storage space drives. That's the thinking at least. So it's not like I'm wasting it's potential or anything. I have a 43 dollar 320g Samsung that kicks it's ass as far as speed goes. Am I wrong, or does WHS w/PP3 not use the D: volume of boot drive until the storage pool is nearly full? I was hoping this, as the 70mb write on that SSD gave me pause.

The ram is also a freebie, but decent stuff, so it's a starter kit really, gets the whole thing up and going. The sata card seemed a good choice as they have 2k3 drivers for it, and I only needed to expand the onboard to allow the extra drives. I love that case, was the smallest I could find that held that many drives and still wasn't embarrassing to look at(great airflow, etc too).

I had that 500D in bookmarks as well, but I'm open to ideas right now, still building cash for the last parts, and of all things I go to buy, NewEgg was out of the Lian Li the other day, so I grabbed the OS and another drive for my wife.(love those samsung F4s)
 
WHS requires an 80gb min OS drive. IIRC Vail requires at least 160gb. (Though who knows now with the DE pulled from it.) The 320gb Samsung should work just fine here. I asked if anyone had used a SSD for WHS and did it help and the answer here was no, that it didn't increase performance.

My experience with WHS regarding RAM has been that 2gb is great, 1gb not so much, and 4gb not any noticeable difference from 2gb.

I'm running 8 port Supermicro AOC-SATA2-MV8 PCI-X (will fit in PCI slots if there isn't a heatsink or something right behind the slot) at $100 each. I have run the generic 2 and 4 port cards in the past and performance wasn't ever an issue.

The only other comment would be about the (gigabit) NIC on the motherboard. Many of us have found superior performance with Intel base setups (even if you have it as a separate add-in card).
 
Yeah I'm not really interested in Vail, even though I was at first, then DE was shitcanned, and it's biggest draw for me disappeared. I was under the impression that the 80g limit was not a problem in PP3(reading thru WeGotServed forums), but even if it is, I can do the HD clone trick to get it installed. Here's my thinking, the SSD was free, it has no errors and plenty of write life left. It does however have a slow write speed(on par really with the avg for the 341AS drives I'm using for storage). It also is a 2.5 and in such a small case, using the dedicated 2.5 mounts is key I think, so I'm stuck with the SSD or a laptop drive for OS. Again, it was free.

I agree, those Samsung drives would be sweet, but thowing a speedy drive at a server that will underutilize it seems overkill to me(I did consider it before the pick of the case). This machine MIGHT have two streams running at the same time, the HTPC and maybe to mine as well if the wife is viewing something girly and I want to watch say, random Stargate SG1 episode or something. (I'm not the biggest Jane Austen fan! haha)

On that supermicro card...do you know how many mm longer than PCI it is? I could measure and make sure it fits, 8 ports would allow a single controller to hold the pool, and would be easier to rebuild I think if the mobo died(it's old). It's about the same price as the PCI-e card too, so this is nice. Are you sure there's no perf diff between it running in PCI over say my first pick? No bus disadvantage for bandwidth? I'm not even sure if I'd run into such a bottleneck if any. I just want to centralize my files, use DE for ease of addition to the pool, and file dupe for the important stuff, as well as PC backups my wife can handle(automated)...lol

The concensus on mem seems to vary on server usage that I can gather, if you use it for HTML serving, or iTunes streaming on top of normal functions, then 4g is recommended to avoid conflicts and slowdowns, but 2g does well in most other cases. So I figured 2g to start couldn't hurt.

I also forgot to mention I use an Intel Gigabit NIC on the board already due to it's quality over the onboard. That will migrate with the board into the server.
 
I've used 6150 based boards in the past for WHS. The onboard NIC stinks, just utter shit, sloooooooooow.

I slapped in an Intel nic and file transfers went up to what they should be.
 
Yeah transfer rates die off on big files with those onboard cards, the intel was recommended awhile ago and has served me faithfully.
 
Check out the Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 as an alternative to the Adaptec.

It is x86 Server 2003 so putting in 4gb of memory will waste around 1.5gb. Not worth it, but I wouldn't go under 2gb. Especially if you want to try out my movies and some other services.

The built in KVM/IP on my board is a godsend (signature). Think about adding on something similar, really helpful if something goes wrong and you can't RDP. On mine I can even feed it disk images eliminating the need for an optical drive in the home server box. Really something to be able to install the OS without touching the computer.
 
Which breakout cables did you get?

Searching for them gets confusing fast if you aren't familiar with server hardware, I thought I found one, then read through the reviews and found it wasn't what I was looking for even though physically it looked like it.

This was one of the main reasons I didn't specifically look at SAS hardware, I know it can do SATA, I just don't know what's involved.
 
Just search for SFF-8087 breakout or fanout cable. Available with or without power connector from bunch of places. I think I have one from 3ware with power adapters (to standard molex) and one from arcrea without power connector.
 
You want forward cables for what you're doing. As for the difference in cables, it's 10cm.
 
Thanks for the heads up on Forward....

Are you saying the .6mm listed cables are 10cm longer than .5mm ones? I thought this might be conductor or insulator specs, so I was unsure.
 
OMG I'm a moron, I just noted it's not mm, it's just m, as in one half meter of cable, disregard above ignorant post.

I need more coffee I think.
 
btw, MaxBurn,....your server is a sweet setup, unfortunately I have to fit mine when finished into a closet near my desk. It's a well vented space, so the server should be fine, but it should cut back on noise in the room. I'm fairly sure the wife will only allow one monster case in the room at a time. I have a Cosmos 1000 so...you get the idea. Luckily that Lian Li case fits the drives I have, and should fit nicely tucked away and stay cool.
 
If you dont already have the mobo/cpu & ram I wouldn't buy that setup. For waht your asking I did just fine using an Atom d510 & it would you as well & be cheaper & more reliable then anything with an nforce chipset.
 
Unfortunately, I am re-purposing existing equipment to get this build started as I can't afford to do the whole thing from scratch right now. The board, and cpu are from my HTPC, which is getting a new board anyway.

The mem was free as well, a pull from a workstation during upgrade to faster ram. It has less than 60 hours on those sticks. Only the board gives me cause for worry, and with the SAS card doing the whole pool for connections, I'm less worried about a board swap out in case this one dies.

I also figure having the 5050e with a little xtra headroom vs the d510 for later can't hurt, and I can deal with the extra 20w in power over the d510, or just underclock it and use less.

As for reliable, that mobo is about 6+ years old I think, and the only issue I had was poor NIC performance onboard, and that was fixed easy enough, I suppose I got lucky. It's also cheap enough to swap out for a new one just like it if it dies. I have already sent 1xatom230, 2xIon330s, and one d510 board back for various clients, one was doa, the Ions fried due to bad heat control in industrial settings, and the 510 had a bad drive controller.

So by my experience, they are no more reliable than other shelf hardware. (The Ion owners were warned by me btw, I even put heatpipes on them, and told the guy he needed active airflow in the enclosure, but he whined about aesthetics and noise. I said "Ok, it's your call!")
 
D'oh, after testing, it looks like one of my ram sticks is a goner.

Luckily I found some decent ram cheap today, and will probably grab that.
 
I don't care for your configuration. I woud not go Micro ATX in most cases. Why not?

Well I went Micro ATX, only had 6 sata ports at the time instead of 8. No big deal I guess, but since I have added 2 more cheap add in cards for a total of 10 ports.

So by not going micro ATX, you may be able to avoid that expensive SATA card you intend to put in there. It sounds like your case will only support 10 drives, so why buy an expensive sata card when you have no more room to add additional drives anyways?

Also, I would avoid the SSD since it's likely the partitions will not be aligned correctly. (unless someone knows a way around this). I would just add another large drive for the OS drive, maximize space!

I went micro ATX because I had a nice p180mini laying around, but now I wish I had not gone that route. If you already have the matx MB thats fine, but put it into a larger case, esp if your going for the expensive sata card!
 
I wish I could...the mobo, cpu, ram are already owned. The 110 buck sata card is to remove the onboard ports from worry really. If the mobo dies, I'd rather have the pool on the card, and have flexibility in choosing a replacement mobo.

I'm not sure about the ssd alignment issue, this is an older drive, has 512 style sectors, so I'm not sure what this would mean, thanks for bringing it up. I will have to check into that.

The case supports 7 3.5 drives and 2 2.5 ones, so it's the freebie slower/older ssd, or I have to buy something else in laptop format, I have no other use for that ssd as it's just too slow. Another case concern, I am now restricted on space I can use since a renovation, and cannot re-purpose my Cosmos for this and get another big case for my rig. I should be able to grow into the pool for awhile, so more drives isn't a concern....I can use the cfg now, and change out to larger ones later, I also have to think about power draw too. Being stuck on what seems like an ever shrinking budget when doing this sort of thing just plain sucks. I now have to wait another week just to get the sata card.
 
Henchman24 said:
I wish I could...the mobo, cpu, ram are already owned. The 110 buck sata card is to remove the onboard ports from worry really. If the mobo dies, I'd rather have the pool on the card, and have flexibility in choosing a replacement mobo.

I'm not sure about the ssd alignment issue, this is an older drive, has 512 style sectors, so I'm not sure what this would mean, thanks for bringing it up. I will have to check into that.

The case supports 7 3.5 drives and 2 2.5 ones, so it's the freebie slower/older ssd, or I have to buy something else in laptop format, I have no other use for that ssd as it's just too slow. Another case concern, I am now restricted on space I can use since a renovation, and cannot re-purpose my Cosmos for this and get another big case for my rig. I should be able to grow into the pool for awhile, so more drives isn't a concern....I can use the cfg now, and change out to larger ones later, I also have to think about power draw too. Being stuck on what seems like an ever shrinking budget when doing this sort of thing just plain sucks. I now have to wait another week just to get the sata card.
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I understand power concerns budget etc. I am in the same boat. Maybe someone can verify this but I would imagine if your MB were to die, the storage pool could be re-located to another system, regardless if the drives were attached to a card or MB... I mean thats part of the reason for choosing WHS.
 
Justintoxicated said:
I understand power concerns budget etc. I am in the same boat. Maybe someone can verify this but I would imagine if your MB were to die, the storage pool could be re-located to another system, regardless if the drives were attached to a card or MB... I mean thats part of the reason for choosing WHS.
Click to expand...

I figured that might be the case, but I also know onboard controllers can be flaky at times, and I know the cards I've been looking at have a good track record in 2k3, so I'm assuming that stability and speed should translate over to WHS.

I've hit yet another setback so this will have to wait another week or two anyway, I have time now to plan things at least. My biggest concern now is freeing up some of my drives before adding them to the pool, I may have to rent a server for a weekend just to move everything over! haha
 
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