Home file server build, where do I start?

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Mjg1675

Gawd
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Oct 14, 2009
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I'm building a file server/seed box.

I don't know what the best bang for buck are at the moment as college has had my attention, so I'm a bit clueless as of now.

What I'm looking for:
Dual or Quad core, I'd prefer quad.

RAM, I don't care, don't even worry about suggesting it, I DO know about RAM.

Motherboard, completely clueless

I want to have 5 x 2tb drives (RAID 5) and I'll pick something/s for the OS.
These drives will need a raid controller, should I trust the onboard or go for something like a Perc 6/i? I'd prefer on board, but if there's a good enough reason to go with a raid controller, then I'll do it.

Power supply, I do know quite a bit about, but I don't know the current kings or how much power I'd need.

Case, must have good airflow and look semi-decent, looking Antec 300 ATM.


BUDGET: ~$1000 Give or take

EDIT: I read everything that has been posted up until 9:22pm EDT. To clear up some discussion and questions. I intend to run Server 2008 R2. I'm looking at a Dell Perc 6/i IF I can find where to buy breakout cables (This is harder than it should be, help me out), I'm going with a 5 x 2TB RAID 5 with another drive for OS. I'd like to steer from Linux as I don't currently have the patience for it. How well should the Perc 6/i handle Sata 3 drives? (6GB/s)
 
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The hitachi 2tb 5k3000's are going for a mere $70/ea @ newegg right now, with a $10 rebate option for up to 5 drives, sounds like something you might want to hit up. The intel i3-2100 is a great little server chip with 2+2 cores and can be had for ~$100. Pair it with a cheap h67 or h61 motherboard (~$60) and a 4gb memory kit (~$40). A good quality antec 400w power supply is plenty for a file server of this size, don't get caught up in the "zomg 239482903watt power for maximum power delivery" hype that seems to run rampant these days.

I just threw together a little WHS 2011 box using this xigmatek case, this xigmatek p/s and a couple cheap case fans. Throw in a $99 HighPoint RocketRAID 2680 and a $20 sas cable and you've pretty much got a great little NAS box w/ 8tb of usable raid5 storage for ~$750 w/ $50 coming back in rebates. That's enough to pick up a nice intel SSD for the OS (more for the reliability over a mechanical than the speed benefit in this case), a good intel NIC and even a little UPS (staples has some 550va APC units on sale for $50 right now that would give your server plenty of time to shut down in case the power goes out).
 
If its strictly for file serving in a home environment, a quad is a waste. Get a I3 2100 and undervolt it. Heck I use an Athlon II Neo Dual-core and it works perfectly. The whole server maybe uses 30-40 watts of power.
 
Another option is the G620, going for $75, a nice dual core. Case a Fractal Design R3 or Define Mini are nice cases for a small storage server. HDD i would go with hitachi 5k3000 2tb (still 512 sectors) so they should play nice with WHS or old OS that have issues with Advance format drives.
 
Go with a real RAID card. I use an old PERC 5i with my server and it performs flawlessly running RAID5 for the past 3 years, and I can always expand the array when I need more space.
 
Go with a real RAID card.
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That is only recommended if you use windows for the server OS. If you plan to use linux or some operating system supporting zfs a hardware raid card is generally not a benefit. I mean a modern CPU can easily do XOR operations (heck my 3 year old Q9550 at work gets 700 MB/s reads and 500 MB/s writes for software raid 6 using 9 2TB drives and that is at what 8% cpu usage on a single core). Also HW raid has never been in my experience as reliable as linux software raid and certainly not zfs (under a supporting OS).
 
saedrin said:
Go with a real RAID card. I use an old PERC 5i with my server and it performs flawlessly running RAID5 for the past 3 years, and I can always expand the array when I need more space.
Click to expand...

A real raid card and a $1000 total budget seems to contradict? No?
 
Trepidati0n said:
A real raid card and a $1000 total budget seems to contradict? No?
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Eh, he could fit it into the build I listed but there really is no point. The highpoint rocketraid 2680 card will serve him just as well for less than half the cost. With the money you save, getting things like a UPS (a must for a raid server, imo) would be a better allocation of resources.
 
Trepidati0n said:
A real raid card and a $1000 total budget seems to contradict? No?
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You can get some of these cards on eBay used for less than $100 US. However to use a real hardware raid card with acceptable performance you generally need a BBU. Remember the big reason why HW raid is fast is the cache its not the XOR processor. That is also the reason why windows raid is generally slow. Most windows software/fake raid do not have an effective write back cache. Some BBUs you can get on eBay for $15 others you may have to pay $150.
 
I wouldn't bother with a raid card. Get a decent mobo with 6 sata ports (a ton of them out there...) Put a relatively small crappy old drive on one port for the OS. Install openindiana+napp-it on the smaller drive. Use ZFS to create a 5 disk RAIDZ1 (raid5 equivalent) pool.
 
The RAID card is nice if only for the reason that you can transplant it into any system and access your data. That to me is worth $120.
 
You mean if the cpu or mobo dies or whatever? You can do exactly the same thing in my config. The problem with raid cards is that some of them make you dependent on them (e.g. if the raid card dies, you need to get another raid card - sometimes the same make, sometimes not, but can't just access the data...)
 
cre3d said:
The RAID card is nice if only for the reason that you can transplant it into any system and access your data. That to me is worth $120.
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The same goes for all non windows software raid. Stick the drives in any PC (probably even a macintosh) having sufficient ports, boot off a livecd / usbstick and have full access to your data.
 
danswartz said:
I wouldn't bother with a raid card. Get a decent mobo with 6 sata ports (a ton of them out there...) Put a relatively small crappy old drive on one port for the OS. Install openindiana+napp-it on the smaller drive. Use ZFS to create a 5 disk RAIDZ1 (raid5 equivalent) pool.
Click to expand...

+++
(do this)
 
The first question you really need to answer is "will I be able eto keep this as just a cheap-o file server or will I get the itch to tinker and play more", because if you think there's a fair chance you'll feel the itch, but go the cheap-o route now, you may find yourself in 6 months realizing your cheap/slow CPU doesn't have hardware VM support, not that you had the RAM to support it anyway, or you want more drives and more redundancy, or more whatever.

If you're the kind of guy that thinks he may find himself wanting more then you may want to tweak your budget up a bit now and plan for that, better to wait a month or two and spend 1500 from the start than 1000 now and 1500 later because most of the parts you buy now just can't be used for what you ultimately decide you really wanted to do.
 
-Dragon- said:
The first question you really need to answer is "will I be able eto keep this as just a cheap-o file server or will I get the itch to tinker and play more", because if you think there's a fair chance you'll feel the itch, but go the cheap-o route now, you may find yourself in 6 months realizing your cheap/slow CPU doesn't have hardware VM support, not that you had the RAM to support it anyway, or you want more drives and more redundancy, or more whatever.

If you're the kind of guy that thinks he may find himself wanting more then you may want to tweak your budget up a bit now and plan for that, better to wait a month or two and spend 1500 from the start than 1000 now and 1500 later because most of the parts you buy now just can't be used for what you ultimately decide you really wanted to do.
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+100. I've made this penny wise pound foolish mistake before...
 
Can't speak to anything else, but RAIDZ doesn't. Not a drive at a time, anyway. If you had, say, a 3-disk raidz, you could add 3 more drives by adding another 3-drive raidz to the existing pool (striping).
 
That is one advantage I can see for a hardware raid controller in that case. Being able to add drives to the array as your storage needs grow is a nice perk. With a controller card you can also just throw in an HP SAS hba and immediately add support for another 20+ drives. Just seems more future proof.
 
Linux software RAID (mdadm), yes.
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Agreed. mdadm has ability to grow an array by adding drives or increasing the size of the drive/device. This feature has been around for some time (first used it 3 to 5 years ago). It also allows you some level of conversion between raid levels and you can change the chunk size if you want. Some of these conversions can be slow and take days. However resync (after replacing a disk) is generally pretty fast. On the case of my q9550 system at work with the 9 x 2TB hitachis, it took a total of around 8.5 hours to rebuild the 14TB raid6 array after I replaced a failed 2TB disk.
 
I think like a lot of things, only the person in question really knows what they need now and what they might need down the road, so if this works better for you...
 
cre3d said:
That is one advantage I can see for a hardware raid controller in that case. Being able to add drives to the array as your storage needs grow is a nice perk. With a controller card you can also just throw in an HP SAS hba and immediately add support for another 20+ drives. Just seems more future proof.
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That is NOT an advantage of hardware RAID over software RAID. That is an advantage of some RAID systems over others. Just because ZFS cannot do it does not mean that no software RAID has expansion capability.
 
john4200 said:
That is NOT an advantage of hardware RAID over software RAID. That is an advantage of some RAID systems over others. Just because ZFS cannot do it does not mean that no software RAID has expansion capability.
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Except you're now limited to running a particular software RAID, whereas with the hardware controller you are pretty much software agnostic, given adequate driver support. There are pros and cons to each, suppose the OP should chime in a little more before we get into a pissing contest over which is better or worse for his needs.
 
cre3d said:
That is one advantage I can see for a hardware raid controller in that case. Being able to add drives to the array as your storage needs grow is a nice perk. With a controller card you can also just throw in an HP SAS hba and immediately add support for another 20+ drives. Just seems more future proof.
Click to expand...
Another important advantage is portability. MB/software RAID isn't necessarily guaranteed to be compatible if you decide to upgrade down the line to a different chipset or CPU manufacturer. A seperate RAID card can be moved along with the drives into any future system and if the RAID card fails, you just replace it with an identical card and all the volumes should still work just fine. Other things like being able to use the HP or intel expander cards is another big advantage if you ever decide you want to really expand your storage potential.
 
Another important advantage is portability. MB/software RAID isn't necessarily guaranteed to be compatible if you decide to upgrade down the line to a different chipset or CPU manufacturer. A seperate RAID card can be moved along with the drives into any future system and if the RAID card fails, you just replace it with an identical card and all the volumes should still work just fine. Other things like being able to use the HP or intel expander cards is another big advantage if you ever decide you want to really expand your storage potential.
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I would not put that as an advantage for HW raid. I mean 10 years down the road will you be able to get your hands on a specific card? Will the card be compatible with new systems?

And Linux software raid will retain compatibly or at least they have for over a decade.
 
Popular RAID cards seem to stick around much longer on the market than motherboards these days.
 
cre3d said:
Except you're now limited to running a particular software RAID, whereas with the hardware controller you are pretty much software agnostic, given adequate driver support.
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LOL, you must be joking! As compared to a hardware RAID card, where you are limited to using that particular type of hardware RAID card. Hardware can fail, hardware drivers can be EOL'd, hardware companies can go out of business. Open source software lasts forever.
 
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-Dragon- said:
Another important advantage is portability. MB/software RAID isn't necessarily guaranteed to be compatible if you decide to upgrade down the line to a different chipset or CPU manufacturer.
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You seem confused. Motherboard RAID, aka FakeRAID, is not the same as software RAID.

Software RAID is compatible with all hardware that the OS supports, which in the case of linux, is almost everything.

And your comment about SAS expanders makes no sense. That has nothing to do with hardware or software RAID. You can use a SAS expander in a software RAID system.
 
john4200 said:
LOL, you must be joking! As compared to a hardware RAID card, where you are limited to using that particular type of hardware RAID card. Hardware can fail, hardware companies can go out of business. Open source software lasts forever.
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Where did you read that my argument had anything to do with support longevity? I was simply stating that the hardware raid solution is more portable from a software dependency standpoint. As long as you have the drivers for your card, you can use your raid in any OS that supports your chosen file system. This, to some, is a valid benefit.
 
given adequate driver support.
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Ahhh. driver support. I am still mad at adaptec for deciding to not support my (home purchase) AAA-133 (3 channel ultra wide scsi 3 HW raid card with BBU) on windows 2000 (or newer).
 
cre3d said:
I was simply stating that the hardware raid solution is more portable from a software dependency standpoint. As long as you have the drivers for your card, you can use your raid in any OS that supports your chosen file system. This, to some, is a valid benefit.
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That is absurd!

The hardware RAID card requires both hardware and software (specific driver) support.

The software RAID only requires software support. Any hardware that works with your OS will work with software RAID.

So clearly, software RAID is more portable.
 
I feel bad for the OP, way too much conflicting info and confusion in this thread. Software raid always more portable. I agree with danswartz, go with a ZFS setup. I would recommend Solaris 11 Express or OpenIndiana over any FUSE-ZFS implementations. Dead simple and you could pull it off for ~300 or so. P43 board with 6 sata ports and support for 4x4GB sticks of ram (16 GB total) ZFS loves and makes fantastic use of RAM. Can't go wrong here, share your storage over iscsi or smb/cifs very easily.
 
john4200 said:
I do not. He seems to have done almost no research, or even read similar threads in this forum, before posting his question.
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Good point, I got lost in the banter and now I'm just angry! :mad: just kidding. But still, do some research!
 
A file server doesn't need much processor power, and since it's staying on 24/7 low power usage is to be preferred.

Here's what I would recommend (and I am in the process of doing).

1.) Buy AMD E-350 board (dual core 1.6ghz processor included) 18W TDP.
2.) Use whatever spare stick of DDR3 ram you have kicking around. File servers don't need much ram. if not, buy something cheap
3.) Install some old spare drive you have kicking around. Since it's going to be on 24/7 boot time isn't a huge deal, so it can be old and slow.
3.) Install a GUI-free linux server distribution like Ubuntu server edition
4.) Buy a 5 bay Drobo S. Connect it to your newly built rig via eSATA.
5.) Put as many WD Green drives as you need in the Drobo.

The reason I like this solution is as follows:

1.) Low power, yet powerful enough to do anything you'd ask of a file server.
2.) Flexibility!!! Drobos are mocked a lot, but the truth is they offer so much more flexibility than other setups, especially the 5 bay ones. Start out with two drives. Pop another one in whenever you need it. if all 5 bays are full, pop one drive out and pop a larger one in. Drives can be any mix of many manufacturer and any storage size as long as they are 3.5" SATA drives. It runs like RAID5, but better. You can select single or dual drive redundancy on the fly.

My Drobo S cost me a bunch of money up front, but I have been very happy with it. The server I chose - on the other hand - I wasn't, which is why I plan on building a new Zacate based one.
 
That sounds ridiculous - well, the "Buy a 5 day Drobo S..." part.

Leaving all DIY/prebuilt, etc. considerations aside, why not just buy a normal NAS in that case? (Qnap/Synology)?
 
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