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home server

B

board2death986

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Aug 13, 2005
Messages
1,404
Looking into using existing hardware to make a server, here's what i got to work with:

Abit IC7-G socket 478
P4 3.2ghz + Zalman 7000cu
4x 512mb Kingston HyperX DDR 400 ram
400w Aspire PSU (easily upgradable, but hard drives will have their own power supply)
Had a 6600GT, but i need to get something to replace it cheap.

Looking to make this into a large Sata drive server, eventually holding upwards of 12+ HDD's but not in any arrays, as I don't see the benefits and don't require fast loadtimes, just massive storage, so JBOD works fine for me. So basically is this hardware alright for that purpose? What controller card would work well? The mobo has 4 onboard 150 sata ports, as well as 5 PCI expansion slots, so if anyone could recommend a decent card that would be great. if the cards have at least 4 sata ports but not over 100$ that would be cool too.
 
board2death986 said:
Looking into using existing hardware to make a server, here's what i got to work with:

Abit IC7-G socket 478
P4 3.2ghz + Zalman 7000cu
4x 512mb Kingston HyperX DDR 400 ram
400w Aspire PSU (easily upgradable, but hard drives will have their own power supply)
Had a 6600GT, but i need to get something to replace it cheap.


So basically is this hardware alright for that purpose?
Click to expand...

Thats overkill for a file server! I gotta P4 2.0 engineer sample, 2 sticks of 256 generic ram and a 480w generic psu, with a 9600 video card...thats overkill too! You really dont need much for a file server.
 
The IC7-G isn't the best choice for a server board - it's only got PCI expansion slots, and doesn't support ECC. However, since performance isn't an issue so much, the lack of any good expansion bus won't hurt you. Lack of ecc may.

I would recommend running raid 5 anyways - the advantage isn't speed, it's that you can lose a disk to hardware failure and not lose any data.

If you really want just a bunch of drives, this supports 8 drives in a single slot, does no raid whatsoever, and has good drivers for Windows. It's about $110, too, which is obviously a plus. I have one, and my brother's getting one in Thursday :D They've been very reliable for me.

 
i believe ockie has this. i think that would be a way to go for 12 drives. sure its 555 (including the shipping), but you dont have to deal with any other hardware. it looks like you place the drives in, attach it to your computer via firewire and you get to have some fun. im looking into this myself, but as i do not have the funds to do it, so i have not looked too intensely at it.

as i was writing this, i wanted to make sure it did raid5. apparently it does not. anyone know if you can do raid through the computer or if the drives would be seperate?
 
hity645 said:
Thats overkill for a file server! I gotta P4 2.0 engineer sample, 2 sticks of 256 generic ram and a 480w generic psu, with a 9600 video card...thats overkill too! You really dont need much for a file server.
Click to expand...

if that's the truth, i may just save this for my media machine. The file server will take a while to finalize since it's going to cost a bundle for the drives, but im trying to get my media machine together as soon as my new TV gets in.

The whole idea is to have the filserver doing storage and then having my media pc accessing it through my wireless for movies and games to run in my room.
 
With that many HDDs, definitely run RAID5 or 6. That way if you lose a drive (or two with raid6) you dont lose data, as long as you replace the dead drive and rebuild the array before another dies.
Keep in mind though, RAID != backup.
 
I would also recommend going with RAID-5 or RAID-6. The advantage is clear: if you lose one drive on JBOD, you lose a ton of data. If you lose one drive on RAID-5, you lose NO data. If you lose 2 drives on JOBD, you lose TONS of data. If you lose 2 drives on RAID-6, you lose NO data.

And as a side-effect you will get insane read performance :D

If you are using 12 drives, it would probably be a good idea to do RAID-5 or RAID-6 with most of the drives and have one hot-spare. That way if one drive fails it can automatically re-build the array to bring back the performance and reliability of a complete array (as opposed to running in the "crippled" mode where it makes up for the lost drive by reading parity data). In RAID-6 with 1 hot-spare, with N drives, you will have N - 3 capacity. That means if you have 12 300GB drives you will get 2.7T of capacity (as opposed to 3.6T) but your transfer speeds will be very fast and you won't have to worry about lost data except in a major catastrophe (fire / earthquake / tornado that destroys the whole machine)
 
It sounds more like you should be putting on your requirements on here and asking people what you want. You can make JBOD, but when a drive fries, you're going to be stuck ripping a lot of DVD's again.
Why do you say you want 12 hard drives?
How much data do you plan on keeping?
How much will you be loading at first?
How quickly will you be adding data to the setup?

You can get a case to house that for less than $550. YOu can get a nice Lian Li one for $250. You might need to buy a few adaptors to use the 5" bays for hard drives, but it is easily doable.

You do realize that you're going to need a very expensive card to do a 12 disc JBOD setup right? Why not build a RAID-5 array, get a good card and expand/add drives as you need them. That will also let you take advantage of larger hard drives as they come along. Given that price seems to be no issue for you, buliding a RAID-5 array with 750GB drives is what you want. Making it JBOD would not make sense unless you like re-ripping/loading 100 DVD's every time a drive fails.
 
general said:
You do realize that you're going to need a very expensive card to do a 12 disc JBOD setup right?
Click to expand...
What card are you using that does raid 5 and not JBOD? I can't fathom making JBOD more expensive than raid 5....

 
general said:
You do realize that you're going to need a very expensive card to do a 12 disc JBOD setup right?
Click to expand...

Not really, he can do JBOD in software easy enough, but he is asking for trouble. I think after the first drive dies and he loses all his data, he will rethink his position.

Oh, and a drive WILL die, and you WILL lose your data, its just a question of is it in one month, or in three years. As the number of drives goes up, the chance of failure goes up.
 
Another suggestion to do a redundant array here. And if you are already going to pony up to 12 drives, why not make it 13 (an extra to put on the shelf). That way there is no scramble to find another similar capacity disk when the hot spare kicks in leaving you with no backup.
 
Alright this picked up a bit. . .well ok here's my situation.

I have a 1.4TB machine holding EVERYTHING at the moment. I'm looking to expand that well over in the future, but obviously my tower is limited in space, and most of the storage won't be accessed continously, so it makes sense to centralize to a server for the stuff that has downtime. This includes movies, *demos*, music, all the usual stuff.

I have another thread with a file storage idea that incorporates the server into a desk design i've been playing with. The desk separates my three machines into sections with a simple L-shape desk with the file server on the right, laptop station in the middle, and my gaming rig on the left section facing my TV. The actual server would be mounted on a slideout tray for maintainance, with cutouts in the desk for wire management and room for cables and slack, while the hard disks would be mounted (in some way i haven't figured out yet) in the cabinet space below it.

Besides that, I said I was looking for 12+, as in expansion later, while I don't believe i'll even start at 12, probably moreso around 5 or 6. The array idea sounds good, so while losing partial memory in the array, any data lost from hard drive failure would be on the rest of the array, so if i have 2 hard drives on the side, one for raid repair and the other for backup (how does that work exactly?).

Eventually this will act as a central server to my TV media machine and gaming computer, but for now it's still in the concept phase, which is why i'm here. Thank you for all your ideas so far. I have a fairly better idea of what i'm doing now.

So the only questions I have at the moment are:

What is involved with backing up a Raid array?

What methods do i have for mounting hard drives outside of using a case?

What is the estimated wattage for 12 sata drives? What PSU would be sufficient?
 
board2death986 said:
oh yea, any cheap mobos with pci and one or two pci-x?
Click to expand...

Do you mean PCI-X or PCI-E? There is a HUGE difference, and both are used for mass storage (PCI-X is more popular though). I only ask because I've seen a lot of people refer to PCI-Express as PCI-X.

If you do mean PCI-X, you may have to look into a dual board for AMD64. There are also a few single-CPU Intel boards but they require Xeon processors.

If you mean PCI-Express, maybe look into a board such as the one I have (K8N5X) which has a 16X PCI-E slot for video, 4x PCI-E slot for storage card, and 1x PCI-E slot for gigabit ethernet (or you can use the on-board GigE). If you want ECC memory then look at an Opteron 100 / 1000 series compatible board. Tyan is releasing 2 new boards soon for the 1000 series AM2 opteron, one of which has a single PCI-X slot and the other has 3 PCI-E slots (1x 16, 1x 1, 1x 16/8x signals). The storage adapters I've seen so far use 4x signals.

If you get a PCI-E board, 3Ware makes some very nice looking PCI-E SATA-II adapters. The 9590SE-12ML supports 12 SATA-II drives in full accelerated RAID with 256MB buffer. It sells for $800-1000 (TigerDirect has it for $899). For what it is, that is not a terrible price. You may be able to save a little bit by going with a PCI-X adapter, but you will have to buy a much more expensive mainboard ($200-400 more expensive) and probably a more expensive CPU (if its A64 VS Opteron or P4/Core2 VS Xeon)

EDIT: I was just looking at NewEgg and found an adapter that might be good for your situation and much cheaper. The HighPoint RocketRAID 2320. Each card is PCI-E X4 and has 8 ports. They support cross-adapter arrays, meaning you could have an array of 16 drives split across 2 cards. Each adapter is $259 (for 2 it would be $518) which is significantly cheaper and has 4 more ports compared to the 3Ware. The big feature it's missing is the 256MB cache buffer, but really with such a huge array, you probably won't even have the network capacity to handle so many drives at full speed (unless you're getting into 802.3AD bonding or 10Gb ethernet, both of which will cost a lot for the proper adapters and switches)
 
yea i was reffering to PCI-X, i've only seen it a few times and usually on the dual cpu boards. Once i get more money into this i'll see what my options are, right now all my money is invested elsewhere but again thanks, it's good to know what i have to look forward to. :D
 
Pyromaneyakk said:
If you get a PCI-E board, 3Ware makes some very nice looking PCI-E SATA-II adapters. The 9590SE-12ML supports 12 SATA-II drives in full accelerated RAID with 256MB buffer. It sells for $800-1000 (TigerDirect has it for $899).
Click to expand...
The Areca 1230 is cheaper and faster.
board2death986 said:
yea i was reffering to PCI-X, i've only seen it a few times and usually on the dual cpu boards. Once i get more money into this i'll see what my options are, right now all my money is invested elsewhere but again thanks, it's good to know what i have to look forward to. :D
Click to expand...
PCI-X boards are readily and cheaply available - with pentium 3's onboard ;) Search eBay and you'll find a board fairly quickly for under $100.

 
If you're shopping for used boards on eBay, you might also consider shopping there for used Intel-based PCI-X gigabit server NICs.
 
You don't need all that much for a fileserver.
Intel D845WNL (i845 SDRAM P4 mobo)
Mobile Celly 1.6GHz
Intel 10/100 load balancing server NIC (don't want to replace all the Cat5)
VIA USB2.0
3x Promise Ultra100 TX/2 IDE controllers (they work together extremely well!)
12x Seagate 750GB HDDs (DVD Images + DiVX vids)
1x Seagate 200GB HDD (OS, system images, music)
CM Stacker STC-101 UWK
2x Ultra X-Finity 500W SLI PSUs (can't beat $5AR ea. :D )

Running all as separate volumes (mounted as empty folders on a common drive letter / network share). Not worried about redundancy, since it isn't too bad to rerip DVD images (~10 mins on a good reader eg. BenQ / NEC). The only backup I have is of the 200GB drive (external, offline USB).
 
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