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Low-Power Data Server

H

haxxorboi

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 21, 2007
Messages
159
I'm trying to figure out my component list for a 3x1.5TB SATA RAID 5 server. It will be used as essentially backup ONLY and sit headless in a closet, connected via GigEthernet. My main purpose for this build is efficiency and low power specs as it's going to be on, or in standby, 24/7/365 I figured you all would have a better idea of this than I do, so I figured I'd pose a few questions...

1. Should I go with Atom, Via, or a low-end Athlon/Intel
2. Mini-ATX or Micro-ATX. Obviously this is somewhat processor dependent and vice versa.
3. Onboard RAID or PCI card RAID
4. Hardware or Software RAID
5. Windows Home Server, Windows 7, or other. I'd prefer not to go Linux, not because I don't have experience or don't like it, but because everything else I have is Windows and I'd prefer to keep backup connectivity in the same OS camp.
6. Is there really any use for Dual LAN? I don't care about security, I already have dual hardware firewalls in place, only about the possibility of higher data transfer rates.
7. After a set amount of time suppose I want to add another 1.5 disk to the array. Is the method for this as simple as connecting it and clicking "Add to RAID" or do I have to dismantle and rebuild the RAID from scratch?

Thanks in advance for the responses
 
BEFORE you put anything in a closet, you need to do a little heat test.

1. Take a 60 watt light bulb and put it in a lamp.
2. Put that lamp the closet turn the lamp on (you might need an extension cord) - Make sure NOTHING is near the bulb.
3. Put thermometer in the closet
4. Close the door.
5. Come back a day later and see how hot it is.
 
1. Even a PIII 733 can function adequately as a file server, just about anything you can buy new nowadays is plenty of horsepower. I'd buy on thermal efficiency and price.
2. Micro ATX, mainly for a PCI-E slot that can take a RAID card (see #7)
3. It depends. Most of the built in RAID implementations are pretty anemic, and can be frustrating. I'd prefer a purpose built RAID card myself, but even some of the discrete RAID cards can have the same gotchas, pitfalls, and frustrations as RAID on the motherboard
4. For RAID-5, if you absolutely must have the capacity, I'd go with a hardware enabled RAID card (see #7)
5. WHS is pretty popular here, although I've never used it. I leave the answer to this question to others.
6. Single Gig-E if you already have NAT or a firewall in place is fine.
7. Some purpose built RAID cards (HighPoint comes to mind) have a feature called online capacity extension, which (in theory) allows you to connect a new drive and expand an existing RAID array without even having to take the array down, let alone break it and rebuild it.

Are you so capacity constrained that you must get a fault tolerant 3TB from only three drives? RAID-5 has significant pitfalls and gotchas, especially in disaster recovery. The only reason to use RAID-5 is if you must have the absolute highest fault tolerant capacity per spindle possible.
 
Trepidati0n:
The closet is ventilated (slatted doors) so I doubt it would be too bad if it was closed, but as it's my clothes closet it never gets closed anyways. Good thinking though, if I decide to place it somewhere else I'll definitely do this test.

DougLite:
1. So backups running from say 2 or 3 computers concurrently over Ethernet shouldn't tax an Atom system too much?
2. Do you know of any microATX Atom boards? I've tried but I can only find miniATX. If I can't find a microATX Atom board what other processor type should I use as far as efficiency? I've heard the Athlons are preferred but I'm not extremely knowledgeable on low power procs.
3. I guess I'll have to decide this based on the the perspective motherboard
4. Sounds good
5. I'd heard WHS as well as Server 2003. But I've also heard just about anything will work (XP, 7, etc)
6. Sounds good
7. I'll have to look into this, it sounds promising.

I have around 1.3 TB that I'll need backed up and I'm sure that's going to expand. My idea was generally to have a 3 disk RAID 5 array with 2TB active space. Perhaps I'm misinterpreting the use of RAID 5 versus other RAID levels. What RAID level would you propose I use in my situation as I honestly have only used RAID 1 to this point?

Thanks very much
 
Don't worry about RAID and go WHS, you will thank me/us later. There is a reason so many people absolutely love it.
 
1. Others here have run WHS on an Atom, I think it's a great idea for a low power build.
2. Doesn't matter as long as it has onboard video (lower power and you don't have to buy a video card).
3. Don't bother with RAID in WHS, use duplication instead. With duplication you tell it what folders to duplicate (essentially like RAID 1 by folder) instead of an entire array.
4. See #3.
5. WHS is purpose built for this.
6. Don't bother with dual LAN.
7. This is another reason to use WHS over a RAID card. With WHS you just add a new drive in, go into the WHS panel storage tab, and add the drive to the pool. No rebuilding an array.
 
criccio said:
Don't worry about RAID and go WHS, you will thank me/us later. There is a reason so many people absolutely love it.
Click to expand...

[LYL]Homer;1034254377 said:
1. Others here have run WHS on an Atom, I think it's a great idea for a low power build.
2. Doesn't matter as long as it has onboard video (lower power and you don't have to buy a video card).
3. Don't bother with RAID in WHS, use duplication instead. With duplication you tell it what folders to duplicate (essentially like RAID 1 by folder) instead of an entire array.
4. See #3.
5. WHS is purpose built for this.
6. Don't bother with dual LAN.
7. This is another reason to use WHS over a RAID card. With WHS you just add a new drive in, go into the WHS panel storage tab, and add the drive to the pool. No rebuilding an array.
Click to expand...

Ockie said:
qft
Click to expand...


QFMFT

Get an atom or via or AMD 4050e, setup and you will be fine.
I ran mine on a P3 733mhz for a year, and it ran great.
 
for a low power file server, take example from my two builds in signature, or check out 10t+ thread ...
17t+ and on lowest idle its consumes 40w ... ( linux cnq, spindowned data drives )
i wouldnt go for itx as in atom speeds ... they just cant provide for ya in the future :)
 
asgards said:
i wouldnt go for itx as in atom speeds ... they just cant provide for ya in the future :)
Click to expand...

My Atom 330 barely ticks over idle while streaming 2 1080p streams around my house... Its a file server, not a VM server.
 
Ok. So I'm perfectly fine with what I'm reading about WHS and duplication. I am curious how the duplication works though. Does it duplicate to whatever drive it defines as having space or is it only to a certain drive (IE the largest one)?

I'd really like to go for the Atom as I really won't be doing much of anything except data storage/processing/occasional serving and I doubt this will require anything more than the Atom 330 (dual core hyperthreaded 1.6 Ghz). My only issue is that all the boards are miniITX which is a pain because I'd prefer the extra features of the microATX variety, especially 6+ SATA ports.

Anyone either know if there's a microATX version for Atom or another system that will deliver similar power usage and if possible has a decent amount of SATA ports (at least 5).

Asgards, I'm guessing this is what you're referring to with low level AMD procs and I will certainly take the setups into consideration, I just like to have lots of different things to check out before coming to an absolute conclusion.

Also, another thought. Would it be worth it at all to have the primary drive set in a RAID 1 setup? Or does a failure of the WHS not really matter?

Thanks again everyone, this is all extremely helpful.
 
WHS manages the pool and you can't really tell which drive(s) your data is on, which is a good thing as it alleviates the mental overhead of multidrive systems. Check the sticky storage show off thread for some screenshots of the WHS interface.

I hear you about the mATX and SATA ports. Not sure of a mobo solution as I haven't looked, but the two add-in cards that are frequently used are these:

Supermicro 8 port PCI-X (works in PCI slots) SATA card

Marvel 8 port PCIe 4x SATA card
 
Alright, so after much deliberation and several spreadsheets I believe I've decided to go with an AMD setup instead of Atom. While Atom does hold a large amount of promise, having the extra addin card will hurt the power rating a bit and then having to pay $100 extra for it just isn't worth it. I figure it'd take me 5 years to recoup the costs of going with the Atom setup if I ran the server all the time and that's just stupid.

Anyways I still have a few areas I wanted some advice... Here's my current planned setup...
Antec Three Hundred
GIGABYTE GA-MA74GM-S2
AMD Athlon 64 X2 4850e/5050e or LE-1640/1660
G.SKILL 2GB DDR2-800
3-1.5TB drives

You can see where I'm still deciding, the CPU and the hard drives.

I'm guessing the single core LEs would be sufficient, but I want to make sure I do have the ability to multistream backups and in the future possibly do multistreaming of video. If you think single core will be enough would you pay $6 extra for the extra 100 MHz or not? I'm leaning toward not...

As far as hard drives go, I've always been a fan of WD but I do have a Seagate 1.5 right now in my Drobo and it works well. As far as power usage and overall performance as a backup drive would you choose Seagate or Western Digital? The different in price is essentially negligible to me as it's only $30 for three as a difference.

Thanks
 
I would get a Dual Core AMD 4050e for that. It will be plenty for backups and streaming.
Its only $39 at the egg.

I would get the WD 1.5tb as it seems to be the sweet spot for Price/GB and for power consumption.
 
Got a link for the 4050e? I was going to use it but I don't believe Newegg carries them anymore.
 
well shoot...i just got one last week from them.

umm i guess look elsewhere
 
Since this is for low power make sure to check each drive for its power usage. I posted some results here in the showoff thread.

The WD greens seem to be champs at low power usage. The 7200.11 1.5tb drives, or any 7200rpm drive for that matter, don't fare to well.
 
Since your looking for basic file serving and a low power system, check out unRAID. The forum is very good and can also answer just about any question you can throw at them relating to unRAID. Also be sure to read up on the wiki and the Topical Index for some info.
 
Well I guess I'll be going with a 4850e as I can't find a 4050e for less than the price of the 4850. Almost no one has 4050s anymore and those who do are charging about twice as much as a new 4850 or 5050... so I'm going the less expensive route :)

I like the low power on the Western Digitals so I'm going to go with 3 of the 1.5TB drives.

One final note. Anyone know of a decent PSU, probably between 150 and 250 watts? Needs to have at least 5 sata cables but those can be molex>sata converters if necessary. I can only seem to find no-name brand ones like Coollink and Athena when I'd rather be seeing Seasonic. I found a few FSP but I was hoping for a more silent one.

Any ideas?

Thanks for all the help
 
prostuff1 said:
Since your looking for basic file serving and a low power system, check out unRAID. The forum is very good and can also answer just about any question you can throw at them relating to unRAID. Also be sure to read up on the wiki and the Topical Index for some info.
Click to expand...

I did check out unRAID a week or so ago. It seems like decent software but I'm pretty much set on WHS. I'm only really trying to figure out my final hardware set.

Thanks though
 
haxxorboi said:
Well I guess I'll be going with a 4850e as I can't find a 4050e for less than the price of the 4850. Almost no one has 4050s anymore and those who do are charging about twice as much as a new 4850 or 5050... so I'm going the less expensive route :)

I like the low power on the Western Digitals so I'm going to go with 3 of the 1.5TB drives.

One final note. Anyone know of a decent PSU, probably between 150 and 250 watts? Needs to have at least 5 sata cables but those can be molex>sata converters if necessary. I can only seem to find no-name brand ones like Coollink and Athena when I'd rather be seeing Seasonic. I found a few FSP but I was hoping for a more silent one.

Any ideas?

Thanks for all the help
Click to expand...

Id get a quality PSU over just the lowest wattage you find.
Just cause its rated for higher wattage doesnt mean it will use more electricity.

I would get a Antec EA380 or EA430
They are quiet, solid, and have good efficiency.

Lassiterb is selling some 430's for like $40 new;)
 
Would you recommend the Antec EA380 or a Seasonic SS-350ET. I really don't foresee my system ever getting above 100 watts or drawing enough on the 12v rail to hinder the PSU on either, which makes me almost want to go with a 300 watt Seasonic. I've used 5 Seasonics for my recent builds, 2 of which were Corsair branded. I love their ridiculously high efficiency and low noise fan controllers.

Any reason to go with the Antec over the Seasonic in your opinion? The Seasonic is also a few dollars less, but that's negligible to me.

For reference, from 80 Plus:
SS-350ET: 85.95% efficiency
EA380: 84.81% efficiency
 
haxxorboi said:
Would you recommend the Antec EA380 or a Seasonic SS-350ET. I really don't foresee my system ever getting above 100 watts or drawing enough on the 12v rail to hinder the PSU on either, which makes me almost want to go with a 300 watt Seasonic. I've used 5 Seasonics for my recent builds, 2 of which were Corsair branded. I love their ridiculously high efficiency and low noise fan controllers.

Any reason to go with the Antec over the Seasonic in your opinion? The Seasonic is also a few dollars less, but that's negligible to me.

For reference, from 80 Plus:
SS-350ET: 85.95% efficiency
EA380: 84.81% efficiency
Click to expand...

They are both great PSU's I would go with whatever you can get the cheapest.
 
Very cool. Thanks for all the help.

Time to make my bank account cry and get some parts ordered!
 
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