lower power storage server?

Bigbacon

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So I am finally at the point that I think having a file storage computer is needed. I have tons of stuff that really should be stored in one central place and be accessible on my entire network all the time, specially for my media PC so I don't need to store all my media on the drive thats in it.

Problem is I want the machine to be low power or as low power as it can be and still be useful. The computer really would be under hard usage a lot, it would mainly sit there and just store stuff.

I have no idea where to start on this project but I am trying to keep costs down. I am undecided on Raid only because if one dies, then there is problems and making sure that I have the same types of drives doesn't seem good to me for the future. I don't mind having lots of different drive letters and what not.

So...
Cliffs.
-Want to build low power network storage computer.
-Do not know any thing about doing so
-need hardware, OS, software ideas
-Will not use linux.
 
Windows home server (if you are anti linux/ freebsd) and get a Supermicro Atom D510 or 3400 motherboard (Intel onboard NICs) and an i3 530 or i5-650 and be done with it.
 
Is there a reason you won't go Linux/Freebsd? Too complicated? Despite what you may have heard, it's very simple to setup, especially if you use customized distro like Freenas specifically designed for that purpose.

And it will be far more reliable and customizable than any windows/whs setup. For hardware, you could get an atom processor/motherboard combo and then a cheap micro-atx case to throw them in.
 
How much storage do you need initially? Also, how much storage do you plan on having in the future?
 
sometime ago i started a thread entitle got a power meter? what is your watts/TB?, the thread set out to gather together the power consumption and available storage of people's servers

got a power meter? what is your watts/TB?

i initially (mistakenly) thought that an atom based rig would give the best (lowest) idle power consummption; i was wrong!
plus, the limited upgrade options for an atom based mobo make them an unattractive proposition for a serious storage nut. ;)

as an example, my new server (currently in buld) currently contains the following:
* Intel i3 core 530
* Supermicro X8SIL-F
* Crucial DDR3 2gig, 2off
* Seagate Barracuda LP 2TB
* Sony DVD
* Seasonic X650
* Coolermaster 580 (modified)
* Windows 7 enterprise
The power draw was 31watts idle

Adding a Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 card to PCIe slot number one increased the power draw to 37watts

Conclusions,
(1) There are many other viable options out there with a much better feature package.
(Personally I think the X8SIL-F is a fantastic board)
(2) In-the-end it is the quantity of hard drives and their efficiency (power draw) that will govern the overall power draw of a large server.
(Sorry if that is stating the obvious)
 
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Another cheap option is this:
$95 - Intel BOXDH55HC LGA 1156 Intel H55 HDMI ATX Intel Motherboard

It has the ever so important Intel NIC.

It's really up to you if you want to spend the extra $105 for the Supermicro motherboard for a second Intel NIC, internal USB port, ability to use more than 14 SATA HDDs (assuming that you're gonna get a card that only supports 8 SATA ports) and IPMI 2.0 that supports KVM over IP and mounting ISO's over a network as well as slightly better motherboard quality.

Do note that you may have to use slightly more expensive ECC RAM with the Supermicro since I haven't seen anything besides the above poster's post about non-ECC RAM working with that Supermicro. So not entirely too sure about that.
 
I was looking boards with 6 SATA ports yesterday and I think that will be fine for starting out. I would use 1+ TB drives so I suspect that is more than enough to start out. Again, i'm not looking to build some super mondo server machine so I will skip any server or special board that is going to require ECC/Buffered dimms or whatever.

The second NIC is probably not needed either. I'm not on a HUGE network and this thing really isn't going to be pushing data 24/7

I am leaning towards AMD stuff only because the price is SO much less. II-X2 are way cheaper than any other Intel offering.
 
Another cheap option is this:
$95 - Intel BOXDH55HC LGA 1156 Intel H55 HDMI ATX Intel Motherboard

It has the ever so important Intel NIC.

It's really up to you if you want to spend the extra $105 for the Supermicro motherboard for a second Intel NIC, internal USB port, ability to use more than 14 SATA HDDs (assuming that you're gonna get a card that only supports 8 SATA ports) and IPMI 2.0 that supports KVM over IP and mounting ISO's over a network as well as slightly better motherboard quality.

Do note that you may have to use slightly more expensive ECC RAM with the Supermicro since I haven't seen anything besides the above poster's post about non-ECC RAM working with that Supermicro. So not entirely too sure about that.

I had trouble with non-ECC memory while doing the Supermicro X8SIL-F review. That being said, it is a GREAT board. I also have the Intel BOXDH55LC you mention. It is a good sub $100 board, however there is no way it is in the same league as the X8SIL-F. Figure a second Intel NIC = $40 (and it also takes a PCIe x1 slot). Then the fact that with Supermicro boards you don't need an attached CD/DVD/USB/Floppy to do software installation as part of the IPMI 2.0/ KVM-over-IP. Slightly more expensive, sure, but it is a really solid setup.

BTW to further Aposim's research I did a quick Atom N330 v. i3-530 review quite awhile ago. I'm working on getting an Atom D510 in the next week or two though but it is basically not much more than 10% faster than the N330.

FWIW I got a few more watts with the i3-530 than Aposim did on the X8SIL-F plus i3-530. Still same ballpark though.
 
I was looking boards with 6 SATA ports yesterday and I think that will be fine for starting out. I would use 1+ TB drives so I suspect that is more than enough to start out. Again, i'm not looking to build some super mondo server machine so I will skip any server or special board that is going to require ECC/Buffered dimms or whatever.

1. Go with the largest hard drive available (2tb) if low power is a primary concern, you want maximum data density. As an example from the thread in my sig:

Code:
[B][U][COLOR="YellowGreen"]Western Digital 3.5" drives[/COLOR][/U][/B]
model          size  read/write  idle   notes
[URL="http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=576"]WD20EADS[/URL]         2tb    6.0      3.7    WD Green, 5400rpm, 32mb, 3yr [URL="http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,2845,2339784,00.asp"]1[/URL] [URL="http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1738/western_digital_caviar_green_2_tb_retail_desktop_drive/index10.html"]2[/URL]
[URL="http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=559"]WD10EADS[/URL]         1tb    5.4      2.8    WD Green, 5400rpm, 32mb, 3yr [URL="http://techreport.com/articles.x/15769"]1[/URL] [URL="http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/green-terabyte-1tb,2078.html"]2[/URL]

One can either have the same 2tb of data for 6.0/3.7w or 10.8/5.6w, your choice.

2. Consumer boards are just fine, but don't necessarily rule out server boards/ECC RAM. They don't necessarily equate 'mondo', they are good at streaming data over a network. In some cases the price premium isn't very much (shop behind the bleeding edge) and the server board may offer better stability, features, number of SATA ports, Intel NIC, and/or better PCIe slots or arrangement.

Scour that thread that Asposium linked to get a good holistic approach in mind before you buy.
 
If you really want low-power by using PicoPSU instead of the inefficient ATX power supplies; then you would have to make sacrifices; you can not use 3,5" disks only 2,5" notebook disks.

So a low power 2,5" NAS would have benefits of being extremely quiet, extremely cool, extremely low-power and you could connect a reasonable number of disks to the 100W power supply. As comparison; a single 3,5" drive consumes 30-35W when spinning up; meaning even one might already overload the PicoPSU on boot up.
 
Is there a reason you won't go Linux/Freebsd? Too complicated? Despite what you may have heard, it's very simple to setup, especially if you use customized distro like Freenas specifically designed for that purpose.

And it will be far more reliable and customizable than any windows/whs setup.

Care to enlighten us on why/how Linux/BSD is more reliable than Windows/WHS? (I won't argue against the customizable part).
 
Because ZFS employs a lot more protection for your files than simple NTFS or FAT do. NTFS is basically an improved FAT with metadata-only journaling. ZFS keeps checksums of your files and can do much more advanced stuff.

This thread might be recommended reading to discover what ZFS is and how it can benefit you:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1500505

However, know that ZFS is not 'common' by any means; and to use it you would have to run FreeBSD or OpenSolaris which are real UNIX server Operating Systems. I did post guides for that on my site, and i'm even working on a web-interface to manage your files just like FreeNAS. You can track my progress in this thread:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1521803

It's a huge step from Windows Home Server, though.
 
Do note that you may have to use slightly more expensive ECC RAM with the Supermicro since I haven't seen anything besides the above poster's post about non-ECC RAM working with that Supermicro. So not entirely too sure about that.

for the record; i neither said nor implied that i am not using ECC memory in my X8SIL

true, i did not state in my above post that my memory is ECC

so, fo the record, my X8SIL has crucial ECC memory
knowing how ackward the X8SIL can be with memory i picked the memory from the SM approved list
 
FWIW I got a few more watts with the i3-530 than Aposim did on the X8SIL-F plus i3-530. Still same ballpark though.

it is very strange that my power consumption is lower, especially considering you are using a SSD whereas i used a seagate barracuda LP

the only differences i can see are:
*the efficiency of your pico PSU + 12v supply -VS- my seasonic X650 PSU
*the fact that I have a 220v mains supply -VS- your 110v supply (i believe you're in the USA????)

how very odd!
 
I am leaning towards AMD stuff only because the price is SO much less. II-X2 are way cheaper than any other Intel offering.

Well here's a prelim AMD setup then:
$59 - AMD Athlon II X2 245 CPU
$65 - Asus M4A78LT-M LE AM3 AMD 780L mATX Motherboard
$55 - Patriot 2GB DDR3 1333 RAM
$65 - Antec NEO ECO 520C 520W PSU
$60 - Antec 300 ATX Case
$30 - Intel EXPI9301CTBLK 10/100/1000Mbps PRO/1000 GT PCI-E x1 NIC OEM w/ 1 x RJ45
$100 - Microsoft Windows Home Server with Power Pack 1
---
Total: $434 plus tax and shipping.

Choose your own drives.

for the record; i neither said nor implied that i am not using ECC memory in my X8SIL

true, i did not state in my above post that my memory is ECC

so, fo the record, my X8SIL has crucial ECC memory
knowing how ackward the X8SIL can be with memory i picked the memory from the SM approved list

Ahh gotcha. Was a bit confused there. Thanks for the clarification!
 
I had trouble with non-ECC memory while doing the Supermicro X8SIL-F review. That being said, it is a GREAT board. I also have the Intel BOXDH55LC you mention. It is a good sub $100 board, however there is no way it is in the same league as the X8SIL-F. Figure a second Intel NIC = $40 (and it also takes a PCIe x1 slot). Then the fact that with Supermicro boards you don't need an attached CD/DVD/USB/Floppy to do software installation as part of the IPMI 2.0/ KVM-over-IP. Slightly more expensive, sure, but it is a really solid setup.

BTW to further Aposim's research I did a quick Atom N330 v. i3-530 review quite awhile ago. I'm working on getting an Atom D510 in the next week or two though but it is basically not much more than 10% faster than the N330.

FWIW I got a few more watts with the i3-530 than Aposim did on the X8SIL-F plus i3-530. Still same ballpark though.

I sent you a pm on the memory for this motherboard.


Thanks In advance.
 
The Zotac with two Mini-PCI-express? I got that one too:

zotac-pinetrail.jpg


It does run ZFS, by the way. :)
Currently my test box for developing the ZFS web-interface.
 
The Zotac with two Mini-PCI-express? I got that one too:

It does run ZFS, by the way. :)
Currently my test box for developing the ZFS web-interface.

can't see the answer above, so i'll ask the question down here....

what's the idle power draw of that mobo in a base configuration?

base configuration = mobo, memory, a single hard drive, psu

would be interested in comparing with my X8SIL-F plus 13-530
 
I have a decent power meter, but i borrowed it to someone. Can get it back in a few days and give you the idle numbers. I do not use a HDD in there though; it boots from the network and has no local disks at all. I created memory disks to simulate disks and use them for testing the ZFS interface. :p

This board has a different chipset than the usual Intel 945GSE; it has the next-gen NM10 chipset which has support for the newer on-die IGP the Atom D510 has; that means the graphics card is on the CPU and the CPU integrates part of the northbridge. So more integration, means less components, means only one passive heatsink (covering both CPU and NM10 chipset) and generally lower power consumption.

By the way: i wouldn't use a PCI gigabit NIC; avoid PCI at all costs. The onboard gigabit NIC should be fine, and you can reasonably expect all current onboard NICs to be on embedded (southbridge) interface, or via PCI-express x1 interface.
 
The Zotac with two Mini-PCI-express? I got that one too:

zotac-pinetrail.jpg


It does run ZFS, by the way. :)
Currently my test box for developing the ZFS web-interface.

Yup that's the one! I was super excited until I realized that it was a 20 pin ATX connector so the PicoPSU won't fit :-P Worst thing may be that I don't have a 24pin to 20pin adapter handy. Two things I don't understand are:
1. Why only 2 SATA ports (I guess Atoms are really streaming targets)
2. Why is the PCIe x1 slot not a cutout so you can have the option of using a x4 card in there?

I ended up buying the Intel H57 mITX, the OCZ Agility 2 120GB shell shocker (I just wanted a SF drive), a few mATX and mITX cases, more ECC RAM and such yesterday too. I think I'm on a SFF kick. Not going to lie, I remember building every PC with big ATX style motherboards years ago so getting a mobo + CPU for $110 with all the onboard features in such a small package is just cool!
 
The older Pico-PSU is 20-pins ATX. Mine is, anyway. The newer PicoPSU-150 may be 24-pins ATX i think. But depending on layout, the 4 extra pins are allowed to just not be connected. Most motherboards do need the separate +12V plug though, as it's used for the VRM (power supply to the CPU).

Since the NM10 chipset delivers only 2x Serial ATA, that's where your limitation comes from:

integration.jpg


I saw some other Atom boards with cutout PCI-express x1 slots; able to have longer cards in there. You can still buy a PCIe x1 -> PCIe x16 riser though; that way it will actually fit since i think otherwise an installed MiniPCIe card would interfere with the PCI-express card.
 
One thing I found in building my low power file server is that hardware RAID cards take a good amount of power. Here's some rough numbers off a Kill-A-Watt, based on the delta of with the RAID card and without.

Adaptec 31605 ~25w
Areca 1680ix-24 ~25w
Areca 1260 ~20w
 
One thing I found in building my low power file server is that hardware RAID cards take a good amount of power. Here's some rough numbers off a Kill-A-Watt, based on the delta of with the RAID card and without.

Adaptec 31605 ~25w
Areca 1680ix-24 ~25w
Areca 1260 ~20w

Were those figures taken at idle or under load (Raid 6 OCE/ verify)?

Also @ sub.mesa, I almost picked up a 20-pin PicoPSU at Fry's but put it down since I figured I'd never need a 20-pin connector. Oh well. The issue with the Zotac board is that there are pins directly to the right of the ATX connector (it is mITX so it is to be expected things are cramped right?) so you can't use the 24-pin connector with the other 4 pins hanging out in space.
 
I see. In that case you could buy a 24-pin ATX -> 20-pin ATX convertor cable. I have one lying around actually. :D

But they might be hard to find, and usually quite pricey for being a rare component.
 
@pjkenned: At idle. I guess I can try to get under load numbers by getting power numbers for the drives in use without the raid card, and then do a verify with the card to see what the differences are.. I'll see if I can make some time.
 
Yup that's the one! I was super excited until I realized that it was a 20 pin ATX connector so the PicoPSU won't fit :-P Worst thing may be that I don't have a 24pin to 20pin adapter handy. Two things I don't understand are:
1. Why only 2 SATA ports (I guess Atoms are really streaming targets)
2. Why is the PCIe x1 slot not a cutout so you can have the option of using a x4 card in there?

I ended up buying the Intel H57 mITX, the OCZ Agility 2 120GB shell shocker (I just wanted a SF drive), a few mATX and mITX cases, more ECC RAM and such yesterday too. I think I'm on a SFF kick. Not going to lie, I remember building every PC with big ATX style motherboards years ago so getting a mobo + CPU for $110 with all the onboard features in such a small package is just cool!


I am with you. I already built 2 Intel JG Geyser boards and am amazed at the power and SFF of them.
 
I see. In that case you could buy a 24-pin ATX -> 20-pin ATX convertor cable. I have one lying around actually. :D

But they might be hard to find, and usually quite pricey for being a rare component.

Stopped by Microcenter between work and dinner. They had one for ~$8! Firing up the little board now.
 
One thing I found in building my low power file server is that hardware RAID cards take a good amount of power. Here's some rough numbers off a Kill-A-Watt, based on the delta of with the RAID card and without.

Adaptec 31605 ~25w
Areca 1680ix-24 ~25w
Areca 1260 ~20w

I am surprised that the 31605 uses so much power

its only rated at 1A at 3.3V

i wonder what my 56145 uses (i would have thought that it would use about the same as the 1680ix as they have the same processor)
 
My NEW Server currently contains the following:

* Thermaltake Armor Case with 3 120mm fans
* Intel i3 core 530 <---- also have an Intel Xeon X3440 CPU
* Supermicro X8SIL-F
* Kingston DDR3 4gig
* Seagate Barracuda 7200.12 500gig for OS
* OCZ Xtreme 700W PSU
* Windows 7 Ultimate 64 Bit
* 2 Athena 4x3 bays for a total of 8 Hot Swap Bays
The power draw was 38 watts idle

Adding a Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 card to PCIe slot number one increased the power draw to 43watts

Adding the 6x 2TB WD20EADS Drives I am at 87 Watts watching Mymovies over the network.
 
So I am finally at the point that I think having a file storage computer is needed. I have tons of stuff that really should be stored in one central place and be accessible on my entire network all the time, specially for my media PC so I don't need to store all my media on the drive thats in it.
...

Cliffs.
-Want to build low power network storage computer.
-Do not know any thing about doing so
-need hardware, OS, software ideas
-Will not use linux.

1) How low power that you want? less than 40W (not counting HDD)
2) How big of the storage do you need 10TB raw or 20TB?
3) Protected data?

1- You can use ITX MB with Celeron or Atom, to run file server you DON'T need P4 or fancy CPU...
such as: ITX-220, Intel D945GSEJT, AT3N7A-I
I refer ITX-220 cuz it is best value and since it will runs as head-less (no monitor) so the average power used is 25W
2- Five or Ten 5x 2.0TB Hitachi HDD (each will need about 13W),
3- I would go for the driver-less hardware raid controller
http://www.datoptic.com/5x-drive-hardware-raid-controller.html
just plug to SATA port you can have a volume as big as 10TB and takes no host CPU power due to its hardware raid. You can have two of these configured as 2x raid5 8TB each, or raid50 as 16TB

One thing I love about this hardware raid controller - I can set the idle timing, so the whole raid array will go to sleep mode, this even requires less power

Software runs with WHS or FreeNAS under USB pen



So for the money it will cost you about
MB+513MB of DDR2 533MHz about $85~$90.00
Hitachi HDD 2.0TB @ $139.00/ea - you can get it even asl ow as $119.00/ea if they are on sale
SPM393 @ $120.00/ea
300W ATX PSU $25.00
OS: FreeNAS on USB pen = $5.00 (free software)

So for 10TB or 8TB raid5 system - without case
Use FreeNAS
cost you $925~$930.00 and use about ~100W (pretty generous)

if use WHS then add $90.00 more

I have this system runs under FreeNAS, of course with some tune up under FreeNAS
It sounds scary because it's FreeBSD, but trust me it's all GUI
I can copy five streams to this file-server under SAMBA at ~10MB/sec per task or 45~65 just ONE task

50mbxfer.jpg


Let me know if you interested
 
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