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Need advice on Home server.

S

SeeThruHead

n00b
Joined
Jan 31, 2012
Messages
55
Im having a lot of trouble deciding which hardware approach to take for my home server build.

Requirements:
Needs to support 24 sata2 drives (norco 4224)
Needs a NAS aspect with expandable drive pool
Should be expandable into a second 4u enclosure. (at a later date, when i have more money)
needs to stream simultaneously to 3 xbmc boxes.
needs to be able to transcode on the fly to 2 android devices simultaneously.
Possible that it may have to transcode to two decvices and stream to xbmc (SMB) simultaneously, but the most common high load i can foresee is one android and 2 Xbmc.

I would like it to run WHS 2011 (for backups and other addins)

Would be nice to have the NAS on ZFS.

So my main questions is how much CPU do i need? Should I use 2 CPU's?
Should I opt for a Supermicro server board over a consumer grade board.
Which socket should i go for. Should i get a server mother board with integrated SAS HBA to save money or should i opt for PCIE HBA's only.
There's so many options I can't begin to decide. Any guidance is welcome.
 
I will answer the onboard sas question since I just went with one. The price savings is not that large usually but freeing up a pcie slot may be a good reason.

Note though that onboard controllers are almost always IR (fake raid). For zfs you want IT. Not too much of an issue with the lsi based ones you can crossflash it but you just need to be careful since you do have a risk of bricking the controller.

Other issue I ran into with onboard was with a second addon controller it would not boot until I disabled the onboard sas bios, I assume the two hba bios conflicted. Again not a huge issue once I figured out the problem, the onboard bios is not needed since the addon controller bios can configure the onboard as well, same chipset.
 
m1abram said:
For zfs you want IT.
Click to expand...

Don't mean to threadjack, but could you explain what that sentence means. I've been researching building a home sever myself and reading lots of these very helpful threads.
 
It means the HBA will act in Initiator-Target mode (IT) - ie it will present the drives "as-is" to the OS - in IR mode, the OS can't see the drives themselves, just whatever raid volumes have been configured (if any).
 
Far as I know you can't run ZFS under WHS2011 so that would be a mute point.

I would saw a Xeon E3 1230V2 should be more than enough processor. 4 core with HT. If you want to save money you can go with a slower E3 12xx series CPU but you lose the HT.

With the transcoding on the fly I would recommend at least 16GB of ram but then WHS2011 is out as it only supports 8GB of ram.

For the Raid controller go with the 1882 series. Get an 8 port with an expander to handle the drives inside and leave the other port for your future external addon.

Now I have a question. How much money are you willing to spend?

My setups at home with the 4224's are being built but in the end they will be.
Norco 4224
Asus P8BWS Workstation/Server motherboard
Xeon E3 1230V2
32GB ram (currently each have 16GB)
EVGA 560 Ti's (currently one is using a crap ATI and the other an EVGA 560) (Folding)
Areca 1882 24i+4e port controllers (currently one is a HP RR 3560 and other doesn't have one)
24 4TB drives (currently 4 2TB drives in one and none in the other)
OCz 120GB SSD for OS usage
Windows 2012 Standard.

Hope that info helps
 
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