New build, looking for suggestions

[gregster]

Current rig:

A64 3000+
1GB RAM
3Ware 9650SE - 8 port
5 x Seagate 1TB 7200.11 in RAID5
Generic Antec case
Fortron 400W PSU
Debian - probably going to stick with Linux

What I'm shooting for is at least 10TB, and there's the option of using RAID6 if I go past 6 drives (my comfort zone). I'm really unsure of what drives to go for with the WD Greens no longer having the TLER fix working. The current Seagates have been pretty poor, two have died and the one replacement is picking up reallocated sectors. So that's three failures (well, near failures as I RMAd them before they died) in about 1.5 years. I would like to go for 2TB drives, as anything less would likely not be worth it. Apart from the very expensive WD 2TB Blacks, it seems like neither company has a 7200rpm 2TB solution. From what I've read we're at least a year away from having 4TB drives, is that about right? I don't want to build something that's going to be made obsolete too quickly.

I'm pretty open to any sort of config. Changing the chassis or RAID card is a possibility, though I think the CPU/RAM are quite sufficient for file serving. As far as a prefab solution, I've considered Drobo, Thecus and ReadyNAS. I like the idea of having "RAID Z" with Drobo, but the price premium is really steep, especially the $200 addon just for Ethernet.

 

[Dangman]

It would help if you told us what was your max budget for this new file server. Also, both companies do have 7200RPM 2TB drives:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...ption=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc=

But as you can tell, not exactly available.

Also, ANY system you build today will probably be obsolete or at the very least, outdated within a year or two. That's just the way it's always been in the computer technology world.

 

[gregster]

I'd probably be looking at about a $1000 or slightly higher budget.

I had forgotten about the Seagate 7200rpm models. I'm not sure if it's worth getting those over the LP series. Actually I think the Seagate LPs are probably the best choice, with performance between the Green and the XT, while being considerably better priced/GB than the XT.

 

[ftp222]

Take a look at unRAID if you haven't already (http://lime-technology.com). It is the closest thing I have found to future proofing a file server. You can add a mix of drives and add larger ones as they become available. I have been running it for almost a year and have expanded the array several times without any issues. This is a great solution for a media server.

I would not recommend a Drobo. I have the 4 bay one with Firewire and it is just way to slow for every day use. Any time you try to read/write multiple streams at the same time, the throughput drops to almost nothing. I have also seen too many horror stories of lost data and nearly had the same happen to me. Mine will be headed to ebay soon.

Windows Home Server is another option that a lot of people on this forum use. The only reason I chose not to go with WHS was the way data protection is done - mirroring versus a single drive parity. Too much wasted space in my opinion.

 

[gregster]

What sort of throughput do you get with unRAID? From what I understand you wouldn't need a RAID card as it's all sw RAID. It seems a bit odd to go with a sw RAID solution like WHS since I have a good RAID card, but at the same time I wish the card mfgs would offer a more flexible RAID implementation.

 

[ftp222]

What sort of throughput do you get with unRAID? From what I understand you wouldn't need a RAID card as it's all sw RAID. It seems a bit odd to go with a sw RAID solution like WHS since I have a good RAID card, but at the same time I wish the card mfgs would offer a more flexible RAID implementation.

With unRAID, you have 2 options - You can write directly to the protected disks and I average 30 MB/s with WD Green drives (both parity and data drives are the slow green drives). Or, you can write to a Cache drive that is unprotected until a batch process at 3 AM that moves all the files to a protected drive - I do not use this much, but users report getting 60-80 MB/s writing to a cache drive - pretty much whatever Gig Ethernet can handle.

As far as reads go, they go very quick at whatever GigE can max out at. I use unRAID mainly for media and file storage, but it has no problems streaming 3-4 HD feeds while I am writing to it. The biggest benefit for me is being able to use a mix of drive sizes and not have to worry much about getting the same model and size for a traditional RAID setup.

I used to run RAID 5 for several years, but got tired of having a drive drop out and having to rebuild the array or in severe cases go the data recovery method if I couldn't get the array back up. I will say performance for unRAID is not as good as a local direct access RAID 5, but honestly with what I am using it for, I rarely notice.

Check out the lime-tech forums if you are curious (http://lime-technology.com/forum). There are a lot of very knowledgeable and friendly people that help out all the time.

 

[gregster]

That sounds fairly decent. I'll have to give it some thought, since I did go to the expense of a RAID card + BBU, but the flexibility would be really nice.

I think what I'll do is buy some 2TB Seagate LP drives on whatever Boxing Day special comes up, and then I can worry about the implementation method later on.