Proposed new/first Home Server Build

[je55e]

Case: Fractal Design Define XL

CPU: AMD Athlon II X2 250 Dual Core Processor Socket AM3 3.0GHZ 2MB L2 Cache 65W

MOBO: MSI 890GXM-G65 mATX AM3 890GX+SB850 DDR3 2PCI-E16 1PCI-E 1PCI SATA Audio Video GBLAN

RAM: G.SKILL Ripjaws X Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) Desktop Memory Model F3-12800CL9D-4GBXL

Raid Controller Card: Dell Perc 6i w/256mb +BBU

Power Supply: COUGAR SX850 COUGAR-SX850 850W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS SILVER Certified Modular Active PFC Power Supply (had one lying around)

HDDS for Storage: Not sure yet. Leaning towards the 8 x 2 TB Hitachi 5k3000 in Raid-6

HDDS for OS: 2 x Western Digital Scorpio Black WD1600BEKT 160GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive in raid-1 (I already have one from an old laptop)

OS: Likely WHS 2011 - Edit: I also have a copy Windows Server 2003 somewhere

Main purpose is to just store files (ripped isos so I can get rid of the disks, encoded dvds, etc), documents, and computer backup images.

The reason I picked WHS is because it's familiar, but I'm not opposed to trying something different.

The reason I picked Raid is because I'm anal about losing files

Thoughts/opinions/suggestions more than welcomed/needed

 

[Rogue71]

first off why would you bother running raid in either the os or the storage drives if youre using whs? what are you planning to do with this server?

 

[je55e]

Main purpose is to just store files (ripped isos so I can get rid of the disks, encoded dvds, etc), documents, and computer backup images.

The reason I picked WHS is because it's familiar.

The reason I picked Raid is because I'm anal about losing files

 

[adi]

RAID won't help for losing files, it will only help if you lose a drive.

WHS can run on top of RAID, but WHSv1 with DE means you can have duplicate copies across multiple spindles without having to pay for a real RAID card. And there isn't a huge need to R1 your OS drive with WHS, just swap out failed OS drive, reinstall, and it will recover the DE pool on it's own.

For server2k3 though, you would have some benefit for RAID on both data and boot volumes, although it still doesn't contain a real backup solution.

 

[je55e]

RAID won't help for losing files, it will only help if you lose a drive.

True. I suppose I was mistakenly equated one with the other.

WHS can run on top of RAID, but WHSv1 with DE means you can have duplicate copies across multiple spindles without having to pay for a real RAID card.

What about with WHS 2011 and raid? (Update original post to show WHS2011)

And there isn't a huge need to R1 your OS drive with WHS, just swap out failed OS drive, reinstall, and it will recover the DE pool on it's own.

I was going to use the mobo onboard raid and I figured $40 for raid-1 didn't seem like that much, but I do understand where you are coming from.

 

[plunger]

For my WHS v1, instead of RAID, I use drive extender and file duplicate.

I also backup my WHS itself. It will copy over any share folder I want, to another backup hard drive that is not part of the pool like a USB drive or esata drive. I plan on buying a fire/waterproof safe and keeping the backup drive in it. I also plan on keeping an encrypted drive at work with just documents and photos.

 

[je55e]

The perc 6i, can I rebuild/expand the array while it's online?
(AKA: will I still have access to my files while it's doing it's thing?)

 

[diizzy]

Well, the case is very nice but it seems very hard to find in the US although its a good case...

CPU and Mobo isn't that suitable, you're better off with a Zecate solution (if you want low power) or an Intel CPU like the i3-2100T along with a mobo that has Intel LAN. If you want to step up a bit grab a Q67-based board and a vPro ceritified CPU and you'll get Intel AMT and KVM-support.

Go with 4Gb sticks, ram is cheap and going down to 1333 Mhz isn't the end of the world. Stick with stock memory if you want to avoid possible compatibility issues.

You can probably go for a simple HBA if you want to try a Linux based solution or ZFS (Solaris/FreeBSD).

The rest looks fine

//Danne

 

[Rogue71]

as some previous posters have stated, whs v1 has built-in duplication as well as the drive extender, so you get the best of both worlds. imo i wouldnt use whs2011 as it does not use a builtin drive extender and you must rely on 3rd party software. i really do not know why anyone would bother with whs2011. so you can have your server and either make it bigger or save some cash.

 

[gmohr]

i really do not know why anyone would bother with whs2011.

I can answer this... Robustness. WHS v1 is an ancient OS platform, and it shows in poor stability. v2011 is built on Server 2008, has none of the one-off complexities of DE, and by most accounts is solid.

DE was great when hard drive space was somewhat costly. Today TB's are just about free.

 

[Abula]

WHS v1 is an ancient OS platform, and it shows in poor stability.

Most of the time older OS are much more stable the newer OS, that said, im not dishing WHS2011, i just dont see any reason to move, specially missing the DE. And btw i havent had any instability issues with my WHSv1 in over two years, im so happy with it, that im building a new one, and still will be be with WHSv1.

DE was great when hard drive space was somewhat costly. Today TB's are just about free.

To me its still great, probably the best feature WHSv1 has, the easy of increasing a storage pool, allowing to mixed different sizes hdd... removal....etc. Its the only reason i wont move to WHS2011, until i need to.

 

[Poplap]

A good alternative to WHS that can give you all the update feature and the Drive expander would be linux running Amahi . had it running on an old server that died due to power outage, and it worked great had a lot of feature including grayhole, the linux alternative to DE, i will say when i was using it you still had to use a little CLI to add drives to greyhole but nothing to complex. the only reason im not using it still is because i wanted to try my hand at ZFS and OpenIndiana. now it does not have the easy integration of WHS but it is still easy to use.

A little information for your internet reading.

 

[gmohr]

To each his own. My WHS v1 has been a troublemaker from the start. I have an HP ex495, and have expereienced hickups with the media collector, the system partition filling with sensless log files, and the full PC restore has never worked when I needed it (although the basic file backup is fantastic).

I'm upgrading, and I hope it improves on the previous version. DE is a total non-issue for me personally.

 

[plunger]

It's probably add-on's that's giving everyone problems. My WHS v1 has been problem free and runs without add-on's. 1 add-on corrupted my WHS and I never used any again.

I restored my pc's plenty of times and never had a problem except for my gigabit Intel CT pci-e card. During restore, it will never see the card or want to use any drivers for it.

 

[Rogue71]

I can answer this... Robustness. WHS v1 is an ancient OS platform, and it shows in poor stability. v2011 is built on Server 2008, has none of the one-off complexities of DE, and by most accounts is solid.

DE was great when hard drive space was somewhat costly. Today TB's are just about free.

ive been running a custom built whs v1 for years now, including a full upgrade which included all the hard drives and all system parts. i never bothered upgrading it to the latest version as i have no need for the connector software at all, so im not sure if that has anything to do with why some people may have issues, but this system runs great and its rock solid.

whs2011 lacks DE. so what if TB are cheaper? that makes no difference. i certainly want the ability to keep adding drives to the pool without adding yet another 3rd party program to the mix that may or may not glitch. so, using whs2011 means that EVERYTIME i want to expand my storage i have to redo the install, unless i want to risk using a 3rd party add-on. if you have a very large storage pool that can be extremely difficult.

i don't doubt that whs2011 could have been an awesome successor to whs v1, but it lacks more than it brings to the table. IMO alot of people that have issues with whs seem to have the pre-built HP systems. MS should have simply offered WHS as a normal software package and promoted the hell out of it, which they did not do. i really have no idea what ms was thinking when they designed whs2011. just stupidity.

 

[plunger]

I certainly want the ability to keep adding drives to the pool without adding yet another 3rd party program to the mix that may or may not glitch. so, using whs2011 means that EVERYTIME i want to expand my storage i have to redo the install, unless i want to risk using a 3rd party add-on.

What the heck?

I didn't know about that, glad I never seriously looked into upgrading to WHS 2011.

Who ever came up with this idea needs to get fired or be sent over to MySpace to work on some collaborations.

 

[cbutters]

Good build IMO, you probably don't need a 850 watt power supply for a basic cpu/motherboard w/ no additional GPU, unless you just need the connectors for all the HDDs or something, but really you would be fine with even a good quality 350 watt for this build, and it would be more efficient at your power requirement level.

Good choice on the Perc 6i, cheap and fast, I have a 5i, and will at some point move to a 6i like you. I am running 8x2TB Samsung F4s and WD Greenpower (I prefer the samsungs).

As far as WHS....... V1, I have been using it off and on since the beginning, the feature set is nice, but like others have said, it really isn't reliable unfortunately... I have had so many issues with corruption in the beginning, then random space being used and you can't ever utilize the empty space again without reinstalling the server OS... It is only REALLY nice if you swap hard drives out for various purposes, you can just tell WHS V1 to remove the drive from the storage pool, then you can just pop it out and everything is fine.... that is the only real reason I would recommend it to anyone at this point in time.

Also... the perc 6i RAID solution is much better than WHS DE, since most people just duplicate all their shares anyways, which means your 16TB is effectively 8TB, a perc 5i in a RAID 10 setup is going to be effectively 8TB as well, but have the added bonus of an extremely fast array that can read write much faster than WHS DE drives would be able to, even gigabit network speeds (max 125MB/s) can overwhelm DE very easily.

you can however use WHS 2011 with your raid array, which would be nice because you get the backup and other feature set of WHS, built upon a Server 2008 foundation. Or if you are a student, just use Server 2008 for free off of dreamspark.... cant beat that...

 

[Rogue71]

What the heck?

I didn't know about that, glad I never seriously looked into upgrading to WHS 2011.

Who ever came up with this idea needs to get fired or be sent over to MySpace to work on some collaborations.

there are apparently 2 add-ons that you can use to replace the built-in DE that whsv1 had. both are beta and still under development,which leaves them open to failure. i have not tried them...im sure they might work. but if at some time a revision goes to crap...so does your drive pool. its a gamble...but imo for everyday usage and storage i cant justify that risk.

 

[je55e]

My Perc 6/i card should be arriving sometime next week. I've been doing a little (lot) of reading and was curious about the whole "4k sector" issue.

Anyone have any first hand experience?

I'm currently reading my way through 550+ page thread on another forum about it. If someone would like to spoil the ending for me that would be great

 

[gmohr]

What the heck?

I didn't know about that, glad I never seriously looked into upgrading to WHS 2011.

Who ever came up with this idea needs to get fired or be sent over to MySpace to work on some collaborations.

This problem is overstated imo. You don't need to redo any install to add a drive, just expose different shares on it. This really isnt hard, folks. To each his own I guess.

 

[Rogue71]

This problem is overstated imo. You don't need to redo any install to add a drive, just expose different shares on it. This really isnt hard, folks. To each his own I guess.

care to elaborate on that??afaik whs2011 does not just let you simply add a hard drive which is incorporated into the existing volume...and THAT is why DE IS a big deal. on top of that unless you fork out a crapload of cash for a good hardware raid controller, you're pretty much stuck using craptastic software based raid.

 

[gmohr]

DE lets one logical share span one or more disks transparently to the client and server administrator. Whs 2011, drops this feature. This does not mean that you cant easily add disks, only that you must manage your data across those disks by placing the shares intelligently so that you don't fill up one volume with, say, movie files. This is a bummer for those with either huge shares or lots of small disks. For everyone else its a non-issue. Keep in mind that whs provides a pretty good tool for relocating shares if you need to balance storage. If you do move a share, the client wont see any impact.

As for redundancy, you can either use raid, or use a server backup drive (up to 2 TB), or one of the cloud based backups, all supported. By giving up on DE, you get a much more standard, fast, and compatible platform to rely on. You can run apps on the box, use best of breed tools, and generally treat it like a normal machine, instead of some hybrid freak appliance on a filesystem that nothing else in the world can read.

This whole DE thing was great back when hard drives actually cost money. These days you can trade used kitty litter for a 1TB DISK.