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Rate My (3TB FileServer) Build

J

John G.

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 28, 2005
Messages
163
Going to be putting something like this together in the coming months. Thought I'd see if you guys had any input before I start making purchases:

Case: Chenbro SR-107 w/ 2 SATA Hot-Swap Drive Cages
http://www.chenbro.com.tw/product/product_preview.php?pid=102
Cost: ~$320

Power Supply: ThermalTake Silent PurePower 680W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817153021
Cost: $151

Motherboard: Asus A8N-VM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131571
Cost: $72

CPU: AMD Athlon64 X2 4200+
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103547
Cost: $361

Memory: Corsair ValueSelect 1GB PC3200
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145440
Cost: $73

Hard Drives: 1xWD3200JB (320GB, 8MB Cache, IDE Interface)
8xWD4000YR (400GB, 16MB Cache, SATA Interface, Raid Edition)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144392
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144424
Cost: $1,671

RAID Controller Card: HighPoint RocketRaid 2320
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816115026
Cost: $286

Video and Sound: Onboard
Cost: Free :)

I'd be setting up the 8 WD Raid Edition drives in RAID 5, and using the 320GB drive as an OS/random storage drive. Total storage would then be 3.12TB, total cost at $2,934. Let me know what you guys think!
 
I may have considered going with a better RAID card, thats an expensive system to be using a slower card. If it is just for home use on 100Mbps you probably won't notice but if it is gige you would for sure.
 
This would be for home (personal) storage. It would be used to store media. Obviously the vast majority of the space would be unusued, so I went with a RAID card that had online capacity expansion, so that I could build the array as I go if I want. I just don't like deleting stuff and definitely don't want to have to endure costs of rebuilding a storage server, so I'm looking for something with a very high maximum storage capacity.

For the PSU, isn't 680W pretty much the most powerful I can get without going more for a more specialized (read: way more expensive) PSU? The WD4000YR are spec'ed to draw 10 W during read/write operations. If all nine drives were read/writing at the same time, that would still be under 100W. I'm hoping real world power demand wouldn't be much higher...

Edit for eth00: As expensive as the system is, I'd like to keep cost down as much as possible. So unless there's a better RAID card out there (that offers OCE) at less than $50 price premium, I think I can take the speed hit. If the RAID card bottlenecks transfer speeds, is it silly to still insist on SATA interface/16MB buffer drives?
 
Lazier_Said said:
Home NAS is not demanding. That is overkill, overkill, overkill.

Think socket 754, cheapest Sempron 64 available, 400-450 watt Fortron PSU, a case like this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811220011.
Click to expand...

The biggest expense difference between those components and mine is the case-- having hot-swap bays are expensive, but would make hard drive maintenance/replacement a lot easier. I know I won't be pulling hard drives out left and right, but if I don't have to anticipate replacing any of them, I don't suppose there would be much point in going with RAID anyway, right?
 
Like Lazier_Said said (...said said, heh) that processor is overkill for its application, and will generate unnecessary heat. The money you save by moving to a cheap 754 platform can go to a beefier PSU and RAID card (hopefully one that does staggered spinup).
 
I agree on going with a cheaper CPU, and maybe going with hot swap cages (even cheap ones, like the Istar or Supermicro 4/5 in 3) or better raid card (Areca, 3Ware?) would be a better option. If you don't need rackmount you could also maybe save by getting a Stacker ST101 / 810 which can fit a lot of equipment. I've got the 320gb Western Digital RE's and let me just warn you, really stress test them because it seems they have a problem with some drives failing smart within a few days (I had one with this issue).
 
My only point of contention with this build would be the power supply. From what I understand, dual rail supplies are bad for disk arrays; see this thread for a discussion on (off?) the topic. See especially post #16. And in any case, anything that makes the avoid thread sounds like a bad idea. Something like the seasonic 600w (also at newegg) might be a better choice.

 
movax said:
Like Lazier_Said said (...said said, heh) that processor is overkill for its application, and will generate unnecessary heat. The money you save by moving to a cheap 754 platform can go to a beefier PSU and RAID card (hopefully one that does staggered spinup).
Click to expand...

Unless I read newegg's site wrong, the card he spec'ed out does support staggered spin up...
newegg.com said:
Staggered drive spin-up support
Click to expand...
 
movax said:
Like Lazier_Said said (...said said, heh) that processor is overkill for its application, and will generate unnecessary heat. The money you save by moving to a cheap 754 platform can go to a beefier PSU and RAID card (hopefully one that does staggered spinup).
Click to expand...

hokatichenci said:
I agree on going with a cheaper CPU, and maybe going with hot swap cages (even cheap ones, like the Istar or Supermicro 4/5 in 3) or better raid card (Areca, 3Ware?) would be a better option. If you don't need rackmount you could also maybe save by getting a Stacker ST101 / 810 which can fit a lot of equipment. I've got the 320gb Western Digital RE's and let me just warn you, really stress test them because it seems they have a problem with some drives failing smart within a few days (I had one with this issue).
Click to expand...

The reason I originally wanted to go dual-core was because there may be multiple people accessing the server at once (ie. streaming video off it). I doubt it would ever be more than three people at once though, and if you think a single core CPU will be able to handle that load just as well, I'll likely rethink the dual-core purchase.

I like the case I have picked out for a couple of reasons. One, I've had Chenbro cases before and really really like the build quality, and screwless implimentation. Two, I'm pretty picky about how things look, and while the innards of the computer remain hidden, the case is the server's face to the world. I think the look of the SR107 Granite is awesome, and they have a nice desktop case that matches it almost identically that I'd like to upgrade to someday. Then server and desktop would match. And I'm just crazy enough to spend an extra few bucks to make that the case. There isn't too much of a premium on the Chenbro as far as quality cases go either. I've been having a really hard time finding it available from US Online retailers (it was introduced in 2003 I think, and everyone carries the standard black or beige bezel models, but I guess the Granite just wasn't a big hit in the server market), so my cost in this case breaks down as $200 for the case as shipped from Germany (which is a hefty shipping fee), and two hot-swap cages made for the case that run at about $60 each. So that's the story behind that the case.

unhappy_mage said:
My only point of contention with this build would be the power supply. From what I understand, dual rail supplies are bad for disk arrays; see this thread for a discussion on (off?) the topic. See especially post #16. And in any case, anything that makes the avoid thread sounds like a bad idea. Something like the seasonic 600w (also at newegg) might be a better choice.
Click to expand...

Sounds great. I picked the Thermaltake because it was the most popular (though I suppose by now I should know that most-purchased doesn't mean highest quality) PSU in the 600W+ range. I'll be sure to take a good look at your recommendations.
 
I'm going to have to agree with the sugestions made about the power supply; Thermaltake isn't exactly a high-end brand, definitly not something that I would want to trust my data to 24/7. Seasonic is indeed quality, and you really can't go wrong with a large single-rail supply from Enermax/Fortron/Antec/PCP&C either.
 
Overkill! SUPER OVERKILL.

This about it this way: High storage RAID server existed way before any of these high end components did. A celly w/ linux would handle all of that just fine.
 
John G. said:
The reason I originally wanted to go dual-core was because there may be multiple people accessing the server at once (ie. streaming video off it). I doubt it would ever be more than three people at once though, and if you think a single core CPU will be able to handle that load just as well, I'll likely rethink the dual-core purchase.
Click to expand...

As a point of reference, I used to have a RAID 5 (5x200GB) file server running off a VIA Epia M10000. That's a 1GHz super weak mini-ITX board. Streaming video to 3 clients from this file server was not a problem at all. The only issue I had with this setup was write speed, which sucked hard due to the fact that the card I was using did not have a hardware based XOR engine. So, to beat a dead horse, a dual core whatever is gross overkill for streaming the 3 clients.
 
like everyone said:

WAY too much CPU - go for a Celeron D and an Intel board with PCI-E
better PSU, PCP&C
better RAID card, Areca or 3Ware

and order those hard drives from ZZF!!
 
John G, your server project sounds a lot like mine. I started with a Chenbro SR107 with 2 hot swap cages as well... but instead of 400GB drives, I'm populating my array with WD 320GB RE's... they seem to be the price point right now.

Taking the advice of other members here, I did go with an Areca 1120 8-port card as my RAID controller mainly because it was benchmarked as one of the fastest and most reliable cards available... and it's hardware RAID so it won't hog a lot of CPU cycles. Not that CPU cycles are going to be a problem since I went from an idea of using a single CPU to a dual Opteron setup... Ya, I know it's overkill for a file server, but file serving isn't going to be its sole purpose anymore. I figured if I had an abundance of CPU power to play with, I'd find ways of using it... and I already have a few things in mind.

Also upon the good advice of some of the members here, I went with a really beefy PSU... a PC Power & Cooling 510XE. Sure it's rated for 510W, but as I quickly found out, watts shouldn't be your main concern with a large number of drives... it's Amps you should be concerned about. Altogether those drives will draw a lot of amperage especially at startup... you need a PSU with a nice +12V rail to power them (unless you have a RAID controller that supports staggered spinup). The 510XE has a nice 34A +12V rail which should power all of my server's drives, the processors, and any case fans.... I say "should" because I'm still in the process of building... I hope to have everything up and running within a couple weeks.
 
Lazier_Said said:
That is overkill, overkill, overkill.
Click to expand...

movax said:
... that processor is overkill for its application...
Click to expand...

anotherguy159 said:
Overkill! SUPER OVERKILL.
Click to expand...

TeedOff said:
So, to beat a dead horse, a dual core whatever is gross overkill for streaming the 3 clients.
Click to expand...

EnderW said:
like everyone said:

WAY too much CPU
Click to expand...

:)

So, I'm curious-- is the whole setup overkill or just the CPU? You guys have convinced me to downgrade seriously on the CPU. I'll likely be going with a Sempron or something comparable at this point. I know this is a lot of money and that's a big point of hesitation (obviously) in building this system. So be specific-- if you think this server is overkill, for which parts is the cost justified? For which is it not?

I made my case on the SR107 earlier (no pun intended), and I really think investing in a good case/hot-swap setup would be prudent not only for this file server, but for the entire life of the case (which probably won't end with this setup). I'll knock the RAM off to 512MB (unless you think I should stick with the full GB), take the CPU way down, and change the PSU (but still likely end up spending as much). The RAID card I've heard all ways: spend less and do software RAID on Linux (can you do OCE with software RAID 5 in Linux?), spend more for a better card, and keep the card that's there.

So to answer the cries of overkill, I'd say there's really not a whole lot of fat to be trimmed aside from what I've decided to do above. There's really no getting around the huge cost of the drives (more than half the total), though it'll likely not be quite that much as I think I'll be buying them one at a time as my needs require, and prices will fall as the months go on.

Looking at power supplies, an interesting specification struk me. MTBF of about 80,000hrs. The RE drives will have MTBFs of 1,000,000hrs. Assuming I can remember my statistics class well enough, we can use the Poisson distribution to find that, two years after the server is brought online, there is an 86.9% probability that none of the eight drives will have failed. Yet there is only an 80.3% chance that the PSU will not have failed in that time. So why am I putting all this money ($250 for the RAID card) into guarding against hard disk failure? Shouldn't I be more concerned about PSU failure? And if I'm not concerned about PSU failure, is RAID 5 worth the cost?
 
From reading the build it's mainly the cpu that is just plain overkill. A file server really needs ram more than anything. That and fast, reliable harddrives to round things out. To put things into perspective one of the records for data transfered in a day was a 1gig p3 BSD server with 2gigs of ram and it pushed something over a terabyte, I believe, with 300 concurrent users.
 
Currently there is no OCE capabilities for linux software RAID 5 as far as I know. i was looking this up a few months ago and couldn't find anything. It is possible to increase the partition sizes of RAID 5, but not add new disks.
 
John G. said:
This would be for home (personal) storage. It would be used to store media. Obviously the vast majority of the space would be unusued, so I went with a RAID card that had online capacity expansion ....snip....
Click to expand...




Personally, I'll never trust a Highpoint card ever again. As far as the 'online capacity expansion' on that card goes, I'd ask someone I trust who's done it with that card before I bought it, as I seriously doubt it'll work right.



defakto said:
From reading the build it's mainly the cpu that is just plain overkill. A file server really needs ram more than anything. That and fast, reliable harddrives to round things out. To put things into perspective one of the records for data transfered in a day was a 1gig p3 BSD server with 2gigs of ram and it pushed something over a terabyte, I believe, with 300 concurrent users.
Click to expand...


It seems to me that can't possibly be right - I've pushed way over a TB in a day before, and that was on a slower, old server. Not to mention that 300 users would be serious overkill, 10 users doing heavy transfers can bring a 6 disk raid 5 to it's knees on 100Mb Ethernet. Now, some of the newer PCI-E cards boast 300Mb/s r/w (i believe - someone correct me if I'm wrong) in combo with 1000Mb Ethernet, but 300 users? Still seems like major overkill.
 
John G. said:
So, I'm curious-- is the whole setup overkill or just the CPU? You guys have convinced me to downgrade seriously on the CPU. I'll likely be going with a Sempron or something comparable at this point. I know this is a lot of money and that's a big point of hesitation (obviously) in building this system. So be specific-- if you think this server is overkill, for which parts is the cost justified? For which is it not?

I made my case on the SR107 earlier (no pun intended), and I really think investing in a good case/hot-swap setup would be prudent not only for this file server, but for the entire life of the case (which probably won't end with this setup). I'll knock the RAM off to 512MB (unless you think I should stick with the full GB), take the CPU way down, and change the PSU (but still likely end up spending as much). The RAID card I've heard all ways: spend less and do software RAID on Linux (can you do OCE with software RAID 5 in Linux?), spend more for a better card, and keep the card that's there.

So to answer the cries of overkill, I'd say there's really not a whole lot of fat to be trimmed aside from what I've decided to do above. There's really no getting around the huge cost of the drives (more than half the total), though it'll likely not be quite that much as I think I'll be buying them one at a time as my needs require, and prices will fall as the months go on.

Looking at power supplies, an interesting specification struk me. MTBF of about 80,000hrs. The RE drives will have MTBFs of 1,000,000hrs. Assuming I can remember my statistics class well enough, we can use the Poisson distribution to find that, two years after the server is brought online, there is an 86.9% probability that none of the eight drives will have failed. Yet there is only an 80.3% chance that the PSU will not have failed in that time. So why am I putting all this money ($250 for the RAID card) into guarding against hard disk failure? Shouldn't I be more concerned about PSU failure? And if I'm not concerned about PSU failure, is RAID 5 worth the cost?
Click to expand...
I don't think the whole server is overkill, at least not to the extent of the CPU. If this is going to be used strictly as a fileserver (ie: stuck in a corner, and just used for the purpose of serving files to other computers), then no, you don't need any CPU power for that. Get the cheapest you can. If it's going to be used for something that does require some power (gaming, encoding, etc), then fine get a nice dual core chip like you have now.
Another thing to keep in mind is the CPU is very easy to upgrade. If later on you decide you want to use it to crunch some numbers, swap a nice Presler in there (provided you went with a 775 platform like I recommended).

I really have no issue with the case, and I agree that it's a good investment in the future IF you are determined to have hotswap bays. The reason I say this is because if you bought two supermicro 5 to 3 bays, it would cost you about $250. You'd then only have $80 or so left for a case to have the same capabilities as your Chenbro.
However, if you want to cut costs, consider giving up hot swap. How often do you expect to use it? Is the time saved by not having to open your case worth it? If not, look into the CoolerMaster Stacker.

I would leave the RAM at 1GB, you wouldn't be saving a lot by dropping it to 512MB anyway, and RAM is more important than CPU power in this case.

I would really stay away from software RAID5. It's going to be slower and a bigger pain in the ass to setup. Plus you'll need a stronger CPU if you go that route. If you want to cut costs here, look into the Broadcom BC4852, it's a great card with lots of features, and for your purposes, it's unlikely you'll notice a big difference in speed. However, the Areca cards really are top of the line and they've dropped in price quite a bit over the last few months. Also consider the 3ware 9550, which although costing just as much as the Areca's, doesn't seem to be as fast, but has some pretty loyal users who like it a lot.

That's an interesting statistic on hard drives and something I've never noticed. The only thing I'd recommend here outside of looking into reduntant PSUs (huge cost increase and requiring a new chassis) is just get a 510W PC Power and Cooling unit. It's rated at 100,000 hours, has a 5 year warranty, and it's probably the best PSU you can buy. Downside is it costs around $200, more if you want a custom harness, which is actually something I'd consider - they will make any combination of connectors and cable lengths for about $50 and it's not very quiet. Everything considered though, it's the only PSU I'd use in this system.

Also, remember RAID5 is not a backup. No matter how good your hard drives or PSU are, if you lose 2 drives at the same time, bye bye. All it really does is lower your downtime if a drive does fail. It's still important to make real backups to removable media or an external drive of all critical data.

Hope this helps.
 
Tyklfe said:
It seems to me that can't possibly be right - I've pushed way over a TB in a day before, and that was on a slower, old server. Not to mention that 300 users would be serious overkill, 10 users doing heavy transfers can bring a 6 disk raid 5 to it's knees on 100Mb Ethernet. Now, some of the newer PCI-E cards boast 300Mb/s r/w (i believe - someone correct me if I'm wrong) in combo with 1000Mb Ethernet, but 300 users? Still seems like major overkill.
Click to expand...
1 TB in a day is 11 MB/s, all day long. That's pushing 100 mbit. Not to say you can't beat that with gigabit ethernet, but with 100 mbit ethernet you'd be hard pushed to even get there.

As for Highpoint's reliability, I haven't heard of anyone having problems with their recent equipment. Their old ide, software-based stuff is utter crap, don't get me wrong, but if you take a list of all the manufacturers and cross off all the ones that have had a bad product at some point, you haven't got much of a list. Do make a backup before you try to do OCE, though - that's not easy and I wouldn't trust anyone to get it right ;)

Software raid is plenty to keep 100 mbit saturated. There's no need to go buying a $600 raid card for this.

 
I highly recommend this case http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811182005

External 5.25" Drive Bays 11
External 3.5" Drive Bays 1
Internal 3.5" Drive Bays 2

It is relatively cheap, well built and if you use hard drive hot swap enclosures like I did when i made my file server, you can get a lot of drives in it. If you use reserve 1 for an optical device, that leaves you with 10 usable 5.25” bays. In my case, i used 5 3in2 enclosures. I currently have 14 drives out of a possible 15 externally available hot swap bays. externally available hot swap bays are a must if you want to do a fileserver right. I highly recommend areca raid controllers. i used an areca arc1230 pcie 12 channel sata raid controller and it is so fast it is scary. Raid 6 is the way to go in my opinion if you go with a areca card.

btw the wheels come already attached to this case :)
 
Tyklfe said:
Personally, I'll never trust a Highpoint card ever again. As far as the 'online capacity expansion' on that card goes, I'd ask someone I trust who's done it with that card before I bought it, as I seriously doubt it'll work right.

It seems to me that can't possibly be right - I've pushed way over a TB in a day before, and that was on a slower, old server. Not to mention that 300 users would be serious overkill, 10 users doing heavy transfers can bring a 6 disk raid 5 to it's knees on 100Mb Ethernet. Now, some of the newer PCI-E cards boast 300Mb/s r/w (i believe - someone correct me if I'm wrong) in combo with 1000Mb Ethernet, but 300 users? Still seems like major overkill.
Click to expand...


Sorry, my numbers weren't completly accurate, I was running off of 6 year old memories.

Here is the correct information I was looking for, though it's more impressive than less impressive as it has even less cpu power than I mentioned previously.

On September 29th, 2000, the record for the largest download from the Internet in one day from a single machine was achieved on a machine running FreeBSD. The site, ftp.freesoftware.com surpassed the two trillion bytes (two terabytes) milestone in under 24 hours.
The server is "only" a Xeon/550 with 4Gb of memory, and 400GB of Raid 5 storage, and typically runs with 6000 simultaneous users every day.
Click to expand...
 
John G. said:
:)

So, I'm curious-- is the whole setup overkill or just the CPU? You guys have convinced me to downgrade seriously on the CPU. I'll likely be going with a Sempron or something comparable at this point. I know this is a lot of money and that's a big point of hesitation (obviously) in building this system. So be specific-- if you think this server is overkill, for which parts is the cost justified? For which is it not?Shouldn't I be more concerned about PSU failure? And if I'm not concerned about PSU failure, is RAID 5 worth the cost?
Click to expand...

I recently went to a Sempron 2100+ with 512MB RAM to support an 8x200 PATA RAID 5 array. This is using a super cheap Highpoint 454 card (I know, I know). CPU, mobo and RAM was like $150. Seems to be plenty of horsepower for home use. Would I like OCE, RAID level migration and all that jazz? Sure...would I pay 250-300 bucks for it? Probably not. That said, when the day comes to migrate to SATA drives, I probably will get a higher end card so I can add drives without rebuilding the thing, 'cause that is a major PITA.

Regarding the power supply question, how about dual hot swap power supplies?
 
TeedOff said:
Regarding the power supply question, how about dual hot swap power supplies?
Click to expand...
A server that requires no downtime this is not;
The feasability of such a beast in any of the cases thus far mentioned is small
Furthermore, you're going to pay. A lot.
 
If you are going to rip and encode DVD's I would keep the AMD X2 but I would go with the 3800+ X2 and save some money. Good Luck.
 
I further support the idea that the entire setup is complete and utter overkill. I see this all the time...people seem to WAYYYY overestimate what it takes to be a home file server. High-end server equipment is not designed for a home file server with 3 concurrent users...it is designed for crazy corporate-level servers with thousands of concurrent users and when downtime is simply not an option. That setup you have planned is going to have so much untapped power it's ridiculous. Do yourself a favor (and save some money!) and get some low end equipment for your server. Even better, take some old existing equipment and put it to some good use.

I have several small file servers around here (between home and college) and the most powerful one has dual P3 800's (mega overkill for what it does), the slowest one is a pentium 1 233 (still practically overkill). They all perform like champs and easily keep up with 100 megabit network connections for file transfers. The dual P3's can easily run a counterstrike source server along with an FTP server (very light load) and distribute compile for my laptop, all at once.

If you want to buy all new eqipment, I recommend you just try to keep costs down and realize that you don't need crazy equipment. For example, I'd look into getting the cheapest Celeron D you can find, a nice lga775 mobo that has ICH7R on it (for raid 5 support), and 3 large hard drives for a raid 5 array on the ICH7R (cheap doesn't mean you have to sacrafice data security). Throw in 512mb or a gig of ram and a 4mb video card from your closet and you've got a fileserver with more power than you'll ever tap in a house.
 
Thanks for all the input guys! I'm in the process of re-working what I'd like the server to look like. I'll post an updated breakdown tomorrow. Until then, I have a question about the PSU choice. Should I go dual 12V rail or not for this setup? If so, I'm thinking I'd go with SeaSonic-- I use one in my desktop, it is wonderfully quiet and stable.

If not, as wonderful as PC P&C may be, there's an awful large premium on those things over other very reputable brands. So I'm looking at the following PSUs, in order of increasing cost (and increasing wattage).

FSP Group (Fortron Source) FSP400-60PFN RET 400W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817104974

ENERMAX Whisper II EG465P-VE FMA(24) 460W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817103464

ENERMAX EG651P-VE FM(24P) 550W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817103437

Any advice?
 
You definitely don't need dual rail, that's only really useful for gaming systems. I have an Enermax PSU and absolutely love it. Mine has a fan control built into it, but I can't even hear it when it's all the way up, so I just leave it that way. I agree on your assessment of PCP&C... way way too expensive in my opinion. I like the whisper II of the three you posted.. you really don't need huge wattage, especially since your RAID card has staggered spin up.

I wouldn't bother with a dual core processor, there's a premium on them, and you'll pretty much never need that kind of power in a home file server. The LGA 775 socket might be a good way to go... they have a whole range of processors available, so you can always upgrade later, but still buy an uber cheap one today. This coming from an AMD !!!!!!, too.

The only reason I'd get a better processor is if you were planning on using it as an HD DVR or ripping lots of DVDs/CDs directly on the machine.

-Nate
 
Well, I've read everyone's input, and weighed the pros and cons of a lot of components against the cost factor. I've decided to revise the plan for the server to look something more like this:

Case: Chenbro SR-107 w/ 2 SATA Hot-Swap Drive Cages
http://www.chenbro.com.tw/product/product_preview.php?pid=102
Cost: ~$320

Power Supply: ENERMAX Whisper II 460W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817103464
Cost: $83

Motherboard: Asus K8N-VM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131588
Cost: $67

CPU: AMD Sempron64 2800+
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819104245
Cost: $76

Memory: Corsair ValueSelect 1GB PC3200
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145440
Cost: $73

Hard Drives: 1xWD3200JB (320GB, 8MB Cache, IDE Interface)
3xWD4000YR (400GB, 16MB Cache, SATA Interface, Raid Edition)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144392
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144424
Cost: $701

RAID Controller Card: HighPoint RocketRaid 2320
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816115026
Cost: $286

Video and Sound: Onboard
Cost: Free :)

Since I've decided to go with a RAID card that has OCE, and people thought what I had was way too much overkill in general, I've toned down the capacity as well. I'll start out with just three of the 400GB drives in RAID 5 and expand an array from there, up to the maximum of eight.

The new, lighter server as described above will have total storage capacity of 1.12TB and final cost of $1,606. Sounding better, all?
 
<paris>That's hot</paris> :) I still think the case is overkill, but if you want it and you like it, go for it. It definitely is sexy :)

I'm planning on building a very similar rig myself pretty soon here. Let us know how it goes when you build it. :)

-Nate
 
PSU wise I think you are ok.

My RAID-5 at home runs with:

ABIT IT7-Max 2 MB
512MB RAM
3Ware 9500-8 SATA RAID 5 controller
One 120GB Seagate 7200.7 as the boot drive
Six 300GB Seagate 7200.8's

And a Antec TruePower 2.0 550W supply.

It's been churning along for months with no issues.

Now, about the RAID card. I don't think your choice is going to cut it. I don't believe that card has very good RAID-5 performance.

The 9500S-8 may be a better choice.

-Larry



John G. said:
Going to be putting something like this together in the coming months. Thought I'd see if you guys had any input before I start making purchases:

Case: Chenbro SR-107 w/ 2 SATA Hot-Swap Drive Cages
http://www.chenbro.com.tw/product/product_preview.php?pid=102
Cost: ~$320

Power Supply: ThermalTake Silent PurePower 680W
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16817153021
Cost: $151

Motherboard: Asus A8N-VM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131571
Cost: $72

CPU: AMD Athlon64 X2 4200+
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103547
Cost: $361

Memory: Corsair ValueSelect 1GB PC3200
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145440
Cost: $73

Hard Drives: 1xWD3200JB (320GB, 8MB Cache, IDE Interface)
8xWD4000YR (400GB, 16MB Cache, SATA Interface, Raid Edition)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144392
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822144424
Cost: $1,671

RAID Controller Card: HighPoint RocketRaid 2320
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816115026
Cost: $286

Video and Sound: Onboard
Cost: Free :)

I'd be setting up the 8 WD Raid Edition drives in RAID 5, and using the 320GB drive as an OS/random storage drive. Total storage would then be 3.12TB, total cost at $2,934. Let me know what you guys think!
Click to expand...
 
Everything I'm reading tells me you are getting the wrong RAID card if you intend on using RAID-5 or any other setup that requires parity.

-Larry

John G. said:
The reason I originally wanted to go dual-core was because there may be multiple people accessing the server at once (ie. streaming video off it). I doubt it would ever be more than three people at once though, and if you think a single core CPU will be able to handle that load just as well, I'll likely rethink the dual-core purchase.

I like the case I have picked out for a couple of reasons. One, I've had Chenbro cases before and really really like the build quality, and screwless implimentation. Two, I'm pretty picky about how things look, and while the innards of the computer remain hidden, the case is the server's face to the world. I think the look of the SR107 Granite is awesome, and they have a nice desktop case that matches it almost identically that I'd like to upgrade to someday. Then server and desktop would match. And I'm just crazy enough to spend an extra few bucks to make that the case. There isn't too much of a premium on the Chenbro as far as quality cases go either. I've been having a really hard time finding it available from US Online retailers (it was introduced in 2003 I think, and everyone carries the standard black or beige bezel models, but I guess the Granite just wasn't a big hit in the server market), so my cost in this case breaks down as $200 for the case as shipped from Germany (which is a hefty shipping fee), and two hot-swap cages made for the case that run at about $60 each. So that's the story behind that the case.



Sounds great. I picked the Thermaltake because it was the most popular (though I suppose by now I should know that most-purchased doesn't mean highest quality) PSU in the 600W+ range. I'll be sure to take a good look at your recommendations.
Click to expand...
 
This is the case I use:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811112508

I have the older PC-70 version but they are nearly identical.

External 5.25" Drive Bays 6
External 3.5" Drive Bays 3
Internal 3.5" Drive Bays 6
Expansion Slots 7

It does indeed hold a total of 15 drives. Mine has 9 in it (7HD, 1 Floppy and 1 CD).

And she's roomy at the hips :)

-Larry

Exocet956 said:
I highly recommend this case http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811182005

External 5.25" Drive Bays 11
External 3.5" Drive Bays 1
Internal 3.5" Drive Bays 2

It is relatively cheap, well built and if you use hard drive hot swap enclosures like I did when i made my file server, you can get a lot of drives in it. If you use reserve 1 for an optical device, that leaves you with 10 usable 5.25” bays. In my case, i used 5 3in2 enclosures. I currently have 14 drives out of a possible 15 externally available hot swap bays. externally available hot swap bays are a must if you want to do a fileserver right. I highly recommend areca raid controllers. i used an areca arc1230 pcie 12 channel sata raid controller and it is so fast it is scary. Raid 6 is the way to go in my opinion if you go with a areca card.

btw the wheels come already attached to this case :)
Click to expand...
 
TechLarry said:
The 9500S-8 may be a better choice.
Click to expand...

At nearly twice the cost. I don't know if I can justify the extra expense-- the server will be used primarily to stream media over a 100Mbit ethernet connection, so I don't think my RAID 5 performance needs to be particularly fast. As long as the thing is reliable, and OCE actually works, that's all I need. Basically, the thing I like most about the card listed currently is the price.
 
TechLarry said:
Now, about the RAID card. I don't think your choice is going to cut it. I don't believe that card has very good RAID-5 performance.

The 9500S-8 may be a better choice.
Click to expand...
Believe it. In 8*Raid 5, the Highpoint 1820 (last generation!) wins against the 9500 in (of the real-world benchmarks): desktop StorageMark, workstation StorageMark, PCmark, Server StorageMark, disk-to-disk backup, the Fileserver test (medium and large), MySQL dump test, and Exchange 2003 (medium and high). So what does it lose? The MySQL usage test and the streaming media test.

So there's no reason at all in my mind not to get the Highpoint. It gets about three times the STR, and uses proportionally less CPU to do so - around 4% on a 1.4gHz system. And spending twice as much for a slower card makes no sense to me, sorry.

 
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