SFF Server Build help

[Chriz]

1) What will you be doing with this PC? Gaming? Photoshop? Web browsing? etc

Mainly for a storage box in my apartment for movies, pictures, etc.

2) What's your budget? Are tax and shipping included?

Not necessarily a cap on the budget as it will be built/upgraded over a period of time.

3) Where do you live?

Kansas City, MO

4) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.

Not 100% sure on exact parts but
CPU
MOBO
RAM
CASE
PSU
5+ HDD'S
RAID CARD(?...not very experienced with raid but I believe I will want raid 5 and not sure if hardware raid on mobo's are any good for this.)

5) If reusing any parts, what parts will you be reusing? Please be especially specific about the power supply. List make and model.

Nothing reused

6) Will you be overclocking?

Not sure it will be needed

7) What size monitor do you have and/or plan to have?

Plan on using remote desktop to do most of the controlling, can hook up to main desktop's lcd for setup/etc.

8) When do you plan on building/buying the PC?

From now till I decide it is finished

9) What features do you need in a motherboard? RAID? Firewire? Crossfire or SLI support? USB 3.0? SATA 6Gb/s? etc.

Raid I am assuming

10) Do you already have a legit and reusable/transferable OS key/license? If yes, what OS? Is it 32bit or 64bit?

I have legit windows os's through school or can use linux if it better suits my needs.




Ok, heres the story, I am looking to build pretty much a box that will have HDD's for storage for movies to stream throughout my house. The smaller and more power efficient I could make it the better it would be. I believe I have read on here in the past that it is not good to use any of the "green" drives in raid so if you could give me some advice there that would help. I will most likely be purchasing 1.5 or 2TB drives depending on their costs and what kinds of sales I can find on them. I have about 600 DVD's I will most likely start ripping to this box as well so I can put them into storage with all their cases. I would like to be able to keep this in maybe a bedroom closet so was hoping that I could just throw in a wireless card and connect it to the network at my place that way. I will most likely just be running win7 on the box unless that is a problem.

A few things/questions for all.
Would like just a plain small box nothing fancy for this setup with the option of at least 5-6 drives minimum.
Not sure on what form factor to use. Originally I thought it would be cool to go with mITX but not sure it would have enough expansion slots for me.

Again, this is just something in my head at the moment and will most likely be looking into buying within the next couple weeks. Any suggestions or comments would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

 

[Chriz]

Also, as far as video nothing is really needed now or for the future as far as a dedicated card unless its cheaper as this wont be used for anything other than storage. My main computer would be the one ripping any of my dvd's so I don't need an optical drive in it either. If there is a mobo that has built on video that would be fine as well. Only add-ons I could think of would be the wireless and raid cards.

As far as being more specific about the budget I would say less than 1k to start for the system with the drives. I may start with just 2-3 drives with the intentions of adding more later on as needed.
Also, I can probably scrape up a small separate drive for the os as well, I believe I have some 80 gigs laying around or maybe a little larger.

 

[bastage]

On my phone so I won't post links or prices, but here is what I would recommend.

Asus m4a88t i mini itx amd board
Amd athlon II X3 45W CPU
LIAN LI pc q08
samsung 2tb drives
Whatever raid card to give you at least 5 more ports
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[Chriz]

Thank you for the info, if someone could give me a good recommendation for a good raid card that would be great. Also, I believe that I have seen power supplies that are meant for SFF systems, I can't remember who it was that made it but if anyone has a good suggestion for a PSU that would support all the drives that would be great.

Thanks

 

[Dangman]

RAID CARD(?...not very experienced with raid but I believe I will want raid 5 and not sure if hardware raid on mobo's are any good for this.)

Make absolutely sure that you actually want RAID 5. RAID 5 isn't always the best choice. Oh and the RAID controller on many motherboards are not true hardware RAID controllers: They're basically software RAID but controlled by a chip rather than the OS. Unless you're using a mobo with the ICH10R storage controller, generally for a Windows based setup, the onboard RAID isn't a good choice.

I believe I have read on here in the past that it is not good to use any of the "green" drives in raid so if you could give me some advice there that would help.

Yes and no: If you're using a true hardware RAID card and/or a Windows OS, yes those green drives are not a good choice for RAID. However if you're using Linux or pretty much any non-Windows based software RAID, then those green drives will be just fine.

I would like to be able to keep this in maybe a bedroom closet so was hoping that I could just throw in a wireless card and connect it to the network at my place that way.

Unless you have a pretty solid wireless N network with great coverage around your bedroom closet, not a good idea.

I will most likely just be running win7 on the box unless that is a problem.

Yeah it might be depending on your budget. So here's the deal: Over in the Data Storage subforum, it's been generally recommended that you get a true hardware RAID controller. By "true Hardware RAID" I mean that the card actually has an onboard XOR engine that can handle the setup and maintenance of the RAID array and cache memory. However, those tend to cost quite a bit of money:
$450 - arece ARC-1222 PCI-Ex4 8 Port SATA and SAS RAID Card
$580 - arece ARC-1880i PCI-Ex4 8 Port SATA and SAS RAID Card

Hence why I asked you earlier if you really really want RAID 5 and if you're gonna be using a Windows OS.

For those non-Windows options, you can get this card and call it a day:
$120 - Supermicro AOC-USAS-L8i PCI-Ex8 8 Port SATA Controller Card (Will need some slight modification to work in normal ATX cases)
$30 - 2 x 3ware SFF-8087 to Multi-lane SATA Forward Break-out Cable
---
Total: $150 plux tax and shipping

Some other options:
Amahi with Greyhole:
Links:
http://wiki.amahi.org/index.php/Greyhole
http://code.google.com/p/greyhole/
http://www.amahi.org/

Pros:
+ Lets you use different size drives and combine them into one drive pool ala WHS's Drive Extender feature.
+ Can set the number of copies of a folder/file that you want stored on other drives. So unlike WHS where only a single copy of that data is stored on a different drive, you set it to where that file/folder can be copied across every single hard drive in your PC. So 5 drives means 5 copies of your data
+ Supposedly you're still able to remove a drive from that Greyhole server and still be able to read the files on another PC without greyhole installed.
+ Free and works with Linux, which is also free

Cons:
- Still very new and experimental. So not all of the bugs may have been fixed or discovered yet.
- GUI is still relatively clunky
- Takes extensive amount of time to recover and repool data across a new drive after a drive failure
- Amahi has a tendency to try to become the default DHCP and DNS cache server for the entire network
- Uses the old “landing drive” system of the older iteration of WHS

Notes:
* Should you delete a file while using Greyhole, all the other copies are deleted as well.
* While the above example recommend Amahi Home Server, you can use Greyhole in virtually any Linux based OS

Flexraid Basic:
Links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlexRAID
http://www.openegg.org/

Pros:
+ Uses data based parity in which parity data is only kept of the file actually stored, not like with traditional RAID where parity data is is kept of the entire hard drives, regardless of whether or not you have data on those drives.
+ Allows use of different sized drives as a result of the data based parity setup
+ Free
+ Can be used with either Linux or Windows.

Cons:
- Not realtime parity so if the data needs to be protected at all times, not a good idea to use FlexRAID
- The FlexRAID needs periods of time of no usage at all in order to re-sync the RAID
- If multiple users are editing stored files, flexRAID is not recommended

Notes:
* FlexRAID Live does not have the cons of the FlexRAID Base. However it has not been released yet and even it is, it would still be a bit experimental at that stage.
* A little old but still good reading:
http://www.overclock.net/htpc/694948-has-anyone-tried-flexraid-their-media.html

Unraid:
Links
http://www.lime-technology.com/
http://lime-technology.com/wiki/index.php?title=UnRAID_Wiki[/QUOTE]

Pros:
+ Allows use of different sized drives.
+ Should one or multiple drives die, only the data on those dead drives are lost.
+ If the data on the hard drive isn’t being accessed, the hard drive is spun down until needed.

Cons:
- unRAID Free has a limit of 3 drives (2 data, 1 parity).
- unRAID Plus has a limit of 7 drives (5 data, 1 parity, 1 cache)
- unRAID Pro has a limit of 21 drives (19 data, 1 parity, 1 cache)
- Costs $120 for unRAID Pro (21 drives) and $69 for unRAID Plus (7 drives)
- Relatively low write speeds without that cache drive.

Notes:
* “unRAID™ is similar to RAID-4 in that for every n hard drives, there are n-1 data drives, and a single fixed parity drive” - From unRAID website

ZFS File Server:
Links:
ZFSguru NAS fileserver project
napp-it ZFS server appliance
Building your own ZFS fileserver

Pros:
+ Free
+ Fairly resilient against crashes, corruption, and such due to the copy-on-write feature as well as the snapshots feature.
+ Maintenance free in that the file system will periodically check and fix itself
+ Very flexible in terms of hardware and software changes.
+ Supports encryption of data

Cons:
- May be difficult to learn for a person who've never worked with BSD before
- Requires a large amount of RAM (4GB+ recommended)
- Cannot expand an existing RAID array with additional drives.

Notes:
* ZFS uses a different method of storage expansion:

What you cannot do, is expand an existing RAID-Z (RAID5) or RAID-Z2 (RAID6) array with one or more disks.
But, you can add new disks or RAIDs to an existing pool. So if you have a 4-disk RAID-Z, you can add another 4-disk RAID-Z so you have 8 disks. The second array would share free space with the first; in essence it would be a RAID0 of two RAID5 arrays. ZFS can expand this way.

What you can do, is expanding mirrors and RAID0's. In the example above that's what actually happened: a new array is RAID0-ed with the existing array. New created files will be written to both devices, for additional speed. Setting copies=2 would make files in that directory be stored on both RAID arrays; for extra redundancy.

* Here’s another thread filled with tips and an excellent hardware list for a large sized ZFS server:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1572188

 

[bastage]

If you can get windows home server from your school that would be great. Even if you have to buy it you still can within your budget.
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