Small (ITX) File Server Advice

[ilikecake]

Well, I am back. Still one handed, though. I am making a BartPE boot USB key to run stress tests to find the load temps on the CPU. I set a thermal shutdown threshold in the BIOS and I am gonna see if I can reach it. If all goes well, I will test memory and hard drives and install Ubuntu Server.

I measured 11/16" from the center of the slot to the edge of the card.

Thanks, though I guess that is of limited use since I don't know how the PCIe riser is measured. I guess I will roll the dice and order it. I may have to make a custom bracket if the size is not standard.

Your build is looking good. Do you have numbers on how hot the CPU gets? The heatsink you are using is much bigger than the one I have on mine, but the CPU is also higher wattage (I think), so the numbers may be similar.

 

[alcuin]

I'll get the temps, but the cpu is a BE-2300 45w cpu. That's 45w on load, idle is probably like 10w or so.

 

[Bicarus]

Very nice indeed.. Good job on the build.. looks nice..

On a side note if you are ever interested in making a SAN outta that beast... you can try

Openfiler: http://www.openfiler.com/

It is a free SAN OS.

Now I am interested in building one for myself. If for anything else as a storage unit.

 

[Calroth]

Well, I am back. Still one handed, though. I am making a BartPE boot USB key to run stress tests to find the load temps on the CPU. I set a thermal shutdown threshold in the BIOS and I am gonna see if I can reach it.

Are you using the Core Duo T2300? (I can't remember who was using what.)

I have an original MacBook Pro with Core Duo T2600 (at 2.16GHz). Now I'm not sure whether running in a desktop/server is much different from a laptop, but this thing runs hot (and this was fairly well established when it came out). At the moment it's idling at 62°C and I've seen it go as high as 95°C. Apparently this is well within spec.

You'll have to do research, but I figure that few people on this board have experience with the original Core Duo so I'd chime in.

 

[ilikecake]

Are you using the Core Duo T2300? (I can't remember who was using what.)

That's me.

I have an original MacBook Pro with Core Duo T2600 (at 2.16GHz). Now I'm not sure whether running in a desktop/server is much different from a laptop, but this thing runs hot (and this was fairly well established when it came out). At the moment it's idling at 62°C and I've seen it go as high as 95°C. Apparently this is well within spec.

Hot damn (literally). My tests with prime95 v25 gave me ~66C loaded after maybe 10 minutes. The CPU was idling at ~59C. According to CoreTemp, TCaseMax is 100C. From what I understand that is the temp at which the thermal throttling kicks in. So I guess 66C isn't too bad, but 95C is getting up there. I am still gonna get a better heatsink when I get a chance, though.

The memory test has gone well, and I have started the hard drive test. If all goes well, I have a copy of Ubuntu Server on standby.

 

[alcuin]

Don't know if this is accurate or not, but if it is, that seems pretty cool to me.

 

[ilikecake]

Don't know if this is accurate or not, but if it is, that seems pretty cool to me.
(snip)

That is some cool temps. I dunno if it is reading correctly without a Tcasemax, but it does seem like your processor runs nice and cool.

I have finally made some progress on my build. The PCIe riser card came the other day, and I put together the case with the hard drives!

Installing the left angle cables. (the reason for left angle cables will be illustrated later)

Installing the RAID card. The PCIe riser fit without modifying the bracket! I was pleasantly surprised.

Array hard drives ready to install.

Also, another bit of advice to anyone else planning on building with one of these cases: The order of assembly is very important. As an example, this is how I reassembled the case after modifying the cables.

Step 1: The two halves of the case without the DVD drive or SATA card installed.

Step 2: Sliding the two halves together. Note the power and SATA cables have to be fed through the hole in the top.

Step 3: The case back together with no power or data installed.

Step 4: SATA for OS hard drive installed.

Step 5: ATX power attached.

Step 6: SATA card installed and array drives attached. (See now why I wanted left angle SATA cables? )

Step 7: DVD drive installed and attached.

This may seem obvious, but I had several false starts where I tried installing the part in a different order, and it was not possible.

I have also attached all the fans, and can say that the HDD cooling fans don't seem to add a whole lot of noise to the system. The CPU fan that I have is pretty loud, so it could be drowning out the noise, but the majority of the noise in my case is coming from the CPU fan.

I have been messing around with Ubuntu server, and am having mixed success. The documentation is pretty easy to follow and concise, but some of the programs do not play nice together. I set up SSH access to the server so I could set up the system remotely. I also installed eBox, which is a web based administration package. However, eBox changed something in my SSH configuration, and I no longer have SSH access to the box. I am gonna continue to play around with eBox, as it shows promise, but it seems to be a bit buggy right now. I will also be compiling the driver for the Highpoint card, and with let you guys know how that goes.

 

[Dangman]

Nice work so far.

You might want to check out Webmin as well. It's another web based management app

 

[Shaggy3zx]

sweet little box!

When you get tired of putzing with Ubuntu give FC9 a whirl. I was astounded when it recognized my nvidia fakeraid.

 

[[LYL]Homer]

Left angle = right angle
right angle = 90 degree angle

 

[ilikecake]

Thanks for the replies. I compiled the driver for the Highpoint 2640X4 without much trouble after installing the kernel headers, make and gcc (along with the dependencies). Next I need to figure out how to use the Linux software RAID to make the data array.

Nice work so far.

You might want to check out Webmin as well. It's another web based management app

Thanks, I have seen things about Webmin. However, it seems that, for whatever reason, Webmin was removed from the Ubuntu repos and replaced with eBox. While this is fairly easy to fix, I would like to give eBox a shot and see how it goes. I think a lot of the problems stem from the fact that I don't know much about Linux servers. Honestly, I may just ditch the GUI web interface altogether. I don't have a big problem with the command line, and I was doing fine with SSH until I installed eBox.

When you get tired of putzing with Ubuntu give FC9 a whirl. I was astounded when it recognized my nvidia fakeraid.

Heh, I started learning Linux with FC3 a while back. I don't want to get into a long discussion on the benefits and drawbacks to particular distributions , but I switched to Ubuntu because it was easier. I may go back to Fedora if I can't get Ubuntu to do what I want, but so far it seems to be going okay.

Left angle = right angle
right angle = 90 degree angle

Almost. While you are correct in stating that a 90 degree angle is the same regardless of the frame of reference, the SATA plug is polarized. It seems that in the conventional naming scheme, a 'right angle' SATA cable attached to a hard drive in the 'normal orientation' (with the SATA plugs on the back towards the bottom) will result in the cable extending downward from the drive. A 'left angle' cable will result in the cable extending from the top of the drive in the same situation. In my case, a right angle cable would have resulted in the cables sticking up from the SATA card, and therefore need to make a 180 degree angle turn to get where they are going, while a left angle is already in the proper orentation.

 

[alcuin]

I think I see a small (mostly cosmetic) issue.

There is a little tab that the motherboard tray is supposed to slide under. It looks like your tray is over that tab. I was constantly sliding the tray over the tab; it takes some practice to figure out a way that works for you so that when you slide the tray in, it goes under the tab, which kind of slightly helps to hold it in place more securely. I circled the tab spots in your pics.





Other than that, looking good. Are you planning on an optical drive, or anything else?

 

[ilikecake]

I think I see a small (mostly cosmetic) issue.

There is a little tab that the motherboard tray is supposed to slide under. It looks like your tray is over that tab. I was constantly sliding the tray over the tab; it takes some practice to figure out a way that works for you so that when you slide the tray in, it goes under the tab, which kind of slightly helps to hold it in place more securely. I circled the tab spots in your pics.

<snip>

Other than that, looking good. Are you planning on an optical drive, or anything else?

Thanks for the advice, I will check that out. There is a slightly bigger issue that I will face at some point. I don't have the I/O shield for the board! While I have ordered one, it has not come in yet. When it does, I will have to take everything apart anyways, so I will deal with that issue then. For now, I am just playing around with the OS to see if I can make it do what I want.

I have an optical drive, but as you probably know, installing the case with the drive in is a bitch, so I left it out until the final pic. I was considering getting the card reader and stuff, but it will be running as a headless server, probably without a GUI. I am not sure what use I would have for the card reader then. I suppose I could setup a script to automatically back up SD cards from my camera, but I don't have that problem very often anyways.

I am currently fighting with the RAID controller to try to get my disks to come up. It can't seem to comprehend that I don't want to use its 'fake' RAID, and just use the disks . I think I am gonna have to manually pull a disk and test it in another computer to see if it is working properly.

More to come...

 

[ilikecake]

<Borat> Great Success! </Borat>

I now have the drives working in Linux and I have confirmed that they are platform agnostic by unplugging a drive and attaching it to my primary computer.

This is probably all common knowledge for those with RAID cards, but it was news to me:

Simply plugging the drives into the RAID card didn't work. I spent a long while poring over the make files trying to track down a warning that I got while compiling, but as it turns out, the answer was much simpler . The RAID card would not show the devices until I initialized them and created an array in the BIOS. Now, this seemed like a problem, as I didn't want to use the RAID feature in the BIOS. To get around this, I created 4 JBOD 'arrays' of one disk each. This allowed me to see the drives in Linux, but I was concerned that the JBOD 'array' disks would now require this controller to be read. This is obviously a problem if my RAID card were to up-and-die on me one day.

In order to see if this was the case, I tested it in the only way I know how. I formatted and mounted one of the JBOD 'array' drives, and wrote a text file to it. For good measure, I also copied all the contents of the /etc folder to the drive so my text file would not get lonely. I then pulled the drive, and took it to my main computer (running windows XP) and attached it. With the help of Ext2 IFS, I was able to mount the drive and read my file.

In keeping with the theme of this thread of way too many pictures, I have included a picture of the testing on my main computer, as well as a screenshot of the moment of victory.





On a side note, dust sure shows up on flash photography! Time to vacuum my room, I guess.

 

[mindedc]

Just as a FYI, if you swapped your mini ITX mb and case with a Asus p5k and a ginormous server case capable of conversion to a rack mount server with two raid cages and swapped your hotpoint for a 3ware, I'm doing exactly the same thing

I have Ubuntu server 8.04 LTS set up and running and I share to both my PCs and to my MACs. I even have a USB setup with NUT so that if the power goes out it will shut itself off.

I use software raid for mirrored boot disks, (you obviously have a single disk) and I use the 3ware controller for my data volume. My previous setup used a CF card to boot the system and then I had the actual root on the RAID array. I had 2 PATA highpoint controllers plus the four on the motherboard and a boatload of disks in software raid.

When I ditched the PATA drives for SATA, I changed to the hardware controller because of problems I was having with my previous motherboard and some silicon image controllers. I actually moved the disks from the silicon image controllers to the motherboard ports on the p5k and it worked perfectly. I had already purchased the 3ware so I migrated over to it. I used the Intel and Jmicron ports to run the array until I got it copied over to the 3ware.

Just a few recomendations to you regarding the ubuntu setup. You will want to set up your OS on your 2.5" disk and have your raid array as a data volume. You will also want to have your data volume where you can have large multi-terabyte drives for when the 2 terabyte disks come out and you have that much pr0n. Right now there are issues with different partition types and resizing disks in a RAID. You can use LVM to grow your partitions automagically etc... but it adds a layer of abstraction and a performance penalty and quite honestly more crap to fool with. You also need a journaled file system that is reliable, stable, and you can grow with the array. I would personally recommend XFS on your data array and I would recommend that you do not create a partition for the disk, just create the xfs partition straight on the disk. If you do that, when you expand the array, you can just do an xfs_growfs and consume the newly added free space on the array. If you are using software raid, XFS will detect the parameters and tune the FS properly for the number of disks and the stripe size. If you use a hardware controller you need to manually set that.

The one place where XFS breaks down is for something like a mail server or news server where you have a bajillion tiny files. In that case reiser or jfs would perform better. I would stay away from ext3 for any serious data because I have had ext3 journaling fail on me on several occasions. Filesystem selection is a bit religious. If someone doesn't agree, please feel free to flame me, but that is my experience and opinion.

Having that kind of config either means horsing around in the installer quite a bit, or doing it after you have installed to the boot disk. It should be pretty easy to set up. It took me about 30 mins to install 8.04, set up Samba for my windows boxes, set up Samba, set up Nut for the UPS, and I also run DHCP and DNS off of my box, so I set them up as well. I already had config files for that though.. It took me some fooling around to get a process for Netatalk for the Macs, but I have that and avahi running for MDNS so my Macs think it's one of them.

I have a few extra gigs of RAM in my box (core 2 duo) and I run some other systems under VMware as well... I haven't set that up under 8.04 yet, I will do that when I have some time.

I would also really recomend that if you want to do the linux thing, you learn how to use vi and learn the command line for all of this. It's really not that much and if you do anything with servers or computers for a living it is information you can use for the rest of your career. I learned unix/linux in high school and I still use the same knowledge today, 15 years later.

If you have Ubuntu/linux questions about this type setup, feel free to PM me and I will do the best I can to help...

 

[mindedc]

One other thing, I have some of those stupid silenx fans. I am not impressed. I got them because they are quiet and I needed some thin fans to go inside my raid cages. I will give them that they are as silent as the grave. The mid range ones are so quiet I can't hear them from more than a few inches away. I can't imagine actually needing the super quiet ones...

They have some sort of oil bearing thing and it causes a lot of resistance. They are super stiff to turn by hand and I have had several of the things fail. I pulled them out and installed some thermaltake fans with dual ball bearings and individual speed controls.... It's the best thing they had at Frys at the time.... I have been much happier with the ball bearing setup.... no failures in months..

 

[ilikecake]

Thanks for the long and helpful reply. Now I don't feel so bad bumping my own thread three times in a row. I will respond to your post in parts.

When I ditched the PATA drives for SATA, I changed to the hardware controller because of problems I was having with my previous motherboard and some silicon image controllers. I actually moved the disks from the silicon image controllers to the motherboard ports on the p5k and it worked perfectly. I had already purchased the 3ware so I migrated over to it. I used the Intel and Jmicron ports to run the array until I got it copied over to the 3ware.

I was concerned (a little) about a controller card failure in the future when a replacement was not available for the controller. (not that likely, but I am paranoid ) Hence using pure software RAID, which can be built on any system that has MDADM.

You will want to set up your OS on your 2.5" disk and have your raid array as a data volume.

That is how I currently have my system set up.

I would personally recommend XFS on your data array and I would recommend that you do not create a partition for the disk, just create the xfs partition straight on the disk. If you do that, when you expand the array, you can just do an xfs_growfs and consume the newly added free space on the array.

I just finished creating the RAID array using XFS as the file system. I am unsure what you mean about not creating a partition for the disk. I used fdisk to create a single volume for each drive, I then used MDADM to assemble the array at /dev/md0

sudo mdadm -C /dev/md0 -l raid5 -n 4 /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdd1

I then formatted it using mkfs.xfs

sudo mkfs.xfs -f /dev/md0

I thin mounted it to /array

sudo mount /dev/md0 /array

and modified fstab to automatically mount the volume on restart

appended to fstab:
/dev/md0          /array       xfs         defaults         0   2

How would one format the disks to allow the array to grow?

I would also really recomend that if you want to do the linux thing, you learn how to use vi and learn the command line for all of this.

I am running Ubuntu server with no GUI, so its all command line for me. Not to get too off topic, but since you mention vi specifically, I have a stupid question: when I am using vi to edit a text file, when I enter edit mode (by pressing 'i') the arrow keys no longer work to move the cursor. Instead they act like letter keys and output unwanted characters. Back when I was using Fedora, this was not the case. Is this normal in Ubuntu? I am running vi through ssh if that matters, but I have switched to using nano because it works.

Overall I am impressed with how easy it is set these things up. Mostly because there is pretty good documentation for most things. One annoying thing is that there is no centralized listing of the basic commands in Ubuntu (that I know of). I imagine that is common knowledge to Linux experts, but for n00bs like me, it sucks to have to search Google for like 15 minutes to learn how to delete a directory.

As I said, I set up a four disk RAID 5 array using MDADM. I ran a benchmark five times and took the average.

sudo hdparm -Tt /dev/md0

 Timing cached reads:   1026.82 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  172.6 MB/sec

I doubt that is anything close to a real hardware RAID controller, but a good bit faster than my boot drive.

 Timing cached reads:   1808 MB in  2.00 seconds = 904.24 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  154 MB in  3.02 seconds =  50.98 MB/sec

Next up is configuring Samba, but I think I will leave that for another day. Do you have any recommendations, or resources on how to setup Samba?

 

[lord_farfig]

@ilikecake

Check out nano, much much much easier to use than VIM (vi).

I have a pretty similar setup as you do, but I have a full size case... yours is pretty nifty, but I like the POWER of my Quad Core, hehe. I do 4 folding clients and a few other things.

Also when you FDISKed your drives and made your partitions did you change the partition type? I know you can use the default '83' but I normally change my RAID drives to 'fd' for Linux Raid Auto-Detect. Not sure that it's a huge difference, but it is something that can be done. However, I don't think you'll want to do that since you've already created your array.

For your Samba, definitely check out SWAT, you'll probably also have to install XINETD and reboot for it to start. (Easy way) otherwise you can edit some files and restart some services w/o XINETD and then open http://servernamehere:901 and then you have nifty web based Samba configuration. You'll have to login with root... so the root account will need to be active. By default it is not with Ubuntu.

Feel free to PM me with any questions.

p.s. sudo rm -rf /bin/laden
(hehe - old Thinkgeek shirt)

 

[Shaggy3zx]

For ubuntu you need to install the vim package, otherwise you are using some archaic version of vi.

Also get a UPS for this server if you don't already have one. No FS likes unclean shutdowns but XFS in particular is susceptible to file corruption during sudden power loss. Likelihood of that happening is low and only for files that are being written to disk but if its "mission-critical" that could suck.

Another web gui that may help you manage things centrally is webmin and its very easy to setup.

As far as linux commands...just search google for "command-line linux" or go buy a book!

Before samba is concerned you do have /dev/md3 mounted right? Anyway, if you want to get samba up and running as quickly as possible for file sharing with no restrictions then do the following:

install samba

mkdir /mnt/share

vi /etc/samba/smb.conf

[global]
        workgroup = WORKGROUP
        netbios name = my-server
        server string = my-server
        security = SHARE
        socket options = TCP_NODELAY SO_RCVBUF=8192 SO_SNDBUF=8192

[share]
        read only = No
        path = /mnt/share
        guest ok = Yes

/etc/init.d/smb restart

 

[alcuin]

You might be interested in this thread I found.
http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1315634
I found an interesting motherboard; GeForce 8200 mini-ITX Jetway JNC62K board. $150ish at newegg, but oos right now. 4 onboard sata, 2 gig-e nics, vga, dvi (single link ) and a dvi to hdmi adapter.

I can't find where but I also read about the unRaid software, and FlexRAID. Sounds like WHS style disk file-based replication, gonna try it out later.

 

[ilikecake]

@ilikecake

Check out nano, much much much easier to use than VIM (vi).

I am trying to switch over, but I am so used to typing vi, I keep doing it automatically.

Also when you FDISKed your drives and made your partitions did you change the partition type? I know you can use the default '83' but I normally change my RAID drives to 'fd' for Linux Raid Auto-Detect. Not sure that it's a huge difference, but it is something that can be done. However, I don't think you'll want to do that since you've already created your array.

I did not do this. While I have already made the array, I don't mind destroying it and rebuilding it. I am still setting up things, and don't have any important data on the array yet. What is the advantage to doing this?

For your Samba, definitely check out SWAT, you'll probably also have to install XINETD and reboot for it to start. (Easy way) otherwise you can edit some files and restart some services w/o XINETD and then open http://servernamehere:901 and then you have nifty web based Samba configuration. You'll have to login with root... so the root account will need to be active. By default it is not with Ubuntu.

I was able to setup SAMBA with a simple sharing system using the CLI. SWAT sounds awesome, but I am reluctant to mess with the root account. I don't pretend to be an expert on security, so when the experts who made Ubuntu disable the account, I am reluctant to mess with it. I may give it a try to see how well it works compared to the config file I have already.

For ubuntu you need to install the vim package, otherwise you are using some archaic version of vi.

Thanks, now vi works again.

Also get a UPS for this server if you don't already have one. No FS likes unclean shutdowns but XFS in particular is susceptible to file corruption during sudden power loss. Likelihood of that happening is low and only for files that are being written to disk but if its "mission-critical" that could suck.

I have a basic APC back-ups that I plan on using. It looks like I can use NUT to setup an automatic shutdown using APC's USB cable.

Before samba is concerned you do have /dev/md3 mounted right?

Did you mean to say /dev/md0? Or am I missing something.

Well, I had modest success over the weekend. I was able to setup samba to share my array and my home folder. I will post the config file later in case anyone is interested. My next two tasks are to setup dupliticy to automatically backup a subset my my array (the important things) to my webspace over FTP. I found a program called ftplicity which is supposed to streamline the process. I will let you guys know how that goes.

My other task is where I ran into trouble. I want MDADM to email me when there is a problem with the array. This did not seem like a big deal, as it is has an option to do that built in. However, this required me to install and configure postfix, which is where the problems came in. I am trying to send mail using the SMTP server from my webhost. However, postfix refuses to send the email, and instead I get a email on the local system saying that it can't find the email address. It seems that postfix is trying to send the email locally and not using the SMTP relay I setup in the main.cf file. If anyone has any suggestion on how to get it to work, please let me know. I have posted my config files here incase that helps. I beat my head on this problem for 3-4 hours yesterday, but most of the documentation I assumes you know a bunch about email servers, which is (sadly) not the case.

 

[lord_farfig]

Yeah it is a hard habit to break... but I found nano and it was so much easier for me to use.

As for the partition types, I recall reading a how-to a while back when I was setting up my first Linux server with MDADM for the RAID... they recommended setting the partition type to 'fd' so I tried it.
I've done both ways, and honestly I didn't see any difference, but maybe it makes it easier for MDADM?

I too am not a Linux guru, but I know a fair share, and I've had friends help me too... so I'm confident with having root enabled, which is why I use SWAT, because it is super easy. Anyway, you can prevent root logging in from ssh if you wish, which will help security.

If you choose to enable root... you can disable it by editing "sshd_config" in /etc/ssh scroll down to PermitRootLogin and change to no. Then restart ssh so that change will take effect.

sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart

If you're in ssh, it will kill your session so you can either reconnect or do it from the terminal. I hope I didn't go too far off in a tangent for you... any other questions let me know!

 

[ilikecake]

As for the partition types, I recall reading a how-to a while back when I was setting up my first Linux server with MDADM for the RAID... they recommended setting the partition type to 'fd' so I tried it.
I've done both ways, and honestly I didn't see any difference, but maybe it makes it easier for MDADM?

Thanks for the tip, I will look into this more and let you know if I learn anything.

I too am not a Linux guru, but I know a fair share, and I've had friends help me too... so I'm confident with having root enabled, which is why I use SWAT, because it is super easy. Anyway, you can prevent root logging in from ssh if you wish, which will help security.

If you choose to enable root... you can disable it by editing "sshd_config" in /etc/ssh scroll down to PermitRootLogin and change to no. Then restart ssh so that change will take effect.

If you're in ssh, it will kill your session so you can either reconnect or do it from the terminal. I hope I didn't go too far off in a tangent for you... any other questions let me know!

I will look into this when I get more time. I have been busy with other things recently, and haven't had too much time to devote to this. I need to think a bit more about how I want to organize the shares.

Do you have any experience with setting up postfix or some other email program? I am still struggling with the SMTP forwarding issue, and the Ubuntu forums have been no help.

 

[lord_farfig]

Do you have any experience with setting up postfix or some other email program? I am still struggling with the SMTP forwarding issue, and the Ubuntu forums have been no help.

No, I unfortunately do not. However, at the howtoforge this might be helpful... http://howtoforge.com/perfect-server-ubuntu8.04-lts-p5

There is some pretty neat stuff there, helpful too, but he doesn't always explain in great detail.

 

[quink]

I'm thinking of getting the same case but was wondering if you could help me out with a dimensions problem. I'm planning on using a raid card but am not sure it'll fit....You think if i gave you the dimensions/picture of it you could give me some advice? i.e. its way too large or if i'm creative i could make it work?
I just need the one addon card(raid) and the rest should be fine.
I'm thinking of getting a flexible pci riser card and just hot gluing the card someplace just to make it fit.
http://www.servercase.com/miva/miva...creen=PROD&Store_Code=SC&Product_Code=1UR32-E

 

[ilikecake]

I'm thinking of getting the same case but was wondering if you could help me out with a dimensions problem. I'm planning on using a raid card but am not sure it'll fit....You think if i gave you the dimensions/picture of it you could give me some advice? i.e. its way too large or if i'm creative i could make it work?
I just need the one addon card(raid) and the rest should be fine.
I'm thinking of getting a flexible pci riser card and just hot gluing the card someplace just to make it fit.

Sure, let me know what card you are thinking of, and I will do what I can. Also let me know what motherboard you will be using with it. You have probably seen that I went with a (relatively) cheap and small RAID card. I was really glad I did. It may be possible to fit a larger card in there, but it probably won't be too easy.

Some rough numbers:

• Clearance from memory to top of case: .75" (If your card is fatter than this, it probably won't fit anywhere creative)
• Max add-on card dimensions: 2.5" tall x 10.5" long. (this is the biggest you could get a card to fit in the 'normal' add in card location)

These are just rough numbers based on my config. Let me know what you are thinking of using, and I will see if I can help.

Also, I would not recommend hot glue. If the card is too big to fit where it is supposed to, hot glue will not be enough to secure it.

 

[ilikecake]

I just noticed that Windows Home Server just released their Power Pack 1, which is supposed to fix the corruption bug. I may wuss out and end up using that. I wanted to give it a shot and see if it could do what I want, but I can't seem to find the trial version on Microsoft's website. I see a place where I can order the DVDs for a 120 day trial, but nowhere where I can download them. Do I have to order the DVDs in order to try it out, or am I missing something?

I also have a few other questions which I will research. If anyone happens to know the answer to them please chime in.

• Can WHS use the various online backup tools like Mozy to backup important data?
• Can WHS send me alerts by email when it has problems?
• What options are there for anti-virus software on WHS?

As I said, I will be looking into these questions, so please don't tell me to RTFM (I will ) but if anyone know the answers already, that will save me some time.

 

[Dangman]

1) This link might be of use to you:
http://mswhs.com/2007/06/25/online-offsite-whs-backup-solutions/

2) No idea

3) Another link to look at:
http://mswhs.com/2007/06/26/more-anti-virus-software-for-whs/

 

[ilikecake]

Long time no update...

A few things have happened since I last updated. Mostly software wise. I got postfix to work. I am not quite sure what did it, but after reinstalling a few times and playing around with the config file, it works. Theoretically, MDADM will now send me emails when there are array problems. I am not sure how exactly to test this, I guess I will just pull one of the disks from the array and see if I get an email about it.

I have also setup Duplicity to do automated backups to a remote location. I was originally planning on using my web host (1and1) as a backup location. But upon further reading, it seems like part of the TOS states that I am not supposed to store backups there, and that they may randomly delete them if I do. In light of that, I plan on using Amazon S3. The S3 Interface is integrated into duplicity already, and it seems pretty cheap. Anyone have any experience with them?

I spent a bit of time messing with BASH scripting, and am getting pretty close to a script that will automatically do a full or incremental backup using duplicity at regular intervals and then send me an email summary of what it has done. I had to code in my gpg key and passphrase, so it is not that secure. However, if someone can get root access to my machine to view that file, I think I have bigger problems than my backup integrity. Plus, why would anyone bother? If anyone is interested, I will post a sanitized version of the script after I get a chance to test it.

Those of you that have servers for your home that use off site backup: how often do you backup? I was thinking of doing the backup every month. Every fourth month would be a full backup, the rest would be incremental, and to delete the backups older than a year. Does this sound reasonable, or is this massive overkill? I would (of course) not backup all 1.9TB of data, but a much smaller subset, so this shouldn't be too bandwidth intensive.

Finally, on a small hardware note: I got the last (I hope ) part of my server. Maybe not the most essential, but it sure is nice to have one of these

Of course, now I have to take the ENTIRE computer apart to install it, so that may not happen for a little while.

 

[quink]

Well I decided to hell with it and just bought the case. I'll make things work somehow. I was wondering....I might be having trouble with the PSU and I'm not sure how to test it. What triggers it to turn on/off? My motherboard only has 1 power connector, the old style that doesn't require the extra 4 pins and it doesn't even take that extra power adaptor that you normally plug in near the CPU. I plug it in, hit the power button and nothing. The green light on the PSU turns on.
If I plug this mobo into another, standard, PSU it turns on immediately(don't even need the switches plugged in) and it beeps.

Have any suggestions?

 

[ilikecake]

It seems to respond like a normal ATX PSU for me. That is: when I plug in the main plug, nothing happens, but when I short the two power pins on the motherboard (or press the power button) the PSU turns on and starts working. What motherboard are you using? The motherboard powering on when power is applied (without the switch) can be a bad thing, but not allways. Can you plug a monitor to the motherboard and power it on to make sure it is POSTing correctly?

 

[quink]

I just tested it out on another mobo I have(matx) and it works fine. But that motherboard uses 24pins + 4. The mini-itx i have is set to power on after power failure(thats what I mean to say the first time) and it works/has been working properly for a while now with a normal psu. It doesn't post at all though, doesn't get anywhere.

 

[ilikecake]

Sounds like a dead PSU then. All I had to do was plug in the power brick, attach the 24pin cable to the board, and press the power button.

 

[kronik8]

Bit of a necro-bump.. have you decided for or against WHS?

 

[ilikecake]

I think I am gonna stay with Ubuntu Server. I requested a 120 day trial of WHS from microsoft, and never recieved it. While I was waiting, I got pretty good with Ubuntu, so I guess I will stick with that.

I have been busy moving recently, and haven't had much time to work on this. I need to rebuild the entire thing to install the I/O shield. I plan to take pictures of this and make a proper work log. I also plan to image the OS drive, and reinstall Ubuntu. I messed up a few things when trying everything out, and installed a lot of extras that I don't need. I figure the second time around, the instillation shouldn't be to hard. Plus, I will save all the config files to make it easy to get everything working the same again.

 

[stainremover]

quick question: any reason you went with this instead of a kpc with 2x1tb drives in raid1? reliability would be the same, write performance (which is what you mostly do when you make backups...) would be better since your raid5 is in software, and i don't think you would notice any read differences unless you had multiple computers connecting to it at once, and even then i doubt it would be that much. isn't gigabit ethernet capped at 120megabytes per second theoretical?

 

[ilikecake]

quick question: any reason you went with this instead of a kpc with 2x1tb drives in raid1? reliability would be the same, write performance (which is what you mostly do when you make backups...) would be better since your raid5 is in software, and i don't think you would notice any read differences unless you had multiple computers connecting to it at once, and even then i doubt it would be that much. isn't gigabit ethernet capped at 120megabytes per second theoretical?

Mainly because I liked the form factor and possible upgradability I guess. There are certainly cheaper ways to make a file server like this. Plus, the 1TB drives are a bit more expensive than the ones I got, but when you compare that added cost to the cost of the ITX motherboard and case, I am sure I come out spending more. I guess I could theoretically have 4TB of drives in this case vs only 2TB of drives in the other case, so that is a slight advantage.

Mainly, it comes down to my desire for an entirely custom build in that small form factor.

 

[fatmcgav]

Very nice install mate, i'm looking at doing a similar set-up... however i have a couple of questions...

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1033021039#post1033021039
Any comments?

Cheers
Gav

 

[whakojacko]

I like this thread since im looking to do something similar, except with some sort of mini-ITX (maybe the jetway). However, my current thought is to use the atom board do keep things nice and cool (and low power) and then run a HW raid 5 card in the pci slot (something like one of these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115030), and then run a seperate OS drive off one of the 2 satas....not sure about OS stuff yet, but probably some sort of linux. that case is looking real nice too...will be following this closely

 

[Dangman]

However, my current thought is to use the atom board do keep things nice and cool (and low power) and then run a HW raid 5 card in the pci slot (something like one of these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115030)

That isn't a hardware RAID card. It's a fakeRAID card which basically means that it still uses the PC's CPU to do all of the parity calculations. Depending on the size of the array and the CPU, you may see a major hit in performance with intense CPU usage.