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BigGrim

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Jan 8, 2011
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Hello, I have come across this site today and have been reading and looking at the great storage systems.

I am looking to have an multi-terabyte system/exclosure.


I am looking at this exclosure as it comes with a basic setup and RAID card.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816111141

This was my other thought as well but I would need a RAID card that would go into the system.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...94028&cm_re=MB455SPF-B-_-17-994-028-_-Product


The drives I plan on using are either:
HITACHI Deskstar 7K2000 HDS722020ALA330

SAMSUNG Spinpoint F4 HD204UI (Cheaper)

I would just start out with 3-5 drives (RAID 5) as my budget is only about $500. I would like this to be up to 10TB until I can setup another system as a Primary storage using a Necro case.


I would connect this to an older emachine I have that was been good. It has a PCIe x16 and x1 slots so it should old fine. The system is currently running Win7 x86 (its an older system) but will install FreeNAS or OpenSuse (havent made up mind yet). Will be used as a storage server as well as host a few VM's

Would any of you peeps thinks that this would be a good setup or any other thoughts that would hold this amount of data for around $500. I have looked through the build forms but they are all custom built systems and I currently dont have that kind of money but my current 4x1TB hdd's are getting full on my main desktop and need to move it off.

Any thoughts or suggestions would be great.
 
lets divide into parts

you want 10TB+, so you need at least 6 Disks (5 x Data + redundancy)
+ boot disk + option

-> you should have a mainboard with 2 pci-e 8x slots for raid controller
(min 6 sata + 8x raid-controller)

you want to host several VM's, so you may want to have the option for 8GB+RAM
If you want to use a type-1 hypervisor to have speed with your vm's, you may need a server-class mainboard with vtd-i and pci-passthrough.

ok
one of the cheapest serverboards i know to be really good is
the SuperMicro X8SIL-f (i would use - f-version with ipmi) about 150 euro
with 6 x Sata onboard
+ dual xeon about 200,--
+ 4 GB Ram about 50 euro

prices are euro incl tax, so $ without tax should be the same

put these 400,-- parts in your enclosure and you have a really fine server base
do not use sata port multiplier if you want to have a trouble free system

i have such a system running with esxi 4 + virtualized ZFS-NAS/SAN (NexentaCore) + virtualized Windows Server + virtualized Solaris Express 11
+ other VM's (with Xeoan Quad and 8GB RAM) and it is performing very well.

gea
 
Great thanks for that. I will look into this. I have seen that the port multiplier seems to be useful but I have not read too much on the reliability of it though.
 
What about the OS drive on the X8SIL, wouldn't you need 7 SATA?

I am looking for a similar cheap setup for 6x 2TB RAID5.
 
bubbles said:
What about the OS drive on the X8SIL, wouldn't you need 7 SATA?

I am looking for a similar cheap setup for 6x 2TB RAID5.
Click to expand...

Not really. The X8SIL also has an internal USB port.
 
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