storage solution required - suggestions please

[Wizard]

I currently have a Terrastation NAS box which is quite good - slow, but good.
I am looking for a solution to replace this 700Gb unit for something a bit bigger.

My inital idea was to get a Lian Li PC-V2000plusII case and fill the bottom with 12x 750Gb SATA drives (Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 750GB S300) and use a decent RAID card to provide RAID-5 over the lot giving about 8.25Tb.

These drives would be for pure storage, I would have another drive for the OS - what ever that may be.

Systemboard is not too important, as the box is dependant on IO and network throughput. RAM would be 4Gb though.

Now, the question is, is this a good option, or the the heat/noise/power going to be too high. Are there any other solutions that would give me something similar but in a smaller case.?

Thanks in advance for any help you can give on this.

Wizard

 

[Ockie]

It's a good idea but your motherboard is going to be critical as well as what controller you used.


Also, if this is pure storage, whats the point on 4gigs of memory. You can get away with a 512 stick... I would toss in a 1gb stick just to be safe.


Noise = Can be low if you use the right fans
Heat = Minimal
Power = Minimal, would depend on what other components you are adding with this

There are many other solutions that would work in a smaller case.

 

[Wizard]

I was going to use an add-on controller for the RAID, that was why the MB was not important. I see your point on the memory.

 

[iroc409]

motherboard is important simply for the throughput. if you are getting a nice raid card, you need a board with a slot to install it in (PCIe or PCI-X).

ram is a non-issue if all you will be doing is storage. i had a p3 machine as a test server with i think 256 or 384 megs ram, and browsing the files on the server was faster than my desktop.

 

[Ockie]

I was going to use an add-on controller for the RAID, that was why the MB was not important. I see your point on the memory.

Motherboard is important because you deal with stability and other features. One of the biggest features is the type of nic it has on board... cheap motherboards gigabit nics gets about 30-40% utilization, if you get a good board, you can see upwards of 80% utilization.

Also, you have a better array of interfaces with a more higher end board, and you have other features which can save you money. Spend the little extra on a good board instead of so much memory, you will not regret it.

 

[longblock454]

Supermicro sells excellent MBs with dual gigE nics and PCI-X for < $200.

 

[Wizard]

Thanks guys. Any ideas on a smaller case? The v2000 is a bit big.

 

[Anarchist4000]

I've got a V2000 and I wouldn't exactly call it huge but could be a problem depending on location. A slightly cheaper option might be to get a quality Crossfire/SLI board with 2 dedicated x16 PCI-E slots. Add in a 12 port Areca and sufficient PSU and you should be good to go. A board with a PCI-E based gigabit card would be a must.

Haven't really looked at what integrated NICs have the best throughput but that might be of interest.

 

[drizzt81]

Thanks guys. Any ideas on a smaller case? The v2000 is a bit big.

Get the Aerocool Masstige (Bay dream in Germany) and load that up with 5-in-3 enclosures from Supermicro. Should be much smaller than the V2000 and hold 15 drives in hot-swap cages.