Help trim down my spec .. Media Server
Hi guys, I've finally had enough of problems with my SC101 Netgear drives (well the drives are fine, but the drivers cuase me all sorts of problems!) So I'm going to build myself a 'server' once more (should never have gotten rid of the old one!)
It's main purpose will be file storage, including video and audio media which will be streamed to the laptop downstairs for use on the Samsung 1080p LCD.
My selections so far are as follows:
Code:
PSU £46.99 500W Silverstone
Case £64.61 Sharkoon Rebel
Mobo £44.00 GA-G31M-S2L
CPU £43.01 E2160 775
RAM £35.00 PC4200 (2x1GB)
OS Drives £57.70 2x80GB Seagate 8.9ms
Data Drives £296.52 3x750GB Samsung
Drive Cases £34.50 CoolerMaster V6 Silver
Drive Ctrl £59.00 4P Promise
£681.33
I'll be RAID-1ing the 80Gigs for the OS (Probably Ubuntu) and RAID-5 the 750s for data.
£681 is a little more than i had hoped, any ideas on how to trim this down, whilst maintaining performance enough to handle the data throughput?
Re: Help trim down my spec .. Media Server
some sort of antec case + psu might suit. They start at around £55 but i'm not sure if thye will fit all the hard drives.
Re: Help trim down my spec .. Media Server
500w is more than you need for that spec machine, may be able to save a few quid that way.
Is RAID1 really needed? If its a homeserver a rebuild is inconvenient but not the end of the world, and if you image the hard drive once setup, relatively painless to do.
Re: Help trim down my spec .. Media Server
Quote:
Originally Posted by
dave87
500w is more than you need for that spec machine, may be able to save a few quid that way.
Is RAID1 really needed? If its a homeserver a rebuild is inconvenient but not the end of the world, and if you image the hard drive once setup, relatively painless to do.
I over speced the PSU to save having to upgrade it as and when I add extra Data drives with the ever expanding needs of HD data files (Contemplating backing up a number of my DVD's to the server for ease of watching also)
Probably true on the RAID1, will be a real basic setup, probably no more than 30mins setup time, so long as the RAID-5 stays intact so I don;t loose the more personal files (Photos etc) then I'm pretty good.
Re: Help trim down my spec .. Media Server
Quote:
Originally Posted by
staffsMike
some sort of antec case + psu might suit. They start at around £55 but i'm not sure if thye will fit all the hard drives.
Tue, I picked the Sharkoom for it's massive about of 5.25 bays, but it could be overkill.
Re: Help trim down my spec .. Media Server
How much were you looking to spend in total? That'll help us whittle down some stuff if possible.
Re: Help trim down my spec .. Media Server
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Skinleech
How much were you looking to spend in total? That'll help us whittle down some stuff if possible.
Fair point, initially I was hoping for sub-£500 however just the hard drives our £300 so that a little hopeful I know. When I did GB/£ 500GBs seemed to still give the best value, but I figured the extra 1p/GB of the 750s was worthwhile, but maybe there are other ideas?
Re: Help trim down my spec .. Media Server
Yeah, the drives are a lot of moolah, but it's the same everywhere. The proce pint of 750gb drives is pretty good just now though, not quite as good value as a 500, but still pretty good.
Could you even consider just 2 drives for the time being? That would save you compromising on the spec to meet the cost. I really don't see many options that will save you a decent amount of money, unless you downspec the entire system.
Re: Help trim down my spec .. Media Server
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Skinleech
Could you even consider just 2 drives for the time being? That would save you compromising on the spec to meet the cost. I really don't see many options that will save you a decent amount of money, unless you downspec the entire system.
Well I want to go RAID-5 for the data storage for easier future expansion so I need 3 drives minimum really. Looking like I can't do much to trim things down. The single OS drive is an option, was thinking about it last night and i can probably use a Live-CD to image the OS to the RAID-5 which would be a nice self contained option.
What I may do for now is backup the drives, and set all 4 250GB disks up in one of our two PC's as one big set (with redundancy) under WinXP and use that until I can get the funds together to do the server properly.
Re: Help trim down my spec .. Media Server
Why are you speccing PC4200 RAM? and £35 for it could find PC5400 for less than that and if you shop around PC6400.
Re: Help trim down my spec .. Media Server
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Webby
Why are you speccing PC4200 RAM? and £35 for it could find PC5400 for less than that and if you shop around PC6400.
I must admit I just grabbed a price for ram with it being such a small price variance.
Re: Help trim down my spec .. Media Server
I'd highly recommend dropping the 2x 80GB disks for the OS. My Ubuntu desktop has heaps of stuff installed and the root partition contains only about 4.1GB of stuff (not including the data and user homes, that's a separate partition). I'd just create a 2GB swap and 6GB root (and that's pretty generous for a root filesystem on Ubuntu) on the RAID5 array.
If it's a server then you're not likely to saturate the throughput available on a RAID5 array because of the network bottleneck anyway so I can't imagine you'd have problems keeping the OS and the swap partition on the same array as your data. Dropping the 80GB drives saves you £57 and that means you won't really need the drive cage either so there goes another £34, that's saved you over £91. For a home media server OS and data on separate arrays is massive overkill IMHO.
Re: Help trim down my spec .. Media Server
Quote:
Originally Posted by
8bit
I'd highly recommend dropping the 2x 80GB disks for the OS. My Ubuntu desktop has heaps of stuff installed and the root partition contains only about 4.1GB of stuff (not including the data and user homes, that's a separate partition). I'd just create a 2GB swap and 6GB root (and that's pretty generous for a root filesystem on Ubuntu) on the RAID5 array.
If it's a server then you're not likely to saturate the throughput available on a RAID5 array because of the network bottleneck anyway so I can't imagine you'd have problems keeping the OS and the swap partition on the same array as your data. Dropping the 80GB drives saves you £57 and that means you won't really need the drive cage either so there goes another £34, that's saved you over £91. For a home media server OS and data on separate arrays is massive overkill IMHO.
Yeah, I'm always one for going for 'best practices' though ;) But it it a good idea, however with the software RAID would greating the small OS partition not drop that space from all volumes? Not a massive loss I'll admit, but just checking my logic.
Re: Help trim down my spec .. Media Server
OK, here's how it will look if you follow my suggestion:
3x 750GB disks in RAID5 gives you 1250GB (unformatted) capacity on the array since you use 1 disk's worth of space in every 3 for parity info in RAID5. 2GB for swap (since that's how much RAM you have) and 6GB for your root partition still leaves you 1242GB for storage.
Not sure what you mean by "drop space from all volumes?"... It's just a matter of creating your partitions when you install the OS as it will see the array as one big disk of 1250GB (or thereabouts, a bit less due to partitioning and filesystem overheads etc.).
Re: Help trim down my spec .. Media Server
Quote:
Originally Posted by
8bit
OK, here's how it will look if you follow my suggestion:
3x 750GB disks in RAID5 gives you 1250GB (unformatted) capacity on the array since you use 1 disk's worth of space in every 3 for parity info in RAID5. 2GB for swap (since that's how much RAM you have) and 6GB for your root partition still leaves you 1242GB for storage.
Not sure what you mean by "drop space from all volumes?"... It's just a matter of creating your partitions when you install the OS as it will see the array as one big disk of 1250GB (or thereabouts, a bit less due to partitioning and filesystem overheads etc.).
OK, I wasn't aware you could install linux onto a software-raid RAID-5, I thought you would need to install the OS to a non-RAID disk portion hence the leaving some disk space off all disks to make the RAIDed ammounts equal on all disks. If it is as you say that would be perfect.
Re: Help trim down my spec .. Media Server
Software RAID5? I thought the Promise controller was for hardware RAID5...
Re: Help trim down my spec .. Media Server
Quote:
Originally Posted by
8bit
Software RAID5? I thought the Promise controller was for hardware RAID5...
Not at £59.. true hardward RAID-5 doesn't come in at under £300 normally.. there are FakeRAID ones for less of course, but from experience Linux doesn't see the arrays on these, just the drives themselves.
Re: Help trim down my spec .. Media Server
Ah I see. Your other option would be to get hold of a Revo64 3-port or 5-port card. They don't do RAID5, they're RAID3 which offers the same redundancy level, similar read performance and better write performance than RAID5. The 3-port version is about £24 from scan.co.uk just now and it is supported in the Linux kernels included from Ubuntu Edgy onwards.
That would save you another £35 which (combined with dropping the 2x 80GB drives and the disk cage) brings your savings to £126. That brings you not too far beyond your £500 price point.
Re: Help trim down my spec .. Media Server
Quote:
Originally Posted by
8bit
Ah I see. Your other option would be to get hold of a Revo64 3-port or 5-port card. They don't do RAID5, they're RAID3 which offers the same redundancy level, similar read performance and better write performance than RAID5. The 3-port version is about £24 from scan.co.uk just now and it is supported in the Linux kernels included from Ubuntu Edgy onwards.
That would save you another £35 which (combined with dropping the 2x 80GB drives and the disk cage) brings your savings to £126. That brings you not too far beyond your £500 price point.
Now you're just getting clever! ;) Sounds a very promising line of enquiry, I shall look into it. Scan tends to be my preferred choice as I can call in on the way home from work ;)
