File Server Spec Help

Hey all,

I have a cheiftec dragon (server edition) sitting here doing nothing and i want to put it to good use.

I have alot of music which i have recently digitalized onto mp3 format and want to be able to store it on my network, with this in mind and the fact i have the case available i want to build a file server.

Ia mlooking for about 2TB of space available after the build, does anyone have any recommendations for specifications for the machine? I wouldnt know what would be sutible.

Many Thanks
Drobbins

Couple of RAID-5 Cards - A Bunch of 300Gb HDs.

Processor wise - anything from a 3200+ Athlon to an Opty 146 - should give you enough.

Motherboard - something with GbE, other features matter little in a filserver.

Hard Disks for the OS - an 80gb, or RAID0 Smaller disks.

Memory - 1 Gb - good enough to run a server variety of linux/2k3

You could probably go lower, but if you want to start streaming high def content in a few years time, then investing in something like this would probably save some time.

Dave

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Originally Posted by dave87

Couple of RAID-5 Cards - A Bunch of 300Gb HDs.

Processor wise - anything from a 3200+ Athlon to an Opty 146 - should give you enough.

Motherboard - something with GbE, other features matter little in a filserver.

Hard Disks for the OS - an 80gb, or RAID0 Smaller disks.

Memory - 1 Gb - good enough to run a server variety of linux/2k3

You could probably go lower, but if you want to start streaming high def content in a few years time, then investing in something like this would probably save some time.

Dave

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Cheers dave,

What motherboard would u look into? Iam not really up on the latest and greatest when it comes to things other than games.

As or raid cards, how many what type would i need? Raid is also another new area for me.

With the 80gb for the operating system would u put that direct onto a onboard sata controller?

Drobbins

This is my take on your needs

Revo64 5 ports with RAID 3, the cheapest mobo, sempy, 5x250gb, 512-1gb memory, and hard disk or CF card for OS, depends if you want to run winxp or freeNAS.

In total that should only cost you about £450.

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Originally Posted by taqies

This is my take on your needs

Revo64 5 ports with RAID 3, the cheapest mobo, sempy, 5x250gb, 512-1gb memory, and hard disk or CF card for OS, depends if you want to run winxp or freeNAS.

In total that should only cost you about £450.

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and totally ignores the requirement for 2tb doh!

Semperons are great, but limited - and when HiDef content comes round, you'll be knackered. Best to find some cheap 939 stuff going round and use that.

If you want true RAID 5 - then you need to buy a decent raid card - hexxeh will probably know the good ones. Either 1 or 2, depending on the number of ports on it and the size of hard disks you plan on using to achieve 2tb.

Motherboards - any of the Nforce 4 ones minus SLI, theyre stable and affordable.

And yes, the 80gb on the onboard controller - which will be raid 0 capable if required.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by dave87

If you want true RAID 5 - then you need to buy a decent raid card - hexxeh will probably know the good ones. Either 1 or 2, depending on the number of ports on it and the size of hard disks you plan on using to achieve 2tb.

Motherboards - any of the Nforce 4 ones minus SLI, theyre stable and affordable.

And yes, the 80gb on the onboard controller - which will be raid 0 capable if required.

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I would like the best quality i can get tbh, iam going ot got wit h300gb drives which will more than likely take me slightly over 2TB the available expansion would be good aswell, so maybe a card with 5 parts each and use 2 cards.

As for the motherboard what about this one.

Drobbins

This is what i have come up with, please give me your thoughts.

Motherboard Abit KN8 Ultra NF4 Ultra, S939, PCI-E (x16), DDR 400, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX
Processor AMD Opteron 64 148 Socket939 , Venus Core, 2.2GHz , 1MB Cache, Retail
Memory 1GB (2X512MB) Corsair Value Select, DDR PC3200 (400), 184 Pin, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 2.5
Hard Disks (Storage) 300Gb Samsung HD300LJ, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 8MB Cache, 9.0 ms, NCQ
Hard Disk (OS) 80 Gb Samsung HD080HJ SpinPoint P80, SATA300, 7200 rpm, 8MB Cache, NCQ, 8.9 ms
PowerSupply 600w Seasonic S12-600 SLi Ready Silent PSU 2xPCI-E 4xSATA 120mm Fan ATX1.3/2.01
Raid Controllers XFX REVO 64 SPU 5 Port SATA Raid Card (PRO)

Drobbins

nVidia chipsets have poor support under Linux, one of the reasons Intel has such a strong grip in the server market, Intel helps opensource developers, whereas nVidia drivers are being hacked together by trial and error.

An Intel Pentium D 805 is silly cheap and will provide more than enough processing power, you're going a bit overboard on the PSU as well, hard drives only use about 8W each, you wont be having a fuse popping graphcis card, no more than 480W will ever be used even if you load hard drives in every nook and cranny in the case.

Now, as for storeage, if you really want to go for full hardware RAID, I would recommend acrea RAID controllers, they work with hotswappable planes, online expantion, awesome performance, but, not cheep, an 8 port card costs in the region of 500 Euro. Linux does however, have excellent software RAID 5 support, that would mean you just need standard SATA controllers to plug the disks into.. just something to consider.

I don't think those 300 GB Samsung disks are going to do it, you're going to need 8 of them in a RAID 5 array to get 2TB, that doesn't leave room to grow (does the cheiftek case even hold that much?). Western Digital and Seagate do 500GB disks, 5 of them will bring you up to scratch, I think Seagate are doing 750GB disks now too

I serve video and mp3 files from an old Athlon 1000 box with 512MB of DDR ram. As long as you are just serving files from the server (not transcoding video) then anything you find should be fine.

I did put a cheap PCI gigabit ethernet card into it, because otherwise moving files back & forth to my main PC was painful.

The motherboard you chose only has 3 PCI slots in it, and it sounds like you intend using 2 of them straight off. For your use I wonder if something older, eg K8T800 based, would be better unless you see a use for PCIe x1 slots.

Oh, that motherboard also has a chipset fan on it, I would avoid that as at best it is a source of noise and at worst a source of failure.

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Originally Posted by aidanjt

nVidia chipsets have poor support under Linux, one of the reasons Intel has such a strong grip in the server market, Intel helps opensource developers, whereas nVidia drivers are being hacked together by trial and error.

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What mptherboard would u consider? I have looked at the CPU u advised and it looks a great buy to be honest, so i think i will go with the Pentium D u recommended below.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by aidanjt

An Intel Pentium D 805 is silly cheap and will provide more than enough processing power, you're going a bit overboard on the PSU as well, hard drives only use about 8W each, you wont be having a fuse popping graphcis card, no more than 480W will ever be used even if you load hard drives in every nook and cranny in the case.

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Your right 8 disks would be silly especially when as you said seagate are doing 750gb drives, which i have looked into and also replaced on the list, the power supply i have swapped out for a 530W Tagan 2Force T530-U22 SLi U-Quiet 21db Also support 12v EPS/SATA/XEON 3 Years Warranty ATX/BTX this is also probs OTT but iam not really sure of anything else that is Solid

Quote:

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Originally Posted by aidanjt

Now, as for storeage, if you really want to go for full hardware RAID, I would recommend acrea RAID controllers, they work with hotswappable planes, online expantion, awesome performance, but, not cheep, an 8 port card costs in the region of 500 Euro. Linux does however, have excellent software RAID 5 support, that would mean you just need standard SATA controllers to plug the disks into.. just something to consider.

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Those cards look fantastic Scan sell them but am not 100% which card to go for, also is their anyway of gettnig hot swap bays for a desktop case and maybe putting them in the 5 1/2" bay becuase if the card support it why not use it

Drobbins

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Drobbins

What mptherboard would u consider? I have looked at the CPU u advised and it looks a great buy to be honest, so i think i will go with the Pentium D u recommended below.

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I always stand firmly by Asus in terms of stability and performance, the chipsets are all passivly cooled so you wont have any noise problems with it, the ASUS P5WD2-E should do the job nicely.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Drobbins

Your right 8 disks would be silly especially when as you said seagate are doing 750gb drives, which i have looked into and also replaced on the list, the power supply i have swapped out for a 530W Tagan 2Force T530-U22 SLi U-Quiet 21db Also support 12v EPS/SATA/XEON 3 Years Warranty ATX/BTX this is also probs OTT but iam not really sure of anything else that is Solid

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That looks all good.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Drobbins

Those cards look fantastic Scan sell them but am not 100% which card to go for, also is their anyway of gettnig hot swap bays for a desktop case and maybe putting them in the 5 1/2" bay becuase if the card support it why not use it

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Areca ARC-1220 8 x PCI-E to SATA II RAID 6 Controller would probibly fit the bill, it's a PCIe x8 controller but it will run in the second PCIe x16 slot. WebConnXXion based in the Netherlands sells a good range of SATA backplanes if that interests you any, I found it difficult to find UK retailers which have a good selection like this. The Chieftec SNT-3141SATA Backplane in particular tickles my fancy.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by aidanjt

I always stand firmly by Asus in terms of stability and performance, the chipsets are all passivly cooled so you wont have any noise problems with it, the ASUS P5WD2-E should do the job nicely.

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Great i have updated the specification with that board.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by aidanjt

Areca ARC-1220 8 x PCI-E to SATA II RAID 6 Controller would probibly fit the bill, it's a PCIe x8 controller but it will run in the second PCIe x16 slot. WebConnXXion based in the Netherlands sells a good range of SATA backplanes if that interests you any, I found it difficult to find UK retailers which have a good selection like this. The Chieftec SNT-3141SATA Backplane in particular tickles my fancy.

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That looks good to me, i have added a backplane and Raid controller card to the list, i found that this backplane would be the best bet as it has room for an additional 1 drive and i can then update to another singular cage at a later date if need be.

With these backplanes is their any special or additional cabeling that i would require? Iam not sure if i quite understand fully how these would connect to the card would they connect like normal disks becuase making the disks hotswapable would mean u can pull any disk out while it is still turned on.

I have also be looking at pc cooling, Water is out of the question so i was looking into some 80mm fans and came accross these if their is something a little quieter please let me know or something better, i take it the backplanes come with cooling.

Drobbins

The backplanes are fairly simple, you plug in 2x12v or SATA power connectors to power the disks, and all 4 sata connectors to the raid card. Of course as always, when in doubt, RTFM... I think you can get some fancy 4-in-1 type connector cables, but a cable tie will do the same job ;)

That fan looks nice, Zalman does great quiet fans too. Also the Zalman CNPS9500-AT Intel LGA775 Aero Flower Cooler will keep that 805 cool as chips.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by aidanjt

The backplanes are fairly simple, you plug in 2x12v or SATA power connectors to power the disks, and all 4 sata connectors to the raid card. Of course as always, when in doubt, RTFM... I think you can get some fancy 4-in-1 type connector cables, but a cable tie will do the same job ;)

That fan looks nice, Zalman does great quiet fans too. Also the Zalman CNPS9500-AT Intel LGA775 Aero Flower Cooler will keep that 805 cool as chips.

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Ah simple as pie ;) So all i would require is 4 sata cables then, also what does RTFM mean does it mean something abut the manual with some naughty words hexus dosent like included?

That cooler also looks perfect, i think to be perfectly honest i have a good specification now :) If you could PM me your email address i can send over the spec and maybe you can look it over??

Drobbins

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Drobbins

Ah simple as pie ;) So all i would require is 4 sata cables then, also what does RTFM mean does it mean something abut the manual with some naughty words hexus dosent like included?

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RTFM means Read The Flipping Manual (honest) :embarrassed:
The Areca raid card comes with a heap of SATA cables, so you don't have to worry about that none.