Advice on home file server

[Bodine]

I'm looking to build a home file server, and despite several weeks of reserch I still can't seem to find all of the right pieces. I think my goals for disk expansion are what's limiting me. Can you guys weigh in on the best way to accomplish the following:

I have 2 goals for the server: file serving and video encoding. Overclock-ability, video performance, gaming, form factor, etc aren't big issues for me.

I've been looking for a system that has:
1) Core duo or core 2 duo - for power savings and encoding performance
2) Multiple (4+) disk bays for RAID 5. I'm going to be doing SATA RAID5 via PCI cards so I don't need RAID on the mobo, but do want the bays for expansion.
3) Externally-accessible drive bays a plus, but not a requirement.
4) Reasonably quiet. I don't need it to be silent, but I don't want loud server-grade fans either.
5) PCI-X a bouns. From what I've read, RAID performance over standard PCI seems sketchy. So PCI-X is an alternative but disk performance is secondary concern for me so it's a nice-to-have but not required.

I'll be running Windows (probably XP) as the OS. I know Linux can do software RAID5 but I'm not interested - I could probably get it running but don't want my Linux ignornace to impede troubleshooting of future problems, other sfw, etc.

Also, though I'm open to opinions on RAID cards, I'm more interested in chassis/mobo advice as that's where I'm really stuck.

Any advice to point me in the right direction is appreciated.

 

[GrammatonJP]

pci-x is not available on desktop pcs.. pciE is availble and better than pci-x

 

[Bobthelost]

You can do software RAID 5 in windows too.

Chassis is up to you, you're not serriously considering removing drives from a RAID 5 array on the fly so the only reason i can think of would be for a single drive or two that you'd be using as removeable storage. In which case you can just use eSATA or a drive caddy job in a 5.25" bay. Any type of styling good for you or is it irrelevant.

 

[Madwand1]

I agree that unless you're going for a server-class setup (and perhaps even still), you should go with PCIe instead of PCI-X, and last PCI.

If you're going PCI, be sure that your GbE is not on the PCI bus. Even some onboard solutions are on PCI.

Intel desktop boards can do Core 2 Duo, onboard video, onboard Intel GbE. These also have 6 on-board SATA / SATA RAID. On-board RAID 5 write performance would be worse than add-on, as would its maintainability, portability, etc., but it could be cheap & convenient to start (or go to down the road as a backup server for example.)

An Antec SLK3000B (or variant) is inexpensive, nicely designed, and can hold 5 cooled drives with an add-on 120mm intake fan. An add-on drive cage such as one of the Lian Li or Thermaltake iCage, etc., can add 3 or more cooled drives.

 

[bob4432]

Originally posted by: GrammatonJP
pci-x is not available on desktop pcs.. pciE is availble and better than pci-x

please explain how you come to the conclusion that pci-e is better than pci-x??

 

[Bodine]

I hadn't considered PCIe. I assumed that PCIe was still mainly a graphics bus and/or would be too expensive. I discovered several PCIe raid cards that are about the same price, though, with 10x the performance (the Highpoint rocketraids have been getting good reviews).

And since I won't be using my PCIe slot for a graphics card, that give me a lot more flexibility with mobos.

Thanks.

 

[imported_goku]

Originally posted by: Madwand1
I agree that unless you're going for a server-class setup (and perhaps even still), you should go with PCIe instead of PCI-X, and last PCI.

If you're going PCI, be sure that your GbE is not on the PCI bus. Even some onboard solutions are on PCI.

Intel desktop boards can do Core 2 Duo, onboard video, onboard Intel GbE. These also have 6 on-board SATA / SATA RAID. On-board RAID 5 write performance would be worse than add-on, as would its maintainability, portability, etc., but it could be cheap & convenient to start (or go to down the road as a backup server for example.)

An Antec SLK3000B (or variant) is inexpensive, nicely designed, and can hold 5 cooled drives with an add-on 120mm intake fan. An add-on drive cage such as one of the Lian Li or Thermaltake iCage, etc., can add 3 or more cooled drives.

Unfortunately PCIe isn't better than PCI-X because there aren't any high end controller cards MADE for PCIe, it's either PCI or PCI-X.

 

[Fullmetal Chocobo]

Originally posted by: goku

Originally posted by: Madwand1
I agree that unless you're going for a server-class setup (and perhaps even still), you should go with PCIe instead of PCI-X, and last PCI.

If you're going PCI, be sure that your GbE is not on the PCI bus. Even some onboard solutions are on PCI.

Intel desktop boards can do Core 2 Duo, onboard video, onboard Intel GbE. These also have 6 on-board SATA / SATA RAID. On-board RAID 5 write performance would be worse than add-on, as would its maintainability, portability, etc., but it could be cheap & convenient to start (or go to down the road as a backup server for example.)

An Antec SLK3000B (or variant) is inexpensive, nicely designed, and can hold 5 cooled drives with an add-on 120mm intake fan. An add-on drive cage such as one of the Lian Li or Thermaltake iCage, etc., can add 3 or more cooled drives.

Unfortunately PCIe isn't better than PCI-X because there aren't any high end controller cards MADE for PCIe, it's either PCI or PCI-X.

The Areca 1210 class RAID controllers are PCIe 8X, and they are hardly low end. However, for a server, the motherboards that are PCI-X capable are likely to be far more stable....

 

[SuperNaruto]

Originally posted by: Fullmetal Chocobo

Unfortunately PCIe isn't better than PCI-X because there aren't any high end controller cards MADE for PCIe, it's either PCI or PCI-X.

The Areca 1210 class RAID controllers are PCIe 8X, and they are hardly low end. However, for a server, the motherboards that are PCI-X capable are likely to be far more stable....[/quote]

Exactly, areca, lsi all have high end raid controolers. Most new server gives you an option of having pci-e or pci-x..

Anyway, they're phasing out pci slowly... so you probably do not want to be stuck with a high end pci-x controller..

 

[Homerboy]

home file server?
Umm any CPU will work
You dont need ANY horsepower if all this is doing is serving up files
Save your money on Core2 and a new MB... just get some old outdated rig (I,m running 2TB on AMD1600+ right now and lord knows what MB).
RAID perf on standard PCI is perfectly fine for HOME USE, let alone most SOHO deployments.
Please you're WAY overbuilding this.

I forgot to touch on the video encoding too...
I use mine for that too. Does it matter if it encodes my DVDs in 1hr or 2 when thats all the machine is doing? Hell no. I just que up 5 encodes at a time and let it chug away. No super horse power needed.

 

[RaiderJ]

I have a PCI RAID 5 card and a motherboard with onboard RAID 5 (not being used). I like having the extra RAID 5 port for upgrading drives and for future expansion. Granted performance wouldn't be as good, but after running my file server on a P3 550Mhz for a year with a 33Mhz PCI card and not having any performance issues, you should be fine with whatever.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: RaiderJ
I have a PCI RAID 5 card and a motherboard with onboard RAID 5 (not being used). I like having the extra RAID 5 port for upgrading drives and for future expansion. Granted performance wouldn't be as good, but after running my file server on a P3 550Mhz for a year with a 33Mhz PCI card and not having any performance issues, you should be fine with whatever.

What sort of file transfer rates do you see?

 

[Homerboy]

Originally posted by: Madwand1

Originally posted by: RaiderJ
I have a PCI RAID 5 card and a motherboard with onboard RAID 5 (not being used). I like having the extra RAID 5 port for upgrading drives and for future expansion. Granted performance wouldn't be as good, but after running my file server on a P3 550Mhz for a year with a 33Mhz PCI card and not having any performance issues, you should be fine with whatever.

What sort of file transfer rates do you see?

you'll still fill up your 100baseT

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: Homerboy

Originally posted by: Madwand1
What sort of file transfer rates do you see?

you'll still fill up your 100baseT

I'm running gigabit of course, so that answer doesn't apply to me.

What sort of file transfer rates do you see?

 

[MerlinRML]

Lots of misinformation in this thread regarding PCI-e vs PCI-X. PCI-e is superior to PCI-X for the same reason that PCI-X is superior to PCI - bus bandwidth.

PCI-X 133Mhz has a total bandwidth of about 1.08GBps (yes, that's gigabyte not bit) for the entire bus, and there may be as many as 5 or 6 PCI-X slots per bus. All slots share the bus bandwidth. This is important, because a single dual port 4Gb Fiber Channel card can utilize the entire bus, leaving you no bandwidth for anything else. Some server manufacturers have implemented multiple buses on a single motherboard for this reason.

PCI-e is a serial bus with dedicated bandwidth per slot. The number of lanes to a connector determines the available bandwidth to the slot (ie 1x, 4x, 8x, 16x). Note that a motherboard manufacturer may actually place a larger slot than there is available bandwidth - an example of this is the case of an a manufacturer putting an 8x slot connector on a 4x bandwidth slot. A single 8x PCI-e slot has more bandwidth than an entire PCI-X bus with 5 slots.

As to the availability of PCI-e cards, that is stilil a problem. However, most of the cards that need the extra bandwidth of PCI-e are avalable on that bus, and there are even a few that don't. I have used PCI-e based SAS disk controllers, Fibre channel controllers, Ethernet controllers, and SCSI/RAID controllers. The 10Gb Ethernet cards were just recently available, and I haven't used any of them yet.


As to the question from the OP, you should look at an external disk enclosure with an SAS multilane connector. They're reasonably priced and give you some of the modularity for storage that you are looking for.

Another option would be to look at these 5.25 modules I haven't used SuperMicro, but the idea is the same as the ones I have used. They work reasonably well to modularize storage within a case. It gets rather difficult to grow beyond the 5 disks, too.

 

[Atheus]

LOL, this is going to be the most overspeced, overpriced, over power hungry home file server ever. New server board, PCI-X, Conroe... hardware RAID 5 redundant storage?!? Can I run a massive corporate website on your spare capacity?

 

[Homerboy]

Originally posted by: Atheus
LOL, this is going to be the most overspeced, overpriced, over power hungry home file server ever. New server board, PCI-X, Conroe... hardware RAID 5 redundant storage?!? Can I run a massive corporate website on your spare capacity?

no kidding hey? That was my point. Hell a P233 will run any home file server just fine. But whatever.

 

[Madwand1]

Funny how people thread crap here about old/cheap gear, and don't back it up with any performance numbers.

Anyone can build or buy cheap under-performing gear. Getting something that will give really good performance affordably is a different matter. Unless this thread comes back to something constructive on that, I'm done here.

 

[Homerboy]

and why would you need a top performing file server FOR HOME? Explain that and I will back u pwith numbers. Simply put, to serve up streaming mp3, .mpg. avi and even .ts you dont need much CPU power or any uber-performing RAID5 setup. Any CPU with modern HDDs hooked up, barebones OS and 100baseT will handle it all. End of story.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: Homerboy
and why would you need a top performing file server FOR HOME? Explain that and I will back u pwith numbers. Simply put, to serve up streaming mp3, .mpg. avi and even .ts you dont need much CPU power or any uber-performing RAID5 setup. Any CPU with modern HDDs hooked up, barebones OS and 100baseT will handle it all. End of story.

Last response to thread crap: Because some of us do large file transfers across the network on a regular basis, and like them to go fast. If you don't get something so basic, and feel a need to dictate usage rules to home users, I have no time for you. Bye.

 

[P.O.W.]

Originally posted by: Homerboy
and why would you need a top performing file server FOR HOME? Explain that and I will back u pwith numbers. Simply put, to serve up streaming mp3, .mpg. avi and even .ts you dont need much CPU power or any uber-performing RAID5 setup. Any CPU with modern HDDs hooked up, barebones OS and 100baseT will handle it all. End of story.

Did you not even read the what Bodine wrote?

I have 2 goals for the server: file serving and video encoding

So he is going to encode with a 300mhz celeron?

Granted a single user does not need a $300 raid 5 card.... but if he has the money who are we to complain.

 

[Homerboy]

Did you not even read the what Bodine wrote?

I have 2 goals for the server: file serving and video encoding

So he is going to encode with a 300mhz celeron?

Granted a single user does not need a $300 raid 5 card.... but if he has the money who are we to complain.

did YOU even read what I wrote in regards to encoding?

I forgot to touch on the video encoding too...
I use mine for that too. Does it matter if it encodes my DVDs in 1hr or 2 when thats all the machine is doing? Hell no. I just que up 5 encodes at a time and let it chug away. No super horse power needed.

Obviously a 300Mhz Celeron won't cut it, but some AMD XP or Sempron will fill the job nicely.

As far as Madwand1is concerned, yeah I don't do large file transfers. All those DVD9 images, .ts files and large home movie files in raw .avi aren't that large. The point being is that "low end" RAID setups (even software) are still going to be more than fast enough to saturate 100baseT On the flip side, standard IDE/SATA HDDs (even in RAID) are going to be your bottle neck on a gigabit LAN. You aren't going to saturate a gigabit LAN on even heavy home use. High performance RAID setups are intended for very high I/O and for 100s and 100s of simultaneous hits per sec. Not 1 sustained LAN xfer of some .iso file you have.

 

[Atheus]

Originally posted by: Madwand1
Funny how people thread crap here about old/cheap gear, and don't back it up with any performance numbers.

Anyone can build or buy cheap under-performing gear. Getting something that will give really good performance affordably is a different matter. Unless this thread comes back to something constructive on that, I'm done here.

Originally posted by: Madwand1
Last response to thread crap: Because some of us do large file transfers across the network on a regular basis, and like them to go fast. If you don't get something so basic, and feel a need to dictate usage rules to home users, I have no time for you. Bye.

Get over yourself... 'thread crap'? Whatever - this isn't your thread, it's Bodine's thread, how do you know what he wants in it and what he doesn't? Perhaps he will be grateful to hear that he has options other than spending thousands of dollars on a pro server setup which will sit idle 99.9% of the time. Why do you want him to spend all that money anyway? Do you sell processors or something? Why would spending up be the default position while we are asked to prove that going cheap is acceptable? Surely it should be the other way round. Can you prove that the high power setup is required?

And it will sit idle. Even if you encode hundreds of videos every year, it's still a massive waste of processing power. As for fast file transfers, I assume your client PC has an even more massive RAID array than your server? Since write speeds are a bit slower than reads, you will need at least one extra drive in your client compared to your server in order to achieve maximum performance, as you will be limited by the client's ability to receive the information. But hang on - if you have a large fast RAID array in your client, why the fvck would you need a file server? This is why people only build these super-IO systems to serve many clients at once, not for home setups.

You want to know how the cheap hardware performs? OK, I have 2 320GB Seagate drives in software RAID-1 on a cheapo Adaptec card stuck in a 66Mhz PCI slot. This modest bus is able to handle the throughput of both drives absolutely fine, and the drives themselves are able to push as much data as my client's WD Raptor can handle, and stream a movie to the HTPC upstairs at the same time. The (cheap) Pentium-III processors run a LAMP server with a couple of websites, a mail server, and they compile my Linux programs, all while keeping an average CPU usage of only a couple of percent.

 

[Homerboy]

hehe common sense has no place for him.

Long story longer: my XP 1600+ w/ 512MB RAM encodes 2-3 DVDs per week (keep in mind some of them are encoded across the LAN too), in addition to serving all sorts of media ranging from mp3, .avi, .img etc etc to up to 3 simultaneous locations in the house, alos serves 2 rather heavily trafficked websites which require a fair amount of pretty heavy mySQL queries handles the job PERFECTLY fine.

Point being, unless you have $$ to burn, you don't need squat for a home server.

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: Atheus
I have 2 320GB Seagate drives in software RAID-1 on a cheapo Adaptec card stuck in a 66Mhz PCI slot. This modest bus is able to handle the throughput of both drives absolutely fine, and the drives themselves are able to push as much data as my client's WD Raptor can handle, and stream a movie to the HTPC upstairs at the same time. The (cheap) Pentium-III processors run a LAMP server with a couple of websites, a mail server, and they compile my Linux programs, all while keeping an average CPU usage of only a couple of percent.

Multi-processor 66 MHz PCI = low-end cheap hardware? Maybe it's cheap now because it's obsolete and used, but it wasn't cheap originally. If you're actually saying that your server can sustain 60 MB/s file transfers, then great. Are you? BTW, what are the specs in detail? Perhaps the OP can consider that as an alternative.

I don't object to good performance on the cheap. I object to people saying that everyone should be happy with outdated, actually slow performance just because they're file servers being used at home.