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Building a home all-purpose Network Server!?

M

mkruer

Member
Building a home all-purpose Network Server!?

The idea of this project is to build an all-purpose network server box for home use that has a low power consumption as possible, and that is noiseless.

Requirements
Low Power Consumption
Raid ability preferably
NAS (Support for online network Drives that can be
ftp server (Secure Login)
http server (Support for MySQL and PHP)
Under $1000 or better
Noiseless (Fan less Preferably)
Small form factor (Micro Tower)
Management From a remote PC

Anything else that you think I am missing. I want to spec it out and see if it is possible to create such a device


 
File server on a peer to peer LAN?

Or Real Server. I.e. Win2000Server, or Win2003Server, or Linux Server?
 
A real server, for a peer-to-peer LAN connection. The server should not be responsible for any login authentication, that should still be handled by the PC?s. but other then that, it should be a fully functional server controlled by remote.
 
You sound like you want a Via Eden based system. They are either fanless or have 1 quiet fan. I have the C3 800Mhz one and can't hear the fan spinning over the hard drive which, admittedly is old and somewhat noisy compared to modern ones. They do not have RAID capabilities onboard but they do have a single PCI slot...If you don't need that slot for a 2nd NIC then you should be good to go. They aren't that expensive and you can stuff them in any size tower depending on how many drives you plan on attaching to it. If you really want a crazy hardware RAID you could stick a 3ware EIDE or Serial ATA hardware RAID card in the PCI slot.

My gentoo eden box is my router, firewall, traffic shaper, time, samba, ssh/sftp, dns, http, mysql (w/php), snmp, etc. server and it's usually idle. The only time the speed of the processor comes into play is when doing sftp transfers over the LAN.

Gaidin
 
Yeah I was looking at that. LOL and if I am not mistaken that is the same thing Linksys uses for the 80gig NAS storage.

I think i may have solved the SATA RAID Issue for $150
4-channel ATA RAID 5 Card with hardware XOR engine
http://www.promise.com/product/product_detail_eng.asp?productId=94&familyId=2

Also the Size could be a Micro Tower, that is about the only way to get enough drive slots. I should apend that i was also looking for 4 5-1/2 drive bays for swapable drives.
 
If you are looking for hot swappable drive bays, several manufacturers make 5.25" housings for 3.5" drives...It was something like 4 3.5" hot swap drives in 3 5.25" bays serial ata, scsi, or EIDE. Unfortunately they aren't cheap...Of course Lian-li makes a nice looking aluminum mid tower with a ton of 5.25" bays for the size. Check out HERE.

Computer geeks sells Genica "brand" hot swap IDE housings with trays for about $8 apiece which is pretty much the cheapest I've seen anywhere and they actually aren't bad for the price. 🙂

That promise card sounds great for the price.

Gaidin
 
Yeah finding the proper box is going to be 90% of the battle

Here is what I plan to use it for. Let me take price out of the equation. What I want is to have a server that can act as a NAS, but still offers FTP and HTTP (preferably secure)access for my person website. I do not expect the FTP of HTTP to be utilized that heavily, mainly for internal testing of websites and the occasional file transfer. I also want to store all my Videos and MP3 to be accessible form any system in my house. And I want the data to be protected reasonably well from disk failure and data corruption. This is why I wanted a S-ATA RAID 5 system. And looking at promise they offer one for $150. I also want the system to draw as low of power as possible (I am energy conscious I guess) and I want the system to be able to run as quietly as possible and if I can have a fully passive system I think it would be fantastic. I want to be able to shove this system into a corner and remote access it. I also want it to take up as little of space as possible.

If anyone know of the parts or some one that make small form factor, but fully-fledged network servers please let me know.
 
You do know that the Promise RAID card that you listed is an ATA only card. There are no SATA connectors on it.
 
Yeh, a Via Eden with a nice RAID card and some big drives....several deals on Maxtor 160's now... with like 512mb memory it should be great...
 
Yeah i was looking at that. But my big concern in oomph in the VIA processor. I was looking at something more mainstream. if only the AMD64 was out. Supposedly, you can run the lower frequencies chips passively. Or perhaps an Centrenio, but they are so dam expensive.
 
But my big concern in oomph in the VIA processor
Click to expand...

Why? Unless you're doing some really compute intensive things it won't make a difference. My current server is a Sun Ultra2 (dual 300Mhz with 2M cache) running Linux. It handles IMAP (Cyrus IMAPd with sieve automated sorting), IMAP-SSL, SMTP (Postfix), webmail via Horde/IMP on Apache, MySQL holding Horde settings and snort logging, mrtg, ssh and probably other things I forgot. The only thing that was slow was the IMAP server when I was using Courier, after switching to Cyrus I can load a IMAP folder with 50,000 messages in it in under 20s via IMP.

As long as the supporting hardware doesn't suck, mainly the IDE controller, the CPU will be the least of your worries.
 
Well the other thing that I don?t like about the VIA Eden systems is the case has very little room for expansion way can you place in there 1 5.25 and one 3.5 I would like to have all the drives is swappable racks.

I think I said it above the hardest problem is going to be finding a case.

As for the EIDE controller. I don?t think this is going to be a big issue if I am using a S-ATA controller card if the PCI bus is good.
 
What in the world do you want swappable racks for? You're not in the SCSI market, and support for IDE hotswap is flaky to nonexistent under any operating system. So all it gets you is an easier time replacing a disk in the event of a failure. But that's a very small benefit compared to the extra space and complexity.
 
As for the EIDE controller. I don?t think this is going to be a big issue if I am using a S-ATA controller card if the PCI bus is good.
Click to expand...

I would think SATA would limit you more considering you're only allowed one drive per cable.
 
Originally posted by: Nothinman
As for the EIDE controller. I don?t think this is going to be a big issue if I am using a S-ATA controller card if the PCI bus is good.
Click to expand...

I would think SATA would limit you more considering you're only allowed one drive per cable.
Click to expand...

Why? the card i want has 4 four S-ATA connections Plus i would still have ove free for a CD drive. but again that is not the limiting factor. the question is how to get all the drives into as small a space a possable.
 
Originally posted by: cleverhandle
What in the world do you want swappable racks for? You're not in the SCSI market, and support for IDE hotswap is flaky to nonexistent under any operating system. So all it gets you is an easier time replacing a disk in the event of a failure. But that's a very small benefit compared to the extra space and complexity.
Click to expand...

Becuse i can get them FREE! and With S-ATA it does support Hot Swaping. that was one of the reason for S-ATA spec
 
Why? the card i want has 4 four S-ATA connections Plus i would still have ove free for a CD drive. but again that is not the limiting factor. the question is how to get all the drives into as small a space a possable.
Click to expand...

I guess I'm spoiled by being able to put up to 15 devices on one cable with my SCSI160 controller. You gotta be carefull about heat though, putting all 4 drives in as small a space as possible could make things get pretty hot.
 
Originally posted by: mkruer
Becuse i can get them FREE! and With S-ATA it does support Hot Swaping. that was one of the reason for S-ATA spec
Click to expand...
I think you'll find that "doing it because you can" is not as great a reason for servers as it is for desktops. I do all kinds of wacky things with my desktop just to try out the technology. But my servers are a different story. I want simplicity and reliability both in hardware and software, not features I don't need. If you're building a server that cannot go down under any circumstances, then by all means go for hotswap. But I hardly think your household will come to a grinding halt if you take down the server for an hour to replace a drive.

 
Well i was looking at getting either 4 120GB WD1200JD dirves about $120 a pop or 3 200GB WD2000JD about $247 a pop.

Its cheaper per MB for the

4x120GB (about $1.00 per MB before RAID-5, and $1.36 per MB after RAID-5)
3x200GB (about $1.21 per MB before RAID-5, and $1.82 per MB after RAID-5)

All the drive suck up about 11 Watts of power. and as far cooling. I would think the CPU world fry before the drives quit
 
Originally posted by: cleverhandle
Originally posted by: mkruer
Becuse i can get them FREE! and With S-ATA it does support Hot Swaping. that was one of the reason for S-ATA spec
Click to expand...
I think you'll find that "doing it because you can" is not as great a reason for servers as it is for desktops. I do all kinds of wacky things with my desktop just to try out the technology. But my servers are a different story. I want simplicity and reliability both in hardware and software, not features I don't need. If you're building a server that cannot go down under any circumstances, then by all means go for hotswap. But I hardly think your household will come to a grinding halt if you take down the server for an hour to replace a drive.
Click to expand...

I will give you that argument. But in reguards to the VIA Eden, the case does not have enough space to place all the drives
 
Sorry, I don't follow Via hardware that closely, but is there any reason you couldn't just take a Via board and put it in, say, an Antec 600-series case?
 
and as far cooling. I would think the CPU world fry before the drives quit
Click to expand...

I don't doubt it, but the heat from the drives will drive everything else up, trust me I have a machine 4 SCSI160 drives and 1 IDE drive and it puts out a lot of heat.
 
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