Considerations for a (cheap) home network backup server?

[HyunYu]

I'm going to be building a backup server for my home network to backup nightly our not-so-insignificant collection of family digital photos and digital video files.

Basically, it'll be a network storage space, and nothing else. I won't be doing any processing or using it for any kind of productivity/web/games purposes. It'll just run nightly backup jobs.

Here's what I'm thinking, as far as specs go:

Sempron 64 3000+
ECS nForce4-A754 mobo
1GB RAM
2 x Seagate 7200.9 120GB ATA100 drives in RAID 1 setting
4 x Seagate 7200.10 320GB SATA drives in JBOD setting
Some cheap video card

The motherboard comes with a gigabit NIC, as does my primary digital workstation. I'll be using Syncback for the backup app.

What factors should I consider before I go ahead with this setup? And how big a power supply would be enough for the six internal drives? Thank you very much for any help, in advance!

 

[BatmanNate]

Nice choice with the Seagate drives, the warranty alone makes them the best option. One factor to consider is that not only do you need a case with room for the drives, but one with ample cooling and space for the cables to reach. Also, drive caddies or removable bays are very handy in these situations. Good ones even provide cooling.

As far as the rest of the PC goes, file serving for a small home network is a very simple task and the components you've listed may be overkill. What OS will you be running? There is a good possibility you have parts laying around that would be more than up to the task. As for the PSU, any solid name brand PSU in the 400 watt range will be ample. You should be able to get one for $50 that can pull 30amps on the 12v rail.

Here's my home file server for an example:

Abit BP6
Dual celeron 366a's
512mb pc100
3com 10/100 PCI
Promise supertrak SX6000 w/ 128mb
Mylex u160 SCSI RAID card


5x250GB RAID-5
3x200GB JBOD
3x120GB JBOD
2x18GB RAID-1 boot


I can't remember off the top of my head exactly what PSU's I'm using. I think it's an Antec 450watt driving everything except the RAID-5 drives, for which I wired in a seperate switch for a Powerman 300watt. The case is a Chenming 901 or something like that, full tower antec knockoff.

Some snafus that I've run into:

- PATA IDE cable routing. PITA. 80-pin cables easily become flaky with bending, streching, or routing about.
- Heat. I run a lot of fans but when the drive bay fans started to go, even the myriad of case fans were enable to keep the drives at stable operating temperature inside the removable trays.
- Power molexes, I have a lot of splitters and repeated plugging and unplugging loosen up the sockets in the plugs.
- Windows Server 2003. This OS is a hog and if file serving is all that you're going to do, you might be better served by running something else.

 

[GrammatonJP]

My file server

1 1u PowerEdge 750 with Areca Raid 1, 500GB WD RE2 - P4 2.8Ghz 1gb ram W2K3
Replicates to bottom server using XO Soft Wansync

1 1u PowerEdge 750 with Areca Raid 1, 750GB Barracuda ES - P4 2.8Ghz 1gb ram W2K3
- Has an external SDLT 320 backup drive

Both have dual gigabit.. I just need to pick up some fancy switches and I can do some full mesh adapter teaming.. or save my money..

I use to run a P3 850 server but due to incompatibility with sata controllers, I end up buying a new one to save me some headache..

In the past, I had a 10 drive scsi setup (mix of 73gb & 146gbs), I checked the power requirements, each drive was double of a ide/sata and about 1/3 more than the new barracudas and it was sitting on a dual xeon 2.0ghz. My PSU was only a 350 and it had 0 problems..

 

[dclive]

Originally posted by: HyunYu
I'm going to be building a backup server for my home network to backup nightly our not-so-insignificant collection of family digital photos and digital video files.

Basically, it'll be a network storage space, and nothing else. I won't be doing any processing or using it for any kind of productivity/web/games purposes. It'll just run nightly backup jobs.

Here's what I'm thinking, as far as specs go:

Sempron 64 3000+
ECS nForce4-A754 mobo
1GB RAM
2 x Seagate 7200.9 120GB ATA100 drives in RAID 1 setting
4 x Seagate 7200.10 320GB SATA drives in JBOD setting
Some cheap video card

The motherboard comes with a gigabit NIC, as does my primary digital workstation. I'll be using Syncback for the backup app.

What factors should I consider before I go ahead with this setup? And how big a power supply would be enough for the six internal drives? Thank you very much for any help, in advance!

Any reason you don't want a USB/firewire-attached external box, attached to the computer that you use most of the time? That would give you space for 4 or 8 drives, and your host OS could RAID them if you felt it necessary (given you'll be moving this stuff over a 100MB network, most likely, RAID isn't terribly necessary for speed reasons, but you may want it for redundancy) - it's cheap, doesn't use all the electricity that behemoth would, and would probably do all that your family needs.

Another alternative is a Snapserver-like device.

 

[HyunYu]

Thanks for all the good suggestions and points so far!

I'd be running Windows XP Home on it. For its intended purposes, I don't need any fancy server features or even the enhanced security/sharing settings that XP Pro has over Home.

I do have a couple of older boxes (Athlon 1.3GHz and K6/233). Some time ago I tried to flash the BIOS on the A7M266 motherboard for the Athlon 1.3 to let it recognize HDDs over 120GB (LBA 40 addressing), but even though it was flashed successfully, I ran into problems. I was able to roll back to the original BIOS version, and as it was my main computer back then, I didn't want to risk damages or downtime by pursuing the issue, but now that it's redundant, I may give it another go.

I do like the idea of an external box that is connected via USB or Firewire that can house multiple drives. Who carries stuff like that? I've checked NewEgg, but couldn't find it readily.

Thanks again.

 

[Madwand1]

Looks like a decent build to me.

One concern I'd have offhand would be potential SATA II and nForce4 compatibility issues, but I think that's OK with the Seagate drives.

The second concern I'd have is that all the drive ports are full. Data expands to fill capacity.. . Keeping a wide PCIe slot free (by not using a x16 physical video card -- getting a x1 or PCI) should give you nice upgrade options here. You might even consider it at the onset to simplify the migration, give you other RAID options and features, and support for staggered spin-up, which would reduce the load on the PSU.

I'd suggest getting a decent case -- esp. one that gives you active cooling on all the HDs, and also gives you enough room to work with the drives and MB.

Adding an inexpensive GbE switch should give better backup / access speed should you want it.

Finally, it's a good build, but I'd still consider pricing out an AM2 430 / nForce 5 build -- with the cheaper AM2 Semprons, it might not be much more expensive, and potentially have greater life / compatibility / capability in the chipset (e.g. RAID 5 support (though kinda slow), larger number of SATA slots (nForce 5)). I wouldn't fret about losing RAID 1 on the OS drive -- it shouldn't be a big deal to re-install the OS and apps on a new drive if needed.

 

[HyunYu]

Madwand1,

Thanks very much, all helpful points.

"Data expands to fill capacity"--how true! :-D Good point about the PCIe slot--the mobo (if I get that ECS board) comes with one 16x slot, I'll keep that free. I originally wanted a mobo with a built-in video card (even something like Rage XL), but couldn't find the right combo of SATA/JBOD and gigabit NIC features. Of course, gigabit NICs are dirt cheap, so I should just take that out of the equation in looking for a mobo.

I'm on the fence about RAID 1 for the boot drive. Especially since the boot drive is going to be largely static with minimal software installed--it might make more sense to just make an image of it in case of disaster recovery.

I *might* end up getting WinXP Pro instead of Home so that I can access the box via Remote Desktop and not tie up keyboard/mouse/monitor. I could use VNC with XP Home, but haven't been too happy with its performance.

Thanks again!

 

[Madwand1]

Originally posted by: HyunYu
gigabit NICs are dirt cheap, so I should just take that out of the equation in looking for a mobo.

Onboard GbE NICs, when not bridged via PCI, tend to perform so well that it doesn't make much sense to spend additional money on an add-on NIC, esp. one that's on PCI and typically will not perform as well. I'd get a PCI video card before I put either the NIC or the storage controller on the PCI bus myself.

Don't get me wrong -- I think that your choices have been pretty decent; I'm just suggesting a couple of options to raise it further.

Best of luck with it.