Wanted to see what everyone thought of it. I'm a ways out from doing it (need to build my next system first), but I want to plan it out so I can account for the costs of it.
Currently planned setup relies on the following items I own
DFI LP-UT P35-T2R
Q6600 @ 3.1GHz
8GB DDR2 @ 690 i believe (i'll fix this one day, but the wifes mad when i play with the overclock on the system, since it acts as a server and gaming rig now)
1 areca arc-1210 raid card
2 1.5tb drives
2 750g seagates.
I have other drives that'll be moving to the new system for sanity reasons
What I'll buy:
2x 1.5tb drives
multiple 2tb drives dependant on the card selected below + the original 4 port areca card + at least 2 for drive failures
another raid card with more ports. Areca is preferred, though a good LSI will fit the bill. I want one thats under $1000, and has the ability to hook up 8 or more sata drives. The areca 1680IX-16 is a very well suited card, with a simple ram upgrade on the card to help with cache and just under my price limit. it'll support 16 drives, well more then i originally planned. the 1680IXL will let me have 12, but limited to the 512mb cache on board. i'm leaning towards the ARC-1261ML-2G or the 1231ml-2g. the extra 4 ports on the 1261 seem worth the 150 dollar difference in price.
The planned design is to take the 4 of the 6 sata ports on the board and use them for a raid 0+1 under 1.5tb drives. This will let me have 3TB for live data thats in process of being downloaded or i need to access with more frequency. I'll place the 2 750g in a raid 0 for the system drive. The 4 port areca card will get 4 2tb drives that will be used in a raid 5 for less intensive storage requirements (music and other smaller files used less often). the 12 or 16 port card will get all of the drives into one massive raid 6 array as the drives wont get large amounts of writes very often, a few 100gb here and there, overnight, but never during the day to make it a noticeable issue with write performance.
I'll likely end up with the 12 port, due to the wife flipping about the concept of even a $600 card for 8 ports, much less a $949 card
but this will be ironed out once i explain to her that for the price difference, its less then buying a second $600 card down the line to equal the 16 port. She'll probably cave on it and agree
The OS of choice will probably be Debian as I love it as a solid distro that's well rounded. I never used WHS and have no plans of starting now since I'd rather not go against something I've known to be a stable setup versus something that might not be worth the effort.
Power and battery backups are not an issue. I have a 1000VA server grade ups, that I plan to locate the software and needed wire for (once im actually close to buying the equiment) that will let the system auto shutdown, so i can enable write caching without worries of a power outage. I'll also be getting the external batteries for this unit as well, so i can hookup another 2 batteries to it to ensure it doesn't die prior to completing the shutdown. I had a chance to test it previously when someone took out an electrical poll a day or 2 back and the unit was serving data during the power outage and lasted for around 8 minutes. the load it saw was less then what it will be with this many drives, but should still give me around 5-6 minutes of time for the system to shutdown. with WOL enabled, it'll boot once the UPS is back up and running and past the 50% charge mark (10m). the psu in the unit will support all of the drives without any issue.
Thoughts on the matter are appreciated. for those who will ask what its for ... it's a project I have to see what i can get into one computer system. me vs a friend. i'll make use of the storage quantities over time, but this way I'm not just getting a slight upgrade next time to cover the gap like usual. I'll be able to say for another few years that I'm just fine on hdd space, with no issues to worry about.
Currently planned setup relies on the following items I own
DFI LP-UT P35-T2R
Q6600 @ 3.1GHz
8GB DDR2 @ 690 i believe (i'll fix this one day, but the wifes mad when i play with the overclock on the system, since it acts as a server and gaming rig now)
1 areca arc-1210 raid card
2 1.5tb drives
2 750g seagates.
I have other drives that'll be moving to the new system for sanity reasons
What I'll buy:
2x 1.5tb drives
multiple 2tb drives dependant on the card selected below + the original 4 port areca card + at least 2 for drive failures
another raid card with more ports. Areca is preferred, though a good LSI will fit the bill. I want one thats under $1000, and has the ability to hook up 8 or more sata drives. The areca 1680IX-16 is a very well suited card, with a simple ram upgrade on the card to help with cache and just under my price limit. it'll support 16 drives, well more then i originally planned. the 1680IXL will let me have 12, but limited to the 512mb cache on board. i'm leaning towards the ARC-1261ML-2G or the 1231ml-2g. the extra 4 ports on the 1261 seem worth the 150 dollar difference in price.
The planned design is to take the 4 of the 6 sata ports on the board and use them for a raid 0+1 under 1.5tb drives. This will let me have 3TB for live data thats in process of being downloaded or i need to access with more frequency. I'll place the 2 750g in a raid 0 for the system drive. The 4 port areca card will get 4 2tb drives that will be used in a raid 5 for less intensive storage requirements (music and other smaller files used less often). the 12 or 16 port card will get all of the drives into one massive raid 6 array as the drives wont get large amounts of writes very often, a few 100gb here and there, overnight, but never during the day to make it a noticeable issue with write performance.
I'll likely end up with the 12 port, due to the wife flipping about the concept of even a $600 card for 8 ports, much less a $949 card
but this will be ironed out once i explain to her that for the price difference, its less then buying a second $600 card down the line to equal the 16 port. She'll probably cave on it and agreeThe OS of choice will probably be Debian as I love it as a solid distro that's well rounded. I never used WHS and have no plans of starting now since I'd rather not go against something I've known to be a stable setup versus something that might not be worth the effort.
Power and battery backups are not an issue. I have a 1000VA server grade ups, that I plan to locate the software and needed wire for (once im actually close to buying the equiment) that will let the system auto shutdown, so i can enable write caching without worries of a power outage. I'll also be getting the external batteries for this unit as well, so i can hookup another 2 batteries to it to ensure it doesn't die prior to completing the shutdown. I had a chance to test it previously when someone took out an electrical poll a day or 2 back and the unit was serving data during the power outage and lasted for around 8 minutes. the load it saw was less then what it will be with this many drives, but should still give me around 5-6 minutes of time for the system to shutdown. with WOL enabled, it'll boot once the UPS is back up and running and past the 50% charge mark (10m). the psu in the unit will support all of the drives without any issue.
Thoughts on the matter are appreciated. for those who will ask what its for ... it's a project I have to see what i can get into one computer system. me vs a friend. i'll make use of the storage quantities over time, but this way I'm not just getting a slight upgrade next time to cover the gap like usual. I'll be able to say for another few years that I'm just fine on hdd space, with no issues to worry about.
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