Server for media (vid, music, misc), other uses

[McManCSU]

I want to build a server that will ultimately hold my entire DVD collection, TV episodes, music, etc. I also would like to be able to do other things such as host my own BF2, CSS, etc. server (which is why I am steering away from a NAS).

I have some old components: 1.5Ghz, 1GB RAM, 350W PSU. The MB has ATA only and since I want to put in 5 drives (4x500GB SATA and one smaller one, for OS) I would need either a SATA RAID controller or a card that allows me to use SATA (one on PCI). I am planning on putting Linux on it.

QUESTION 1: For this type of use, would I want to get a RAID controller or get a SATA expansion card and use some software for controlling my RAID array?

QUESTION 2: Enough power?

Thanks in advance

 

[ShawnD1]

1). Never do software raid.
I'm only saying this because I've been burned in the past. I had a software raid in Windows XP Pro until one day I had to reinstall because of some problems (drivers/virus/something causing instability). With the new installation, my raid was gone and could not be brought back. I lost maybe 400GB of files in that fiasco.

I'm against the idea of RAID in general. Across a network you will see literally no speed increase when using a RAID 0. Using a RAID for backup seems rather expensive (do you really need to backup 100% of your files?). On top of that, having a RAID 0 significantly increases the chance of data loss due to hard drive failure (if any single drive fails, you lose all data on all drives).

2). That's easily enough power.
The computer I'm using right is a Core2 6600 with a GeForce 7950 and 5 hard drives; total power consumption right now is only 170W (and that's under 50% CPU load)

 

[McManCSU]

My buddy says he uses a SW RAID and has not really had any problems when he has reinstalled stuff, just as long he sets it up the same way. On a side note, I would probably not use RAID 0, but rather RAID 5 so that I have a good coverage in case of disk failure. Anyone else have an opinion on HW vs SW RAID? The concern of mine regarding HW RAID is the $$$. I know they sell some for ~$100-200, but are they good (reliable) enough for what I would want?

 

[ShawnD1]

They cost way less than that. I purchased a RAID card about a year ago for $50 canadian.

 

[Bremen]

Originally posted by: McManCSU
QUESTION 1: For this type of use, would I want to get a RAID controller or get a SATA expansion card and use some software for controlling my RAID array?

For a plain file server sofware raid is more than enough. For reference I had a PII 266 running a 1TB RAID 5 array just fine. One of the nice things with linux software raid is you can span controllers with the raid volumes. Also you can move the array between computers/controllers as I've had to do numerous times.

 

[MerlinRML]

There are some issues with software RAID, but they're not impossible to overcome. There are some definite benefits, too.

1) You can save the cost of a hardware RAID solution
2) Your host CPU is probably going to be a LOT faster at doing XOR calculations than the processor on a RAID controller.
3) You're not tied to any specific hardware platform.

So you gain a faster CPU and portability. However, the limitations are that you are sacrificing CPU cycles to perform RAID calculations, and if you ever move to a different machine your new machines may not have the right combination of onboard SATA ports or PCI slots to just move the drives to it.

You should probably look at installing your OS either on its own RAID 1 array or just its own hard drive and have your data on the RAID 5 volume. Keep the OS separate so that if you have to reinstall, you can import the RAID volume. If you keep them together, you're likely to overwrite your data when you reinstall the OS.

I'm not familiar enough with the CPU load from the game servers you're going to run to know if you have enough CPU to run the servers AND perform the RAID calculations.

 

[Bremen]

Originally posted by: ShawnD1
They cost way less than that. I purchased a RAID card about a year ago for $50 canadian.

For CAN50 it almost certainly is not a hardware raid card. Which means he'd be using linux software raid tools anyway (there isn't much interest in writing drivers for software raid cards in linux since the tools already available are better options for the most part)

 

[ShawnD1]

Originally posted by: Bremen

Originally posted by: ShawnD1
They cost way less than that. I purchased a RAID card about a year ago for $50 canadian.

For CAN50 it almost certainly is not a hardware raid card.

RAID 0/1, $32 Canadian

Or you can check out newegg
RAID 0/1/2, $16 American (this one only has 1 IDE slot)


The more expensive ones support more drives. For example, this $425 card supports up to 16 SATA drives.

 

[Bremen]

RAID 0/1, $32 Canadian

Or you can check out newegg
RAID 0/1/2, $16 American (this one only has 1 IDE slot)


The more expensive ones support more drives. For example, this $425 card supports up to 16 SATA drives.

We're talking about doing raid5 here. Neither card does that.

 

[McManCSU]

So to summarize:

Linux based RAID SW controlled would be safe enough. A RAID card would only take the burden of doing RAID commands off the CPU. I would keep my OS on a separate (nonRAIDed) drive. I'll have to investigate more into whether RAID 0/1 would be an alright option for me. I dont know the differences off the top of my head between 1 and 5 (i think 5 is that everything is 100% mirrored, so 4 500GB drives only gives 1.5TB). But if in my case, a less complex RAID might work, and then I could find a cheaper 4 SATA RAID card. I would prefer to have a 100% mirror JUST in case a drive crashes

Lets say I do get a SATA controller (nonRAID). I would assume they have ones that are a PCI card with, say, 4 SATA ports?

OK, one more question, well clarification really: If for some reason I need to rebuild my RAID, but want to try and retain the data already on it (Maybe adding/removing a disk). Would there be a difference in risk factor between SW and HW, assuming you approach the setup the same way as before? Does that make sense...?

 

[Madwand1]

1. "RAID is not a backup." Regardless of how good or expensive a RAID implementation is, it's not as good as an offline backup, at least as long as that backup is current. If you really care about your data, or its rebuilding time, budget for a separate backup. It doesn't have to be fancy; it could be just an external USB 2 drive or two.

You could reduce the size requirement by only backing up important files, and leaving the downloads, etc., to whatever might happen.

2. Don't skimp on the power supply on your primary data store with multiple drives. Drives take a fair bit of 12V power to start up, and older PSUs are designed towards more 5V power. There's a long recent thread elsewhere about a PSU smoking and taking every single drive attached to a RAID array with it. See (1). There are some online PSU calculators which might help you out.

3a. Learn your RAID management stuff for yourself. This stuff is very implementation-specific. If you're thinking about Linux SW RAID, find the sites and read the docs. You'll have to know this well when you set up this stuff. Esp. if you skip (1), a mistake here could cost you all your data.

3b. Practice RAID degrading and rebuilding when you first set up your system. Take notes, label ports, etc., whatever's needed so that when a failure happens or a change is needed, you're better prepared.

4. Know that a PCI-based software RAID setup, esp. when combined with a PCI-based gigabit network card will have an impact on performance. Anything less than gigabit of course will also put a significant cap on your performance potential. An on-board SATA setup, combined with on-board gigabit, and a budget modern CPU and perhaps new RAM is an alternative which will probably perform better; at more cost of course.

 

[Bremen]

Originally posted by: McManCSU
So to summarize:

Linux based RAID SW controlled would be safe enough. A RAID card would only take the burden of doing RAID commands off the CPU. I would keep my OS on a separate (nonRAIDed) drive. I'll have to investigate more into whether RAID 0/1 would be an alright option for me. I dont know the differences off the top of my head between 1 and 5 (i think 5 is that everything is 100% mirrored, so 4 500GB drives only gives 1.5TB). But if in my case, a less complex RAID might work, and then I could find a cheaper 4 SATA RAID card. I would prefer to have a 100% mirror JUST in case a drive crashes

Raid 0 splits data between two drives. Raid 1 mirrors drives (you lose 50% of your drive space). Raid 5 uses parity information across n drives. So actual space is the number of drives minus 1. 4x500GB = 1.5TB.

Lets say I do get a SATA controller (nonRAID). I would assume they have ones that are a PCI card with, say, 4 SATA ports?

Yes, although I believe it might be cheaper to get two cards with two ports each!!

OK, one more question, well clarification really: If for some reason I need to rebuild my RAID, but want to try and retain the data already on it (Maybe adding/removing a disk). Would there be a difference in risk factor between SW and HW, assuming you approach the setup the same way as before? Does that make sense...?

Adding removing a disk is easy enough with a software array. Probably easier with a hardware raid setup... as for risk I'd say there's much more risk with a hardware solution. If your controller goes you're screwed (need to get an identical card to replace it, which in x years might not be easy. SW, you can transfer between controllers to your heart's content).

 

[McManCSU]

Sounds like I'll have to read up on some Linux RAID SW, but I think this sounds like the best idea for what I want. The main reason I want to make this server is for a media center to stream my movies, etc. directly from the server to my TV. So having a hard, unplugged backup is not really what I am looking for. Any recommendations on SATA controller cards? They probably don't differ in implementation, but rather in quality (looking for brand names). Thinking of this sparks another question:

What if one of my SATA controllers goes bad (lets say i get 2 cards with 2 SATA ports on each)? Will this F up my RAIDed data? It seems like this could really mess some stuff up...

Thanks

 

[McManCSU]

bump

 

[ch33zw1z]

When utilizing RAID, no matter what controller and drives, there's always a chance you can lose data. It's not likely that losing a controller would take the data with it.

When you create the array, RAID information is stored on the controller and the drives. After replacing the controller, you have the option to copy the RAID config from the hard drives to the controller. You must also be aware of firmware revisions, use the same as the old controller...or one that is also compatible with your hdd's firmware.

 

[Bremen]

Originally posted by: ch33zw1z
When utilizing RAID, no matter what controller and drives, there's always a chance you can lose data. It's not likely that losing a controller would take the data with it.

Unless it writes corrupted data to the disk. But this is a risk with any hdd.

When you create the array, RAID information is stored on the controller and the drives. After replacing the controller, you have the option to copy the RAID config from the hard drives to the controller. You must also be aware of firmware revisions, use the same as the old controller...or one that is also compatible with your hdd's firmware.

With a software raid the controller has no information whatsoever about the raid. Hence you can easily change controllers. In fact linux autodetects each disk in an array at bootup so you can change how the drives are arranged on the controllers as well.



As for brand I don't think it matters really. Obviously some may have better IO performance, but this shouldn't be an issue. I have a couple Rosewill cards and they work fine (cheapest cards on newegg at the time).

 

[ch33zw1z]

Originally posted by: Bremen
Unless it writes corrupted data to the disk. But this is a risk with any hdd.

So, it's "not likely". There's always going to be exceptions...

With a software raid the controller has no information whatsoever about the raid. Hence you can easily change controllers. In fact linux autodetects each disk in an array at bootup so you can change how the drives are arranged on the controllers as well.

Some good info about Linux :thumbsup:

 

[MegaVovaN]

We are not answering OP's another question.

I think this server will not be a good CSS or BF2 server, regardless of what hard drive set-up you put on there.

1 ghz is way too little for a lag-free server. I have AMD 1600+ (1.6 ghz), 512mb RAM, and it was enough for 8-10 players in CS 1.6
Never really ran CSS server, but tried, and it was so laggy and slow no one stayed. I imagine BF2 requires even more beefy server.
In short, you need a faster CPU and possibly more RAM to run game servers.

 

[McManCSU]

Ok. So lets say I do this RAID array for 1.5TB. This may be a dumb question, but how hard is it to set it up as a UPnP device? ie for http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2909&p=2

 

[Bremen]

Originally posted by: McManCSU
Ok. So lets say I do this RAID array for 1.5TB. This may be a dumb question, but how hard is it to set it up as a UPnP device? ie for http://www.anandtech.com/showdoc.aspx?i=2909&p=2

It apparently can also use SMB (this is the windows networking protocol and is a buggy POS!!! but unfortunately we're stuck with it). Linux uses the samba program to interface with MS networks (it can be a pain to setup though, but it will work).

 

[McManCSU]

So maybe I should use something like Infrant's NAS (which is inherently UPnP) instead of setting up my own Linux box?

 

[Bremen]

I've never used NAS, so I can't comment. I will say that samba will work for you, its just not the easiest thing in the world to set up the first time. There is also a http frontend (swat) to configure it if you need it :0) Also the OS forum will be able to answer any questions, we've all had to do it, so its something everyone knows about.