AVS › AVS Forum › Video Components › Home Theater Computers › Guide To Building A Media Storage Server
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:

Guide To Building A Media Storage Server - Page 6

post #151 of 7742
10/3/08 at 11:13am
Finally was able to get some info out of my supplier. About the "updated" backplane in the Norco 4020, it seems the factory is atleast 3 months out, for the "new(er)" backplane. I guess, no updated chassis/backplane until 1Q 2009.

About availability in Europe, I checked with them, and the market for these things in Europe is pretty limited, which is why no one has setup any distribution channels there. So, in short you guys in Europe are pretty much in a bind, I doubt you'll able to source these locally, anytime soon.

And getting them from here, is pretty steep in terms of shipping cost. I checked with my supplier, and he can have them shipped from here to Europe, but the shipping costs are in the neighbourhood of $200 per chassis. Not good, but these things are heavy. I tried to to see if it was possible for the "factory" to ship it directly from Asia to Europe, but they can't, because of import/export regulations. The "receiver" on the other side will need an import license, if the chassis are shipped direct from the factory, and I doubt they will do it for small quantities, even if someone was willing to get an import license.

So, long story short, for you European guys, it's pretty much around $500 shipped, per chassis.
Reply
Reply

AVS Top Picks

post #152 of 7742
10/3/08 at 11:21am
Quote:
Originally Posted by kenshin-san View Post

I can't find the darn references now, but when buying my 4020's PSU I hee-hawed between the PC P&C 750 and the Corsair 750. I found a few references to cheaper components being used in recently manufactured units for the PC P&C model now that OCZ has it's claws firmly embedded. Enough to make me go with the Corsair.

Probably just FUD.


Nothing negative to say about the PC P&C PSUs. The test reviews I've read all say very good things about it.

I've been very pleased with the 3 corsair TX's that I have running. They rated for 80%+ efficiency at 20%, 50% and 100% load, which is very good.

IMHO you can't go wrong with either of these.
Reply
Reply
post #153 of 7742
10/3/08 at 12:28pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by kapone View Post

Finally was able to get some info out of my supplier. About the "updated" backplane in the Norco 4020, it seems the factory is atleast 3 months out, for the "new(er)" backplane. I guess, no updated chassis/backplane until 1Q 2009.

Thanks for the update, I'll bug you in Jan 2009 for another one. Was there any indication the price would change with this update?
Reply
Reply
post #154 of 7742
10/3/08 at 2:46pm
iam planning to built a media server from old component :
a a8n32 sli mobo and an opteron 175 i just bought 4 * 1.5T seagate HDD
and was planning to buy an areca 1680 but i read that there was some incompatibility problem is it still the case??
what OS should i go for ?
the only one i got available at this point is Vista X64.
Reply
Reply
post #155 of 7742
10/3/08 at 2:48pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by MiBz View Post

Nothing negative to say about the PC P&C PSUs. The test reviews I've read all say very good things about it.

I've been very pleased with the 3 corsair TX's that I have running. They rated for 80%+ efficiency at 20%, 50% and 100% load, which is very good.

IMHO you can't go wrong with either of these.

PC P&C has alway's been the cat's meow in terms of quality imo. I only recently heard of the OCZ merger causing the line to falter, but again I can't find the reference I read earlier stating that some of the components sourced are different in recently manufactured psu's. So I'm chalking it up to the crazies unless someone else can find evidence.
Reply
Reply
post #156 of 7742
10/3/08 at 3:37pm
Has anyone had a chance to test the new Seagate 1.5TB hdd's against the 1280ML or 1680ix yet with IOMeter/Winthrax/etc.?
Reply
Reply
post #157 of 7742
10/3/08 at 3:46pm
Hello,

Thanks for checking with the folks at Norco Kapone, it's much appreciated.

Whilst the news on the Norco is unfortunate, it does mean I am probably going to go with either Antec or the monster cube case from Lian Li Onebygone has used for his Plutonium server, both of which are easily available at reasonable prices here in the UK, it's just the cost of the 5 --> 3 SATA backplanes which is going to hurt, but at least these can be added as I need them.

Thanks and best wishes,

Dave
Reply
Reply
post #158 of 7742
10/3/08 at 4:33pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by analogueaddict View Post

Hello,

Thanks for checking with the folks at Norco Kapone, it's much appreciated.

Whilst the news on the Norco is unfortunate, it does mean I am probably going to go with either Antec or the monster cube case from Lian Li Onebygone has used for his Plutonium server, both of which are easily available at reasonable prices here in the UK, it's just the cost of the 5 --> 3 SATA backplanes which is going to hurt, but at least these can be added as I need them.

Thanks and best wishes,

Dave

To get 20 SATA hotswappable ports, you're gonna need 4 of those SATA 5-in-3 cages. That's roughly $400 not including shipping for them. ANd you still need the case, the Lian Li cube is about $340 I believe, and the Antec's still around $150, both not including shipping.

(I'm not including VAT in anything).

And your end product still won't be rackmountable (assuming that's what you want).

At $500 including shipping (from US to UK), the Norco still may not be a bad deal. If I have enough interest from European buyers (and actually US as well), I can try and pressure my supplier to drop the "price" by a bit, kind of like a group buy. I don't know how much they will be able to drop it by, but I guess it depends on the size of the group buy as well.

I can have them directly drop shipped from my supplier, doesn't have to shipped through me.

If you guys are serious, lemme know, I'll try and organize a group buy.
Reply
Reply
post #159 of 7742
10/3/08 at 5:13pm
With all these fast (3 Gb/s) drives we're using, are people using the "Sata II" cables that are rated at 3 Gb/s or is everyone still using the standard 1.5 Gb/s cables?

Hey, odditory, if it's not too much trouble, it would be great if you could specify cables, (and source links), with the rest of your profiles.
Reply
Reply
post #160 of 7742
10/3/08 at 9:07pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by kapone View Post

If you guys are serious, lemme know, I'll try and organize a group buy.

I'd probably be in for one. If you decide to do this let me know. I'll probably be in the markert for one relatively soon. I've been waiting for this thread for a LONG time. I just bought an apple tv and put xbmc on it and use that to stream movies off my desktop computer. I really want the 2.5tb of movies off of my JBOD desktop with no backup and onto a propper server.
Reply
Reply
post #161 of 7742
10/3/08 at 9:52pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by aaomember View Post

How do you guys remotely control your server? I plan to place mine in a rack down stairs, and would like to have easy access.

While remote desktop is a great tool, I usually use UltraVNC. One downside is the screen refreshes are not nearly as fast as remote desktop.
Reply
Reply
post #162 of 7742
10/4/08 at 2:38am
Quote:
Originally Posted by kenshin-san View Post

Has anyone had a chance to test the new Seagate 1.5TB hdd's against the 1280ML or 1680ix yet with IOMeter/Winthrax/etc.?

+1

The only thing keeping me from starting my new build.
Also wondering if the 1680-ix actually has an issue with dropping SATA drives?..
Reply
Reply
post #163 of 7742
10/4/08 at 6:30am
Quote:
Originally Posted by slimeballzz View Post
Also wondering if the 1680-ix actually has an issue with dropping SATA drives?..
Yes. The 1680ix has known compatibility issues with a wide range of sata hdd's. My understanding is that Western Digital and Seagate NS (Enterprise) are the only recommended sata hdd's at this point.

After almost 2 weeks of troubleshooting I have a raid 6 array of WD1001FALS that is FINALLY solid. It has run for 15 hours with Winthrax thrashing it with no problem; I'm now running IOMeter against it with no issues (Currently on hour 24). Unfortunately it is only capable of sequential write speeds up to 80MB/sec (500MB/sec for sequential reads). I measured write speeds of 300-400MB/sec with Seagate 1TB AS drives (SD15 fw), so I know that something is up. I'm guessing it's firmware related.

Odditory has a 1680ix and a set of WD1001FALS hdd's. I'm waiting to hear what his experience is like once he's done testing.

I've attached my communication string with Areca Support. Axan has also posted his email communication's with Areca support over on hardforum.

 

Areca Conversation.txt 15.9130859375k . file
Reply
Reply
post #164 of 7742
10/4/08 at 8:36am
Quote:
Originally Posted by kapone View Post

If you guys are serious, lemme know, I'll try and organize a group buy.

I'm interested in one (or two if there are good savings), also.
Reply
Reply
post #165 of 7742
10/4/08 at 9:18am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cockroach View Post

I'm interested in one (or two if there are good savings), also.

In for one or two.
Reply
Reply
post #166 of 7742
10/4/08 at 10:12am
Ok, I'll check with the guys to see what kind of pricing they can offer. So far I have:

aaomember - 1 or 2
Cockroach - 1 or 2
xeonicxpression - 1

At some point, (and I'll let you guys know), I'll send out details on where to send your contact info and payment. I'm assuming everybody has a Paypal account, I'll just send each of you a Paypal invoice, either from me, or my supplier direct (still gotta work that out).
Reply
Reply
post #167 of 7742
10/4/08 at 4:50pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by kapone View Post

Ok, I'll check with the guys to see what kind of pricing they can offer. So far I have:

aaomember - 1 or 2
Cockroach - 1 or 2
xeonicxpression - 1

At some point, (and I'll let you guys know), I'll send out details on where to send your contact info and payment. I'm assuming everybody has a Paypal account, I'll just send each of you a Paypal invoice, either from me, or my supplier direct (still gotta work that out).

I live in CO, not in europe, if that matters. Thanks.
Reply
Reply
post #168 of 7742
10/4/08 at 7:57pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by kapone View Post

Ok, I'll check with the guys to see what kind of pricing they can offer. So far I have:

aaomember - 1 or 2
Cockroach - 1 or 2
xeonicxpression - 1

At some point, (and I'll let you guys know), I'll send out details on where to send your contact info and payment. I'm assuming everybody has a Paypal account, I'll just send each of you a Paypal invoice, either from me, or my supplier direct (still gotta work that out).

If someone could put this case up on ebay now and let us take the advantge of 30% off. That would be great.

I also want one and I live about 25 min to Norco HQ in CA (pick up preferred)

BTW, Google checkout might work better for you in this case. (2% plus seller protection)
Reply
Reply
post #169 of 7742
10/4/08 at 10:09pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by lymzy View Post

If someone could put this case up on ebay now and let us take the advantge of 30% off. That would be great.

I also want one and I live about 25 min to Norco HQ in CA (pick up preferred)

BTW, Google checkout might work better for you in this case. (2% plus seller protection)

It's not that simple. Putting things on eBay means, you have to pay eBay fees (and potentially Paypal fees as well). Those two combined can be almost 12-15%, who eats that?

Now, if I send you guys an invoice, and you Paypal me the money, I still end up paying the Paypal fees, and when I pay my supplier, he'll end up paying his credit card company or something similar. Too many costs involved.

What I'm gonna try and setup, is either you send your payment directly to my supplier (they can accept credit cards), that way, there's only one fee transaction involved, or if I end up invoicing you guys through Paypal, I'll see if my supplier can do net 60 or so, and just invoice me in our next cycle (we buy lots of stuff from them).

Will try and work something out in the coming week. However, 5 chassis, is not enough "pressure" to ask me to lower their prices. It's gotta be somewhere around 15-20 at the very least, I'd think. But I'll still ask.
Reply
Reply
post #170 of 7742
10/5/08 at 3:15am
I don't know how much these are gonna cost, but thinking about it, I might like as many as 3. I don't really want them until December, so if we can wait a bit to get more interest, that's fine with me.
Reply
Reply
post #171 of 7742
10/5/08 at 7:27am
Quote:
Originally Posted by kapone View Post

It's not that simple. Putting things on eBay means, you have to pay eBay fees (and potentially Paypal fees as well). Those two combined can be almost 12-15%, who eats that?

Now, if I send you guys an invoice, and you Paypal me the money, I still end up paying the Paypal fees, and when I pay my supplier, he'll end up paying his credit card company or something similar. Too many costs involved.

What I'm gonna try and setup, is either you send your payment directly to my supplier (they can accept credit cards), that way, there's only one fee transaction involved, or if I end up invoicing you guys through Paypal, I'll see if my supplier can do net 60 or so, and just invoice me in our next cycle (we buy lots of stuff from them).

Will try and work something out in the coming week. However, 5 chassis, is not enough "pressure" to ask me to lower their prices. It's gotta be somewhere around 15-20 at the very least, I'd think. But I'll still ask.

If we're talking about the Norco cases I'd be in for a power buy, 2 please depending price...(Note I am in Ontario Canada)

I also think we should approach Areca or 3ware and see if they are willing to do power buys on a 24 port Card for these bad boys, I know three ware and could approach them to see what their interest would be?

Cheers,

Requis
Reply
Reply
post #172 of 7742
10/5/08 at 7:47am
Quote:
Originally Posted by kapone View Post

So, long story short, for you European guys, it's pretty much around $500 shipped, per chassis.

That may be true for some of us europeans, but not all...

I live in Norway and what I've done is to use the service of a freightforward-company, instead of using FedEx/UPS which is much more expencive.

I bought my Norco 4020 from ipcdirect.net and had them ship to a freightforward-company that serves Norway, Sweden and Denmark (jetcarrier.com), for a total of $340. Then Jetcarrier will ship the goods either by plane or by ship over to their HQ in Norway and then use normal mail-service to ship to the end-customer.

Since I'm an impatient person I went for the expencive, but fast, air-freight which costs me aprox $144, but had I gone for the much cheaper ship-freight it would have cost me only $50, but it would have taken me about 3-4 weeks to get the package.

All in all the case will cost me $340 + 25% Norwegian VAT + $144 = $569, but thats because I went for the faster and expencive freight-option. By ship it would have cost me $475. Had I gone for the international shipping through UPS from iPCDIRECT.net the bill would have ended up at aprox $755 + 25% Norwegian VAT = $944.

When I now see the total cost, I do realize its not too far off your $500ish mark, so I guess I really shouldnt have done this calculations and post at all... (hobbies are always much more expencive than you think)
Anyways, its cheaper than buying the Lian-Li Cube and 4in3/5in3 drivebays, and lots cheaper than using international freight with UPS.

Now, I dont know of any other freightforward-companies that serves the rest of europe, but I highly doubt that a bunch of Norwegians are the only guys here in Europe that has come up with such an idea...
I dont know how much VAT the other countries in Europe have or their VAT-laws, but I hope my overview will give the rest of you some inspiration to the possibilities that exists, other than using expencive mainstream freight-options.

Myself, I'm now waiting for a big package to arrive in 2-3 days time...
Reply
Reply
post #173 of 7742
10/5/08 at 8:25am
$50 is a bargain for US to Europe. Who is that with.

Taking as an example border HQ for SEA they want £70 for the 22KG. Now the $340 shipped from IPC is £190 + VAT is £223 which totals £293 = $520.

That vs £303 for a 20 bay case shipped from Xcase isn't worth while. I need to significantly beat Xcase to think about buying a rack (or three).
Reply
Reply
post #174 of 7742
10/5/08 at 8:56am
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cockroach View Post

$50 is a bargain for US to Europe. Who is that with.

The company I use is Jetcarrier.com. They only serve Scandinavia though, but I dont know which company they use for the actual physical shipping.
Afaik one thing that lowers the price is that Jetcarrier.com ships over their own container(s) every 2 weeks from their office in New Jersey, and normal shippingtime by sea is 4 weeks, so obviously its not direct shipping from US to Norway. Their airfreight takes 1 week (thursday to tuesday), but the goods have to go through customs for a day or two, and also there is a weekend to consider, so I'm not complaining about the time spendt.

I did a little search on google, for freight forward companies between US and UK: (no workable urls until my 3rd post apparently)

google.com/search?hl=en&q=us+uk+freight+forward

Take a look at some of the links provided there - perhaps you'll find a similar company in UK like Jetcarrier.com.
Reply
Reply
post #175 of 7742
10/5/08 at 12:09pm
I currently have one of those ~$1k SuperMicro cases and I'm just about out of room. My controller is a Areca 1170 w/ 24 SATAII ports. This combo has worked well for me, but I need to decide where to go from here.

Browsing the Areca website on the 1680, the following caught my attention:

"Areca high-performance ARC-1680 series PCIe to SAS RAID host controller can provide up to (128) SAS/SATA ll peripheral devices using SAS expanders. :

So, I was thinking about doing the following:

Get an Areca 1680ix-24 controller and 24 1-5 SATAII port multipliers like these:

http://www.cooldrives.com/cosapomubrso.html

Get 6 Norco 4020 cases and mount 4 port multipliers within each case and then get convert the 4 SATAII channels from the multipliers to a SFF-8088 connector and run it back to the server chassis, which would be equipped with adapters to convert the internal SFF-8087 connectors to external SFF-8088 connectors.

I would then run a RAID60 configured as 6 20 disc RAID6 arrays, all using 1.5TB drives. Each "shelf" would then be 27TB, and the total capacity would be 162TB. In essense, I would stripe (RAID0) the 6 RAID6 arrays.

I figured I could start with 2 RAID6 arrays striped together, and then add drives within each of those 2 arrays until I'm full (40 discs total), and then add another 4020 and add it to the RAID60.

Does the 1680 support expanding this way?

Does running 120 drives off a single 1680 via port multipliers introduce issues?
Reply
Reply
post #176 of 7742
10/5/08 at 12:13pm
The 1680 does not support port multipliers. It supports "SAS expanders", which is a whole different (and quite expensive) proposition.
Reply
Reply
post #177 of 7742
10/5/08 at 12:59pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Magnus Lie View Post

That may be true for some of us europeans, but not all...

I live in Norway and what I've done is to use the service of a freightforward-company, instead of using FedEx/UPS which is much more expencive.

I bought my Norco 4020 from ipcdirect.net and had them ship to a freightforward-company that serves Norway, Sweden and Denmark (jetcarrier.com), for a total of $340. Then Jetcarrier will ship the goods either by plane or by ship over to their HQ in Norway and then use normal mail-service to ship to the end-customer.

Since I'm an impatient person I went for the expencive, but fast, air-freight which costs me aprox $144, but had I gone for the much cheaper ship-freight it would have cost me only $50, but it would have taken me about 3-4 weeks to get the package.

All in all the case will cost me $340 + 25% Norwegian VAT + $144 = $569, but thats because I went for the faster and expencive freight-option. By ship it would have cost me $475. Had I gone for the international shipping through UPS from iPCDIRECT.net the bill would have ended up at aprox $755 + 25% Norwegian VAT = $944.

When I now see the total cost, I do realize its not too far off your $500ish mark, so I guess I really shouldnt have done this calculations and post at all... (hobbies are always much more expencive than you think)
Anyways, its cheaper than buying the Lian-Li Cube and 4in3/5in3 drivebays, and lots cheaper than using international freight with UPS.

Now, I dont know of any other freightforward-companies that serves the rest of europe, but I highly doubt that a bunch of Norwegians are the only guys here in Europe that has come up with such an idea...
I dont know how much VAT the other countries in Europe have or their VAT-laws, but I hope my overview will give the rest of you some inspiration to the possibilities that exists, other than using expencive mainstream freight-options.

Myself, I'm now waiting for a big package to arrive in 2-3 days time...

Just a side note, shipping a Norco 4020 from IPCDirect to Norway using USPS is $175 (only available on request du to the lack of tracking possibilities). Adding the $305 for the case brought me up to $480. Shipping time was appx 7 days.

Myus.com is another shipping service similar to jetcarrier.com

.arve
Reply
Reply
post #178 of 7742
10/5/08 at 1:49pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by kapone View Post

The 1680 does not support port multipliers. It supports "SAS expanders", which is a whole different (and quite expensive) proposition.

Bummer. So right now, the least expensive solution is to add multiple controllers to a single server and run Server 2008 (perhaps there are alternatives?) to combine each RAID6 array into a single logical volume?

I noticed that Areca offers the ARC-8010 SAS Expander module. I wonder how much they run? I really like to idea of setting up a RAID60 array that I can expand over time, without too high of an up front cost.
Reply
Reply
post #179 of 7742
10/5/08 at 8:16pm
Sorry if this is a bit off topic, but I'm wondering if you guys are just using regular Cat 6 cables in conjunction with a gigabit switch? I would you guys would have a gigabit network at home to facilitate the higher transfer speed to the server. Any comments on what kind of gigabit switch one should get? Any advantages to getting a business grade switch over a consumer gigabit switch? Are you guys using dedicated gigbit NIC or you're using the integrated gigbait NIC?
Reply
Reply
post #180 of 7742
10/5/08 at 9:34pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sgt_Strider View Post

Sorry if this is a bit off topic, but I'm wondering if you guys are just using regular Cat 6 cables in conjunction with a gigabit switch? I would you guys would have a gigabit network at home to facilitate the higher transfer speed to the server. Any comments on what kind of gigabit switch one should get? Any advantages to getting a business grade switch over a consumer gigabit switch? Are you guys using dedicated gigbit NIC or you're using the integrated gigbait NIC?

Yup, regular ol Monoprice CAT6 cable.

Any "decent" gigabit switch should be fine. Really, anything over $50.

Business switches are usually built better, have lot more functionality, and are more reliable than consumer switches. Will you see a performance difference between the two? Probably not.

Onboard gigabit works just fine, if setup correctly. Below is a screenshot of onboard gigabit testing. (Network transfer from my workstation to the new server. The source drive on the workstation is a 3 drive RAID-0 array, and the target drive on the server is an 8 drive RAID-5 array. All onboard gigabit ports, Nvidia 680i onboard gigabit on the workstation side, and Intel onboard (with I/OAT) on the server side.)

Reply
Reply
New Posts  All Forums:Forum Nav:
  Return Home
  Back to Forum: Home Theater Computers

AVS Top Picks

AVS › AVS Forum › Video Components › Home Theater Computers › Guide To Building A Media Storage Server