Guide To Building A Media Storage Server - Page 53

Yes that case is quite sexy!


So do any of you know how well software raid setups are at expanding the array without rebuilding it? Aka adding a drive. Also what kind of write speeds can I expect with a software raid array with 20 HD's?

Hello all,

I have revised my storage server component list. I have learned much by browsing these forums, and I would like to emphaize some key points:

1. RAID is not a backup
2. Some hardware RAID controllers really use software RAID
3. It is absolutely necessary to back up all critical data regardless of your choice of hardware/software RAID

This has lead me to this system. I want to use WHS drive extender. I will make sure that the system harddrive is the largest (1.5tb). All other drives will be 1tb. I will back up all of the data to external sources, such as USB harddrives, or whatever. All critical data will be backed up on my NAS.

Here is the link to the hardware components: http://secure.newegg.com/WishList/Pu...umber=14262067

I would eventually have 20 harddrives in that case. ~20tb. What are the implications of doing this? What is the process to upgrade the harddrives 1 at a time? I know some of you are using this setup, so I am greatly interested in hearing your thoughts.

Under $50 and it is only three inches deeper (height and width are the same). This would also be a bit easier to configure since VIA is 100% headless. If you know your stuff you could install the OS on the CF media and roll with it. Having the ability to plug in a monitor, keyboard and mouse is likely to be handy at some time in the future. You could actually sitck a 9th drive in the uATX case with a 3 in 2 adapter and of course you would replace the power supply.

KOTONM0UTHKING4,

I'd stay away from those 7200.11 if I were you. Check the thread about Seagate's 7200.11 line of HDD failing for a lot of people...

WD is supposed to ship 2TB drives soon too, so that may be an interesting alternative.

As for WHS, upgrading the HDDs one at a time is pretty simple : you need to have enough free space in your drive pool to "offload" the drive you are going to upgrade (you do this via the WHS Console). After the drive has been offloaded, you can remove it form the pool and then insert another one and add it to the pool.

Ok, so it looks like when i want to upgrade my 1tb harddrive, i have to have 1tb free in my storage pool. I can then unplug that drive, install the 2tb harddrive, and then have it repopulate the data? or is this done through a back up?

I am also correct that the system drive needs to be the largest of all drives. I am stuck in a corner with that drive correct? I couldn't upgrade the system drive and still expect my storage pool to be accessible. In that event, i need to transfer the back up into the storage pool?

Thanks! How does the hardware look? appropriate? or could i cut some corners. This will only serve as a storage server... and nothing else

Cheap cases like this one you linked are a dime dozen.

I was excited for a minute. Thought you found a SFF case with 8 hotswap bays and a decent PSU for $100, neither of which this case has.

The Via board has a VGA header and if you look on the back of the Via case there's a punch out for it. Plug in a usb kybd and mouse and you're done

In order to remove a hard drive you need to enough space in the storage pool for WHS to off load the data of the drive to be removed.

You can remove the drive *after* you install the new drive - this way you don't have to deal with trying to free up space on the server.


The system drive requirement is that it has to be at least 80gb. It does not need to be the largest drive - I would recommend between 250-500gb.

In order to replace the system drive (the recommended way) you'll need to make sure duplication is enabled for all WHS shares, remove system drive, install new system drive, perform server reinstall.

Some options to consider;

1. Replace all the Seagate drives with WD drives instead. The Seagate 7200.11's have issues as mentioned. Your system drive doesn't need to be the biggest anymore since PP1. Data transfers go directly to the destination drive.

2. You don't really a built-in DVD-RW in a server. After you install the OS, you're pretty much done with it. Consider an external USB unit you can use on any other system builds for the same money. Besides it just uses power 24/7 and won't get used.

3. Not sure of the reason you have a Q6600 C2Q cpu on the list, but a C2D will do just as well and use considerably less power.

4. There's a few open box SuperMicro X7SBE boards that will save you $100 depending on how soon you're ready to order.

MiBz,

Thanks. I will replaced Seagates with WD. I just liked the 5yr warranty on seagates. Ill investigate WD. I was going to use the DVD-RW for ripping new DvDs straight to the storage server. I will look into a USB version so that I can do my part to stop global warming .

I was also thinking about using this CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16819115132.

Im looking at possibly getting an open box motherboard.

Also, if i remember correctly you were using WHS for your media storage. Do you have any recommendations that I may not be aware of?

I guess noone here really runs software raid?

I'm considering using my adaptec cards as dumb JBODs for testing out ZFS in (open)solaris. Considering the hardware raid part of it well... isn't very good.

As a side note, I got a notification from provantage that my SAS expander got shipped, so I expect I'll be able to play around with it next week.

Several people here run Linux software raid with great success. Windows software raid tends to have issues since it can't doe OCE.

thx
mike

Solaris has piss poor device support, it really doesn't run well on most hardware people here tend to run.

BTW, My 31605 talks to my 1 TB 7200.11's just fine (and I don't see any issues with them in general, as opposed to the 1.5 TB 7200.11's), but the 51605 and the 2xxx controllers do have issues with them. Go figure. Like I said, I prefer wine to milk in storage.

Just FYI, I was unable to recover data off the damaged linux raid5 array I mentioned in an earlier note. 9 TB gone, just like that.

All the really important stuff was backed up anyway - Mbiz, I run a Retrospect workgroup server in the house, so I don't need WHS for that, but am still thinking about running that in a VM to play with. I have most of my music backed up on DVD's, but the DVD's will be a pain to rerip. Ugh.

I swapped out the backplane in the RPC-4020 last night (since it looked like it was having some problems that contributed to the failure earlier this month - man, there are a LOT of screws holding these in!), and installed the adaptec 31605 last night. So far so good. Windows server 2008 installed really easily, and I just finished adding it my AD. I very much like the adaptec storage manager. So nice to have too all this stuff in one spot.

Tonight I'll move the disks back to the RPC-4020 from the temporary 5in3's I used to bypass the faulty RPC-4020 backplane , and build some arrays.

Will let you know how it goes.

thx
mike

You would actually go into the console, identify the drive you want and tell it to remove it from the shared pool. You can only do this if you have room on other drives to shift the data. When it is done moving the data it will tell you and you can physically remove the drive. Also, if all of your folders are duplicated you could just simply yank the drive and let it repair itself. In that situation only PC backup images would be at risk, but they would be repaired on the next backup cycle.

The system drive does not need to be the largest drive. It is the 'landing drive' and no single file can be sent to the server that cannot fit on it. Strange, I know. So unless you utilize truly massive files you shouldn't need to worry about it unless you are thinking of using an old drive for the primary drive.

I have used linux software raid, mdadm, for several years without problems. I have done everything from swapping mobo's, replacing dead drives, oce etc. without incident. mdadm also supports hotspares and raid 6 if you need them.

BTW, just FYI. The adaptec 31605 blink drive command works with the seagate drives in the Norco RPC-4020! The red activity blinks when the function is selected for a drive. Nice going norco!

Can you expand the array easily? like adding new drives? How long does it usually take? I was going to run Server 2008 but if it has issues with software raid I'll look into other things like mdadm. Also what kind of read and write speeds do you get to the server?

I was under the impression that Solaris made a lot of strides recently in terms of supporting commodity hardware versus their old sparc-only setup, but I haven't given it a try yet. Maybe I'll just run it in a VM?

My main concern is how your norco got a faulty backplane in the first place. One of my 4-in-3 hotswap cages had a faulty backplane, but I think it was there from the get go. You're saying your norco actually developed faults after you were using it, and it was fine before? That's a bit disconcerting, since a lot of us are using the same case. If one of the backplanes goes awry, that means 4 drives will start going flaky, and even raid6 cant save that.

I assume you got one of the newer 4020s with the brighter leds and without the SAS connectors?

I used to like Seagate's too. Not anymore. Too many problems.
Unfortunately they also reduced their warranty down to 3 yrs as of Jan 1st.
Besides a warranty doesn't bring back your data after the drive dies.
The WD black series WD1001FALS 1TB carries a 5yr warranty and WD offers advanced exchange for free.



No problem, you can always stay with the internal DVDRW if you wish.,
I would think more convenient to rip at your workstation/desktop and then transfer over the network to the server. Besides what will you do when you start ripping BD movies ?


Looks good. Half the money, runs cooler, less power.
I don't see a down side.



It's an option that will save you some money. It sill carriers the same warranty and 30 days from newegg. Mine was only missing the backplate, not a big deal considering the $100 saved.



I would say you should consider setting the motherboard SATA mode to AHCI and either slipstream the Intel AHCI drivers into a DVD install (search the thread, I posted some instructions on this or google) or connect a floppy drive just during the install to provide these drivers.

WHS is quite straightforward and intuitive to use so you'll be fine.
Like any other solution, never trust your important data to one place, so be sure to backup.

There's a good community for support, tips and WHS addins here.

Removing a drive from WHS is simple. If you don't have enough space in the pool to 'discharge' the data of the drive to be removed you can either insert the new drive first, add it to the pool and then tell WHS to remove the old drive. Or if you're out of drive slots, do the same by connecting a temp external usb drive or esata drive, add it to the pool to provide enough space to redistribute the data off the drive to be removed, then insert the new drive and remove the external. Pretty simple.


There's no more landing zone since PP1 so this doesn't apply anymore. And since the Nov 08 update, you can transfer files to the server as large as the amount of space remaining in the total storage pool.

all,

readydriver plus provides a workaround the problem and seems to do ok so I do not have to manual intervene to finish a boot..

I still wish to relax some the security setting in the 2008 to be a little closer to my 2003 server -- like reduce the password complexity requirement etc.

but I no ready to finish a few other setup like AV software - try my acronis imager software and then I can try some VM's

Thanks

Hey Mike.

I've heard about incompatabilities with the Adaptecs and the 1.5TB Seagates.
Aparently Adaptec has little interest in resolving this for 'consumer' drives.

After returning 8 Seagate 1.5TB's a few months back for firmware issues.
I decided to take another run with them just before the holidays and ordered 4 new ones. They came in with the latest CC1J firmware.

I can confirm that they work just fine with my Areca 1261. Initialized, formatted and benchmarked great. But after just 2 weeks the heads started making clanging noises. RMA'd them just this afternoon with newegg.
I'm done with Seagate for a while.

Wow 9TB lost. I'm really sorry buddy. I was hopeful for better news.
That really sucks. Yet there you are back in the saddle again !

Glad to hear the Win2008 install went well. I'm impressed with how streamlined it installs and runs with very little overhead. I have to say it's been my fav OS so far. I even contemplated running it as my desktop for a while, but I like some eyecandy. Maybe 7 will do it for me. I dunno.

Glad ReadyDriver worked out for you. I hadn't used it, but I heard it does work. Just remember that if you ever decide to reinstall the OS, to uninstall ReadyDriver from the current OS first to remove it's boot loader.

I dunno, strong passwords are a good thing IMHO.
But if you still want to relax the password policy, it's easy tho.

Hit Start - Administrative Tools -> Local Security Policy -> Account Policies -> Password Policy.

Find - password complexity requirements and disable it.

Solaris is getting better, but its target is enterprise hardware, so good luck finding solaris drivers for quite a bit of consumer hardware.

I had the old backplane with the SAS connectors. I can't prove it went bad, but there were some signs that sure pointed to that. Norco was willing to replace it with a new SATA only backplane, and the electronics on that version seem much simpler.

It's hooked up to the adaptec controller now and I am doing drive evrifys across all the spindles to verify if I get smart errors, etc...

As an aside, I can't seem to get server 2008 to recognize the newest adaptec signed driver. It seems to work fine with the old one, but the drivers are signed and should work, but windows refuses to install them. I never had to deal with this sort of thing with linux.

Yeah, RAID is not a backup. You should always have another copy of irreplaceable data. But is that the whole 20 TB? So far I have found a single 1 TB drive to be a sufficient backup for portions of my 3 TB RAID5, but I imagine that will change at some point.

So, if RAID is not a backup, is WHS drive pooling with duplication not a backup as well? It would seem they both protect from drive failures, but fail to protect from software corruption, accidental deletion, etc.

But WHS doesn't offer even drive failure protection to data not duplicated, whereas RAID protects all data on the array. And data duplication is the most inefficient method of protection against drive failure - buy two drives for the space of one. RAID parity is far more efficient.

It seems this thread is mostly dedicated to WHS now. While I can understand the desire to save money, not all RAID cards are $1000+. RAID has alot of functionality and efficient use of disks that WHS just can't offer.

At long last, I've got the parts on order to put together my file server. Here's a list of the parts:

mobo:

GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P

CPU:

Intel Quad Core Q6600

Ram:

4 GB (2x2GB) Corsair Dominator 1066

PSU:

Antec True Power Trio TP3-650 (650 W)

Case:

Antec 900 (I did say "at long last", didn't I? I've been sitting on this case for a year (CompUSA fire sale) intending to build my new main PC, but...the economy happened. A Norco 4020 will come in 3 or 4 months. P.S. - I've been sitting on the CPU for nearly as long.)

SAS/Raid:

Supermicro AOC-USAS-L8i 8 Port SAS RAID x2 (Thank you eBay!! $50 each)

SAS cables:

AMCC SFF-8087 Forward Fanout cables x4 (Thanks again to eBay. $7 each!)

Video: an old PCI GeForce 6xxx I have laying around

I plan to use Ubuntu and mdadm for software raid. I intend to grow this server incrementally. I want to start off with 4 drives in RAID5. When this gets close to being filled, I'll add another 4-drive RAID5 array and use LVM to JBOD the two arrays. This will be repeated as needs grow.

As soon as the parts come in from newegg, I'll experiment with my proposed setup with 4 400GB drives I have had laying around for the past year (blasted economy!). With this experimental setup, I'll use the next month or so to learn the ins and outs of linux, mdadm and LVM. After I've become confident in my competence with them, I'll swap out the 400 giggers for 4 1.5TB drives, and use the 400GB drives elsewhere for my upcoming HTPC.

I don't intend to use this system for anything other than serving my movies, music, and other data. No Folding@Home or transcoding will be done on this box, thus the low graphics card and non-HW raid cards. Besides, I can't afford that Areca 1680 I really wanted.

My goal is to have this machine serve media to Windows machines, linux machines (MythTV), and game consoles (XBox360). If anyone has good knowledge on what to use to set this up (NFS, samba, iscsi, etc) please chime in.

I welcome any critique and comments. To those out there who use mdadm and LVM, please drop any nuggets of wisdom you may have, and point me to any good resources (online or otherwise) to help a brother out. Thanks in advance.

Lifespeed,

You are right. WHS in not a true back up either. However, a combination of external storage systems with either RAID or WHS Storage pool is a back up. I will be backing up all data with external harddrives, and I have the original DVDs to use fas a permanent backup. You can argue that I can save ungodly amounts of time with RAID because I wont have to re-rip my DVDs because of a failed drive. I feel comfortable backing up data onto external harddrives/NAS until the are full, and then flicking the off swtich and keeping that as a backup. In the event my WHS storage pool fails, i can replace the lost drives, recompile the pool, turn on the external sources, and copy and paste. I am basically going to be filling up this storage system so slowly that it might be in my best interest to follow this process over time, instead of buying a $1000 RAID card. With a RAID card, i could spend a day expanding the volume size each time i want to add another harddrive.

I have had a hard time finding reasonable prices on a RAID contoller that is capable of handling 20 harddrives. If you can point me in the direction of one then i might be interested. I am really only looking to spend $1500 right now, and if necessary I can spend more later.

I want to hear everyones opinion. Give it to me!

That board has no PCI-X slots. You may not think you'll care now about limiting the combined throughput of 12 drives to 80 MB/s, but I promise you will later. Either buy a PCI-X board (a dying breed, and often years behind in other features) or try this card:

http://www.supermicro.com/products/a...C-USAS-L8i.cfm

I can't see any reason why it would be limited to SuperMicro motherboards. It's $125, much faster, and far and away the cheapest 8-port PCIe SAS controller.

There are a bunch of Dell PCIE SAS cards on ebay ranging between 50 and 130 bucks. Most of them support 8 SATA ports. I emailed one of them asking if it only works with Dells and he said it will work with any PCIE motherboard. So I think I may try and get some of these to try maybe? Probably wouldn't use them for hardware raid but software raid more then likely. They do have a ram slot for CACHE and comes with 256mb stock though. I think they use an IOP333 processor? I'm not sure how great of a hardware raid card this is? Any thoughts?

The IOP333 is a real raid chip with good performance.