Guide To Building A Media Storage Server - Page 8

KS, I didn't mention the 8 port because I've never used it .
IMHO 8 ports is too little especially when you start playing around with link aggregation.

But I know a few people who've tested or own the the 2708. They've only had good things to say about it... I dunno.

http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/content/view/30040/51/

http://qualapps.blogspot.com/2007/06...rformance.html

The 2708 doesn't support jumbo frames which might the explain the mismatched dropped packets your client encountered.

I do have first hand experience with the 16 port 2716 and it's been fantastic. No issues at all. For the price it's really hard to beat.

Very nice suggestions.
Just goes to show you that you can build a simple media server for very little these days.

I didn't want to suggest using PCI slots for the supermicro 8 port PCI-X cards for a few reasons.

On the surface first impressions would lead you to believe that PCI should be ok with something like WHS. But there's quite a few reason why it might not be. Besides that you might not decide to stay with WHS and want to keep your options open to Linux raid, W2k3, W2k8 etc.

First the PCI slots on that board are 32 bit so max is 133MB/s total for that slot of 8 connected drives. The Seagate 1.5TB's are benching nice at 100-120MB/s each....

WHS does all kinds of strange things in the background like balancing where it's moving data around it's drive pool. Most likely during this balancing all the drives involved will be on the same controller on the same slot. If you've also got folder duplication on a couple of folders and trying to transfer files over the network.. ..remember that the GbE port on this board also shares the PCI bus at the same time.

Second, PCI manages devices using bus master latency timers. It acts like a traffic cop with a stopwatch stopping traffic from one device completely then telling the other device to go and so on. Anyone who's been stuck at an intersection durring rush hour with a traffic cop directing traffic will relate. Each time the PCI clock runs down it stops everything and allows one device to go. If there's no demand for that device it'll tell the other to go until the clock runs down again. With all drives and GbE network interface the same bus ...it'll work but not so well.

PCI-e and PCI-X don't have this issue

RTL8111C is connected to the PCI Express bus.

As an alternative:
mobo: Asus M2N-LR

Just not certain if it will work with regular Athlon X2's...

I'd KILL for someone to come out with something like THIS, on a more modern 775 or even Atom based architecture.





This is the VIA NAS 7800-15LST motherboard, and it's not even mini-ITX, it's the size of an OPTICAL DRIVE!!. It's just based on a much older architecture, and is horrendously overpriced. (About $350).

If someone could just make a regular Micro ATX motherboard or even Mini-ITX, throw 8 (or even MORE!) SATA connectors, dual GB LAN, it'd be heaven for SMB storage.

I'd setup iSCSI or AOE based nodes in a heartbeat if such motherboards became more mainstream.

I almost feel like talking to some of these guys and starting a line of storage optimized motherboards, and have them OEM them.

Rene , thanks for correcting my oversight.
How do you feel about connecting 8 SATAII storage drives to each PCI slot ?

Does anyone know if WHS can be managed remotely by IP address like freeNAS?

Yes of course you can RDP into the desktop like any Windows OS.

You're "technically" at the limit for a GbE connection with a regular PCI bus. The PCI bus used to be saturated with communications for every device in the system, but it seems like it's included more as a legacy interface lately. If WHS really is thrashing the HDD's with read/write operations while you are trying to access the volume it doesn't really matter that it is utilizing PCI bus' bandwidth to do so. Your hdd throughput in that situation is going to be horrible anyways.

If you're going to use software raid, then it makes sense to upgrade the board. I think it makes sense to recommend a "cheapest point of entry" system designed to be more of an appliance for people who want to get their foot in the door for as little money as possible with the side effect of having fewer upgrade options down the road. A second recommendation for a system with an upgrade path could be the next step up in price for people who are willing to spend more money for a future need (the mb/cpu you or ilovejedd recommended). And a third recommendation for a system that utilizes hardware raid, and delivers high performance/scalability.

I wish the LSI controllers that you linked awhile back had the same msrp as the supermicro controller.

Talk about redundancy!

The 2716 looks awesome, and at a killer price. I'm hoping that after I recover from the new NAS server they will offer the same savings somewhere down the line.

First, thanks for all the info, I have learned so much, yet I know so little...

This will sound stupid, but just to confirm if I go the UnRaid route than I loose running apps like DNS updater, ORB, slingbox or small front page web hosting out of my server box, right? UnRAID is an OS and SW Raid Ctrl and nothing else.
Basically NAS, not a server.

Also, when weighting between SW based solution like UnRAID vs. HW based solution like RAID Ctrl Card, I need to figure in the $150 pro license if I want to run more than 3 HDs; that money should be figured in as savings if we go with HW Raid Ctrl card, although I don't think we found any 16+ cards for under $800+.

I want to have 1 machine on 24/7 that besides primary duty as a data server for DVDs- BD-TV shows-music library, etc, would also update my Dyn DNS (for my DVR, HAI system, maybe Orb or slingbox etc) and allow to run those services from server. Don't know how much WAN steaming I'll do as I'm limited to 600Kbps upload thru my cable ISP provider, no I'm not willing to pay $299 to get enterprise solution.

I also am looking for fault tolerance (RAID 5 or 6 type), so WHS is a no go unless I go with FlexRAID or with HW RAID controller card, right?

Now with all of that, can I still use what WeeboTech recommended, or do you recommend something else? :
* Abit AB9 PRO ~ $90 (9 internal sata, 1 external sata)
* Celerom M 440 2ghz ~ $50
* 4g Ram ~ $70
* Centurion 590 if I limited myself to 9 drives or NORCO RPC-4020 (with 1 8 port SATA card) would give me max 17
* If 8 port card, which one?
* Either Corsair-TX650W or PC Power & Cooling 750Watt Power Supply
* No video card (headless) - save power, or can you recommend cheap card that wouldn't suck a lot of power as any system maintenance would be done thru remote desktop?
* Windows XP or Vista, unless someone knows of a good reason to step up to Win Server 2003 or 2008.

Don't know that I care about hot swappable. While is sounds cool, I don't expect my HDs to fail ever, but if they do (alright, when they do) I don't mind pressing power button to swap the bad drive.

Ultimately I want to set up a server on the cheap, that will let me grow in storage as I backup more and more BDs and HD-DVDs (have a bid for 60 disk set on eBay, there goes 2+Tb. I see streaming from 2 up to 5 HD feeds to TVs throughout the house. Nothing extreme.

Thanks for any and all suggestions.

Mario

My answer is seen in my server recommendation, i.e. good enough for WHS and unRAID, as also attested by several users like below. If you are going with software RAID, you have to look for something else obviously (MV8+PCI-X slot, PCIe controller etc. that's beyond the scope of my recommendations for now).

Galaxy 4.75 Parts List by 'Self Proclaimed Storage King' Ockie:

- Case: NORCO RPC-4020
- PSU: PC Power & Cooling 750W
- CPU: AMD Athlon X2 4050e 2.1GHz 45W
- Memory: G.Skill DDR2-800 2 x 2GB kit
- Motherboard: BIOSTAR TF720 AM2+ GeForce 8100 and nForce 720a chipset ATX
- Graphics: onboard video
- SATA controller: Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 8-port SATA PCI-X controller x 2
- HDD for OS: Seagate SATA 1TB
- HDD for storage: WD SATA 400GB x 20
- OS: Microsoft Windows Home Server

Click here for more pictures at Hard Forum.


He wrote:

and here:

BTW my recommendation is very close to his system (coincidentally). I chose GIGABYTE GA-MA78G-DS3H because 5 PCIe x1 devices can be used at the same time (for DVR).

Lemme throw in my .02 on a slightly different note (and yes it's probably gonna cost you more than .02 )

Here's the problem.

Disk identification

VERY VERY important, if you're building a decent sized storage system. You cram 20 or 30 or 40 disks in your storage server, and heaven forbid one of them goes bad. How do you find out WHICH one, "physically"?? i.e. which disk do you pull out from the bays?

1. You could start pulling disks randomly (possibly based on an activity LED being intermittent or something), until you find the bad one. While workable, and costs the least , not very elegant, and the pulling out/push it back in has the potential to damage another perfectly good disk, due to the rapid power down/power up sequence.

2. You keep a log of serial numbers and physical locations of each disk, and try and keep it handy. While workable and costs the least still a little clumsy, if you end up popping in disks in incorrect "phycial" locations unintentionally, it screws up your log completely. And even if the log is right, Windows doesn't tell you the serial number of a failed disk handily. You have to dig through system logs and what not to find the serial number.

3. While building your storage server, you wire the LEDs correctly. Ah, nirvana. But it's gonna cost you, although it's the most elegant. While a lot of controllers support activity and optionally fault LEDs, and some SATA/SAS hot swap cages even have fault detection built in, the problem is that unless you are using the controller's software (assuming it even has one), you still don't have a way of lighting up the LED of a specific disk, even if the LEDs are wired correctly.

For e.g. while the Supermicro MV8 card is a great value for an 8 port card, and even has LED headers, it doesn't have any software, and I don't think the driver allows any kind of disk identification.

The "ideal" solution is of course where you are using a controller that has it's own software and also supports LED management, but that may not be practical for a lot of builds.

Why am I mentioning all this? So, you can prepare beforehand. Atleast have something handy that tells you which disk is where, because at some point, something WILL fail.

Kapone -
Did you find out what you might be able to do thru your supplier on the power buy of Norco RPC-4020 cases?
And how soon were you going to move on those, just trying to figure how soon I can start this poject.

So far we're looking at $325 from NewEgg shipped.
While I greatly appreciate your willingness to help out others save money, unless the power buy saves us $30+, I would rather buy directly from N.E. just so you're not bothered with everything that comes with buying for others (shipping/tracking/RMA/repairs.

Thanks,
Mario

How do these MV8 controllers perform under heavy load (especially on the PCI bus).

I was planning a machine out, and if I use them I'll use PCI-X, yet I'm curious of everyone's experience with these controllers both ways.

Hello,

I have been doing some testing with a PCI based SATA controller card, based on the SIL3114 chipset using basic satalink firmware (JBOD, not RAID) to 3 X 250Gb drives.

I wanted to test the SIL3114 on the basis of cost, I can get these for around £20 delivered and it only takes around 15 minutes to replace the RAID firmware with Sata LINK firmware, so they just act as SATA controllers.My plan was to use Open Solaris with ZFS to address the drives on these cards.

My tests, using an Asus A8N-SLI Premium motherboard with an S939 Athlon XP 3000+ CPU and 2 Gb Ram yielded some useful experience. When copying .ISO images across the network from my ripping system to the server, I was seeing transfer rates down in the 20Mb/s region, and this was through a Gigabit hub with short runs of CAT 5e cable between the systems. I think the problem is simply the PCI bus is becoming saturated and limiting bandwidth. I have not dug into the exact architecture, but I think the MoBo I'm using must have the onboard gigabit interface and the PCI slots sharing either a common bus or a common chipset somewhere, as this does seem very slow. If this is the case then it pretty much rules out the Supermicro cards for me also, as they would have to run as standard PCI cards in this system. I think the best option is to look at a PCIe based solution using either the X4 or X8 interface (the A8N-SLI has an X4 and a pair of X16's which will accept an X8 card), and run it either headless, or use an old Matrox PCI graphics card.

I know compared with a lot of the hardware mentioned here this board is hopelessly outdated, but this is fundamentally a very solid board and as I have a couple of these boards already it seems a shame to waste them, especially if the performance problems can be overcome by using the PCIe interface instead of the legacy PCI.

I am right now looking at two or three models of LSI Logic cards which use PCIe (X4 or X8) and are supported in Solaris, Open Solaris and Windows 2003, giving me maximum flexibility in OS choice and configuration.

Based on this very limited test, I'd say that even using WHS I would be tempted to avoid using PCI interface cards as I really do think that given the storage capacities and speeds being discussed here, I think this interface has been overtaken, ironically it is probably best kept for supporting basic graphics cards in these systems.

Best wishes,

Dave

Hi,

In the "Build log: 48 terabyte media server" post I got the advice to use the storport driver and not the Scsiport driver.


Now I see that Areca has released a Scsiport with WHQL certification (ftp://ftp.areca.com.tw/RaidCards/AP_.../X86/scsiport/) but the storport is still in Beta.

Does anyone have some information as to why storport is better that scsiport ?

Regards,
arve

I haven't done it yet, but I think you can run any OS you want through VMWare under the unRAID Linux based OS.

Someone correct me if I'm mistaken.

This is not quite true. unRAID is based on Slackware. It's very possible to add additional applications on the fly after boot up.
It takes a little work, but the nice thing about this is they run in a root ram filesystem. This means the disks will still spin down (unless you install applications that constantly access the disk).

For example, I;ve added a DHCP server with PXE boot services. Caching name server and nagios. I'll be adding LCDproc monitoring soon.
In addition I have rtorrent running all day on the machine so two drives spin constantly (Parity and the data drive).
Furthermore, there have been members who have gotten VMware running on the distribution.
So unRAID is quite capable of hosting services if you are willing to get your feet wet with Linux. The community is a great help too.

Consider unRAID a protected JBOD system, while also provide a single view to all of your JBOD disks.

if you need massive speed, then a raid5/raid6 arrangement may work out better. But for average home media storage, unRAID is a great solution.


The ABIT AB9 PRO does not run without a video card. A cheap PCI video card will work fine. you access the environment via browser and/or telnet interface.

Supermicro boards can run headless, plus also provide BIOS support via serial port (null modem). I'm looking into the possibility of a new build with a supermicro and the MV8 cards.


What I love about the trayless removables is no screws.
My hd's are the floppies of the new era. LOL!

I should add, and some people may or may not find this worthwhile, I've also installed the Gigabite RC-RAMDISK PCI card connected to one of the SATA ports. With this I have a ram based filesystem whereby I capture logs (syslogs) and run other small Database applications thereby eliminating spindles in my network.
The new system I'm considering will have 4 of these with LVM and I'll rearrange my smaller ITX hosts to do an NFS mount or boot from these.

Have a look at this WHS Add-in

http://www.tentaclesoftware.com/WHSDiskManagement/

I'm well aware of that add in. But not everyone runs WHS.

My point was to plan ahead and be prepared, while in the building stages, rather than be frustrated later.

Guys, can you have more than ONE raid array on ONE raid controller?

Ie, 3 drives in raid 0 and 6 drives in raid 6 on the same controller?

I was thinking of an Areca 1230

Thanks

George

kapone

Am I missing something here? The mobo you posted above. What's the big deal, the amount of sata ports and gigabit ports?

If so, I have 4 gigabit ports and 10 sata ports on my current mobo for 775

George

That's a deal breaker for me. I edit files directly on my server, I don't store files locally. So if I edit a file on an unraid server it's not going to re-compute the parity?

Sure, but that one has an embedded VIA processor as well, and draws about 10w.

I believe that comment was based on FlexRAID and was a drawback of FlexRAID vs. unRAID.

I'm pretty sure unRAID will recompute, or at least I hope so b/c I'm using it the same way you described.

Most controllers allow multiple arrays (and multiple types) per controller.

Absolutely anything you write via a network share (Samba/SMB or NFS) will have parity calculation done.

It's linux software raid slightly modified to have each disk be it's own volume (mini raid) sharing a parity disk.

Keep in mind RAID5 without striping where each disk shares 1 parity disk (like raid4) Each Disk is it's own filesystem which is why you will not loose 100% of your data should you have 2 or more disks fail. If need be, in a pinch, a disk could be removed and mounted on any system capable of reading reiserfs.

on top of this, the user share joins each disk/filesytem into a joined logical view.

Jason4207 is correct; I was comparing Flexraid. Unraid performs instant parity calc on write (UNLESS you set up a cache disk, as the cache sits outside of the array with periodic syncs)