Guide To Building A Media Storage Server - Page 13

This is not totally true. It's based on slackware 12. You can download almost any slackware 12 package, drop it on your flash, update the config/go script to do an installpkg (packagename) and an application can be added.

I have my caching DNS, tftp, pxeboot, syslog-ng, nagios, X10 control processes and other administrative functions running on it.
I also run lighthttp and rtorrent on it all day long.
It just takes a bit of tweaking to install the package and insure your configuration files are in place on the root ram filesystem.

If you are savy, you can decompress the compressed initram and install the applications there.

There are members of the forum extending unRAID's functionality all the time.

Perhaps there are applications which are just not prime time for linux which does not serve everyone's needs.

Lately people have been getting vmware running on unRAID.
This is how I've been doing my transcoding with a virtual windows machne.

So the possibility exists.
It's more based on needs, what third party apps are desired, knowledge base and desire.


It's write performance would be a show stopper for any high throughput situation. The cache drive functionality does help this.

i use the 2724 in my business which is a setup of remote desktop hosts connecting to backend file servers.

never have any problems with the switch other than not being able to connect to the web management while it is under switching load (which is basically all the time for my business)

for a home setup the 2716 or 2724 qould be ideal.

i personally use the netgear gige (blue metal ones) at home and have run both their 8 port and 16 port versions with absolutley no issues.

I had two netgear gs108's fail on me within one week of each other. Really pissed me off, as I'd purchased them less than 6 months earlier. I didn't even bother to rma them, just stuck them in a box and bought a cheap replacement from fry's. Maybe I just purchased two bad apples, and it was just my luck.

[quote=jason4207;14830667]As WeeboTech said a better CPU, and video card would allow you to run Vista, but if you're going to go that route I'd pick a more modern motherboard w/ 45nm support as well. P43/45

I have the MSI P43 Neo3-F motherboard and an E5200 CPU. The board has 8 sata ports which isn't quite as many as the ABit AB9 Pro, but still enough for most folks. The MSI has better memory compatibility, and is compatible w/ 45nm CPU's. It's also priced similarly or even less than the Abit AB9 Pro.

The E5200 is a 45nm dual-core 2.5GHz CPU that can be overclocked very easily to 3.5GHz if you need that extra power for Vista. I don't need that much power for my unRAID file server so I actually have my E5200 underclocked and undervolted to 333x6=2GHz at an ultra-low vcore of 0.856v.

Very powerful graphics cards are now dirt cheap. I know eVGA has B-stock items and you can get the 8800GTS-512 for $99, or the 9600 GSO for $69. Either will allow you to run Vista Aero w/o issue, and even play all the modern games out there w/ very good settings. You can get cheaper cards, but you won't find a much better price-performance ratio if you need graphical power. Running a graphics card like one of these on a Windows platform also gives you the option to use the GPU for encoding which can save you a lot of time if you like to encode. I haven't tried this yet, but I've read a little about it.
QUOTE]

The only issue I have with getting a better video card is that I wanted to save the PCI Express slot for the Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 card when I need to expand beyond the 8 HDs, unless you have better, comprable solution for 8 SATAs card. I was going to go headless for the system, but apparantly this MoBo will NOT boot without a card. Wish I could find MoBo with video on-board that would have 8-9 SATAs on board and would have other things like Gig lan, low power consumption, etc.

Mario

The supermicro card mentioned is PCI-X not PCIe (express).
Different bus types
http://www.supermicro.com/products/a...C-SAT2-MV8.cfm

You can use the Supermicro in a regular PCI slot and depending on usage you may or may not notice a performance penalty.

I read that PCI-X (extended) is backward compatible with PCI, has this been tested?
Will AOC-SAT2-MV8 work well with ABIT AB9 Pro MoBo?

I'm planning on going with ABIT AB9 Pro because of the 9 SATA cards.
As this is going to be a closet media server, I was looking for a cheap card that won't suck a lot of power since the only time it'll be used is when I originally build the system and then for troubleshooting (when I can't remote into it). What do you recommend for that?
I was going to go with EVGA 128-P1-N309-LX GeForce FX 5200 128MB 64-bit DDR PCI Video Card, but only because it was cheap PCI, leaving PCI express free for SATA expansion card.
Oh, yea; I'm going to go with WHS or Vista with FlexRaid solution.

Thanks for feedback
Mario

Quick question: What software are you all using to "archive" your BD and HD DVDs to disk? PowerDVD seems to be a good player option, (Please correct me if that is wrong), but its web site doesn't seem to state that it will allow you to backup your disc to a HDD. So I assume something else is needed for that. TIA!

I've read from others this card is backwards compatible with standard PCI Slots.
I do not have confirmation that it works on the ABIT AB9 PRO, but I have no reason to believe it wont. Keep in mind this will limit the traffic to 8 ports to 133MB/s. If it's a lightly to medium traffic system you'll be ok.

People on the unRAID forum use the PCIe slots with 2 PCIe 1x - 2 port SIl3132 PCIe cards and 1 PCie 4x - 4 port Adaptec 1430sa.
This yields a total of 17 internal sata ports and 1 external sata port.

Some light reading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_device_bandwidths
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI-X
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Periphe...t_Interconnect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI_Express
This is dated, but I still found it interesting http://tweakers.net/reviews/432

Alrighty. The rebuild is finished. It took close to the same amount of time as the array initialization at 31:27 hh:ss.

I compared the md5sum's with the original's and they all match. The zip file extracted properly, and it's contents also matched the original md5sum value.

The 1280ml + Seagate 1.5TB = Thumbs up.

I hope this helps anyone else trying to make the same decision.

For all those in the market in the UK (or EU I guess) for an 8 port RAIDCore card then a well known auction site is your friend.

Do a search for 'RC5252-08' and you'll be surprised by the price!

I got two!

Edit: Buy it Now for 75 Euro

Thanks for testing that combo kenshin-san. It's good to know the Seagate 1.5TB drives work well with the 1280ml.

Has anyone seen any reports of issues between the 1680ix and the Seagate 1.5TBs? Or are we all assuming that because other AS series drives have had issues, so will the 1.5TBs? I know odditory was planning on testing the combo, but it doesn't look like he's been able to yet.

Thanks -- very useful info. Just got a couple of the drives and am loading some DVDs to them and trying a few different storage formats -- need to decide that before doing a massive load (certainly don't care to do it twice).

Still contemplating less-expensive alternatives; but I suspect I'll end up just buying a 1280 & a bunch of these drives ... nothing else is nearly as attractive -- and it's only money !! [and the market's up 700 points ].

It actually closed, UP 938 points. A very amazing day, but I doubt it's gonna last.

One thing that I haven't seen mentioned regarding alternatives to "enterprise" RAID solutions for Media Servers is how you know when you've got bit rot or a slowly failing drive. I use a 3Ware 9550SX-8LP and I have it do a Verify on my RAID5 array every week. A hard disk won't know that there's a potential error until it goes to read it. Media servers can have content that doesn't get read for relatively long periods of time. I personally feel that RAID Verify is a very important feature.

In my situation, I use RAID5 for storing replaceable or transient media (DVD rips, HDTV recordings) and as a destination for backups of non-arrayed hard drives. I've been doing this long enough that I expect all hard drives to eventually fail. In fact, I had all 4 Maxtor PATA disks (6Y250P0) from my original RAID5 array fail. They dropped one by one 18-30 months from purchase. When it went degraded the third time, I only lost 3 HDTV recording files. That loss was due to read errors on the last remaining original disk while in degraded mode. At that point I had already decided not to try to rebuild and I was just copying the data off the array. The 3Ware 7500-4 controller didn't just give up and take the whole array offline, it just wouldn't read the files that were occupying space that was throwing read errors. Had I been doing RAID Verify on that array, I'm sure I would have known the disks were failing even sooner and wouldn't have lost any data.

- Mike

Yeah, there's been discussion on this feature in some of the threads. For those folks that don't/can't run RAID-6 then a background scrub is a great way to minimize the chance of bit errors during a RAID-5 rebuild. Rather than doing a Verify periodically, some RAID cards now offer a permanent background scrub (or verify) that runs at a very slow rate. It's often programmable, where all of the bits are guaranteed to touched at least once a week, once a month, etc. If errors are detected they're fixed while the array is still optimal. For folks with large RAID-5 arrays of large drives (like eight 1TB drives) this is almost a mandatory feature since the chance of a bit error during a rebuild is so high - something like 25-50% if I remember the numbers correctly. Background scrub could bring this down to just a few percent.

100% agree. And as typical array sizes grow ever larger, this becomes even more important.

Right now, I have migrated 1 of my arrays into "production" with eight 1.5TB drives, 4 more will be added to this array in the next few days. Can't have that sized array with no regular consistency checks.

kapone,

=> What controller are you using? (Clearly it must work well with the Seagate 1.5's)

=> How long does a consistency check take?

=> Just for grins, why didn't you do use RAID-6 with such a large array? (soon to be 12 drives)

This may seem like a bit of a long shot, but if anyone happens to have a Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 laying around, it MAY just work with Ciprico's VST Pro raid software.

VST Pro supports the Marvel Hercules-2 chipset and since Supermicro's PCI-X cards use this very chipset it's worth a shot.
http://www.supermicro.com/products/a...C-SAT2-MV8.cfm

Btw I ordered a whole bunch of stuff from Newegg this week-end to build 3 different servers spanning from low-mid-high end systems.
Using the following boards;

P45 P5Q-E
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...2E16813131296R

Supermicro X7SBA
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...2E16813182144R

Supermicro X7DCL-i dual quad core E5410's - 8 cores
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...46&Tpk=X7DCL-i

I would love to know how you make out with those supermicro boards.
I've been eyeing them up for my new unRAID server.

Just a FYI about the 9 SATA ports on the AB9 Pro. They are controlled by two different SATA chip sets. So if you wanted to do a poor man's RAID with this board, you can only use half of the ports per RAID array. If you you want to use the ports for JBOD, then there's no problem.

3 Chipsets, ICH8 I believe (6 ports), SIL3132 (1 internal, 1 external) & JMB363 (2 internal eSata +1 PATA).
The SIL3132 and JMB363 are port multiplier capable. (at least with the hardware I used)

=> What controller are you using? (Clearly it must work well with the Seagate 1.5's) - The server has four Ciprico RC5252-08 controllers in it.
=> How long does a consistency check take? - Don't know yet. Only migrated to production this week. Will tell you next week how long it took.
=> Just for grins, why didn't you do use RAID-6 with such a large array? (soon to be 12 drives) - The Ciprico controllers/software/firmware do not support RAID -6. (yet. Apparently it's in the works).

Thanks => I LIKE the interface VST presents. I may have to give the VST software a shot => if I can find a Ciprico controller at a reasonable cost (~ $150 or so would be nice) that plus a board with 6 ICH10 ports would let me build a 14-drive RAID-5 for a very reasonable price. ... sounds VERY attractive

... but of course that also depends on when the VST software becomes available again !!

Sure I'll be happy to share any info you're looking for.
I'm basicly building these for various purposes/tasks that should address various people's build needs at different budgets.

For the WHS server build I'm using the X7SBA Supermicro board I'd suggested earlier to take advantage of the PCI-X slots for SM SATA cards.
Ironicly the entire WHS build will cost about the same as just one 16 port Hardware raid card and the storage can grow just by adding drives to it.

Don't get me wrong. I have an Areca 1261ML 16 port raid card that I think is absolutely awesome. But it's it's an enterprise raid card. I just don't feel they're nescessary for a home server build.

It's kind of like putting ZR (149+mph) rated tires and always being restricted to driving on highways where you'll never go over 70mph.

Ok I think that I am going to set-up a raid 5 array. I have a few questions though. Above is the parts I have right now. I am think I will get 3 more 750 drives and use the 2 that I have for a total of 5. This is what I need to know.

If I have 5 750's I should get 3 Tb of usable storage right?
If one drive fails I can throw in a new one and it will rebuild right?
Can I add more drives later without having to move all the data to rebuild the array?
I see this card recomended alot:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16815121009
Is this a good card for my motherboard? It would have to go in a PCI slot. Is there maybe a better card. Maybe a PCI-E card would be better. I would have to get a PCI 1X graphics card then.

Thanks

While those PCI-X cards will function in a PCI (133MB/s limit) slot, the I/O will be serverely limited for software Raid 5 application.

Raid 5 is multi disk I/O intensive, so if you're set on the combination of software raid 5 and these cards you might consider looking at using a server motherboard with PCI-X slots.

What O/S are you planning on for the software raid ?

I want to use vista because I will also be doing some HTPC task with this same pc. Guesse I could use a differnt OS and run a different frontend than VMC if that makes this easier. Not really set on software raid but looking for cheap way to use what I have and not have a bunch of drives showing up. Also need some protection against failed drives.

If you're planning on running Vista as the O/S, you should know that Vista doesn't have software raid 5 capability built in. In this case the SuperMicro SATA cards may not be the best choice for you since they just present the system with more SATA drive ports, nothing else. They too have no raid capability on their own.

If I understand right you want to use this system to both store your media as well as to be used as an HTPC. While this is ok, it's not ideal. Drives make noise and require cooling which also makes noise. I'm not so sure you're going to want to hear the fans blowing while you're watching a movie in your living room.

Is it a possibility for you to seperate your storage system from your HTPC ?

Have you considered builing an inexpensive storage server using unraid or WHS ? In which case you don't need to worry about running raid 5.

In most cases you can put together a pretty decent server for less than $500(without the drives).

Hello,

As I follow this thread and wait for some turn key solutions I am wondering what windows server you guys running. I have a copy of small business 03 but have access the server 2008 or home server also. My plan is to build up a Norco case that could hold up to 15 drives?

Thanks for all the great post!

Tyler