20TB fileserver (3 Viewers)

[funkstar]

What do you use for controller cards?

I have a server with 8x 1.5TB disks in RAID-5 and 8x 1TB disks in RAID-5, running on two Dell PERC 5/i's. Eventually this will be migrated a a PERC 6/i with a SAS expander and hopefully a jump up to 20 SATA disks. The PERC 6/i will let me use RAID-6, giving me a little more confidence that I'm not going to loose the array. Also, not being limited to 8 disks in an array will be great, means I can just add another 4 1.5TB drives to my MP data volume. The other array volume handles all the other storage on my network.

I can get 200MB/sec+ transfers between arrays, and about 70MB/sec from my desktop to my server over a single gigabit connection.

 

[karbl058]

Impressive! How much did it all cost?

 

[allanp81]

It says I think, $6000 (AUS) or so.

 

[disaster123]

AW: 20TB fileserver

I'm with you ;-)

# df -h
Filesystem                 Size  Used  Avail Use%
/dev/mapper/sdb1      19T   7.7T   11T  43%

 

[u095538]

How much of the 20Tb have you used up? What sort of transfer rates do you get? I'm assuming you have gigabit networking as well?

Yep, networking is Gigabit.

I've only populated 13 of the 20 drive bays with 1TB disks. It's a RAID 6 with 1 hot spare. So I've got 10TB.

Here's a breakdown for those who want more info:
A RAID 6 array uses two disks worth of data for parity (so I can have two drive failures and not loose any data), 11TB left.
I've got one disk set to a hot spare, so if a disk dies it'll rebuild straight away. So that leaves 10TB.

I've only used 6TB so far. Here's Windows XP properties of the drive

Excellent setup!

How are you saving your movies? .iso backups? I've been having the hardest time getting subtitles to work on and off as seen in your video. Recently I've been ripping without subs and only keeping forced subs, sucks but it works for now.

All the movies are either Xvid (standard def), or x264 (high def). I re-encode everything (no .iso's). I keep everything English, so for audio, the most tracks I've seen are:
The main feature
Visually impaired ("fireworks appear above the sony logo. The camera pans out.." etc...)
Director's commentary
Sometimes more commentary tracks (actor's commentary etc..)

All English subs are kept, and the video is resized down to 720p. I playback on a 52" telly so 720p is just fine I reckon. There are exceptions of course, movies like Avatar I keep the res at its original 1080.

I OCR all subs into the text based format .srt, and mux it all into the MKV container. As far as final file size and bitrate go. I just follow the "scene rules". That way everything looks just as good as the stuff people download, which looks fine I reckon: Scene rules

Very cool. How does it go on electricity usage?

I don't know! I'd love to find out. How do I measure something like that? Every computer in the house (except the server) goes to sleep. The disks do spin-down on the server when not in use; a setting on the HDD controller (RAID) card.

Just what I was not supposed to see... Been planning something similar for about a year now but never really got that balance of needs/expand/price right. Your solution looks very promising to what I have for demands and my wallet is starting to glow to be used... My Acer Easy-store suddenly looks very small and in need for an upgrade!

Very impressive!

If you do not mind me asking, but what OS do you run, RAID level and do you have any specific software to get everything working smoothly or is it just Windows + Mediaportal?

It's 'Windows Home Server', which is actually a slightly edited Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1. It's not great at all and I would swap it in a heartbeat for "FreeNAS" were it not for Media Portal's TV Server.

I've looked into Myth and apparently MythBackend (the server part, of a multi-seat Myth setup) doesn't run well on FreeBSD, which is the Linux OS used by FreeNAS. I might switch over one day, I'd love to see what Myth has to offer, but for the moment, everything is working so...

RAID level is 6.

As far as getting everything running smoothly, there's no special software, just determination. My advice to anyone having stability issues would be the following tips:

> Treat your server as a server. That means no casual browsing, no facebook, no email, no Office, etc.. Make sure you tell your people (girlfriend for me, kids for others) that too. Restrict access if people aren't playing by the rules.
> Go through and, one by one, investigate every error in your event manager logs, until you are satisfied.
> When everything is rock solid stable, don't update shit unless you have to, or want to. Then, backup, and proceed to do one operation at a time. The best way to backup is to take a quick image with CloneZilla. You can it up boot off USB, and quickly snapshot the OS disk.
> Still can't get stability? Update the mobo drivers
> STILL can't get stability? Have you tried Linux yet?

What do you use for controller cards?

I have a server with 8x 1.5TB disks in RAID-5 and 8x 1TB disks in RAID-5, running on two Dell PERC 5/i's. Eventually this will be migrated a a PERC 6/i with a SAS expander and hopefully a jump up to 20 SATA disks. The PERC 6/i will let me use RAID-6, giving me a little more confidence that I'm not going to loose the array. Also, not being limited to 8 disks in an array will be great, means I can just add another 4 1.5TB drives to my MP data volume. The other array volume handles all the other storage on my network.

I can get 200MB/sec+ transfers between arrays, and about 70MB/sec from my desktop to my server over a single gigabit connection.

"I have a server with 8x 1.5TB disks in RAID-5 and 8x 1TB disks in RAID-5"
That's 17.5TB!

"..means I can just add another 4 1.5TB drives to my MP data volume. The other array volume handles all the other storage on my network.

I can get 200MB/sec+ transfers between arrays, and about 70MB/sec from my desktop to my server over a single gigabit connection."

Holy crap your house is from TRON.

Impressive! How much did it all cost?

Too much, about four grand :|

I was a noob when I built it too, I could do it for probably half that now.

It says I think, $6000 (AUS) or so.

Wait, what?

I'm with you ;-)

# df -h
Filesystem                 Size  Used  Avail Use%
/dev/mapper/sdb1      19T   7.7T   11T  43%

lol, awesome! What distro are you using? FreeNAS?
/dev/mapper/ <--mapper?

++++++++++++++++++++++

Thanks for all the "awesome" and other such comments guys. It's appreciated.

 

[disaster123]

AW: 20TB fileserver

Ubuntu Server LTS in this case

 

[u095538]

Re: AW: 20TB fileserver

Ubuntu Server LTS in this case

Cool! Is it mainly a file and print server? Any particular reason why it's Ubuntu Server, instead of, say, FreeNAS? Do you just dedicate a samba share for your MP server to use? Have you tried Myth before?

 

[ejtje]

Oeps

 

[u095538]

Oeps

Opera estate primary school?

 

[trekkiedj]

Thought i would chime in here. Heres my server info for those who are interested.