Building a File & data server (1 Viewer)

[AIstudio]

Hi Joz,

OK from you comments:

•Mother board: Tyan S5211G2NR i3210, S775, PCI-E (x16), DDR2 ECC/Non-ECC 667/800 MHz, SATA II, SATA RAID, ATX £201.25 Inc VAT
I know it is expensive and that is probably due to the PCIeX slots etc. I do like the Tyan boards and have had several over the years. To put into perspective I built a dual Athlon MP 2.2Ghz system around 8 yrs ago on a Tyan tiger MPX board. This system is still alive today (kids use it now). It runs rings around most of my friends pc's but unfortunately the CPU's are that old they don't have the required instruction sets for modern software etc.
I may change to another Tyan though. Not sure about Gigabyte boards (never used them) used a lot of Asus boards although they are starting to grind on me with all there problems at the moment.

•CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo, E8500, Wolfdale Core, S775, 3.16GHz, 1333MHz, 6MB Cache, 9.5x Multiplier, Retail £156.23 Inc VAT
I understand your comment here and it would save a few ££. To be honest the nest one up is a LOT more ££ and that was the reason I went for this one. I will leave it as is for now

•Memory: 8GB (4x2GB) CorsairXMS2, DDR2 PC2-6400 (800), 240 Pins, Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 4-4-4-12, DHX £111.14 Inc VAT
I understand your comments here. The main reason for a lot of ram is that he may want to run some apps locally on this server. If he has multiple users he may need it. With memory being so cheap at the mo I just plumped for a good 8gb kit so that it is matched. May look into going 667 though

•Raid Controller: Highpoint RocketRaid RR3510LF PCI- E 4 Channel SATAII Raid Controller £321.70 Inc VAT
Looks like a good card with most of the work done on board. Also has support for the larger drives over 1Tb

•Hard Drives Raid x 4: 1TB Western Digital WD1001FALS Caviar Black, SATA 3Gb/s, 7200 rpm, 32MB Cache £83.55 Inc VAT x 4 = £334.20
I also have 4 1TB samsung spinpoints and also 4 500Gb spinpoints. Very quiet and had NO problems whatsoever with them. The WD Black look quite good, and a lot cheaper. Will go with those for now

•OS Solid State Disc: 80GB Intel X25-M, SSDSA2MH080G1, 2.5", SATA 300 MLC SSD, 250MB/s Read 70MB/s Write speed NCQ £285.17 Inc VAT
OK many thanks for saving me there. I don't know much about SSD drives and you have pointed me in the right direction. I know the intel drive above is smaller, but with a lot better controller it should be more than big enough.

•GPU: Palit 9500 GT SUPER, PCI-E 2.0(x16), 800MHz GDDR2, GPU 550MHz, 32 Cores, HDTV/ D-Sub/ DL DVI-I £43.67 Inc VAT
Just that I don't really like on board GPU's much. Never had good experiences with them and like separate. Also the Tyan board don't tend to have the GPU on board. (Some might but I haven't checked)

•PSU: 750W TX Corsair PSU, single 12V rail, quiet & cool 80%+ Eff £100.61 Inc VAT
The original one was 1100W he wont need that so I have gone for one a lot lower, lots of headroom though. I do prefer NOT to stress the PSU too much. I also like the modular corsairs as they are very quiet and have good efficiency. The 750w is a LOT cheaper though


Many thanks for the links to the computer places in Rotterdam area. Scan is UK based (where I live) I have used them for years and always give good service.

I have discussed of site backup with him and he is considering options at the moment so thanks for pointing that out.

quake2rambo

The S5211G2NR has 2 PCI-X slots on board. Do you really need this ?

It is required for future expansion to give better network throughput in the future.

The RocketRaid RR3510LF needs an 8x-PCI-E slot. So you need a mainboard with 1x PCI-E 16x for GPU and 1x 16x/8x PCI-E for your Raid-controller.

Yes the raid does require a x8 slot and the GPU a x16. The above Tyan board has 2 x16 slots so these can be used for the GPU and the Raid card. You can put a x8 card in a x16 slot you know just that the slot will run at x8 and not x16.

I would recommend you a board with built-in GPU, DVI and/ore HDMI-out

I dont want a board with HDMI out etc. Not required at all so a bit of a waste really.

Thanks for the input though. Makes sure I check the comatability

Well it is looking better than the first spec i put together. This really isn't about cost cutting, just putting something together that will be powerful enough to do the job required and expand.

If there are any potential bottleneck areas in the above spec I am all ears. The last thing I want is for my brother to ring me to say " this server is a pain, as soon as there are more than X users trying to access data it stalls and they have to wait etc"

So I will carry on looking into the motherboard and I thank you for your input so far

Hopefully I will nail down the spec over this weekend and my brother can then decide if he buys locally in Rotterdam, or buys from Scan in the UK and ships it over. Not sure which is best under the current climate?? I will leave that for him to look into lol.

Regards

Kev

 

[JorisFRST]

If data is important and sensitive and you want a reasonable uptime ?

Buy from HP or Dell, with a 4hr contract, or if money is an issue a nbd contract !

What happens when your server goes down in 2 years ? And you can't find the parts anymore to fix it...

Also for sensitive information (or important information) Backup to TAPE, daily incremental, weekly full,

store used tapes offline (brother takes them home for instance.)

Server hardware isn't cheap and good performing raid setups are definately not cheap.

Don't go anywhere near software raid, a good hardware raid 5 will be your best choice.

If it's only file server get the cheapest CPU with 2gb of memory available for the model that can handle your storage requirements.

That's my idea ;-)

Forgot to tell that a UPS system (just one of the small APC's) and a double power supply (included in most servers) are a good thing with RAID systems.

 

[AIstudio]

Hi JorisFRST

I wont buy from HP or Dell. Don't like there machines or prices at all. Have you ever bought a replacement power supply for a dell. They are way overpriced rubish, sorry if this seems a little harsh. They change the wires around so that they don't conform to the atx specifications etc and you MUST buy there hardware. You could get a comparable PSU for a dell anywhere for a fraction of the price.

We are looking into tape backup devices at the moment. Any ideas about what to look for on the tape drive backup??

We will stay away from software raid for this. It is only as a second backup though.

You are the second person to say stay away from software raid. I understand it is not good as your primary as they tend to be more of a snapshot raid and don't work on the fly. They are also CPU intensive etc. I do use it on my media center as the data on there never changes. Unless I add some music or a new film. That only gets run once a week.

It is only data file server but it will be used for many users across the glob that can access large data files (cad, catia etc) and have the ability to view the files, alter them and re save them etc. Obviously this will be set up with rights as some files will be read only etc.

What is the benefit of RAID 5 over RAID 10 etc. Is RAID 5 the best solution?? I know it gives good space from the drives in the raid and can also have good throughput. Obviously RAID1 will be faster but more expensive on the drives for less usable space.

I am not to worried about the server going down or anything as I will make sure there is a spare brand new hard drive around. As long as the raid card doesn't go down. Even so in 2 yrs I think this card will still be available. and it will stay with the raid array even if a new machine was built in a few years.

Many thanks for the info though

Regards

Kev

 

[joz]

About RAID:

RAID5 = Highest CPU usage, slower writes, faster reads (comparable to RAID-1). 2/3 of capacity available. If 1/3 of the drives fail you can still get data back. minimum of 3 drives
RAID10 = Benefits of both worlds. RAID-0 for performance and RAID-1 for safety. Only 1/2 of the capacity is available though. If 1/2 of the drives fail you can still get data back. minimum of 4 drives
RAID1 = Safety first. Read/writes are comparable to that of a single drive although reads might be a little quicker. 1/2 of capacity available. If 1/2 of the drives fail you can still get data back. minimum of 2 drives
RAID0 = Performance first, safety last. 1 drive failing means losing all the data. full capacity available.minimum of 2 drives

So I say RAID-1 is the best solution, Like I said before. Since money does not seem to be a real dealbreaker here. RAID-1 is just the best bet for safety which is the concern here. You do not need to think about RAID 10 I think because internet performance will outweigh HD performance.
If you're going for RAID-1 then I'm not as sure that you'd really need the RAID card. Because RAID-1 is just writing the same data twice instead of once, doesn't take any extra processing power or caching for that mather. Although write cache is always nice to have, will make HDs faster.

p.s.
I think you're basing too much on your own personal experiences. I would read more reviews and stuff if I were you, why I think this way;
You discard onboard GPU because you had bad experiences,
You discard onboard RAID/SATA controllers for the same deal

I do not have those experiences myself with the 2 above and I've been building/installing quite a lot of PCs.

 

[JorisFRST]

RAID 1 you could use the onboard controller.

RAID 5 you need a card (well, i have a raid5 on an onboard one too, but it's pure luck if it happens to work well)

RAID10 you also need a card, it's the fastest, but it's way too expensive (well, for your needs, i won't say that when it's for a database systems with 3000+ users ;-))

As you said you needed alot of storage i would prefer raid5 over raid1, that's the only reason really.

And the issue about the power supplies in branded servers, that's the point, they're branded servers, you buy them with 4 or 5 year warranty and write them off the books in the same time... No headaches, no worries, you know what it will cost you over those years beforehand.

Another good thing about raid 5 is you're not limited to 3 disks (depending on the controller).

You could put 4 1TB disks in raid5 and you'd have almost 3Tb available for storage.

The more storage you need the more expensive raid1 becomes.

on tape backups:
We tend to buy the same as the server vendor, so we never have the finger pointing issue when something breaks ;-)
But most of the time in the rebranded box sits an ibm drive.
It all depends how much you want to be backed up daily against weekly, you could do with a 1 tape drive,
and split up the full backup over a few nights. It's more about managing and keeping track of the tapes then anything else really.

 

[AIstudio]

Hi Joz,

Thank you for clearing the raid situation.
I think I have done to much reading at the moment and everything is getting fuzzy lol.

I will look at using RAID5 and tape backup off site then for this situation

Hi JorisFRST

I know what you mean and I do appreciate that companies just do not build machines but buy them. In this case it is more of an in between situation. My brother (a consultant) has just completed his first year self employed and is still in his early years as a company. I think he would prefer me to build this and maybe buy machines in the future?? who knows.

Many thanks

Regards

Kev





Regards

Kev

 

[JorisFRST]

And just buy a board with integrated intel graphics, it's more then good enough for a server system.

You want your money to go somewhere else ;-)

 

[AIstudio]

JorisFRST

Ok will look at a 775 board with integrated and see what is around. Many thanks for the info

Regards

Kev