Ongoing New Server Build (1 Viewer)

[Jacko]

Thought i would pop this build in here for everyone to give opinions on. I've nearly built it and am just waiting on the mobo (on route to me hopefully today ) and processor, ram and graphics card. Ok so components are listed below.

1x Lian Li PC-A16B Aluminium case Full tower in Black
3x Icy Dock MB455 5 x Hotswap SATA
1x Samsung 320GB SATA II 300 7200rpm (system disk)
1x Silverstone Strider ST75F 750W PSU
1x AMD AM2 Athlon 64 Dual Core 6400 (overkill?)
1x Asus M2N32 WS Professional mobo
1x Corsair 4096MB TwinX XMS2 6400 (cheap so went for 4gb)
2x Apaptec 6 port SATA controller PCI-X
5x Seagate 500GB SATA II 300 7200rpm (raid 5)
1x ATi HD 2400 PRO


Ok so this system will have the ability to house 15 hotswap drives over 3 raid 5 arrays, the reason for this is so i have the ability to scale the system to my requirements. Say in 6 months i could have filled the 1.8Tb and want to setup another raid array...well i could either buy 500gb drives or if the price has dropped considerably i may want 750GB or 1000GB disks and could buy 10 disks or even 15 of them and copy the existing data over. So should have flexibility with how i want it configured.

I will try and run windows home server with this system as i want it to keep backups of all systems in the house, i want to stream media to all systems, i want all data to be centralized on one system for easy management and i want to stream DVB-T and DVB-S and S2 around the home. What i need to learn is how this is do-able. I've not been using MP for long but have found it and its plugins very powerful and would like MP to be my complete media solution around the home. I have a system in my study, living room, garage (for when im working on the car) and also spare room. I want all the systems to be able to stream live tv and have the ability to time shift (saving onto the server) and to be able to stream radio and also have access to all stored media with my tv series, and my film and music with all the fan art, album art and imdb info and music lyrics and what have you. What i would like to do is copy all the configuration data from my study pc where i have been using MP to all the other systems as it takes quite a long time to do this will all systems.

I shall keep you posted on my progress and will put some pics up shortly.

Regards
Jacko.

 

[ThaClown]

Whow great stuff man, very very nice...

 

[Gixxer]

looking forward to see the results !!

i have seen that the mobo has 10 SATA + 12 coming from the 2 controllers, is that right? 22 disks in total? so why 15 hotswap?

im starting to get interested in RAID as i have never used it so excuse my ignorance. im trying to learn.

 

[Jacko]

looking forward to see the results !!

i have seen that the mobo has 10 SATA + 12 coming from the 2 controllers, is that right? 22 disks in total? so why 15 hotswap?

im starting to get interested in RAID as i have never used it so excuse my ignorance. im trying to learn.

Erm no real reason for why i've limited myself with only 15 drives, as you have pointed out i have scope for more drives but am limited at the moment with the case as i bought the Lian-Li case cheep and it only has 9 5 1/4 bays and i have used them all with the 3 hotswap bays. I could in future go for a larger case a and more hotswap caddies but this solution at the moment would max out at just over 11Tb of storage space and i can't see me running out just yet so im happy with the current setup. If i do start to run out of space in the future i wouldn't mind getting a MUCH larger case but i would want over 15 5 1/4 bays so i can max out the board using all sata ports and using ide optical drive and so on. But for this im sure i would need massive amounts of power and possibly 2 of them so its stable. Its hard to work out power usages as manufactures are never keen to publish these. With rough guess work i think i should be fine with 15 drives and this setup but i'll find out soon enough i suppose!

 

[Jacko]

Built and running WHS and TVserver

Built and now running tv server although i still need the 500Gb drive and the other adaptec card to go in, getting there tho...

Tv server works and it the latest build; i can scan and find channels.....something i could never do when running it on another system with the same card....only thing is the client install causes me no end of problems like slow to load both MP config and MP itself and causes my MCE remote to stop working with MP, when loading 'tv' im MP it will hang. these and lots of other little niggles has left me no choice but to un-install it but i will perserver and ask some questions in the correct sub-section for some advice on the problem.

Pictures;