Ongoing The Milhouse Media Server (1 Viewer)

[milhouse]

I've gone ahead and ordered the parts for a new server for the basement, and thought I'd detail it all here. Had a hard time researching all these pieces, so I wanted the pulled together in one spot in case it'll actually help someone else some day.

Why a new server?
My current setup is

• HTPC in living room
• HTPC in bedroom
• Mediaserve in basement
• Mediaserve2 in basement

Each media server is an older Dell minitower with an 80GB system drive, and 4*500GB SATA drives on a cheap SATA controller card. The 4 500GB drives are in RAID5 configuration (software, Windows 2003 server). One server is full, the second is about halfway. The main driver for the new setup is that I am out of space for additional hard drives. I am several months out from needing them, but want to be ready so I don't have to buy the system AND the drives at once.

My options, then, were to add a THIRD computer to act as a server, or buy a new one, move the 8 500GB drives into it, and make sure I've got room to grow. I went with the second option. Not for power savings so much as sanity. I hate periodically logging in to each server to make sure the drives are good, updates are installed, etc.


How to build one big enough to grow, when I've already got 8 storage drives?
After a fair amount of research, I settled on a Cooler Master Stacker STC-T01-UWK for the case. This monster has ELEVEN 5.25 bays down the front. If I remove the power/reset/ports in the top bay, I can stretch it to TWELVE.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119039

To get the most hard drive space crammed into the 12 bays, I am using four 5-in-3 SATA backplanes. In the Stacker feedback on newegg, someelse had already done this, so I know they'll fit. This gives space for TWENTY hot swap drives in one case. Nice.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817121405

The hard part of planning for 20 hard drives is the controller. A hardware raid controller with this many ports costs a FORTUNE. And I wanted software raid, anyway. (If the RAID controller dies, I have to get another one exactly like the first. Too risky for me.) I found an 8-port SATA controller for PCI-X that should do the trick - and be faster than the cheap Rosewill 4-port PCI ones, too. So two of these cards:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815121009

PCI-X is a little hard to find. Let alone two ports. So I had to go to a server-class motherboard. 2 PCI-X slots, and 6 SATA ports. That gives me 22 ports for 20 drives.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131134

This motherboard also drove my decision for an Opteron and ECC memory. 2.5 GHz dual core (that I will probably under-clock to save power) and 2GB of ECC memory.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819105018
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820134113

I figure that as long as I am using a server-class setup, I'd go with RAID 1 (mirroring) for the system drives. So 2 160GB drives for that.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136075

And finally, two 500W power supplies. The case has room for two, and to be blunt, 2 smaller power supplies is a lot cheaper than one big one.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817171018


When all is said and done, I'll have room for 20 drives, 10 already in the case. All ready for 10 more, set up for power and controllers. Won't even have to open the case when I upgrade. (At that time, I'll buy either 8 * 500 or 4 * 1000, copy all the data over to the new array, and re-build my current 8 into one array instead of two.)

Will posts pictures of the build process. The delivery guy starts delivery Thursday, and will hopefully have it all here by the weekend. Fun!

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

See you when you have finished setting this beast up.

Hoping everything goes according to plan, no bent pins, the worst nightmare.

 

[charli181]

and who said "why would you need 1GB of storage"?....

 

[hsiegeln]

Hi,

thanks for posting. I am facing to build something like this by the end of year. This is a perfect shopping list!
Have you checked out FreeNAS for the OS, or which OS are you gonna use?

 

[milhouse]

I have considered FreeNAS and other various linux distros, as well as unRAID. They are all more flexible than software raid in Windows Server 2003 - especially the ability for online capacity expansion. I really want OCE, but can't do it.

I have also considered WHS, but to get any redundancy I would have to mirror everything. So in my case, RAID 5 is more efficient.

However, I am sticking with Windows Server 2003 for two main reasons:
1) I have to support this thing, and I am far more comfortable in Windows than Linux on the off chance I have to get under the covers to fix something.
2) This box runs some web server software, such as a bulletin board for my wife's horse barn. Again, I am much more comfortable with IIS than Apache (even though the web software will run on Apache under Linux).

 

[mzemina]

I have a WHS (Windows Home Server) and FreeNAS computers. I do like some of the features in WHS but you need a fairly powerful computer to even start-up the OS (based on Windows Server 2003) but after I got FreeNAS up and running I really like it! The only things that are missing (from my standpoint) from FreeNAS are email (or net) notification of errors and quotas - but really they aren't in WHS either. For the price (cheaper computer and OS) - I recommend FreeNAS, the administration is via web browser. Yes it is based on BSD but that is hidden just pop in a CD to install and the setup was easy. Plus I have web servers (I like linux for admin tasks) on other computers.

 

[milhouse]

Let me take a closer look at FreeNAS. I might be able to clear off my half-full RAID set by moving the files around the network, and rebuild on FreeNAS. Have to do the math.

That is very disappointing that e-mail notification of drive failures isn't an option. That's the main thing I dislike about Windows Server 2003. Seems like an obvious thing to have for a feature...

I'll see what I can learn about FreeNAS between now and friday and make a decision then.

Thanks for the input-
milhouse

 

[Dubyahjay]

I still dont understand why my unRaid post hasnt garnered more attention. Everyone deserves to at least check the OS out. I have already been through the other alternatives including freeNAs and software raid in linux. Maybe it just fits my needs perfectly though and not others.

 

[milhouse]

For me, unRAID looked very nice, except one MAJOR problem. unRAID maxes out at 16 drives - even at the Pro version. I will have an 18 drive array, plus two more for system.

If I was planning for 16 or fewer drives, I think I would have gone for the unRAID solution. It seemed to do everything I needed, and I really liked that individual files don't get striped across disks, so if the array did go back it would still be mostly recoverable.

 

[Dubyahjay]

Whats the total storage capacity you are looking for?

unRaid will give you up to 15 tb...

Granted, you will not be able to have all 18 drives in there, but you can have a couple as replacement drives in case of crash. Unless of course you are looking for a storage capacity greater than 15tbs...... good lord! Have we gotten to that point already? (To think i still brag about my first TB )