Building a new server

[darunium]

Hi All,

I'm building a new server for my (small small) company, we just need it for communal data storage and access, so HDD capacity is my primary concern. I just wanted to throw this out there to see if anyone has any suggestions:

• 
  SB:
• Intel Core i5-2500K - $224.99
• ASUS P8P67 (REV 3.0) $154.99
  
  OR lynnfield:
• ASUS P7P55D-E Pro $179.99
• Intel Core i5-760 $209.99

• LIAN LI PC-A71F Black Aluminum ATX Full Tower Computer Case $199.99
• XFX Radeon HD 5750 1GB - $109.99
• CORSAIR 750TX 750W $109.99
• G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) DDR3 1600 $49.99
• 6x HITACHI Deskstar 2TB 7200 RPM $719.94
• Tuniq Tower 120 $59.99

It seems like SB is the same price as lynnfield so I suppose I should just go with the latest generation. It's too bad they don't have Intel HD on the P67 chipset, then I could forgo the graphics card. I looked into getting an H67 but all the boards I could find with sufficient SATA were microATX, plus the extra PCIe slots that tend to come on the P67 boards might be nice for future expansion (SATA cards and such)

 

[Blain]

I'd suggest a pre-built model and add your own raid version HDs.
Samsung F3R... WD RE4... Seagate Constellation ES

 

[VirtualLarry]

5750? For a storage server? What, are you going to play games on the storage server after-hours? Because, aside from the HDs, what you listed OP is more like a gaming rig build.

Here's a better build.
Athena Power CA-601YW80 Yellow SECC 1.0mm Steel ATX Full Tower Computer Case V2.92 EPS 800W Active PFC Power Supply
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16811192240

I went looking for the "big" Chieftec Dragon/Chenbro case, but this is what's left in stock. It's a medium-sized case in this style. The one I have has 6 5.25" bays, six internal 3.5" bays, and a floppy bay. This one only has 4 5.25" bays, and six internal 3.5" bays, of which two are also external floppy bays. (Either/or)
Also includes an 800W PSU.

Yes, it's yellow, deal with it. To that, you add:

SUPERMICRO CSE-M35T-1B Black 5x 3.5" Hot-swap SATA Hard Disk Drive Trays
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-405-_-Product

This will give you a total HD storage capacity of 11 drives. With an additional 5.25" left for a DVD burner.

SUPERMICRO AOC-SASLP-MV8 PCI Express x4 Low Profile SAS SAS RAID Controller
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-358-_-Product

GIGABYTE GA-H61M-D2P-B3 LGA 1155 Intel H61 Intel Motherboard
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-482-_-Product

In a combo with a Core i3-2100 for $20 cheaper
http://www.newegg.com/Product/ComboD...t=Combo.622953

Grab some DDR3, any 1.5V DDR3 will do. 4GB or more. (Only two slots for RAM on that motherboard.)

So between the 4 SATA on the motherboard, and the 8 SATA on the controller card, that gives you 12 drive ports.

Of course, no gaming on this rig, since you would be using the onboard video on the Core i3-2100 chip.

Edit: Hitachi 2TB HDs are fine, I just picked up 8 for my own storage server I'm building.

Edit: As for your original build, the Tuniq Tower 120 doesn't have 1155 mounting brackets, I don't think. At least mine dont. There is a newer version of the Tuniq Tower that does.

 

[COPOHawk]

That is a gaming build...not a server. You need to stop reading the forums for the best "monkeyspank" parts collection

1. Way too much horsepower for a server...and you don't need a Tuniq tower unless you are overclocking.

2. Sandy Bridge? Really? Way overkill. Think cheaper and less power consumption.

3. Also case and video card are overkill.

 

[darunium]

Thanks for the advice! I used to build gaming rigs as a job on the side, so that's where my mind's at, and hence why I'm new to thinking about a server.

I figured that I would have cheaper options looking at servers, but frankly I couldn't find any chipset that gave me more SATA ports at lower cost. It's absolutely true we don't need an i5 or the HD5750, I was thinking that when I was first looking for parts, but I've had trouble figuring out the best of the cheaper options, I'm just not familiar with what's out there.

The i3-2100 though will save us a hundred bucks and draws a lower power, but I'm under budget as is so idk.

It would be nice to minimize the video card; as I mentioned before I'd rather go H61/H67 so I can go without a video card entirely, the problem was the SATA connection availability - the Intel controller can handle the same number of connections as on the P67, but the boards themselves tend to come with fewer (well, they tend to come with fewer 3rd party connections)

The SATA controller suggestion is a good one, but I do have a concern, can I rely on those cards? They vary greatly in price, with the higher end ones not making it worth it, and the low-end ones not inspiring a lot of faith. I think I'd be more comfortable trusting the Intel controller on the P67 (and a few Marvell around isn't so bad) and have to deal with a bigger case and more expensive Mainboard. The cheapest 4x SATA controller I found on Newegg was >$200. I don't really know what going SAS instead would entail.

I should mention that I don't at least initially intend to put any redundancy between drives; everything will be backed up nightly offsite. This is just a replacement for people's personal drives.

That said, since I get the same number of Intel-controlled connections with H67, going with H67 and getting a controller card with a 3rd party controller for more slots might be a fine idea.

As for the case, I need at least 8, preferably more 3.5" slots. Why did I go with the Lian Li? one reason: 10 internal 3.5" bays and nice and roomy inside, easy to work in and mess with stuff. The excess 5.25" bays are totally worthless though, unless I use the suggested bay replacement - those 5x3.5" hot-swap trays suggestion is great, it means I can get away with something smaller, I hate spending a hundred bucks on something so simple though.

Can't do yellow I'm afraid, not professional enough hah.



I'll take your suggestions (thanks!) and dig around a bit with your ideas in mind:

• maybe using the 3x5.25"-> 5x3.25" replacement to go with a smaller case, doesn't save any money though.
• picking up the H61 and using a 3rd party controller for the SATA connections I need as suggested. I'm still a bit uncomfortable with that, so I'll prolly stick with a cheap P67 board and a low end graphics card - does anyone have a particular cheap, low power graphics card that they would recommend? I'm not familiar with them.
• I'll prolly stick to sandybridge or lynnfield, if I go i3 that saves $100 and brings the power consumption down to 65W, so that might be the way to go.

So I'll come back with some changes. Two lingering questions are: 1) the video card suggestion I just mentioned and 2) how should I budget PSU requirements? I figure that each HDD will prolly run <10W when operational, but say more in the 30-40W range during spin-up, so I'll budget 40W/HDD to be safe. Then I figured that 200W should be ample for the mainboard/CPU/Memory/graphics card, which puts me in the 600W area, 750W to be safe and account for whatever we might put in there in the future.

Thanks for the advice

 

[Jeff7181]

Use integrated video. Your power estimates are way high. A quality 450-500 watt PSU should be more than adequate.

Where I work, we use HP servers and we have several DL360's with twin quad core Xeons, anywhere from 12 to 48 GB of RAM and 2-6 15k SAS drives. They have 460 watt power supplies.

Actually, after rereading your posts, skip the server all together and use a cheap NAS device.

 

[VirtualLarry]

HDs take 20-25W to spinup, I think.

 

[darunium]

Use integrated video. Your power estimates are way high. A quality 450-500 watt PSU should be more than adequate.

Where I work, we use HP servers and we have several DL360's with twin quad core Xeons, anywhere from 12 to 48 GB of RAM and 2-6 15k SAS drives. They have 460 watt power supplies.

Actually, after rereading your posts, skip the server all together and use a cheap NAS device.

thanks.

Is there a particular NAS brand or spec you would recommend? They vary widely in price. I don't have a lot of faith in netgear, and Cisco's systems are super expensive. There's a lot of brands like synology, qnap, and buffalo that I've never heard of. Seagate might be OK though, I've never had a barracuda die (although many have)

 

[Jeff7181]

A friend recommended Synology. I don't have personal experience with them, but I trust his opinion.

 

[Broheim]

OP, just get a NAS, anything else would be overkill.

+1 on synology, I have one myself and it was so easy and painless to setup and use, never had a problem but make sure you don't use green drives.

not sure exactly sure what your budget and needs are, but they have something in every pricerange.
http://www.synology.com/enu/products/

 

[mfenn]

A friend recommended Synology. I don't have personal experience with them, but I trust his opinion.

QNAP is also good.

EDIT: OP, what's you budget? It may still be useful to have a real server if you want to integrate into an AD environment.

 

[Jeff7181]

QNAP is also good.

EDIT: OP, what's you budget? It may still be useful to have a real server if you want to integrate into an AD environment.

Even if not now, that were to become necessary in the future, you can either transfer the files to a server to host them and then back them up to the NAS device. Or only allow the server to access the NAS device, and then just use the server to present the share to clients. Either way, I don't see the NAS device being a bad idea.

 

[Lifted]

Definitely NAS. Synology makes good devices. Server is overkill for simple file sharing, especially when there is no domain/directory involved.

 

[fffblackmage]

Another +1 for Synology. Haven't had one myself, but I've heard really good things about them from a co-worker.

 

[Paperlantern]

Definitely NAS. Synology makes good devices. Server is overkill for simple file sharing, especially when there is no domain/directory involved.

Yes but could there be? You say small small, but is there any possibility you could grow within the lifetime of this server (3ish years?). Having a domain can help as you hire new people. If not, definitely go NAS.

If you do go server, the suggestion of the newegg build with the yellow case is exactly what I did with my physical server, though not with that exact case, just one similar to it. I love that style for some reason for servers. Yes it is yellow, but at least you wont misplace it? Heh. I love those five and a quarter bay drive cages for hard drives. Never buy video card for a server if the board has on board, 99.99% of the time you wont be looking at the server from the console anyway, a 4MB video card is enough to run RDP. Let us know which way you go.

 

[Jeff7181]

Why are people talking about this as if NAS and an AD domain are mutually exclusive?

 

[darunium]

Thanks! My budget is $2000. It looks like NAS is the way to go as long as I can find one (it seems like synology is the most highly recommended) that is cheap enough to make it worth it over building.

On that note, Synology has cheaper 4-bay options: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822108066

As well as more expensive ones:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822108059

And some in the middle:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822108050

The more expensive option doesn't seem worth it, since for two of them to get the same capacity as the homebuilt that's near $1300, plus $700 for the HDDs and we're at the same place in price. The cheapest options on the other hand give me a $500 savings over the homebuilt, so that becomes more worth it.

What questions should I ask myself in choosing between them?

It seems like besides a variety of software features like email notifications and automatic backups and such that I don't need, the main difference is the processor, with the more expensive model coming with an Intel Atom dual core and the others with some nameless processor.

With any of these systems, can I treat them exactly as a remote drive from another computer and back them up to online services via a client like that? Or would I have to do anything from the NAS itself?

Thanks for the advice.

 

[Blain]

Provantage...
1 - Synology DiskStation DS411+
4 - Samsung 1TB F3R enterprise drives
RAID 6

= Sub-$1000 (shipped), GOODNESS

Add a good AVR UPS to that and you've got some nice reliable storage for way less than $2000.

 

[darunium]

So as a bit of a test I tried a new homebuilt model, an Asus H67 board that actually has 6 SATA connections (incl. 2xSATA2), an i3-2100, stock cooler, 2x2GB DDR3, either Antec 300 or Lian Li PC-K7B if I wanna spend $30 more, as cheap as I can get reliable PSU (sticking to ocz, antec, and corsair, and I'd rather deal with only a single rail, that left me with just the corsair CX in the 400W range, but the reviews were junk and the 650W TX is only $20 more with very reliable reviews (and I've had great experience with TX/HX in the past), so for now I figure on that despite the excess power).

With windows 7 and all the little bits here and there that comes to $600, with 5 SATA connections available; given that we get an actual computer for that, it might still be worth going that route over the NAS, which at best is only $200 cheaper for 4xSATA (and I don't look forward to trying to deal with an NAS interface, I can only assume its not far off from a router experience :-( )

 

[darunium]

Provantage...
1 - Synology DiskStation DS411+
4 - Samsung 1TB F3R enterprise drives
RAID 6

= Sub-$1000 (shipped), GOODNESS

Add a good AVR UPS to that and you've got some nice reliable storage for way less than $2000.

Thanks Blain! Unfortunately we're looking for a target of 12TB of disk space, so I'm pretty stuck on 2TB drives (although newegg has a sale right now on 3TB drives, so I may pick 4 of those up instead).

 

[heymrdj]

If you're building your own here's an excellent way. A Norco 4020/4220 chassis (4u, 20/24 SAS/SATA hostswap HD bays). Get a Atom 330 mainboard with a PCI-E x16 slot (the processor is already on the board). Add 1GB of RAM (you'll probably just be running some linux distro on here). And finally a RAID card (a good areca that will cover all 24 ports will cost about 12-1500 though so you'll have to decide if you want to spend more to have the ability to add all the ports). With that you can fill up to 72TB in that chassis.

Of course another way to do it is just to buy a premade NAS. I do like Provantage (their multi u chassis, not those diskstations, way to expensive for a box holding a few hard drives). The software is great to work with and it really makes it easy layout your disks instead of having to go through an OS.

 

[ncalipari]

If you have a bit of knowledge of linux and if you want keep the price/GB and cost of maintenace, while keeping performances up your best bet is a home built system.

If your need is just storage, with maximum performance, reliability and aviability then try this build:

XION Predator: 75 $

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-036-_-Product

SAPPHIRE PURE Fusion Mini E350: 139 $

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-019-_-Product


SUPERMICRO AOC-SASLP-MV8 PCI Express x4 Low Profile SAS SAS RAID Controller: 110 $

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-358-_-Product

CORSAIR Builder Series CX430: 45 $

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-017-_-Product

Corsair XMS 8GB: 90$

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-262-_-Product


9 X Caviar green 2TB (or disks of your choice) : 720 $

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-514-_-Product


Total: 1179$, 18 TB of space, 66$/TB, 40W peak without disks. Try to beat this

If you want to spend a little more, to increase reliability, I would use an CoolerMaster Haf 922 case, with this:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...o%20hot%20swap

A few considerations:

You would have 9 SATA ports, thus ideal would be gorups of 3 disks in raid 5, with a total capacity of 12 TB. Obviously since you have a lot of spare CPU raid should be software.

Raid 5 is a bit slow on small random writes, thus you have two choice, depending on how much hardcore you are:

1) You make a 6 gb ramdisk, to buffer writes, and you syncronize it with disks lazily. Obviously a PSU is mandatory.

2) You modify this file in linux: /sys/block/md/stripe_cache_size to 32768

This file modify the number of Raid 5/6 writes that can be held in memory, not the size.

And that is why I used 8 gb of ram.

With this trick, performance wise you'll be close to a raid 10 of 7200 rpm disks, but at a fraction of cost and power. Ideal for a 24/7 setup.

With your budget You could build two of this in a mirrroring setup for enterprise-grade reliability

Obviously with this setup you have to configure everything, unlike with synology which is ready out of the box, but:

1) You have unlimited flexibility. For example you could use the GPGPU to encrypt all the data with a 1024 bit key without performance degradation.

2) You save a lot of money, power-wise, performance-wise, scalabitlity-wise.

3) No vendor lock-in

 

[mfenn]

Why are people talking about this as if NAS and an AD domain are mutually exclusive?

They're not, but integrating a Windows Server is much easier than fiddling with vendor-specific AD "client" implementation.

 

[mfenn]

So as a bit of a test I tried a new homebuilt model, an Asus H67 board that actually has 6 SATA connections (incl. 2xSATA2), an i3-2100, stock cooler, 2x2GB DDR3, either Antec 300 or Lian Li PC-K7B if I wanna spend $30 more, as cheap as I can get reliable PSU (sticking to ocz, antec, and corsair, and I'd rather deal with only a single rail, that left me with just the corsair CX in the 400W range, but the reviews were junk and the 650W TX is only $20 more with very reliable reviews (and I've had great experience with TX/HX in the past), so for now I figure on that despite the excess power).

With windows 7 and all the little bits here and there that comes to $600, with 5 SATA connections available; given that we get an actual computer for that, it might still be worth going that route over the NAS, which at best is only $200 cheaper for 4xSATA (and I don't look forward to trying to deal with an NAS interface, I can only assume its not far off from a router experience :-( )

You're correct, most give you a router-ish web interface, though some also have a "thick" client as well.

I do think that getting a "real" computer will serve you better in the long run, especially since you have expressed interest in doing cloud-based backups. With a server, you could just run the backup client on the server itself instead of having to worry about having another machine do it.

One thing though, you might want to buy a copy of Windows Server 2008 R2 instead of Windows 7. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think that there is still a limitation on the number of concurrent clients for shares hosted on Windows 7. Plus Server lets you do cool things like distributed file system (so you can add more servers) and quotas.

 

[Paperlantern]

You're correct, most give you a router-ish web interface, though some also have a "thick" client as well.

I do think that getting a "real" computer will serve you better in the long run, especially since you have expressed interest in doing cloud-based backups. With a server, you could just run the backup client on the server itself instead of having to worry about having another machine do it.

One thing though, you might want to buy a copy of Windows Server 2008 R2 instead of Windows 7. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think that there is still a limitation on the number of concurrent clients for shares hosted on Windows 7. Plus Server lets you do cool things like distributed file system (so you can add more servers) and quotas.

MFenn is right, 2008 R2 would be a much better choice out of the gate. If/When you do grow down the road, the versatility it provides will be a godsend.