$2800 Data Server

[shmithers]

$2800 to spend on a home media server not including drives.
 
If ya got some time to spare want to help me pick some parts?

I'm hoping to have 16-24 bays and not too insanely noisy. I Don't require an optical drive, and I'm thinking something like a 40 or 80Gb SSD for boot drive.

I haven't decided what OS to use, does anyone have suggestions for this also? I'm hoping for something DROBOish (I have many different drives of in all sorts of sizes and I'd love to be able to just have it set up as one big network drive if possible).

I hope this isn't too much to ask, but I'd love to see some different ideas for server set-ups.

Cheers,

[alaricljs]

What OS and do you want any horsepower for doing stuff other than serving data all day?  What sort of data protection in the box? (none, RAID5/6/10/??)  If RAID, do you insist on hardware or will you use the OS?

Start with a Norco 4224 case.  Mobo/cpu/RAM/SATA cards will get determined by the above questions.

[shmithers]

It's purely a data server. No other tasks as far as I can imagine (Maybe one day I'd put Windows Server with Active Directory but I doubt that) . I generally don't trust RAID at all so for mission critical data I do regular backups and everything else non critical I'm not too sure. (Can I use software RAID for a flexible RAID with many different sorts of disks? I've been under the assumption that RAID requires similar disks)

[firestorm]

If it's just a data server, I wouldn't spend too much money on the core hardware (CPU/Mobo/RAM); I'd spend it on fault tolerance if it will always be a data server.  I suppose it depends on what you want to do, but even intense read/writes aren't going to use a lot of CPU or RAM.  If you run something like FreeNAS, you can run it on old POS hardware.  

I'd invest in a 1Gbps network as well, if you don't already have that.

You might consider looking for something that supports iSCSI.  An iSCSI initiator comes with Windows 7, and it's a free add-on for XP and such.  It would allow you to mount a volume in your server as a local disk.  This is vastly different than mapping a drive.  With iSCSI, you have direct access to the disk(s) just as you would if they were installed right in the local machine, so you can partition, format, etc...

I've seen some RAID solutions (hardware and software) that allowed mixing drives, but it is never recommended.  They should at least have the same spindle speed and nearly the same capacity.  You will forfeit the difference in storage capacity on the larger drivers.  You also forfeit performance on faster drivers (i.e. The array will run only as fast as the slower disk.)

[alaricljs]

I generally don't trust RAID at all so for mission critical data I do regular backups and everything else non critical I'm not too sure. (Can I use software RAID for a flexible RAID with many different sorts of disks? I've been under the assumption that RAID requires similar disks)

Think about how much data this is and how long it would take to restore everything.  Is  your time worth that much?  RAID works if you do it right which is why there isn't an enterprise with mission critical data that isn't on a form of RAID.  Standard RAID does require same-sized disks although there are 3rd party package solutions that support dissimilar disks with redundancy.  If you can handle Linux I'd definitely recommend it over Windows for everything that both are capable of doing and of course there's plenty Linux can do that Windows can't.  There's also a Solaris based package called NexentaStor that might work for you if you don't have unix knowledge.  I will admit that I run my server without RAID, however I also have it on a quality UPS and configured such that I get alerted if there is anything remotely flaky going on. I've never gotten pre-failure alarms working on Windows if it wasn't a part of the hardware already.

You might consider looking for something that supports iSCSI.  An iSCSI initiator comes with Windows 7, and it's a free add-on for XP and such.  It would allow you to mount a volume in your server as a local disk.  This is vastly different than mapping a drive.  With iSCSI, you have direct access to the disk(s) just as you would if they were installed right in the local machine, so you can partition, format, etc...

iSCSI is useless for shared storage like a media server.  I've also tested iSCSI vs CIFS (windows shares) and vs NFS.  On a 1Gb network there was no appreciable difference across the board.  There are great things about iSCSI but it rarely fits on a home network.

All that said, you need to be able to run 24 SATA channels which means figuring out a motherboard and controller(s) combination that suits you're performance needs and budget.  SuperMicro has nice 8port cards at ~$130 for 3Gbs SATA, more for the 6G version.  3 Cards gets you to 24 ports.  Unfortunately they are UIO format which is an attempt by SM at vendor lock in, here's a solution:  http://blog.agdunn.net/?p=391

On to a mobo that supports 3x PCIe x8 non-video slots.  I've only done this with server class mobos, so you'll need to look into it.

[kidchunks]

+1 for buying a dedicated raid controller.

I recently built a freenas box with a perc6/i running raid 10 (4x1tb drives+hotspare for 2tb total) and noticed the increase in performance over software raid.

Not saying software raid won't work for what you need. But if you've spent $2800 on the hardware alone, don't skimp out on the raid setup, you will regret it later.

I generally don't trust RAID at all

Thats fine, I don't either. Which is why I also keep the important data backed up to externals and a cloud. Just be sure not to mistake RAID for the all and only backup solution. I've seen many make that mistake and it cost them big.

[alaricljs]

Wow.  I run my Home Media server on an ancient Asus A8N SLI-Deluxe.

3 TB of porn though.

I'm sitting on 6TB, but I haven't gone BD yet...  On the other hand it is running on server class hardware since that same hardware also runs my web/mail/more server.

[alaricljs]

Consumer grade spinning disk is not intended for long term storage, regardless of it's implementation (RAID or otherwise).

Something that will scrub your data will go a long way toward keeping data on consumer grade disks a longer term solution.  I know Linux md and ZFS on Solaris/BSD have scrubbing.  This is one of the benefits of going with RAID.

[kidchunks]

Agreed, to an extent.  It's important to understand what the storage is going to be used for.  Consumer grade spinning disk is not intended for long term storage, regardless of it's implementation (RAID or otherwise).  To make some blanket statement like "I don't trust RAID" is like saying "I don't trust 6 cylinder engines".  Under what circumstances do you not trust them, and how were you using it?  When used for their intended application, with a proper implementation, they would just fine.

Excuse my blank statement without further explaining. I've had a few incedients with some bad 3ware IDE raid controllers few years back when I started testing some deployments (mainly small storage servers, dinosaur IDE drives). It turned out that the controllers themselves were bad (didn't realize until too late) so the trust issue isn't with "RAID" (I should of corrected that before),  but rather the raid controllers. I just had some bad experiences with the ones I purchased sometime ago and that left me feeling edgy even when using the newer controllers (which I think are great!). So again, no issue with RAID levels but from past experiences, raid controllers still leave me cautious.

[alaricljs]

Well, yeah... new anything should be tested first.  How many people are running raid but have never actually kicked the chair out from under it to see if it really works?

[zaerst]

ZFS raid > ALL
Get freenas 8 for OS.
Also make sure a lot of memory and or cache SSD drives.

[zaerst]

Oh yea, currently my setup...

Core i3
Zotac Mini itx
8gb DDR3
6 x 2tb Samsung drives
8gb usb for FreeNAS 8

Works great for serving my media to my HTPC etc.