Building Media Server (video streaming)

TheMightyDude · 13 Mar 2011 at 02:49

Hello All

Its been a while since I have last been here and where my NAS box is starting to become full and reaching the max limits of the unit, so I was thinking of building a Media System to stream the movies that I have to Tv's around my house.
I have the following spare MOBO and CPU that I was thinking of using but couldn't find any info on the max storage that board supported.

I was thinking of using a Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD3R (rev: 1.0) along with an Intel i7 920 (2.667Ghz) and will be running a 64bit Linux OS along with a custom written miniDLNA application.

I was hoping to use 7 2TB drives (6 as raid 5 for the media) and the other for the OS and database for the list of movies etc.
I know this sounds a bit over board but I just don't want to have to redo the array everytime I need to add another drive.

I will prob also use between 4Gb to 8GB of Ram.
And I have a spare 850W PSU here some place.

So my questions are:
1: Is there a max limit that this mobo can use?
2: Is there a max limit that the RAID 5 can use?

Thanks in advance.
Paul

rgritchie · 13 Mar 2011 at 07:41

RAID 5 has a max of 6 drives on this mobo. Make sure you put the OS drive on the Marvell or Gigabyte Sata sonnectors

TheMightyDude · 13 Mar 2011 at 14:26

rgritchie said:
RAID 5 has a max of 6 drives on this mobo. Make sure you put the OS drive on the Marvell or Gigabyte Sata sonnectors

Yeah thats why I said (6 as raid 5 for the media)

Ive built PC's since the Intel 80386 (i.e. i386) days, but just not a system that is to use a storage of this size.

I was just wondering if there was a max storage size that either RAID5 or this mobo can support.
TBH, I think I should be fine with the mobo but may have an issue with RAID 5.
I have read that a lot of RAID Controllers only supporting drives upto 1TB and a max array size of 2TB, so I may have an issue.

vertica · 13 Mar 2011 at 14:38

Thoughts:

The CPU/RAM/PSU are massive overkill - Possibly looking at selling them and buying more efficient/less powerful hardware + ££ for more media

The mobo is also overkill, you could again sell and go for a smaller mobo compatible with whatever you get above, SATA expansion cards can be had relatively cheaply if you'd be concerned at the lack of ports on smaller boards.

As you are using linux the mobo's RAID facilities are less of an issue, as you can create a software RAID from the OS. I suspect you could span across the Intel, marval and gigabyte controllers on your UD3 if you tried! This also gets round any motherboard limitations in terms of RAID sizes.

AFAIK it is single HDDs above 2.2TB that some mobos don't like. So you should be fine using 2TB disks.

TheMightyDude · 13 Mar 2011 at 16:49

vertica said:
Thoughts:

The CPU/RAM/PSU are massive overkill - Possibly looking at selling them and buying more efficient/less powerful hardware + ££ for more media
The mobo is also overkill, you could again sell and go for a smaller mobo compatible with whatever you get above, SATA expansion cards can be had relatively cheaply if you'd be concerned at the lack of ports on smaller boards.

As you are using linux the mobo's RAID facilities are less of an issue, as you can create a software RAID from the OS. I suspect you could span across the Intel, marval and gigabyte controllers on your UD3 if you tried! This also gets round any motherboard limitations in terms of RAID sizes.

AFAIK it is single HDDs above 2.2TB that some mobos don't like. So you should be fine using 2TB disks.

Yeah I was thinking that also this morning, so I was thinking maybe this would be also one of my game dev boxes as well, I could also off load the encoding onto it as well, not too sure yet, either way this would require the CPU I have spare.

The Motherboard and CPU was originally for another game development system but ended up being leant a better one

I may also be running the CPU in low power mode i.e. reduced speed mode C1 something (what ever its called) so the CPU will run slower until its needed which will reduce the power used, the LAN will also be run in green mode also reducing power, I have been told I can also use the WOL to reduce even more power so in a way it shouldn't take that much power.

As for the RAM I haven't got any yet but anything from 2 to 4GB will be fine, however it depends on what else I use it for, my main game dev system has around 24GB fitted.

I may also end up using this as one of my game development boxes, because my main game development box that was leant to me (HP ProLiant DL380 G7) by people I cannot mention, is running VMware (Linux) with several virtual hosts to simulate several separate servers all using 2.5GB Ram, 100GB to 500GB storage and I think its starting to get a bit loaded now, I think its using 2 CPU's because it shows up 8 cores running at 2.667GHz and I have a few empty storage bays and I have loads of free memory slots, but where I am not allowed to change or add any hardware to it, off loading a few hosts to a new box would be beneficial.

So this may not just be a Media Server, sorry I should have said this in my original post.

I am not too happy on using Software Raid, I would prefer Hardware Raid, but if there is no other option then it will have to do.
My issue would be the time it takes to re-do the drives in case of a power failure or a Crash/Reboot or maybe a drive failure, I guess i am use to a hardware one with a backup Battery.