First Server Build Advice Needed!

PlanetGong

PlanetGong

PlanetGong

Associate
Joined
15 Jun 2003
Posts
361
Location
Leicestershire
Hi

Having recently purchased a laptop to replace my desktop PC, I thought I would use the parts from my old desktop to make a server. The server is to be used to share files between two laptops both wired and wirelessly i.e. HD video and music and also transcode films for PS3 watching.

The parts I can salvage are as follows :

Gskill Falcon SSD Hard drive 64gb
Samsung Hard drive 500gb
Samsung Hard drive 1tb
Geforce 8800gt
2xDVD/RW Drives
Intel Q9450
Asus P5Q Pro motherboard

Now I'm thinking that a lot of this stuff would be wasted in a server, so I am thinking I should sell some bits (i.e. the graphics card), and replace them with less powerful versions, saving myself some cash. So the question is, what to keep, what to flog, and what to replace the flogged stuff with! Or sell all of it and buy a purpose built server?

I was thinking of using Windows Home Server as I don't think I need anything more powerful for my needs?

I also use SABnzbd, I assume I could get this setup on the server?

As you can probably tell I've never tried anything like this before, so would appreciate any help and advice you can give!

Thanks.
 
Excellent, cheers guys. I take it it's pretty easy to setup for a novice like me? Is it best to get 4 hard drives and run them in RAID?
 
Servers are not too difficult to setup. If you build a PC you should be able to build a server.

On the RAID front, it depends on what you want to gain out of it.
If you want protection of your data should a drive die, then RAID5 is your friend.
Also, to a certain extent RAID5 with 4 disk should give you a read performance boost, and maybe a small write hit.
If you want to have fast access, RAID0 is your friend here. However, lose 1 disk and you lose ALL your data on the array.

RAID DOESN'T AND WONT REPLACE BACKUPS!!

Personally I have a hardware RAID card running 8x2TB disks in RAID6.
This protects me against 2 simultaneous disk failures, but I still backup my irreplaceable data to 2x USB disks (one I keep in the house, and the second away from the house).
I only backup just short of 1TB data at present, the rest of the data I can live without should the worst happen (such as a house fire, flood etc)
 
For 4 drives with the OS being installed on the array, I'd recommend 4x 2TB disks in RAID10. That gives you better redundancy than RAID5 with much better performance, the only downside being 4TB total capacity instead of 6TB (though if you require that level of fault tolerant storage you need to be looking a little higher up in the market tbh). Putting pagefile or other latency sensitive write operations on RAID5 is ill advised. Especially on controllers with a small, non-battery backed write cache. To used RAID5 you'd want a separate RAID1 for the operating system, pagefile etc. To do so requires 5 drives minimum, I believe you only have 4 in the microserver.
 
Last edited:
Skidilliplop said:
To do so requires 5 drives minimum, I believe you only have 4 in the microserver.
Click to expand...

You get a 250Gb HDD with the microserver, this can be placed in the 5.25" Area at the top and there is a spare Sata port on the motherboard for it, this gives you 4 Bays free for storage.

The onboard fakeraid controller only offers 1 or 0, if you want RAID5, then you need to use software raid, I assume WHS 2011 will allow this? And that might be the one to go for OS wise if you want a familiar windows environment for ease of installing other apps etc, it should be due out shortly, you can get the Release Candidate for free. Otherwise, free Linux builds such as FreeNAS etc are very good for File Serving, but adding your own apps in for streaming etc can sometimes be a real headache..

The HP Microserver cashback of £100 officially runs out the end of the month (it may well be extended yet again)...
 
So I could run 4 drives on RAID, and then use the supplied drive for the OS? I think I am going to go for WHS 2011.

Is there anything that needs upgrading on the server if I want to do transcoding for PS3 media server etc, i.e. does it need a RAM upgrade?
 
You could do but it would seem counter intuitive to have a fault tolerant data store and OS on a single drive as if the OS drive fails you can't get at any of your data until you replace it and re-install. If that kind of lengthy down time isnt' a problem then why bother with RAID at all? just using JBOD/windows dynamic disk to increase the volume size would work. Then if anything goes wrong you jsut restore from a backup.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom