Home server spec

[MarcLister]

I recently bought an Antec 1100 for my PC which means my Antec 300 case is empty. As I already have a HP ProLiant ML110 G7 G840 server for my Windows Server qualifications I would like to build a nice little home server to act as a store for my weekly PC backup and as a file store.

As I already have the case, can someone please spec me a fairly good server and perhaps even an OS to run it? I would like to have an OS that would allow me to set up network drives that my Windows 7 PC can access, for the weekly backup say. I have a 500GB HDD that I currently use for backups that I reckon would do as the HDD for the OS. The motherboard will need to have Gigabit Ethernet and plenty of SATA sockets so I can bung in 2/3TB drives as I see fit.

Total budget is probably £300-400 for the basic spec, i.e. without the storage drives which I will buy separately.

 

[MarcLister]

Hi imb4tman. Thanks for the quote. Is an AMD board and chip the best way to go? I take it that AMD chips are very good for low power and heat settings like a simple home server?

 

[MarcLister]

Exactly the spec I built a few weeks ago except the psu and WHS, I'm using freenas with it as a headless box, get 60-70mbps transfers over gigabit with a single spinpoint f3 1Tb, I'll eventually expand to 8x2/3tb using ZFS raidz2 giving me 2 parity drives and 12/18tb total storage.

Cool. Headless box though?

Microserver?

Already got a HP ProLiant server for MS cert studies. Want to build my own one and use my Antec 300 case. The current ProLiant servers appear to be £440+ which I think is a bit steep.

I only use the single core in mine but with home WHS 2003 and it runs like a dream. For slightly better performance you could go for the Intel Celeron dual core. Uses 10w more power. Might cost a little more on the motherboard too going Intel but still well within your budget.

Any particular Celeron dual core and Intel motherboard you can suggest then? Edit: This chip perhaps?

If I use two SATA ports for the OS HDD and a DVD drive, I have 4 left. Is there a way I could get more, if I needed to? Either with a motherboard that has 7-8 SATA ports or some kind of add-on card? 2nd edit: And this for the extra SATA ports?

 

[MarcLister]

Yeah that chip would be fine. And yes you could get pci sata card to expand. But once the OS is installed well you ever need the ODD again? Could just disconnect it and get a sata slot back.

Cool.

Well, thinking about it, I have a USB DVD drive somewhere here. If the motherboard I end up getting supports that, I could install the OS that way and never use a SATA port. This'd give me 5 SATA ports for storage drives, which should be more than enough. I might need to find some 5.25" blanking plates for my case though!

 

[MarcLister]

Everything on freenas is done through Webgui and runs from a 4gb flash drive, so that frees up one of the SATA ports.

OK. And FreeNAS would allow me to set up network drives/shares that I can map to on my PC?

Part of me wants to use a Microsoft Server OS, part of me wants to save the £40 if FreeNAS is good enough.

Any idea how much Server 2012 Essentials cost? Is it worth looking at that or should I just decide between WHS 2011 and FreeNAS?

 

[MarcLister]

Been thinking about this and I was wondering how much RAM would I need at most? I'd have thought that 16GB would be more than enough? Or can I get away with just 8GB? I could get 4x4GB sticks of RAM and max out a 4 DDR slot motherboard? Or go for 8GB and look for a 2 DDR slot motherboard, which'd be a bit cheaper.

How does the Intel Celeron G550 and the MSI B75MA-P45 mATX look? I would use 2 of the Crucial 4GB sticks, if 8GB is more than I'll ever need for a server.

I really don't know how much RAM I'd need for a server. I'm going to use WHS2011 I think if that helps determine how much RAM to get.

I would like my motherboard to have Gigabit LAN (for obvious reasons) but also a UEFI BIOS. Why not?

 

[MarcLister]

Board and chip will be fine, could go a little cheaper with something like I'm using. You don't need a power house for a NAS. If you're using WHS then 4gb Ram will be plenty, if you go freenas then the rule of thumb with ZFS is 1gb ram per 1tb of storage.

I was thinking that if I went for say 4 x 3TB drives, then that's 12GB RAM. Not that I would need/want/use 12TB of storage.

You're not going to need a lot of memory for a server, might be worth listing what you're going to be using on it but 8GB will be plenty. That would easily allow you to run a media server like Twonky for your UPnP devices, a NZB client, Sickbeard, Torrent client, backup automation etc. You definitely want gigabit for backups.

To begin with just WHS to allow for backing up of files to a single 3TB drive. I'll add more in once I get the hang of network shares and so on. I'll have to research Twonky, NZB and Sickbeard to see what I can do with them and see if I'll ever use them.

 

[MarcLister]

WHS 2011 has a 8Gb memory limit, also you would need a graphics card when installing it, although you can run headless after its set up

Ah cool. Thanks for the info. I've just upgraded to an HD 7850 on my main PC so I have an HD 6770 spare now.

Wouldn't he just use the onboard graphics?

Once it's in use I'm sure. Although I do wonder why if I can run it headless why can't I install it headless?

 

[MarcLister]

When you're installing it you will be prompted to select a drive to install it on, enter the product key etc so you would need a monitor to see what you're doing as there won't be anyway of logging in remotely until after WHS is installed.

Edit: Missing sarcasm fail. lol

The onboard graphics would work though, as you suggested?

 

[MarcLister]

OK, I got some gear yesterday and built it all up last night. The machine even booted up first time!! This was at about 2am this morning so I left it there and I've yet to install WHS2011. I've got my two HDDs in the machine that were my external HDDs. The 500GB one is going to be the drive I install WHS onto and the 2GB one will be my initial storage drive. There's tons of stuff on there so do I need to copy it over to my main PC before I install WHS? In other words, will WHS format/wipe the storage drive when it sets everything up?

Once I've got it all running then I'll post back with the specs.

 

[MarcLister]

Well I set it all up last night. My 2TB drive didn't get formatted/wiped and I've shared some of the folders I use a lot and have been able to access them through the network.

The spec I went for is as follows:

Corsair Builder Series CX 500w Modular '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (CP-9020059-UK) 1 £45.82
Gigabyte Z68AP-D3 Intel Z68 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard 1 £44.99
Microsoft Windows Home Server 2011 64Bit (1 Server & 10 Client Licenses) - OEM (CCQ-00128) 1 £33.32
Intel Celeron G550 2.60GHz Socket LGA 1155 Processor - Retail 1 £26.66
Crucial 4GB (1x4GB) DDR3 PC3-10600C9 1333MHz 240-Pin (CT51264BA1339) 2 £39.98
OcUK Tech Labs - Zaward Golf III Fan 120mm ZG3-120TL TRIPLE PACK 1 £6.66

 

[MarcLister]

Have a look at stablebit for a couple of apps if needed drivepool and disk scanner, if you buy 1 you get discount on the other you also get them fully functioning for 30 days (try before you buy)

Robert

Cool. I like the look of the Drivepool app. I'll have a look at both apps in more depth later.

 

[MarcLister]

Holy thread revival Batman!

So 7 years, 1 month and 7 days after the last post in this thread, I've been having some issues with the server. The CPU (Intel Celeron G550 2.60GHz) overheats quite quickly to over 100oC. I have the stock Intel cooler applied to the CPU and I've just blown the dust off it and cleaned the case up. The CPU temp is currently moving between 43 and 62oC due to the processor being at 50%+ usage. The task has now finished and the CPU usge is at 0% but the temp is still hovering between 45-50oC. I know I could take the cooler off, apply some thermal paste and things would probably be OK but I have bought a Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo that I plan to fit anyway as I doubt the stock cooler is up to much and if I have a third party CPU cooler to hand I might as well use it.

As it is a 2 core/2 thread CPU I wonder if it is a bit slow and could do with being replaced? I'm wondering if it would be a good opportunity to replace the Celeron G550 with a faster LGA1155 chip? I have found some Core i3 chips for a reasonable price (3240, 3225, 2120, 3220, 2100) that I could get. Would it make sense to do this so that when I fit the new heatsink, which I will do regardless of replacing the CPU, I can drop the new CPU in? My long term plan is to get a NAS like a Synology DS918+ which is a much smaller device than the Antec 300 case the server is currently using so I don't want to spend lots upgrading the CPU. The chips I've found would cost me no more than £10-15 including delivery and, along with the Cooler Master Hyper 212 Evo, is a good enough purchase to make to extend the life of the server for a bit and make it a bit more resilient to its task.

I would be very appreciative of your thoughts and suggestions on whether or not I should upgrade the CPU.

 

[MarcLister]

Hi Avalon. What do you mean when you say the chips are "for nothing at this stage"? I have 8GB of RAM and WHS 2011 only recognises 8GB. How does RAM come into the equation?

I wasn't looking at TDP but merely looking for a more capable and cheap chip to replace my Celeron G550.

"what is it actually doing that will be edit from upgrading"? Is "be edit" mean to be "benefit"? I've read that sentence a few times and that's the only way it makes sense to me.

My query was as I'm going to fit a decent third party cooler, should I also take the opportunity to fit a decent, cheap i3 chip to give the system a bit more oomph?

 

[MarcLister]

If the current CPU hasn't been struggling and you don't plan on increasing the workload then it would be a (small) waste of money. However, if you are anything like me, then yes because new = better!

New = better is the correct answer! I managed to get a Core i3-3240 for £5.90 including free delivery and got £1.04 off the price thanks to a discount code the auction site told me about.

If you decide to upgrade the OS, go for Windows Server Essentials 2016, not 2019 as the latter drops the client backup facility.

Hi Quartz. Cool, thanks for the advice. I've only had a brief look for WSE2016 but I can't find anywhere selling it so I can't see the price. WHS2011 cost me about £40 but I get the feeling WSE2016 would cost a few hundred £££? If I decide to keep a PC NAS rather than get a Synology, I think I'll probably go for FreeNAS.

Autocorrect has has apparently refined its distain for me to new level (of course this has absolutely nothing to do with the two kids using iPads linked to my iTunes account for school for two months despite having laptops). For nothing means exactly what it says, they are available for bugger all and ‘be edit’ was indeed benefit. The RAM point was simply that you can upgrade the RAM for - again - bugger all, and while 4GB is OK, given you should be moving to something like FreeNAS (1GB/TB is generally the metric used, though it doesn’t scale in linear terms) or a newer Server Essentials install, you’ll have a better time with more memory. As usual the cost/benefit depends on what you pay and what you do with it, if you’re doing nothing that taxes the current CPU significantly, then putting a faster CPU in won’t give you any real benefit, but you don’t give us any real usage info to form an opinion.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go and reset the autocorrect dictionary on my iTunes account, as I apparently we didn’t specify the optional factory reset/mute buttons on the kids.

Hehe! Autocorrect ftw!

I have 8GB of RAM and I believe WHS2011 only recognises 8GB of RAM so whilst I could technically upgrade the RAM it wouldn't work because the system wouldn't see it.

I downloaded the largest file I have on my server to my C: to monitor the server's CPU usage and then I copied it back again to see how the read/write CPU usage varied. The 15GB file did at times push the server CPU to 85-90% usage and the temps increased. The standing temp is quite close to the limit so it doesn't take much to push it over the limit. Hopefully the i3 3240 will help a bit with the usage and hopefully the temps as a result. If it doesn't, it only cost me £6.

 

[MarcLister]

Yes, it cost me a few hundred. Well worth it for the automatic backup and WSUS support.

Sounds like it is something I need to read up on before I make a decision. Thanks for the advice.

WHS2011 does indeed only see 8GB, I had read an earlier post saying you were going with 4GB, either way WHS 2011 is dead, no more security updates/support, time to move on. Also if a simple file copy is doing that to your CPU activity, that’s not great.

Ah, I think the 4GB was an earlier 'idea' then when someone said it takes 8GB max so put 8GB in, the cost of this at the time was good enough to go for 8GB so I did.

My NOD32 on the server is still working but it's an older version so I knew I would have to do something at some point.

Like you say, if reading/writing a 15GB zip file to/from the server is causing the chip to hit 85%+ usage, with nothing else happening, that isn't ideal. As I said earlier if the i3 3240 helps with that, then great, if not it only cost me £6.