Mini-ITX

Harpss1ngh

Harpss1ngh

Harpss1ngh

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Hi guys,

I have a spare E8400 and 4GB of RAM lying around so was wondering as an alternative to getting a HP MicroServer, whether to get a Lian Li Mini-ITX case and pick up a decent Mini-ITX motherboard which would be cheaper and perform better?

I'd probably stick a Raid Card in the x16 slot too as I've seen a 6 bay Mini-ITX Fractal Design case!

In terms of performance as a file server how would that compare to the HP Micro Server and the SOHO Nas solutions from QNAP and Synology.

Not sure whether to use unRAID, FreeNAS or WHS2011 just yet, might virtualise the lot and have a play round to see which ones I like best!
 
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If you going the FreeNAS route..... with your amount of RAM I would seriously go FreeNAS 7 (32 bit version) over the newer 8. The newer version is nice but really needs loads of RAM and a powerful quad core CPU to make it sing usng ZFS.

With unRAID and FreeNAS you have to do some careful research if using add in RAID cards.... not all are compatable etc etc etc

Lastly bin the fancy, expensive case until such time that you can get it all working together with a performance that you are happy with. An old battered creation in the loft or garage will serve just as well during the early days.

Performance is a hard question to answer because so many factors can come into play. :)
 
Also make sure when selecting a RAID card that it will run ok in such a confined space.

I have a dell Perc 5i card and had to modify the cooling solution as it was no longer in a server case with forced air cooling, this caused the card to be hitting temps as high as 80 degrees before the modifications.

Tom
 
What about WHS2011? I'm mainly going with this setup for it's expansion potential (6 bays!). I understand about performance factors, it should be on par with my TS-219P+ which can max out 1Gbit Ethernet.

EDIT: For the Raid controller card I'd probably use a Highpoint RocketRAID 640 SATA 6Gb/s Raid Controller Card, which is low profile and doesn't seem to need cooling. Is this just Firmware RAID rather than Hardware Raid then?

Since it'll be running a E8400 (most likely WHS2011 at this stage) would I need Hardware Raid and will the above significantly affect write performance on Raid 5?
 
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I have only used a Highpoint 2320 and that was some time ago.

Having looked at reviews people seem to say it adds 40 seconds to boot time and also seems to be slow when building an array initially.

Cards like this normally use a bit more CPU power when compared to an enterprise solution, especially when building / rebuilding an array.

However money wise they are a lot cheaper and for a home server would probably be a good compromise.

Tom
 
Harpss1ngh said:
What about WHS2011? I'm mainly going with this setup for it's expansion potential (6 bays!). I understand about performance factors, it should be on par with my TS-219P+ which can max out 1Gbit Ethernet.

EDIT: For the Raid controller card I'd probably use a Highpoint RocketRAID 640 SATA 6Gb/s Raid Controller Card, which is low profile and doesn't seem to need cooling. Is this just Firmware RAID rather than Hardware Raid then?

Since it'll be running a E8400 (most likely WHS2011 at this stage) would I need Hardware Raid and will the above significantly affect write performance on Raid 5?
Click to expand...

I would sell the E8400 + Ram and buy a microserver. You can fill the server with up to 5 3.5" HDDs. (If you fit one in the ODD bay)

Mine pulls 45Watts with 3 3.5" HDDs in it.

I doubt that raid card will be any good. I would use a Drive extender add in for the WHS 2011 then it will do all the duplication etc its self.

The Fractal case is £109. At that price you are less than £45 away from the complete HP microserver.

Also the Microserver has DDR3 so you can go for 8GB RAM quite cheaply.
 
jamesfreddie said:
I would sell the E8400 + Ram and buy a microserver. You can fill the server with up to 5 3.5" HDDs. (If you fit one in the ODD bay)

Mine pulls 45Watts with 3 3.5" HDDs in it.

I doubt that raid card will be any good. I would use a Drive extender add in for the WHS 2011 then it will do all the duplication etc its self.

The Fractal case is £109. At that price you are less than £45 away from the complete HP microserver.

Also the Microserver has DDR3 so you can go for 8GB RAM quite cheaply.
Click to expand...

I don't mind spending a bit extra if I can get better performance out of the E8400, which has a higher spec than that AMD Turion II 1.5GHZ chip. Not too bothered about power consumption. It also doesn't have a dedicated RAID controller and doesn't support RAID5 which I really need and without a RAID card would need a processor capable of handling RAID5!

Would I just be better off with a consumer NAS for RAID5?
 
Harpss1ngh said:
I don't mind spending a bit extra if I can get better performance out of the E8400, which has a higher spec than that AMD Turion II 1.5GHZ chip. Not too bothered about power consumption. It also doesn't have a dedicated RAID controller and doesn't support RAID5 which I really need and without a RAID card would need a processor capable of handling RAID5!

Would I just be better off with a consumer NAS for RAID5?
Click to expand...

I run a N40L microserver with WHS 2011 installed. It is used as a torrent, backup and media streaming server. It runs it all fine.

What are you hoping to achieve at the end of the build?
 
Harpss1ngh said:
I don't mind spending a bit extra if I can get better performance out of the E8400, which has a higher spec than that AMD Turion II 1.5GHZ chip. Not too bothered about power consumption. It also doesn't have a dedicated RAID controller and doesn't support RAID5 which I really need and without a RAID card would need a processor capable of handling RAID5!

Would I just be better off with a consumer NAS for RAID5?
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go ahead then :)

we can't answer your question directly because so many variables are involved :)

I run a RAID5 array in my N40L, using FreeNAS 7, no fancy RAID card, 3 GB of RAM, 1GB internal wired network, with a decent add in NIC card and it scorches a SOHO Syn NAS :)
 
Softraid?

I have three 2TB drives in Raid5 under an Ubuntu ESXi VM using dmraid.

The great thing is that the Raid configuration is stored in superblocks, so if you can forgive Raid5 it's flaws and don't expect a performance increase from it (irrelevant on a fileserver limited by it's 1gbit NIC) then it's a fantastic means to achieve some redundancy.

I did try UnRAID and FreeNAS but both were unstable under ESXi and I was determined to run ESXi so I could use pfSense as well.
 
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MikeHiow said:
Softraid?

I have three 2TB drives in Raid5 under an Ubuntu ESXi VM using dmraid.

The great thing is that the Raid configuration is stored in superblocks, so if you can forgive Raid5 it's flaws and don't expect a performance increase from it (irrelevant on a fileserver limited by it's 1gbit NIC) then it's a fantastic means to achieve some redundancy.

I did try UnRAID and FreeNAS but both were unstable under ESXi and I was determined to run ESXi so I could use pfSense as well.
Click to expand...

Did you use VT-d to pass the controller with the disks on direct to the VM for control ?. This should resolve the instability generated by ESXi device layer above the bare metal.

RB
 
Essexraptor said:
go ahead then :)

we can't answer your question directly because so many variables are involved :)

I run a RAID5 array in my N40L, using FreeNAS 7, no fancy RAID card, 3 GB of RAM, 1GB internal wired network, with a decent add in NIC card and it scorches a SOHO Syn NAS :)
Click to expand...

Which Syn NAS? Benches? Would never trust RAID5 in a softRAID, running several VM's...that would tax that little AMD Turion for sure

EDIT - You're using both network cards, configured for load balancing? The would explain the higher throughput
 
Harpss1ngh said:
Which Syn NAS? Benches? Would never trust RAID5 in a softRAID, running several VM's...that would tax that little AMD Turion for sure

EDIT - You're using both network cards, configured for load balancing? The would explain the higher throughput
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Thought you wanted to run a fileserver?

Looking at the HP Microserver thread, quickly, peeps seem to run ESXi without any problems ? ?

As for benchmarks :cool: I'm just going by the file transfer speeds from my own real life experiences of transferring large files (20GB +) to the HP and the same files to my old DS207 (DMS 3.1) and a newer DS111J (DMS 3.2)

It's softRAID... I suppose the pros and cons debate about which is better, RAID5 performance, yadda yadda will go on forever but again I pefer the simple solution without to many components that can go wrong in the system. So far it has not let me down ... so I'm happy :)

I'm not niave enough to treat my server as a backup and all the sensitive or "need to keep" data is backed up externally. The freeNAS config is also backed up just in case the USB stick it's installed on fails.

NIC wise ... my current NIC card ( recommended to me by a forum member running 4 HP's :) ) was installed to circumvent occasional stuttering during streaming using the onboard NIC, which is disabled via BIOS

:)
 
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Essexraptor said:
Thought you wanted to run a fileserver?

Looking at the HP Microserver thread, quickly, peeps seem to run ESXi without any problems ? ?

As for benchmarks :cool: I'm just going by the file transfer speeds from my own real life experiences of transferring large files (20GB +) to the HP and the same files to my old DS207 (DMS 3.1) and a newer DS111J (DMS 3.2)

It's softRAID... I suppose the pros and cons debate about which is better, RAID5 performance, yadda yadda will go on forever but again I pefer the simple solution without to many components that can go wrong in the system. So far it has not let me down ... so I'm happy :)

I'm not niave enough to treat my server as a backup and all the sensitive or "need to keep" data is backed up externally. The freeNAS config is also backed up just in case the USB stick it's installed on fails.

NIC wise ... my current NIC card ( recommended to me by a forum member running 4 HP's :) ) was installed to circumvent occasional stuttering during streaming using the onboard NIC, which is disabled via BIOS

:)
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Initially a file server for starters but the biggest advantage of these servers over SOHO NAS's is running multiple VM's running different services/OS's.

Proper RAID cards besides their other obvious advantages have better I/O performance compared to a motherboard chipset controller which has to rely on the CPU compared to a dedicated RAID controller...

Yes, there are many factors that can determine performance but you're comparing the NAS to a DS111J (single disk NAS) which can't even do RAID let alone RAID5, RAID 5 is Striping (2 disks) + Parity (1 disk), it's going to be faster than a single drive in any case so not a fair comparison. The DS207 also isn't a fair comparison because it's got a significantly poorer spec. A fairer comparison would be with a 3 or 4 bay NAS capable of RAID5 such as a QNAP TS-419P II or a Synology DS411.

The Microserver is cheaper to buy compared to those two and from reviews it's performance is ok and I understand it's very cost effective but unless someone can actually do a real performance comparison I've decided to give a custom build a go since I just need a case and a decent RAID Card...
 
RimBlock said:
Did you use VT-d to pass the controller with the disks on direct to the VM for control ?. This should resolve the instability generated by ESXi device layer above the bare metal.

RB
Click to expand...

I don't think it supports VT-d?

I created RDMs for each disk manually rather than using virtual disks.
 
good luck :)

post some screenies of your performance and give us a breakdown of the final hardware spec, costs etc.

just so peeps can have a guide to follow if they want to follow a similiar route with a custom homebuild

should be an interesting project :)
 
Eh screw it, finding that motherboard at a decent price is impossible since it's no longer produced lol! I'm joining the HP Microserver crew!
 
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