Simple home server spec

[imyashy]

Hi There,

Apologies if I have posted this in the wrong section.

I consider myself a moderate PC builder/user and I've been thinking about setting up a home server/file server so people in my house can access their personal files (documents/music etc) from the shared file server.

We have 2 PCs and 1 Laptop in the house connected to a D-Link DIR-655 Wirless Router. Both PC's are connected using cat5e cables. The laptop uses a wireless connection.


I have listed my requirements below:

1. Must be low power (low wattage)
2. Must be able to handle gigabit speeds for transfer of large files i.e. video.
3. Each user's documents will be shared on the file server. Seperate user accounts are not required i.e. each user should be able to access eachothers data on the fileserver.
4. Fileserver must contain 1x2TB hardrive or 2x1TB Hard drives.
5. Files on server must be accessible wired/wirlesslesy.


Questions:

1. What Type and Speed of CPU, RAM, Mobo will be enough for my requirements?

2. Whats the max power I need from a PSU to run the above?

3. Which OS will i be best using?

4. Will I need a software firewall on the server/fileserver?

5. If I simple use windows XP as the OS will windows software firewall suffice? Which ports will i need to manually block off?

6. Is it a good idea to setup VPN on the server or should I not configure it to use the internet at all?

7. Can I use the fileserver to install my bittorrent client on? Is this a bad idea ie. point 6?

8. What other security implications do I need to consider?

9. What other implications do i need to consider?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[imyashy]

Thanks essex raptor but before i go down the route of buying a pre-built solution I want to have a stab at building one myself..

What spec would you recommend mate?

 

[imyashy]

I've got a small Mini-itx box that I've built. Although it cost a lot more than the HP miniseries, it has the big advantage of not looking like a big PC which is important for me as it's sat in the AV cabinet under my TV. I'm running WHS2011 and the hardware is a Zotac S775 board with an E1600, 8GB RAM, a 500GB boot disk and two 2TB data disks. It's all in a Bluejour case which has no drive bays or ports on the front so just looks like another piece of AV hardware.

Whats the power consumption like mate?

 

[imyashy]

Would the Intel D945GSEJT mini-itx motherboard with a 1.6ghz Intel Atom cpu suffice?

I wonder what the file transfer speed is like on a gigabit LAN..

 

[imyashy]

. I get lots of good advice from others here and alternative views as well that I had not myself though of. It is a good place to bounce ideas and get alternative views so am happy to give back too. Good crowd especiall in this subforum for business and server type of questions.

Rb

RB and Essex - Many thanks for your advice so far. Few more questions:

1. Isn't 4-8GB RAM too much for my requirements? Why so much?
2. Would you recommend on installing WHS 2011 on a small sized SSD?
3. How much power would I ideally need to power the aformentioned mainboards? (MSI/Gigabyte H61 mITX board, Intel S1200KP mITX server board, Intel DH67CF)?
4. Is it possible to setup a VPN in WHS?
5. Is it possible to install uTorrent in WHS?


My main focus for my requirements is file sharing and very fast speeds over the network. All client machines have gigabit ethernet network adaptors. I understand hard drives are a bottleneck when transferring files over a gigabit network. I have cate5e wiring in my home.

 

[imyashy]

RB - Essex - Blue,

Thanks for the additional feedback.

RB - Please can you PM the exact spec of your home server please. That will give me a good basis to start from in terms of a hardware setup.

Also whats the Power usage on your home server idle and at load?

Thanks in advance.

 

[imyashy]

Hi,

I will put my specs up here so others can see.

My WHS-2011 server is as follows;
Intel i3-2120T Processor
Intel DH67CF Motherboard (not specifically bought for this build but I had one spare).
8GB Kingston ram (2x4GB)
Fractal Array R2 Mini case (inc 300W SFX PSU).
IBM M1015 SAS controller
WD Scorpio Black 320GB boot drive
2x WD Green 2TB data drives
2x Seagate Barracuda 1.5TB data drives
WHS 2011
Drivepool (all data drives pooled in to one large data partition).

No idea on power draw as I have never tested. The SAS controller is because I used to have more drives and it will allow me to connect up to 8 drives without expanders.

If I were to change anything (apart from bigger hard drives of course) then I would probably change the motherboard to an DQ67EP as it has a few nicer features (6 SATA ports - 2 external, AMT 7.0 and TPM for encryption). The H67 board I am using is more for media PCs.

One risk that has been brought home is that one of my drives failed (not listed in the specs above) with bad blocks and I ended up not only loosing some data but also ending up with some corrupt files. The file are all movies so not so important and I can just rip them from the discs again but there were no alerts on WHS 2011 unless I trawled through the event viewer. There is a smart drive info plugin available for WHS 2011 but I believe that is another extra paid option. Even so I would be tempted to get it if it was not too expensive and if it supplies info to my dashboard on my main PC as anything I would need to login to the WHS 2011 box to look at would be a waste of time for me as the server console is generally untouched.

RB

Many thanks for the advice. Much appreciated

One question - What can be acheived by having 2 Gigabit ethernet ports on a mainboard? What are the benefits?

I understand that the ports cannot be cominbed to double bandwidth however are there any security benefits i.e. isolating my LAN from internet traffic?

I have 3 machines connected to a D-Link router. Would it be possible to have one ethernet port in each machine using the LAN and the other ethernet port in each machine using the internet?

 

[imyashy]

With the right software and infrastructure (switch needs to support it) you can combine the ports to double the bandwidth (within the limitation of hard drive speed and receiving machines network connectivity etc). Combining network ports for greater bandwidth is usually more useful when multiple machines are pulling from or pushing to a single server and want to minimise speed loss of all machines fighting for the 1GbE connection. Of course they are now just fighting for the 2GbE connection instead and are still limited by IOPS/Speed of the storage. Another advantage is redundancy. You could link them have one as a failover should the other stop working.

The suggestion you are putting forward with routing to individual machines is possible but you are then dedicating one port to each machine so even when that machine is not running the bandwidth is still not available. It is fully possible though.

Some info on link aggregation from smallnetbuilder here and have a search for LACP (link aggregation command protocol) as that is what your switch will need to support.

RB

Thanks for the advice mate. I will take a look at the website.

On a side note can dual ethernet ports on each machine in my house benefit me security wise?

For example..Can I set up 2 networks and allow one machine to access both networks simultaneously? i.e. one port for internet usage and the other port for access to a local file server in the house?

Besides link aggregation for increased throughput what other benefits do dual ethernet ports on a single machine provide?