Simple home server spec

[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.

 

[RimBlock]

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.

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

 

[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?

 

[RimBlock]

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?

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

 

[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?

 

[RimBlock]

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?

Dual ports have the advantage of boosted throughput (as previously mentioned) with the right infrastructure and configuration, redundancy so should one port break the other will take the load rather than the machine completely loosing all connectivity and network segregation. One common use would be in machines used as firewalls. One port would be connected to the WAN feed (i.e. the internet router) and the other would be connected to the internal network. The software on the machine would examine and filter / block or allow traffic to pass from on network to the other based on the machines configuration. PfSense is a popular open source firewall that can be used for this purpose.

RB