Spec Me a Media/File Server , TV Streaming and Backup box

bugeyewrx

bugeyewrx

bugeyewrx

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I've currently got a small media/file server running Freenas on an old Dell PC , it's great and works well but I'd like to be able to get a bit more from it .

What I'd like to do is have a 'box' that is my media/file server , backup and can stream TV ( freesat ) to some XBMC clients .

So my plan is to set up the server using WHS2011 as a backend for Media Portal . WHS2011 can deal with the server duties , backups etc and Media Portal can deal with the TV part .

I've got myself a rack mount 4U server case from Ebay so that's the case sorted. The case will take up to 10 drives but I obviously won't have that many in there to start with , probably one for the os two main drives and two server backup and one PC backup .

I'm not specing the drives as I've got most of them already .


Dualcore Intel .

YOUR BASKET
1 x xenon intel core i3 2120 3.30ghz bundle £164.98
1 x lian li ib-01b pci-express 5-port sata-ii & 1-port e-sata raid controller £69.98
1 x corsair builder series cx 430w v2 '80 plus' power supply (cmpsu-430cxukv2) £36.98
1 x compro videomate s350 digital satellite tv card - retail £20.99
total : £305.53 (includes shipping : £10.50).




quadcore amd

your basket
1 x xenon amd bulldozer fx-4 4100 3.60ghz bundle - quad core £173.99
1 x corsair builder series cx 430w v2 '80 plus' power supply (cmpsu-430cxukv2) £36.98
1 x compro videomate s350 digital satellite tv card - retail £20.99
1 x startech 2 port pci express internal sata ii controller card (pexsata22i) £19.99
total : £263.95 (includes shipping : £10.00).




dualcore amd


your basket
1 x xenon amd x2 250 3.00ghz bundle - dual core £114.98
1 x corsair builder series cx 430w v2 '80 plus' power supply (cmpsu-430cxukv2) £36.98
1 x compro videomate s350 digital satellite tv card - retail £20.99
1 x startech 2 port pci express internal sata ii controller card (pexsata22i) £19.99
total : £204.95 (includes shipping : £10.00).




sort of leaning towards the amd quadcore setup right now as the value for money seems good plus i 'think' it would give me a few more options for the future.

i've also been looking at the Hauppauge WinTV-NOVA-HD-S2l as an alternative satellite tuner card.

:)
 
Interesting question...

I have an AMD quadcore (Athlon II x4 630) as my home server. It has 8 HDDs and 16G of memory and runs FreeBSD. Why FreeBSD? Simple. IMHO there is only one sensible choice as a server filesystem and that is ZFS. I chose FreeBSD simply because it had good support for ZFS. ZFS also benefits from lots of memory (hence the 16G !). I store all my media on a 4 disk RAIDZ array and have a couple of ZFS mirrored drives as a central backup resource.

I would look again at how you will connect your disks to the system and how you will expand it over time (because you will add more disks ;))

What I've found as I've expanded the server is that the cheaper mobos didn't cut it in terms of features. Too restrictive on SATA ports, wanting to add in PCI-e cards but no available slots etc... so I upgraded my motherboard to a Sapphire Pure Black 990FX the other week. This has 9 SATA III ports plus 6 PCI-e x4 or greater sockets which should see me through for the short to medium term ;)

I've been through the cheap Startech PCI-e HBAs (admittedly SATA I ones) and they suck for disk bandwidth. I ended up buying a pair of Adaptec 1430SAs (before I had the Sapphire mobo) which gave me sensible bandwidths to the disks - the old mobo sucked as well as it had the SATA ports behind IDE controllers which made disk access speeds dependant upon which controller it was behind - not good if you're ganging disks together in some form of array.

If you're going to PCI-e HBAs, you really should allow 1 PCI-e lane per hard disk - although you can get away with 2 hard disks per PCI-e lane as the transfer speeds are about 1-1.5Gbps. Hard disks work on PCI-e lanes but put a fast SATA III SSD on a single lane and you'll wonder why you spent the money as it'll be throttled to heck. IMHO, a 4 port controller SATA II should have an x4 interface and a 4 port SATA III should have an x8 interface. The 6 port controller you linked to has one lane (i.e. 2.5Gbps shared across 6x 3Gbps links) and will suck big time if you want to do quick transfers to the disks. The Adaptec 1430SAs are around £75 each but will run the disks fully.

If I were building this from the ground again, I'd start off simple, but with components that would enable me to grow without changing. Motherboard with enough high bandwidth connectors I could add to things over the years would be my first priority. Get as many SATA III ports as you can (and AMD are streets ahead of Intel here). Build it once and build it right.

I'd also try and avoid using it as a TV streamer (but if you really wanted to, FreeBSD has a couple of USB based options which should work with xbmc) and if you were sure you wanted to use it as a tv streamer, you should look at DVB-S2 based card as they will support the HD satellite services (the card you linked to is DVB-S only).

HTH
 
Last edited:
arad85 said:
HTH
Click to expand...

Yes it does :) I've been scratching a round at this build for a few months now and haven't had a lot of luck finding any hard info . Lots on how to convert an old Dell using x server os but not much on the hardware for this sort of build .

I hope you don't mind a few questions ....

Why the Athlon rather than a Phenom .... you seem to get more grunt for not much more money , is it the power usage ?

I'd had a look at FreeBSD and was my first choice before looking into how to stream TV using it , the whole whs2011 and Medial Portal just seemed so much simpler .... You don't have any links to info on the BSD/TV options do you ?

I understand the idea of 'future proofing' my build and tbh that's whats driving the whole thing . My Dell/Freenas set up works well for now apart from setting up some sort of low maintenance backup on it. It would probably rumble on for a couple of years but it would be nice to set up something now that I can expand on .


I must admit to knowing next to nothing about the sata cards etc so that info was very helpful . My plan , this is another reason for the amd building being favourite right now , for setting up the drives is as follows :

The main server storage and the OS drives are plugged directly into the mobo sata ports and the backup drives via the sata controllers . That way I get five/six by 2tb drives with a decent bandwidth . I don't think the low data transfer rates for the backup drives would be a problem for me , if it takes all day to restore from a backup drive I'll just watch a different film :)

So I get 10tb to 15tb of storage ( depending on the drives I use ) all backed up in one neat and easy to manage box that should last me at least five years .

Or am I missing something fundamental ?

I should add that I'm not planning on running RAID and that the backup is just to protect from disc failure and the need to spend several weekends ripping a load of DVDs. I also back up anything critical to Idrive and a USB drive I keep at work .

Re the tuner card ... I knew there had to be a reason the Hauppauge card cost so much more. I missed that the one I'd speced wasn't S2.

:)
 
To answer your questions:

Athlon was because I bought a bundle package like you are thinking of now. The only thing left over from that (it was Athlon/785G/2G memory) is the Athlon processor - now in the Sapphire board with 16G of memory rather than the original 2 (ZFS needs more than 2G to work sensibly). I did up it to 10G and that helped a lot and changed it to 16G when I upgraded the motherboard - no noticeable difference except I now have a 15-or-so GB disk cache in memory :). I have an i7-2600K for number crunching and I haven't found the Athlon wanting for speed serving files so...

FreeBSD and video is via the USB webcam module. Take a look: http://wiki.freebsd.org/WebcamCompat - looks like the standard solution for S2 is a Technotrend 3600 (one on e-bay for £66 in the UK). If you are set on the box doing streaming, I have to say that I personally would move heaven and earth to get it working under FreeBSD. Once you use ZFS everything else is inferior. I'd also (and in fact do) run RAIDZ (or Z2 if you are paranoid) for your media store. Yes, you lose the extra space of the parity drive(s) but if one goes - which it eventually will - you'll be glad you did.

I run my media off a RAIDZ array with no backup, but a hot spare ready to be resilvered in should the need arise. It's all re-creatable and whilst it would be a pain to do that, I'm prepared to risk it given I'm too stingy to have 6TB somewhere else with the backup on it. The great thing about ZFS (did I mention ZFS is the dogs... ;)) is that it's easy to just add disks to a pool - you can resilver, upgrade storage, disk check etc... all whilst the filesystem is online. For example, I check my disks on a weekly basis for errors - it just chunters along in the early hours checking the data integrity which includes the metadata which is also parity checked. If it scans without errors, you know there are no errors on the drives in the array.

If you need to buy a SATA HBA plugin card, the Adaptec 1430SA are about the best you can get for the price. They need a PCI-e x4 slot, but will give full bandwidth to the disks. Trust me, there will be more than one occasion where you will be glad you hadn't skimped here in the future...

For data backup I would also want to backup to a physically separate computer. Despite me holding my media on a single RAIDZ array without a full backup, I do backup the stuff that would take an age to recreate - the music files. That backup is on a physically separate computer just in case the PSU takes everything out! My main server is my main backup device too - everything backs up to that machine. That backup (which includes drive images of the system drives of all my other machines) is replicated to another machine just in case.
 
Thanks again arad85

I think I'm getting a handle on the hardware and tbh I'm tempted to just copy your spec but the extra £90 on the mobo is putting me off. You're probably right and it will turn out to be a false economy that I regret ;)

I think you are right about FreeBSD for a few reasons . My main reason for not using it was having to use MythTV to stream to the XBMC clients. I've had a couple of goes with MythTV and I just can't get to grips with it also when it's own WIKI describes it as not exactly fit and forget and requiring monthly maintenance (not an exact quote but the gist of what it said ... I'd link to the quote but I can't find it again) it sort of puts you off trying anymore :( VDR on the other hand looks much simpler and worth a try .

Thing is if I can't get it all working under FreeBSD it's not cost me anything ... and who knows I might learn some stuff ;)

The RAID thing ... I just said I wasn't bothered about RAID, I've just realised that my whole disc / backup plan is in fact a rather inefficient form of RAID 1, I'll start reading up on RAIDZ :)
 
Ahh.. You don't need to get that mobo (it also needs a PCI-e graphics card as well, but you may have that somewhere - I use a 210). More that fact it had oodles of expansion (and 2x Gigabit Ethernet ports if that's of use to you). The 990 is expensive as it's aimed at the X-fire/SLI crowd, but it means it has bandwidth coming out of its backside. I have to say, I've not seen any other board with 9 (+1 e-SATA!) SATA ports. It's surprising how quickly you can use the ports up - especially if you're like me and have a 3.5" removable drive bay plus front e-SATA hooked up (so that's 3 gone already with the DVD drive)... All of a sudden you're springing for a PCI-e HBA to put an extra disk in... (with my 2x Adaptecs installed I currently have 17 internal SATA ports with 3 PCI-e slots for further expansion should I want to :D)

I have to say FreeBSD is my favourite OS to use. The ports methodology (you install stuff from source locally not via RPMs or apt-get) means everything is consistent. It is a little command line-y which might put some off but a simpler introduction might be a PC-BSD install (I use PC-BSD running fluxbox as the X environment) which is easier to get up and running if you want something more graphical.

BTW, I run MythTV on a couple of my xbmc systems here. I only use it for recording - never live TV - but it isn't too hard to setup once you've done it 5 or 6 times ;)
 
It'll be worse than that .... I'll be posting does anybody know of a mobo with loads of sata ports because the one arad85 recommended two years ago is discontinued now and the only one I can find is £300 :D

MythTV ... 5 or 6 times .... yes familiar with the whole Linux fifth or sixth time is the charm thing :D

Now that I realise my backup wasn't a backup but some sort of dubious RAID I've got something to do with my current server ... remote backup server :)
 
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