storage server

crazyDAJT · 20 Feb 2008 at 23:09

I'm looking at maybe building a storage server when i move into out of my flat and into a house, where i could potential have a broom cupboard.. i mean server room.

anyway

combining this:

with a RocketRAID 2320, or a Dell Perc 5/i if i can pull one out of workstation at work, (will have to probably change the motherboard for that).

so for about 1.4K thats 3.5TB of storage. now I'm not going to spend that all at once, and i have an old IDE dive i can use for the operating system.

the bare bones will only cost about £600

now the questions.

would it be a good idea to get a gigabit lan card, would it help to have two connections, the plan is to connected it to anything hardwired via a gigabit network, but it will also have to be responsive over wifi.

probably a maximum number of simultaneous users of 6.

PSU, I'm not going to need PCIe just a shed load of sata connectors, anything more appropriate??

also OS, can i set up shares properly, i.e. allow limited assess to some users got this working on my vista desktop and it works well. can i do the same with samba in linux, or would it be easer to go with windows home server.

any other general comments more than welcome.

ta

EDIT: second PSU is a mistake, still in my cart form my last wanted build

PhillyDee · 20 Feb 2008 at 23:25

Well, The corsair is over powered, go for the 520 If you want a corsair (Why do you have 2 PSUs?. Do you need the floppy drive?
Anything more than 2gb of ram for a file server is basically overkill. What is its main use? I use my WHS server box basically as a file server and it uses no where near 1gb ram.

jak731 · 20 Feb 2008 at 23:27

firstly why the 2 psus?

2nd is 4GB of RAM required for what this server is required to do?

3rd how are you going to connect 9 sata devices up?

crazyDAJT · 20 Feb 2008 at 23:28

PhillyDee said:
Well, The corsair is over powered, go for the 520 If you want a corsair (Why do you have 2 PSUs?. Do you need the floppy drive?
Anything more than 2gb of ram for a file server is basically overkill. What is its main use? I use my WHS server box basically as a file server and it uses no where near 1gb ram.

2 PSU is a mistake, thats good as it make it cheeper. lol

i want it to act a simple file server, backup server and also serve DIVX and HD content.

crazyDAJT · 20 Feb 2008 at 23:29

jak731 said:
firstly why the 2 psus?

2nd is 4GB of RAM required for what this server is required to do?

3rd how are you going to connect 9 sata devices up?

4GB is so cheep, but take your point, it is overkill so will knock that down to 2.

its 8 SATA drives and one IDE drive, both the RAID controllers do 8 drives

decto · 21 Feb 2008 at 00:20

Buy the 1TB RE2 drives. Each one uses about half the power of the 500GB drives you specify so you'll save on power and they will run cool and quiet. for ~£60 extra you get 5 1TB drives and 4GB storage ... with 5 yr warrenty.

Plus if you shopped around you could use get a 560 mainboard that supports 6 x sata which is plenty with 1TB drives.

My X2 3600 S939 1GB with a Raid 3 1TB array (revo 64 PCI 3 port) using onboard Nforce 1GB network with XP strikes out at ~40MB/sec which is 50% of Gbit network speed. Multiple users suffer but that is due to the drives having to seek. If this is an issue you need to look at real fast drives but if access is limited the 1TB RE2 will be good.

If you disable simple file sharing XP Pro has some decent file permission and encryption.

... sack the second PSU.... 5 x RE2 = 40w .... + the AMD and board ... looking at 120W all in !!! (I'm 65w idle, 100w load)

crazyDAJT · 21 Feb 2008 at 00:29

decto said:
Buy the 1TB RE2 drives. Each one uses about half the power of the 500GB drives you specify so you'll save on power and they will run cool and quiet. for ~£60 extra you get 5 1TB drives and 4GB storage ... with 5 yr warrenty.

Plus if you shopped around you could use get a 560 mainboard that supports 6 x sata which is plenty with 1TB drives.

My X2 3600 S939 1GB with a Raid 3 1TB array (revo 64 PCI 3 port) using onboard Nforce 1GB network with XP strikes out at ~40MB/sec which is 50% of Gbit network speed. Multiple users suffer but that is due to the drives having to seek. If this is an issue you need to look at real fast drives but if access is limited the 1TB RE2 will be good.

If you disable simple file sharing XP Pro has some decent file permission and encryption.

... sack the second PSU.... 5 x RE2 = 40w .... + the AMD and board ... looking at 120W all in !!! (I'm 65w idle, 100w load)

good point about the 1TB drives, it does mean i can save £190 with a raid controller card. so that extra cash will be saved.

can anybody recommended a cheep board with lots of sata ports and good raid capability's