versatile home server

Capt Doufos

Capt Doufos

Capt Doufos

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
2,721
Location
Nr Colchester, Essex
Hi Guys,

I am just after an opinion really. I have a server at home which hosts all my media (Home Photos's/Videos, Music Rips/Downloads, Bluray/DVD rips, and software ISO's) as I can't stand having the physical media cluttering up the place. This is about 4TB hosted on a RAID5 array with the irreplaceable content replicated to another drive and my PC. I am just trying to cover loosing a drive with the other content, as it can be downloaded again\re-ripped (it's just a mega PITA if it happens).

I would like to change the setup so I can run some other server apps (on multiple virtual servers) rather than just the file server, things like a minecraft server for 4 people and being able to use it for test setups as required (new serverOS's and Apps etc).

So it gets a bit complicated as I really need to run a hypervisor (2012R2 Hyper-V or ESX 5.5) However I am conflicted as I would really like to keep the storage as simple as possible and have the minimum amount of potential failure points. I am thinking of migrating to a drive pooling style setup where I can just flag the content I to duplicate rather than risk raid rebuilds, which also means I can just pull the drives and put them in another machine if any other part of the hardware/OS fails.

I would like to keep it in one server to minimize cost/power draw but I am beginning to think hosting effectively a NAS virtually might be more trouble than it's worth.

What do you think? Would you have a separate nas and server or all in one box? Any software would you recommend? I have been looking into Openfiler, FreeNAS, Stablebit Drivepool, Unraid, ZFS RAID-Z2 etc.

Help me please! I am rubbish at making decisions at the best of times. There are too many options.

:)
 
using something like free nas is good from a licensing kind of thing, if its not a problem ;) then i wouldnt use free nas / linux i would go windows all the way.
have you thought about live drive or crash plan for a cloud backup of your data, if you have fibre even better
 
I am in similar situation to you. I have a MicroServer running Windows 2012 R2 as a file server, and a separate box running ESXi. Essentially you are talking about two very different requirements:

- Reliably and stably host files. This needs to have very high WAF (wife acceptance factor), so essentially needs to never fail. If it's down, she can't watch her movies/series, etc., and given evenings is when I'm most likely to tinker, and when she is sitting down to watch TV, then bouncing this box is not an option.
- An environment where you want the flexibility to build and destroy things, upgrade, reinstall, reboot with abandon -- a lab.

My MicroServer idles at 38W with a 64GB SSD and 2 x 3TB WD Reds. The fact that it is low-powered (in terms of CPU and RAM) makes it easy for me to leave it alone (I'm not itching to tinker with it), and as a result has been rock solid for several years (I'm on my 2nd MicroServer, I originally had an N36L, now it's an N54L).

I then have a virtualisation host (currently a completely passive system with a Xeon E3-1265L v2) which I use to run various things that I currently want to learn/play with.

Because I'm running Windows 2012 R2 on my MicroServer, I also have it as a Domain Controller and DNS server, providing an anchor for the home lab.

I've been very happy with this arrangement.
 
To expand a little on my MicroServer -- I use Windows Server Backup (the built-in Windows backup) to backup everything on one of the 3TB drives to other drive. This runs nightly, and provides me with more than enough protection. Valuable data (photos, documents), is backed up from our laptops to the MicroServer using a fantastic tool called Bvckup 2 (http://bvckup2.com/), and I run CrashPlan on the MicroServer, which backs up the backed up data (from the laptops) to the Cloud. So a 3-tier backup system, effectively.
 
I have Windows Home Server 2011 installed on the bare metal of a 1155-based system (currently with a G550 CPU, but I could drop in up to an i7-3770 if I wanted more CPU power) with 4GB RAM (WHS2011 supports 8GB max).

Disk storage is handled by StableBit DrivePool, with 2x 3TB and 1x 2TB drives in the pool. Only my most critical/non-replaceable items (such as documents and photos) are duplicated onto multiple disks, everything else can be found again.

I've also got the following tasks running on it 24/7:

DHCP
ArgusTV - recording of live tv
CouchPotato/SickBeard/Headphones - automation
sabnzbd+/uTorrent - downloading
Apache - basic web service
MySQL - centralised XBMC database
XBMC
CrashPlan/OwnCloud - for storing of family backups
SQL Server 2005/2008R2 - hosting databases I'm working on for work
Dropbox
TeamViewer - remote access for any required administration

This cheap little box (mobo/cpu/mem was <£100) hasn't let me down with any of the tasks I've asked of it, but I've got room for expansion with up to 8GB memory, and the ability to throw in a much quicker CPU, should I feel the need for it.


As it just runs happily on its own and I rarely need to touch it, it does everything I need, and as has been said above, the WAF is high because it's always available.

I decided to stick with a single box, running a copy of Windows on the bare metal, because it's the easiest to deal with, and as it's Windows, I can do anything I need to with it very quickly. Yes, some form of Linux distribution would probably do everything I need to as well, but if I needed to make any changes, or troubleshoot, it would be an absolute nightmare, as it is completely unknown territory for me - give me a Windows box and I can do what I need to quickly - that's more important to me than the extra uptime a Linux box will give by not requiring a reboot at 3am every couple of months for a new Windows Update! ;)
 
Thanks for the input so far, I have been messing about with it for ages and have been getting random BSOD's on hyper-v, wasting night after night on it. I nearly just bought a NAS last night out of frustration, but I resisted due to PSU/Board failure in a nas it's bye bye data most likely.

I like the idea of Drivepool as time goes on and you need more space you can just add in extra drives or start swapping out your 2TB's for 4's etc without having to rebuild an array.

I don't mind using Linux as the fileserver, it's not that hard to manage when using Samba and Webmin, and other than the intial setup of things like SabNZB+ they are easily managed. I did stick to using an NTFS drive for storage though to give me the option to plug it into a windows PC. I'm not sure about a drivepool type option for Ubuntu server though.
 
I'm currently running a mini-itx build with a first gen i3, 8gb ram, 6TB of independant disks, and SBS2011 running on the bare metal.

I have a linux webserver and a openvpn server running on hyper-v (which shouldn't be installed on sbs).

So far the box has been awesome. Exchange handles emails, and the DC lets me manage my home network. But the lack of coherent storage is a big let-down. Coupled with the fact that I've run out of SATA ports, I have also decided to upgrade.

I'm looking at a cheap 8-core AMD system with a load of spare PCI-E slots to add cheap SATA controllers after I exhaust the sata ports. I'm going to put on a copy of Server 2012 on the bare metal and create some nice storage pools. Then in hyper-v, I will convert and run the SBS as the DC and Exchange, and also my linux VMs.

I did consider a seperate box for storage, but this would be a waste of resources in my opinion, and I also looked into freenas to run on the bare metal, but no VM support without some serious hacking. The final option I considered was linux as a base, running BTRFS so I could swap in and out drives at my leisure, but this is still beta, and not really ready for prime-time, so server 2012 it is..
 
I have found this for Linux, doesn't look as nice as drivepool, but seems to do a very similar job. http://www.greyhole.net/

There are quite a few FM2+ boards with 8 SATA3 sockets for about £55 (A88X) There is also a Quad Core A8 6500T due out very shortly which is only 45W TDP for about £72. They could be a good option. The boards also support SCSI over USB.
 
If you want to run something like ESXI then you would be better off with hardware that supports proper hardware passthrough and a dedicated SATA/RAID controller.

For example I my ESXI box with a Dell SAS 6/ir card passed through to a debian VM which acts as the file server, then along side that I have a mix of windows and *nix VMs performing various tasks
 
I have an HP P400 8 Port card which I was passing through Hyper-V I'm just not sure it worth the risk of secondary failure and associated rebuild time with Raid 5/6/10 or Z. Obviously the more drives you have in the array the greater the chance of a failure. With drives being so cheap I think I may as well just go for data duplication apart from the things I really don't care about. I think I would certainly want at least Raid 6 or Z2 if I was going to raid it, but I'm not sure it's worth it.
 
Having the redundancy and single logical partition that having RAID6/RAIDZ-2 would give is definitely worth it. Particularly with those two as they will still offer some redundancy against a second drive failure while the array rebuids.

edit: The other bonus with ZFS or MDADM based RAID means that even if the controller dies you arent hunting around for another controller to retrieve the data just about any *nix based system will allow you to do so
 
It's more the fact, say I have 6 2TB drives Raid 6/Z2 would give 8TB useable, and if I loose a drive the rebuild time is going to be significant.

If I just use a JBOD drivepool and duplicate everything I would only loose a max of 2TB, which is equates to a £60 drive and has the bonus of being able to take any of the drives out of the pool and read them in another PC and be able to increase the size of the pool whenever I desire. I would loose performance, but I don't really require it, I just think it adds another layer of complexity I don't really need.
 
Capt Doufos said:
I have found this for Linux, doesn't look as nice as drivepool, but seems to do a very similar job. http://www.greyhole.net/

There are quite a few FM2+ boards with 8 SATA3 sockets for about £55 (A88X) There is also a Quad Core A8 6500T due out very shortly which is only 45W TDP for about £72. They could be a good option. The boards also support SCSI over USB.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I hadn't come across this before, I'll do some reading.

Those boards look compelling too. Not so sure I would want an APU for a VM box though. Something would irk about having a massive GPU die for that usage. The price is good mind..
 
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I guess going forward, having a half decent APU there could be of benefit with anything you use that offers GPU acceleration, but I know what you mean. I would rather a the same CPU with lesser GPU for less of my pennies.
 
I wouldn't worry too much about trying to keep a low TDP - all you're doing is limiting how quick your server will run should it need to. A higher TDP processor will only use more power if you need it - and if you need the power, you'll be glad for it! ;) Almost any modern processor, when under minimal load, will use minimal power.
 
Confused said:
I wouldn't worry too much about trying to keep a low TDP - all you're doing is limiting how quick your server will run should it need to. A higher TDP processor will only use more power if you need it - and if you need the power, you'll be glad for it! ;) Almost any modern processor, when under minimal load, will use minimal power.
Click to expand...
Agreed.
 
Found my stability issues are my Q6600 G0 vs Abit AWD9D-MAX, so I may take the opportunity to put something with some more poke in.

I am thinking:

AMD FX 6300 (8 core would be nice but not sure if I can stretch the extra £30)
Gigabyte 970A-DS3P (8x SATA would be nice, but there only seem to be FM2+ boards in this price bracket with 8)
8GB Teamgroup Vulcan 2400mhz
 
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