info on new build for server

spboyd1 · 08-07-2012

i have a new server case but nothing else the server case has9 bays and thats it, i am not sure which system to use intel or amd a;so what type of server to make it i do know that i want tostore a very large dvd and music libery on it i would like to play it on my large screen tv wirelessly but would play wired if nessersery i am not sure if i would play direct from server to tv because i do have a new wd live unit so i guess i am asking you what would you do and how would you build a system and what type of system i have about 450.00 us to start so please help i need to start now and if you can tell me where to read how to set up a server i would like that also since i have read suff like all the hard drives need to be the same so you can read all the movies in a certain que at one time and not have to go from hard drive to hard drive to locate what you are looking for well thanks for the read and any help will be good

**geno888** · 08-07-2012

The most costly part of a storage system is HDDs. What capacity are you planning to get?

If you want to use a RAID system, costs will be higher, so maybe you can consider to buy a NAS instead of building a server from scratch

If RAID is not a must for you, a nice solution can be a box like this. There is also a version with 4 bays, and there are also the RAID versions of these boxes, that can build a RAID array with spare drives (i.e. drives that remain untouched and are used only when a drive of the array fail.

**Albert** · 09-07-2012

Also, can you be a bit more specific on exactly what server case you have? Beyond the 9 drive bays, there are other guts to fill it with; we want to help you as much as possible.

spboyd1 · 10-07-2012

ok guys thanks for the read the server i got was the rosewill RSV-R4000 w/ an rackmount for 8 internal bays and it has 4 cooling fans i also got 3, 2TB hard drives and i have 2 ,1TB seagate drives i believe all the hard drives are 7200 RPM and 64MB catch that is all i have to start the server with like i said in my first post i am not sure of how to build it to get to do as i said in the first post thanks for the read and help

*eric93se* · 10-07-2012

So that case will support regular ATX motherboards, so thats good.

On the part where you say the HDD's need to be the same in order to read from them. I think that depends on the software used, and there is a cool OS (haven't had a chance to play with it) called OpenElec that might be what your looking for. You can also install the OS on a fast thumb drive. Look up some videos on Youtube.

spboyd1 · 10-07-2012

ok what i meant. was i read where if you want to see all. movies in a certain. type and you ha e them on different. hard drives tou ha e ro have them the smae type so you can make the system raid i don't know just something i read alao i read that you don't. need a fast gast psu or great mobo to run sever

*eric93se* · 10-07-2012

Honestly there are so many options that I don't know where to start. There is low power, regular desktop stuff, server, NAS. You might need to do some reading so you can decide. All you really need is a fast dual core with a MB that has 6 SATA ports, MB's with more than 6 and the price shoots up and its a waste. You can always add a sata card later.

You should give OpenElec a try and see if it does what you want. I wish there was more info on their website. There is a link on their site for their forum.

**geno888** · 10-07-2012

To build a RAID system, all HDD must be identical, i.e. same capacity and same speed, not necessarily the same brand. However, different brands usually have slight differences in performance too, so it is advised to use identical drives of the same brand too.

Rack cases are different from "consumer" cases, and probably you'll be forced to buy a PSU purposely built to be installed in a rack. These PSU are very costly, and not that easy to find.

In my opinion you can spend a lot less money buying a NAS. A two bays NAS and a couple of 3 TB drives should be more than enough to store a rather large collection of movies and music

However, if the rack case can contain a regular ATX board, you'll need a board with as much SATA ports as possible. And these are very costly too.

If the server will be used as media storage only, you can save a lot of money getting a low power CPU. An Ivy Bridge processor is a good choice, because is powerful enough to run a server and it has also a low power consumption.

A low power consumption means also that you can use a silent CPU cooler. Theoretically, you can also use a large aftermarket cooler designed for overclockers and use it without any fan, so the CPU can be cooled passively. These coolers, however, are quite costly too, so again the NAS seems the best solution.

Because of you said to have different disks with different capacities, I again suggest to get a box like the one I suggested before i.e. this or the 4 bays version.

With that box, you can use all HDDs as single drives. You can remove or add drives as you like without any worry about rebuild the RAID array, just power off the box, change the drives, and power on the box again.

spboyd1 · 11-07-2012

geno888 i looked at the fantec but it didn.t see a price and did you say that it could take all 5 of the drives i said i had and still show me all the movies in a certain type like if i have each drive set up with horror in it along with say comedy it will show me all the horror together at one time and i tried to start a home sever before and it didn.t seen to have so much in cost and set up i have 2 tb hard drive already filled and i haven.t even started to do the20 boxes with about 75 to 100 titles per box so i really need a lot of hard drives with room to grow once again thanks for all the help

**geno888** · 11-07-2012

The Fantec QB-35US3 has 4 bays. You can connect up to 4 disks there, and all disks are seen ad independent drives, so you can use different capacities and brands.

So if you want to make a disk for horror, a disk for comedy, etc, you can do it easily.

Bear in mind that even a 2 TB drive cannot contain a very large collection of movies, so to save space maybe you can consider to convert your movies to mkv container using the H.264 codec. A full DVD9 (7 GB) can be compressed with excellent quality to a 1 GB file.

Do you want to watch these movies in your television? What media player do you have?

A nice solution could be getting the WD TV, connecting it to the Fantec box, and use it to watch movies on television

*eric93se* · 11-07-2012

Okay so just to give you an AMD and a Intel option. The AMD board has 8 Sata connectors, the Intel has 6. Also the AMD GPU is more powerful than the Intel one. Both setups don't need a video card and both have HDMI connectors for HDTV. There is a $15 off code on the AMD cpu now.

ASRock A75 EXTREME6 FM1 AMD A75
AMD A6-3650 Llano 2.6GHz Socket FM1 100W Quad-Core
Team 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600
Rosewill FORTRESS Series FORTRESS-450 450W Continuous@50°C,80 PLUS Platinum Certified

To go Intel, swap out the MB and CPU for:
Intel Pentium G860 Sandy Bridge 3.0GHz
ASRock Z75 Pro3 LGA 1155 Intel Z75

8GB of RAM is overkill, but its cheap right now. The PSU is platinum rated and its the regular style which fits your case according to newegg. Both the Intel and AMD systems should be similar in efficiency when idling. The PSU has 6 SATA connectors and some molex, you can use molex to sata adapters if you need more connections.

ChristineBCW · 11-07-2012

We usually do home-theater RAID5 systems with 4 hot drives (usually SATA3 3Tb desktop variety ('cheap' things) and a 5th 'cold drive' for any replacements in years to come). The drives run us $120 bulk, so that's $600. We get some AMD 990 board which will have 6 SATA3's, all RAIDable by the motherboard's chipset, plus they'll usually have two more SATA ports for a CD and a boot drive (SSD is pricey, and we usually go with a 10,000 rpm 450Gb drive instead).

This is a great drive for TV recording, because we stick a dual-tuner card in there as well. SSDs could handle that but at many times the price, and require such discipline to unload the recordings promptly due to capacity limits. An HDD is more practical for our customers.

CPU? At least a quad-core, it doesn't matter so much. These boxes record TV, edit and burn all disks, plus have a fairly safe RAID5 system.

This is usually $1200-1300 total, so a good amount goes to hard-drives. Getting that 5th "cold drive" seems like a waste, but any rebuilds will be greatly speeded up if all models are identical - and a 3Tb rebuild will take a day perhaps.

(Oh, to echo the previous poster's comments comparing Intel vs AMD SATA port offerings - Intel motherboard chipsets only handle 4 SATA2's and two SATA3's. If those motherboards have additional SATA3's, they're not RAIDable by the Intel motherboard chipset, and they're usually limited to striping-only or pure-redundant (RAID 0, 1). The AMD motherboards have native support for 6 SATA3s and for disk-intensive operations for low-cost endeavors, the AMDs offer more for less. When we build 'real' RAID systems, we start with $300-400 RAID boards and use SAS hard drives which will easily be twice, three or even four times the price, per drive. But those folks better be making several hundred thou a year off of their computers.)

spboyd1 · 12-07-2012

ok to geno888 i will look into that fantec i already have a wd live tv box so i will check into it to see how you hook it up , now to eric i was looking for the advice you gave me the frist time i asked this question so i say thanks for thenew stuff that you suggested now to all i have been wondering weather i need a raid system because i was not really trying to make a lot of redunted stuff but now that you guys have given me this stuff i will consider both the build and the fantec ecause then i would have a back up what do you think thanks for the read

*eric93se* · 12-07-2012

Well you wouldn't setup RAID for redundancy (you would loose HDD space) you would strip them so that they act as one continuous drive. But like I was saying earlier, I don't think you have to do any of that with the Openelec software.

Read more about RAID HERE

spboyd1 · 12-07-2012

thanks eric93se it look like you are the way to go since fantec items won,t ship to us though amazon or any of the other ways i have tried i will start to price items today one quick ques some seem to think that the amd is not worth buying since it does not meet up to intel for speed and reliability but i think you said before that for a sever unit you didn't have to worry about that

*eric93se* · 12-07-2012

Quote:

Originally Posted by spboyd1

thanks eric93se it look like you are the way to go since fantec items won,t ship to us though amazon or any of the other ways i have tried i will start to price items today one quick ques some seem to think that the amd is not worth buying since it does not meet up to intel for speed and reliability but i think you said before that for a sever unit you didn't have to worry about that

I didn't find a review between the two processors above, but from what I can tell the AMD is the better choice overall.

*Mr. Belvedere* · 12-07-2012

Quote:

Originally Posted by spboyd1

ok what i meant. was i read where if you want to see all. movies in a certain. type and you ha e them on different. hard drives tou ha e ro have them the smae type so you can make the system raid i don't know just something i read alao i read that you don't. need a fast gast psu or great mobo to run sever

I will assume you are going to use the server as a file server and use another device next to your tv to connect to it.

Regarding file servers there is only one thing important: huge throughput. The faster your drives and your network connectivity are, the better. You are not going to get good throughput with wireless. Gigabit ethernet is the bare minimum, but also pretty cheap. You do not need lots of cpu power, graphics are totally unimportant. Servers should be maintained via remote connection so you will not need any screen as well. Operating Systems like NAS4FREE can do great things for your server and run on a small USB stick, because the entire operating system is about 50 MB.

If you want reliability you will have to put in a hardware RAID configuration with at least RAID 5. Almost all other solutions are completely worthless unless you do your own backup system. You will need to have one spare disk, but it's pretty comforting to know your other terabytes are even safe when a drive malfunctions. One thing to remember is to know how long the same drives will be available. No use in rebuilding a RAID if there are no more drives available. Good Hardware RAID is totally OS-independent, so you can still throw any kind of file server system on it you want to.

Regarding playability there are two things important: immense compatability and great performance (1080p should be no problem at all). Sotware like OpenELEC or XBMC can do wonders for your hardware, if configured correctly. DTS-enabled sound cards are recommended since they can do all the sound for your system. Video graphics with built-in MPEG decoding are also highly recommended.

spboyd1 · 13-07-2012

hey eric can i use this it just showed up todayhttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341018&nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL071212&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL071212-_-EMC-071212-Latest-_-PowerSupplies-_-17341018-L0A

*eric93se* · 15-07-2012

That PSU is not efficient. At idle it will only be around 80% efficient (or less).

Take a look at this list: Efficient PSU's

You don't need a lot of power for a server, it will be at idle and draw around 80W. And at full load will not use more than ~200W (which will never happen for a home/personal server). This Rosewill CAPSTONE Series CAPSTONE-450 450W is efficient and enough power. It has 6-sata connectors, but you can use adapters, or if you know how to solder you can add as many SATA cables as you like.

spboyd1 · 16-07-2012

thanks for the advice i thought it was better because it had more power, that's why i always come here for advice eric93se ordered everything that you had in the amd setup but the power source i got the first one under your last post once again thanks i will post again for set up advice once the gear shows up

08-07-2012	#1
spboyd1 MyCE Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2007 Posts: 90	info on new build for server i have a new server case but nothing else the server case has9 bays and thats it, i am not sure which system to use intel or amd a;so what type of server to make it i do know that i want tostore a very large dvd and music libery on it i would like to play it on my large screen tv wirelessly but would play wired if nessersery i am not sure if i would play direct from server to tv because i do have a new wd live unit so i guess i am asking you what would you do and how would you build a system and what type of system i have about 450.00 us to start so please help i need to start now and if you can tell me where to read how to set up a server i would like that also since i have read suff like all the hard drives need to be the same so you can read all the movies in a certain que at one time and not have to go from hard drive to hard drive to locate what you are looking for well thanks for the read and any help will be good

08-07-2012	#2
geno888 Senior Moderator, Editor and Guru Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Italy Posts: 29,213	The most costly part of a storage system is HDDs. What capacity are you planning to get? If you want to use a RAID system, costs will be higher, so maybe you can consider to buy a NAS instead of building a server from scratch If RAID is not a must for you, a nice solution can be a box like this. There is also a version with 4 bays, and there are also the RAID versions of these boxes, that can build a RAID array with spare drives (i.e. drives that remain untouched and are used only when a drive of the array fail. __________________ Click here or here to download latest version of CD-DVD Speed Click here to read more about DMA User guide for CD-DVD Speed: English version - Versione Italiana User guide for ImgBurn in BUILD mode English version - Italian version Please do not ask questions via PM. Post in the forum instead. Thanks Per favore, non chiedete consigli o suggerimenti tramite PM. Usate invece il forum (che serve proprio per questo). KTPHTT

10-07-2012	#8
geno888 Senior Moderator, Editor and Guru Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Italy Posts: 29,213	To build a RAID system, all HDD must be identical, i.e. same capacity and same speed, not necessarily the same brand. However, different brands usually have slight differences in performance too, so it is advised to use identical drives of the same brand too. Rack cases are different from "consumer" cases, and probably you'll be forced to buy a PSU purposely built to be installed in a rack. These PSU are very costly, and not that easy to find. In my opinion you can spend a lot less money buying a NAS. A two bays NAS and a couple of 3 TB drives should be more than enough to store a rather large collection of movies and music However, if the rack case can contain a regular ATX board, you'll need a board with as much SATA ports as possible. And these are very costly too. If the server will be used as media storage only, you can save a lot of money getting a low power CPU. An Ivy Bridge processor is a good choice, because is powerful enough to run a server and it has also a low power consumption. A low power consumption means also that you can use a silent CPU cooler. Theoretically, you can also use a large aftermarket cooler designed for overclockers and use it without any fan, so the CPU can be cooled passively. These coolers, however, are quite costly too, so again the NAS seems the best solution. Because of you said to have different disks with different capacities, I again suggest to get a box like the one I suggested before i.e. this or the 4 bays version. With that box, you can use all HDDs as single drives. You can remove or add drives as you like without any worry about rebuild the RAID array, just power off the box, change the drives, and power on the box again. __________________ Click here or here to download latest version of CD-DVD Speed Click here to read more about DMA User guide for CD-DVD Speed: English version - Versione Italiana User guide for ImgBurn in BUILD mode English version - Italian version Please do not ask questions via PM. Post in the forum instead. Thanks Per favore, non chiedete consigli o suggerimenti tramite PM. Usate invece il forum (che serve proprio per questo). KTPHTT

11-07-2012	#10
geno888 Senior Moderator, Editor and Guru Join Date: Jun 2005 Location: Italy Posts: 29,213	The Fantec QB-35US3 has 4 bays. You can connect up to 4 disks there, and all disks are seen ad independent drives, so you can use different capacities and brands. So if you want to make a disk for horror, a disk for comedy, etc, you can do it easily. Bear in mind that even a 2 TB drive cannot contain a very large collection of movies, so to save space maybe you can consider to convert your movies to mkv container using the H.264 codec. A full DVD9 (7 GB) can be compressed with excellent quality to a 1 GB file. Do you want to watch these movies in your television? What media player do you have? A nice solution could be getting the WD TV, connecting it to the Fantec box, and use it to watch movies on television __________________ Click here or here to download latest version of CD-DVD Speed Click here to read more about DMA User guide for CD-DVD Speed: English version - Versione Italiana User guide for ImgBurn in BUILD mode English version - Italian version Please do not ask questions via PM. Post in the forum instead. Thanks Per favore, non chiedete consigli o suggerimenti tramite PM. Usate invece il forum (che serve proprio per questo). KTPHTT

13-07-2012	#18
spboyd1 MyCE Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2007 Posts: 90	hey eric can i use this it just showed up todayhttp://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341018&nm_mc=EMC-IGNEFL071212&cm_mmc=EMC-IGNEFL071212-_-EMC-071212-Latest-_-PowerSupplies-_-17341018-L0A Last edited by spboyd1; 13-07-2012 at 04:28. Reason: let out item

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09-07-2012	#3
Albert Senior Moderator Join Date: Apr 2005 Location: AL, USA Posts: 5,982	Also, can you be a bit more specific on exactly what server case you have? Beyond the 9 drive bays, there are other guts to fill it with; we want to help you as much as possible.

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10-07-2012	#5
eric93se MyCE Resident Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 3,622	So that case will support regular ATX motherboards, so thats good. On the part where you say the HDD's need to be the same in order to read from them. I think that depends on the software used, and there is a cool OS (haven't had a chance to play with it) called OpenElec that might be what your looking for. You can also install the OS on a fast thumb drive. Look up some videos on Youtube.

11-07-2012	#12
ChristineBCW MyCE Die Hard Join Date: Jul 2012 Location: USA-Canada Posts: 1,299	We usually do home-theater RAID5 systems with 4 hot drives (usually SATA3 3Tb desktop variety ('cheap' things) and a 5th 'cold drive' for any replacements in years to come). The drives run us $120 bulk, so that's $600. We get some AMD 990 board which will have 6 SATA3's, all RAIDable by the motherboard's chipset, plus they'll usually have two more SATA ports for a CD and a boot drive (SSD is pricey, and we usually go with a 10,000 rpm 450Gb drive instead). This is a great drive for TV recording, because we stick a dual-tuner card in there as well. SSDs could handle that but at many times the price, and require such discipline to unload the recordings promptly due to capacity limits. An HDD is more practical for our customers. CPU? At least a quad-core, it doesn't matter so much. These boxes record TV, edit and burn all disks, plus have a fairly safe RAID5 system. This is usually $1200-1300 total, so a good amount goes to hard-drives. Getting that 5th "cold drive" seems like a waste, but any rebuilds will be greatly speeded up if all models are identical - and a 3Tb rebuild will take a day perhaps. (Oh, to echo the previous poster's comments comparing Intel vs AMD SATA port offerings - Intel motherboard chipsets only handle 4 SATA2's and two SATA3's. If those motherboards have additional SATA3's, they're not RAIDable by the Intel motherboard chipset, and they're usually limited to striping-only or pure-redundant (RAID 0, 1). The AMD motherboards have native support for 6 SATA3s and for disk-intensive operations for low-cost endeavors, the AMDs offer more for less. When we build 'real' RAID systems, we start with $300-400 RAID boards and use SAS hard drives which will easily be twice, three or even four times the price, per drive. But those folks better be making several hundred thou a year off of their computers.)

12-07-2012	#13
spboyd1 MyCE Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2007 Posts: 90	ok to geno888 i will look into that fantec i already have a wd live tv box so i will check into it to see how you hook it up , now to eric i was looking for the advice you gave me the frist time i asked this question so i say thanks for thenew stuff that you suggested now to all i have been wondering weather i need a raid system because i was not really trying to make a lot of redunted stuff but now that you guys have given me this stuff i will consider both the build and the fantec ecause then i would have a back up what do you think thanks for the read

15-07-2012	#19
eric93se MyCE Resident Join Date: Dec 2004 Posts: 3,622	That PSU is not efficient. At idle it will only be around 80% efficient (or less). Take a look at this list: Efficient PSU's You don't need a lot of power for a server, it will be at idle and draw around 80W. And at full load will not use more than ~200W (which will never happen for a home/personal server). This Rosewill CAPSTONE Series CAPSTONE-450 450W is efficient and enough power. It has 6-sata connectors, but you can use adapters, or if you know how to solder you can add as many SATA cables as you like.

16-07-2012	#20
spboyd1 MyCE Junior Member Join Date: Jan 2007 Posts: 90	thanks for the advice i thought it was better because it had more power, that's why i always come here for advice eric93se ordered everything that you had in the amd setup but the power source i got the first one under your last post once again thanks i will post again for set up advice once the gear shows up

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