DonationCoder.com Forum
Main Area and Open Discussion => Living Room => Topic started by: superboyac on November 30, 2009, 12:58 PM
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You guys here at DC helped me build my new PC earlier this year (see here (https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=16186.0)), and it was fabulous. Your advice and back and forth dialogue was a great way to figure everything out. I truly took it all to heart and it resulted in the best rig I've ever made.
Anyway, with all the talk recently of backing up, I started my setup. I encountered a problem I had never run into earlier about almost having too many hard drives. Mouser correctly pointed out that after a certain number, Windows and/or my hardware may have certain issues with it. So I started thinking about what the good solution is, and I think the answer is that eventually I will need some kind of home server, and that's where all this started from.
On my current setup, I have my main hard drive, another drive for storing documents, a backup drive (internal), and another backup drive (external). The external enclosure actually houses 2 bays, so there's another drive in there that I mess around with. That's 5 drives. I also have a couple of other drives lying around that I'd like to make use of.
So, my initial idea is to set up some kind of server pc running one of the Windows Server flavors (2003, Home Server, 2008, etc.). I'll put all the drive in there except for my main and document drives, and that will be my home server. I'll connect it to my linksys router/wifi box and there you go.
What are your initial thoughts? I'd love to hear them. Don't be afraid to express your honest opinion. Some people in my previous thread thought that my system was overkill and were worried that other people were recommending pricey hardware to me. yes, my rig was expensive, but I'm also very happy with it after almost a year.
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What are all the drives for? Maybe just get a large NAS and stick everything on that, then backup the NAS to an external drive. Lower power than a full system, takes up less space, possibly quieter, little or no maintenance, accessible from all systems on a network.
Total solution cost, about $800:
2.5TB (~2.3TB formatted) RAID 5 NAS - $600
http://www.adorama.com/VDLA5B5B25TB.html?searchinfo=5big
2TB single drive for backup - $140 (after rebate)
http://www.buy.com/prod/fantom-greendrive-2tb-usb-2-0-and-esata-external-hard-drive-2-year/q/loc/101/212502309.html
Just a thought. :)
- Oshyan
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What are all the drives for? Maybe just get a large NAS and stick everything on that, then backup the NAS to an external drive. Lower power than a full system, takes up less space, possibly quieter, little or no maintenance, accessible from all systems on a network.
-JavaJones
I considered that. but I think I want to build my own system. A large part of the drives are for backups. I have a lot of files. Each of my backup drives are already 1 TB, and they are more than 80% full already. So I want to build a system that I can expand. I also want to play around with a server. I just don't like the idea of a NAS...too pre-packaged for me. i don't really care about power consumption. I don't mind the maintenance. I care about quiet, but I don't see why it has to be that loud. And I have plenty of space in my house. I'm not trying to be an ass, I just wanted to address your concerns, which are very valid by the way.
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Not a problem, I totally understand your reasoning... and in that case, you could get something like ReadyNAS, with 4 or 6 bays, empty, and buy some 1-2GB drives to fill it with. It's expandable, lets you tinker and build and configure, and has all the other advantages of a NAS. ;)
e.g. http://www.amazon.com/Netgear-ReadyNAS-Diskless-Desktop-Attached/dp/B000VA3TXY/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1259609756&sr=1-4
Perhaps you could explain more specifically what you want to do with a "home server"? Backup? Media streaming? Central file repository for sharing (NAS-like)?
- Oshyan
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I'll also add that some NASes are not as "pre-packaged" as you might think. Some you can hack and get a full Linux distro running on them.
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i don't really care about power consumption.
-superboyac
Bad boy! BAD, bad boy!
If you don't need the flexibility a server gives you, building a full server is wasteful in money, and while you might not care about your power bill, that kind of mentality doesn't exactly our environment.
And as innuendo mentions, there's a lot that you can do with some of the nicer NAS units.
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Yes, I guess I failed to mention the level of customizability some offer. I believe it's ReadyNAS (or a similar one) that has a whole modding/plugin community around it, with lots of cool tweaks, mods, plugins, etc. to enhance functionality and get it doing exactly what you want. There are even dedicated bittorrent and other clients available for them.
- Oshyan
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I think your best bet might be Windows Home Server for what you're describing. To give credit where due, Microsoft did a very nice job with their latest iteration of this product. The way it handles data storage and harddrives is particularly well done. Add in the network backup capabilities, system health monitoring, and remote access features and you have a very good solution for a small home or SOHO server. WHS is also (IMHO) one of the easiest to administer servers available. Worth a look.
Info here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/windowshomeserver/features.mspx
You can download a 120-day evaluation copy which should give you plenty of time to see if it meets your needs.
Link: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?displaylang=en&FamilyID=e3694b69-93f6-4267-b881-55ce0648c784
If you decide to go ahead with WHS, an OEM copy will set you back about $100 street.
If you're feeling more adventurous, take a look at the Amahi Home Server. It's a Fedora/FOSS-based alternative that provides similar functionality. Free to install, but registration is required.
Info here: www.amahi.org
:Thmbsup:
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Thanks, 40! yes, I've heard a lot of great things about Windows Home Server. I should also mention that years ago, I got a free copy of Windows Server 2003 that I never used. At the time, i was blown away by how fast it was relative to Windows XP, but I had no need for a server at the time. Whatever, it's there.
i do want to build my own box. I will try not to be wasteful with the energy consumption. But it's going to have 3-5 drives in it. That's fo sho.
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I know I recommended it in your other thread but I'll recommend Windows Home Server once again. I've used it since being part of the beta test and love it.
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I know I recommended it in your other thread but I'll recommend Windows Home Server once again. I've used it since being part of the beta test and love it.
-skwire
Yeah, your post was the one that introduced me to it. Thanks. At this point, it looks like I'll go that way.
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I've run into a more pressing need right now, please help me out with a few questions:
I need to back up my information to something off-site. Now, instead of paying for a service, I'd like to set up something in either my parent's house or my sister's house. What's the easiest way to do this? Can I just buy a NAS and connect it to their router? How do I access and administer the NAS from my house? Through ftp? Or through http? Or something different? I just want to sync the files from my hard drive to that one.
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Take a look at CrashPlan and/or CrashPlan+.
The Home Server Show website ran an interesting two-part article on using it with WHS. Sounds very much like what you're trying to accomplish. (Note: I haven't tried this yet, but I've got it on my to-do list for March. Looks promising! :Thmbsup:)
Here's the links for the article:
http://homeservershow.com/whs-and-crashplan-for-social-cloud-backup-part-1.html
http://homeservershow.com/whs-and-crashplan-for-social-cloud-backup-part-2.html
Link for CrashPlan homepage: http://www9.crashplan.com/consumer/index.html
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Obligatory Disclaimer: 40hz has no affiliation (financial or otherwise) with the makers of CrashPlan.
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I've run into a more pressing need right now, please help me out with a few questions:
I need to back up my information to something off-site. Now, instead of paying for a service, I'd like to set up something in either my parent's house or my sister's house. What's the easiest way to do this? Can I just buy a NAS and connect it to their router? How do I access and administer the NAS from my house? Through ftp? Or through http? Or something different? I just want to sync the files from my hard drive to that one.
-superboyac
I have a Synology NAS, which is able to use various services (I use DYNDNS.org) to keep a (free) hostname registered to the (probably variable) IP address; and from there you can set up ftp and/or http etc.
You should be able to ftp straight to it, although I have not attempted to do that from an external site.
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As usual, 40hz is two steps ahead of me. Good to have you back, man!
Thanks Perry, I'll check that out. I don't know what would be better: ftp or http. I'm guessing ftp is more appropriate for file syncing.
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I totally forgot about this thread.
What do you guys think about Dell's Powervault line? I was just eyeing the PowerVault MD1000 as my storage box. I spoke to someone this weekend that highly recommended it, saying they are very well built and so forth. I mean, The Norco unit that most consumers like me buy costs about $300, and this thing would cost like $3000. So what is it that justifies a 10x price difference?
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Are you seriously thinking of dropping three large on an empty chassis? :huh: Think about it...you're already in three grand and you haven't even purchased a single hard drive yet.
My Windows Home Server has thirteen drives in a regular vanilla computer case that probably cost $60. The only custom modifications I did to the case was to kit it out with plenty of fans and replace the stock PSU with a heavy-duty one. I can't think of a single reason for you to buy something like that PowerVault.
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I was only asking. I don't have a problem spending it if there's a reason for it. That's what I wanted to know. I don't shy away from spending a little extra if the equipment is all rugged, well made, metal, etc. vs. something cheap and plasticky. But then we're talking 10x the price, so that might be a little too much to justify.
But I may very well go for that $300 Norco unit. People seem to be pretty happy with that. I also don't really want to do this with a normal tower case. i want to build a mid-size rack. Not one of those 7-footer ones, but like a mid-height thing around 4' or so. I want to be semi-enterprise quality with this stuff, even though it's for home use. I'm like that.
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I was just eyeing the PowerVault MD1000 as my storage box.-superboyac
Sorry if I sound like a broken record... I'm all for the off-lease commercial stuff. The company I mentioned in the other thread Stallard Technologies, Inc. (http://www.stikc.com) handles those and they are indeed $3,000+ (refurbished). However...
I spoke to my contact there the last week (While ordering a PowerEdge 2800), and told him about DC. If you call the number on their site, ask for Geoff (pronounced Jeff), and tell him you're from here he'll work with you. No discounts were discussed, but if you need a configuration not listed in their site (small number of large drives with room to grow), he's the man to see; knowledgeable, honest, & fun to chat with.
Note: I also found out (last week) that they have a referral program, but that has no bearing on my decision to endorse them. I like the company because they have excellent service & quality product.
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I was just eyeing the PowerVault MD1000 as my storage box.-superboyac
Sorry if I sound like a broken record... I'm all for the off-lease commercial stuff. The company I mentioned in the other thread Stallard Technologies, Inc. (http://www.stikc.com) handles those and they are indeed $3,000+ (refurbished). However...
I spoke to my contact there the last week (While ordering a PowerEdge 2800), and told him about DC. If you call the number on their site, ask for Geoff (pronounced Jeff), and tell him you're from here he'll work with you. No discounts were discussed, but if you need a configuration not listed in their site (small number of large drives with room to grow), he's the man to see; knowledgeable, honest, & fun to chat with.
Note: I also found out (last week) that they have a referral program, but that has no bearing on my decision to endorse them. I like the company because they have excellent service & quality product.
-Stoic Joker
Thanks Stoic! that's the kind of help I truly value. I will definitely give him a call.
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There's a recent MakeUseOf.com article on do-it-yourself home server using Amahi (http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/set-home-server-amahi/).
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I haven't called Stallard yet, i will later today maybe. I have a feeling their prices just can't compete with the cheap stuff like Norco.
I'm trying to figure out all the different Norco models, and what their differences are. hell if I can tell.
RPC-4220
This is a popular one on newegg and seems to be what most people get.
RPC-4224
I'm tempted to get this since it seems like an updated version of the one above. But I have no idea.
^^Both of these, on Norco's website, fall under the "server rackmount" category.
The ones below fall under the "Storage Systems" category. i don't really understand what the difference is:
DS-24DR
DS-24E
DS-24D
DS-24ER
All of these are just like those popular RPC-4220 models, but they are in different categories and have a few variations. I don't know what the differences are and why they are considered different than the others.
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The RPC-4220 and 4224 are both full system enclosures with lots of drive bays. You get the chassis, motherboard, CPU, RAM, hard drives, and stick it all in the same box and rack mount it. This is a full single-unit solution for your needs.
The DS-xx models are all storage *only*. They're external enclosures with no room for a motherboard but lots of room for drives, designed to provide significant external storage to existing systems. So if you go this route you have to buy another unit for the host system.
The external enclosures work through a SAS expander and connection with an SFF-8088 (ideally) multi-lane connection. This means you need a compatible controller card/port in your host system. With use of the expander, these large external enclosures can show up as "Just a Box/Bunch Of Disks/Drives" (JBOD), in other words they present to your system as independent drives, which you can then choose to configure however you want (including setting up various RAID configurations). Unlike other some enclosures (particularly consumer-level) that would use e.g. a USB, Firewire, or eSATA port (none of which are multi-lane) where the drives would need to be in a RAID configuration controlled by hardware *in* the box that houses the drives so it can be addressed through the single non-multi-lane port.
- Oshyan
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+1 X 100 with JavaJones on the above post.
If you're going to be configuring more than 4 drives in your storage array, you definitely want to either be on a 'business grade' server chassis - or have some of your drives in an external enclosure. And if you're thinking of using RAID (especially RAID-5) on your data drives, you most bodaciously DO NOT want to use a desktop/consumer class controller card.
The mobo RAID controllers (or those cheap weird-brand Asian imports) are OK for mirroring (RAID-1) your boot disk. But I wouldn't want to use them for much more than that. Especially when you can score a decent used "pro" card on e-bay or other places if you shop around. Most times they're between $100-$150 (with battery). Not a bad deal when you consider they run around $600 new - and some junk RAID card will set you back about $75-$80.
If you do go with a consumer card, burn a joss stick in front of the Data Buddha and keep your fingers crossed. Shanti! :huh:
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Buddhist monk repairing a computer in his monastery in Thailand. How cool is that!
Note: I've seen mirrored drives both get corrupted very nicely by cheap RAID cards. So maybe I'd restrict "RAID on the cheap" to RAID-1 and only if I were using a mobo-based controller. But I'd have to be feeling pretty good about myself on the day I chanced it.
Putting your big data drives in an external enclosure also goes a long way towards reducing heat build up in your server case. And taking some strain off your server's power supply. It can also (usually) just be moved over to something else if your main server dies. So you'll still have access to your data and archives in a pinch. You'll also get some additional protection by having your drives in two separate enclosures in the unlikely event your power supply or AC circuit experiences a catastrophic failure which fries everything downstream.
Just my 2¢ :Thmbsup:
P.S. Don't use RAID-5. If you have a good backup strategy and can afford occasional downtime to perform hardware maintenance or replacements, RAID-5 is more trouble than it's worth IMO.
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Thanks JJ and 40hz, very helpful as usual.
40, you've warned me several times about the consumer RAID controllers, so I'm going to avoid those. I actually don't intend to use RAID at all, even with 10-15 drives installed. I'd rather have a software or OS way of combining directories and drives (volume spanning is the term, I believe?). I just don't think I have the stomach to deal with RAID, so I'll be really trying hard not to need it.
Since the DS units from Norco are just for storage, perhaps the best thing I can do is buy the server box (I don't know what to call it, but it's the part that has the mobo, cards, and all that stuff) and buy a DS unit for just the storage.
For the server, this is going to be hard for me to shop for, so I'm asking for help on it. What specs do I want or need? I can spend a decent amount, but I don't want to spend way more than I have to. Like, if a shitty server costs $500 and a decent one costs $2000, I'll get the expensive one. But if a shitty one costs $1000, and the decent one costs $7000, I'll probably stick with the cheap one. If I can build it myself and avoid some brand name prices and restrictions, I'd like that also.
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What do you guys think of the Dell PowerEdge R710 units? They seem to be popular and reliable from what I've read.
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Stoic, I just spoke to Geoff from Stallard. He's a great person to talk to, thanks for that recommendation. Very knowledgeable and easy to understand.
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Stoic, I just spoke to Geoff from Stallard. He's a great person to talk to, thanks for that recommendation. Very knowledgeable and easy to understand.-superboyac
Yeah he's a hell of a good (real people kinda) guy. And he does know what he's doing.
So why the R710? Are you planning a rack system?
You're not going to have 500 users, so you really don't need QuadCores. So why not go back one more generation to a 2900 (tower) or 2950 (rack). You can still get ( 8 hot-swapable) 3TB drives on a 6I controller in the box with redundant power supplies.
I just picked up one of the 2900's around the first of the year. I got it with 4GB RAM, and 2 Xeon (5060) 3.2GHz CPUs. Serving the accounting db to 20 users at the office is super fast. The old HP NetServer LH3 used to take 30 - 45 minutes to do a from the application local backup. The 2900 doesn't even take a full minute to do the same thing.
Could be a lot more bang for your buck, if you don't need that close to the cutting edge.
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I'm not generally too enamored of Dell. But I have to say I have never had serious issues with any of their servers. And that goes back to the 90s when I first started not insisting on IBM, Compaq or HP (they used to be two different companies back then!) for server deployments.
Dell does a nice reliable server. I have clients with Dell servers that have been running continuously for years. And if we set them up, the only time they ever need to get power-cycled is when a software upgrade requires it, or if a drive is getting replaced because it threw a SMART alert.
One additional thing I really like about Dell is they don't load their servers up with a bunch of proprietary technology, or adopt their own vocabulary for common industry-wide terminology.
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Agree (like I almost always do) w/Stoic regarding the spec for your personal server. Unless you're planning on supporting more than 100 heavy users, the 29xx series (or equivalent) should do ya fine. And since you're mostly talking "file & print" as your core function, even the 29xx will provide you with more power than you need right now. Which is great because you'll have room to grow.
For you, the most expensive components you own will probably be your disk controllers if you're serious about running something like 15Tb worth of storage. Muy macho! I like! :Thmbsup:
Note: If you plan on running Windows Server, put any spare money you have into RAM (up to 8Gb) first. 4Gb is a good number. Probably 4Gb the sweet spot for what you'll be doing. So start with that and up it if you think you need to. Don't bother going past 8Gb however, because you'll start getting diminishing returns unless you have a lot of simultaneous users.
re:CPU - go with Intel if at all possible. I know you can arguably get more bang for the buck with AMD. Don't bother unless you're a heavy-duty Linux or BSD wonk. Intel OWNS the Windows server marketspace. And when it comes to CPUs, be sure to check for: 64-bit with support for virtualization. Because that's where everything is going - if it hasn't already gone there.
8)
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Yeah, I just threw that R710 model out there. That was before talking to Geoff. Now, I'm sort of relying on his analysis to recommend something for my needs. So I don't have any idea at this point what models I'll be using.
40hz: regarding your comments, I have a couple of questions. if not Dell, what other brands would you consider? Also, how hard would it be to build a Dell-like server? I always prefer building things myself because I get to choose each part specifically, and I end up knowing how to do the maintenance later on, when necessary. Now, as an older and wiser person, I am moving away from all that DIY stuff, especially since I am extremely busy now and I can afford way better things than I used to. So if something is reliable and made well, I'll just buy it if it's in a rather large price range. People on this forum are always concerned about how much I pay for things, and I appreciate their concern (but I probably spend a little more "liberally" than most people are comfortable with).
About prices, it sounds like this project will cost me around $3-5000 or something. Which is fine, and I hope it's a reliable setup. I'm very excited about having my own server and trying to clean up my life. I want as much of my "stuff" as possible on hard drives and backed up. Then I can clean out unnecessary paperwork and cabinets and other useless things that I've held on to. I'm in the middle of a whole clean up phase in my life. I simply don't need or care to have a lot of the things I have. DVD's, useless books, unused furniture, all that type of junk. I just want to remove all the clutter. This server will really help me do that. All the stuff I have backed up on spare drives and cd's and dvd's, it's all going on the server.
The next step would be to create my own private network, or intranet, or VPN, or whatever you call it. if I can accomplish that, I'm really set. especially if I can do it using no other cloud services or anything. The only service I'd like to employ is the ISP, and that's it. If I can achieve that level of computing independence, I'll be very happy.
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Servers need to be rock stable, and that requires well matched components. They don't need to be constantly tweaked to maintain lightning speed...They ain't for that.
DIY desktop can be fun...DIY server = bad idea. The factory takes great care to make sure all components are matched and play well together. And they're also very well documented and easy to get parts for.
Googling an error message for a mainstream server will get you tons of spot-on info.
Googling an error message for a DIY server, will get you tons of cryptic guessing games.
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Servers need to be rock stable, and that requires well matched components. They don't need to be constantly tweaked to maintain lightning speed...They ain't for that.
DIY desktop can be fun...DIY server = bad idea. The factory takes great care to make sure all components are matched and play well together. And they're also very well documented and easy to get parts for.
Googling an error message for a mainstream server will get you tons of spot-on info.
Googling an error message for a DIY server, will get you tons of cryptic guessing games.
-Stoic Joker
Thanks. I needed to hear that. That's the impression i got the last couple of weeks while I was looking into it.
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I'll agree again with Stoic's comments. (Jeez! It's getting to be a habit lately... :mrgreen:)
From an assembly perspective, a server is no more difficult to build than a desktop.
But it is hard to get a good match of components unless you really know what you're doing (as in: you're familiar with a lot of server-type brands and products) or you're willing to spend some time reading and digesting Scott Mueller's massive Upgrading and Repairing PCs book every time you run into something about hardware you don't fully understand. Server hardware is similar enough to desktop hardware that you can make bad decisions if you only think of a server as some sort of 'souped up' PC. Because the entire design criteria is different than that of a desktop.
Then there's the infamous HCL (i.e hardware compatibility list) Microsoft publishes for server system builders that you'll need to consult if you're going with a Windows solution.
In short, more trouble than it's worth unless you have something very specific in mind. But unless you have an exotic application, web, or database server requirement (like Google or some ISP hosts do), it's always easier (and usually cheaper) to buy an assembled system. You could go bare-bones and get something from Super Micro (http://www.supermicro.com/index.cfm). But for the same or less money, you could also get a very capable used server (with warranty) from a 'name brand' maker.
Kind of a coin toss...
I've pretty much stuck to the big three prior to using Dell: HP, Compaq, IBM.
Of the three, I liked Compaq (ProLiant series) best, then HP, then IBM.
Today, I'd stick almost exclusively with Dell or HP - with my current preference being for Dell.
8) :Thmbsup:
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P.S. if I were engineering a truly massive data center (which I'm not) for something like Facebook or Amazon, I'd definitely call IBM and invite them to buy me lunch (which they would) to discuss their "heavy iron."
;D
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You could go bare-bones and get something from Super Micro (http://www.supermicro.com/index.cfm). But
-40hz
lol My website is hosted on a 5 year old Dual Xeon SuperMicro box.
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It been a great machine, but today I'd definitely go with Dell.
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OK...
Now that we're all finished talking common sense, let's start getting a little crazy once again in the grand tradition of the Donation Coder forum.
I mentioned earlier I didn't feel it made sense to custom build a server unless you had a specific goal or need in mind.
Here's a blog post by Backblaze (http://www.backblaze.com/) (an online storage service provider) who did have a unique need for a very high capacity, high density storage server that was reliable and extremely inexpensive to build. What they came up with was not only unique - they released the full design specs and a detailed parts list so others could build their own. It uses off-the-shelf components except for a custom designed rack case. It packs forty-five(!) 1.5Gb TB hard drives for a total of 67.5 gigaterabytes of total drive space. And it costs about $8000 in unit quantities including their custom designed case.
Here's the little monster, minus its 'skin,' with five drives installed - and another 40 to go! 8)
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While it would be patently insane to exactly duplicate this box for personal use, it would be relatively easy to go with a subset since the bulk of the cost is tied up in the hard drives. If you take the drives and the custom rack case out of the bill of materials (and remove some of the parts needed to handle all 45 drives) the cost drops below $1500. Pretty amazing.
Here's a video discussing the company's business model and it's server design. Interesting to watch both from a business and technical perspective.
A blog post with a cost analysis and full details on the design and construction of this server (with parts list) can be found here (http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/09/01/petabytes-on-a-budget-how-to-build-cheap-cloud-storage/).
Here's a couple of illustrations taken from the blog to whet your appetite. Click to enlarge.
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A couple of points:
Hardware is only part of the equation when building a server. Backblaze has done the hardware spec and component matching. Which is a major time saver for any who wish to follow in their footsteps. But note that this system is also designed to run a customized version of Linux and in-house software specifically set up for Backblaze's own requirements. And they are not providing copies.
Building a cloud includes not only deploying a large quantity of hardware, but, critically, deploying software to manage it. At Backblaze we have developed software that de-duplicates and chops data into blocks; encrypts and transfers it for backup; reassembles, decrypts, re-duplicates, and packages the data for recovery; and monitors and manages the entire cloud storage system. This process is proprietary technology that we have developed over the years.
You may have your own system for this process and incorporate the Backblaze Storage Pod design, or you may simply seek inexpensive storage that won’t be deployed as part of a cloud. In either case, you’re free to use the storage pod design above. If you do, we would appreciate credit at Backblaze and welcome any insights, though this isn’t a requirement. Please note that because we’re not selling the design or the storage pods themselves, we provide no support nor warranties.
If you were planning a Windows Server deployment, you'd still want to check Microsoft's HCL to be sure there were no known problems with components. I'm guessing some of these components (like the port multiplier backplanes and a few of the cards) will not be found on the 'official' hardware list. Which is not to say they won't work. It's just you may have driver or other issues if you use them. The only way to be sure would be to buy them and test them thoroughly before you commit your data if they weren't on the HCL.
But anyway, there you have it: 68GbTB of storage platform for only $8K.
Like I said earlier - pretty amazing. 8)
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AAhh!! I love it!
40hz, I don't know...who are you?? Get out of my brain!
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@SB - sorry Bro. Server design...it's a sickness. I love these things. I really do. :-*
It's gonna break my heart the day all the SMBs I have as clients finally migrate to the cloud and no longer have their own servers.
I think my great-grandfather felt the same way when the telephone finally replaced the handwritten letter as the primary means of personal communication after F2F conversation.
I shudder to think what he would have thought about something like Facebook or Twitter. ;D
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@ 40hz - A little crazy?!? Zoiks! I wonder how much torque 45 HDDs spinning up at once produces? Do they guage drive activity by how voilently the rack it's mounted in is shaking?
1.5GB x 45 drives to get to 67.5GB seems like a really old design considering they have 3TB drives now.
Then again my brother does work in a metal shop, so the case would be fairly cheap... :-\
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In my previous job, I was working on a big surveillance system installation. There were loads of cameras, and so much video. Obviously, there were tons of hard drives, I don't remember how many. But there were 2 or 3 banks of something like 40 hard drives. All I remember was that the fans were VERY loud, like jet engines.
I think 40 meant 1.5 TB (unless I'm mistaken).
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I love this stuff also. It fits right in with my plans to live off the grid. The only "service" I truly need is an internet connection. I can manage to live without electricity (generator+ solar stuff), water (well), and sewage (fertilizer stuff). but I still can't do without the ISP.
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@ 40hz - A little crazy?!? Zoiks! I wonder how much torque 45 HDDs spinning up at once produces? Do they guage drive activity by how voilently the rack it's mounted in is shaking?-Stoic Joker
That was my first thought too. They address it in their blog however:
A note about drive vibration: The drives vibrate too much if you leave them sitting as shown in the picture above, so we add an “anti-vibration sleeve” (essentially a rubber band) around the hard drive in between the red metal grid and the drives. This seats the drives tightly in the rubber. We also lay a large (16″ x 17″ x 1/8″) piece of foam along top of the hard drives after all 45 are in the case. The lid then screws down on top of the foam to hold the drives securely. In the future, we will dedicate an entire blog post to vibration.
They didn't quite give an entire post to vibration, but there was a follow-up post. You can read it here (http://blog.backblaze.com/2009/10/07/backblaze-storage-pod-vendors-tips-and-tricks/#more-199).
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1.5GB x 45 drives to get to 67.5GB seems like a really old design considering they have 3TB drives now.
Helps if I can use the correct multiplier. It is terabytes - not gigabytes as I originally wrote. (Thanks Superboy for spotting that!) :-[
Note: This article was written in 2009. They were already mentioning plans to go over to 2TB drives in the near future.
Then again my brother does work in a metal shop, so the case would be fairly cheap... :-\
I'd be more likely to just do it in an open cage with a large fan blowing directly across it. Since I don't need to worry about space and density like they do, I don't feel a need to pack every available inch with a drive.
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I didn't have time to go read the details at work today ... but Damn! 67.5 TeraBytes.
...Now I'm afraid to read it ... 'Cause the wife will freakin shoot me if I come off with an idea like that.
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I didn't have time to go read the details at work today ... but Damn! 67.5 TeraBytes.
...Now I'm afraid to read it ... 'Cause the wife will freakin shoot me if I come off with an idea like that.
-Stoic Joker
Not surprising. If you were temped, it would probably be the only merciful thing to do. ;D :Thmbsup:
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I can fill up 60 TB no problem. Uncompressed movies and music. Backup. Done.
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I can fill up 60 TB no problem. Uncompressed movies and music. Backup. Done.
-superboyac
Yoiks! I'd think you'd be a shoe-in for the coveted 2011 "Swat Fly with Sledgehammer" Tech Achievement Award (also known in geek circles as the Spank the Monkey Medal) if you did that.
;D
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I can fill up 60 TB no problem. Uncompressed movies and music. Backup. Done.
-superboyac
Yoiks! I'd think you'd be a shoe-in for the coveted 2011 "Swat Fly with Sledgehammer" Tech Achievement Award (also known in geek circles as the Spank the Monkey Medal) if you did that.
;D
-40hz
That's me! Quite literally. When I was little, I had a traumatic incident with wasps and I got stung a lot. Since then, I hated the creatures. There was a while where if I saw a lone wasp on the ground or something, I'd take a running leap and jump just as high as I could, and land on it with all my strength. And, of course, I still added a little foot-twist at the end to make sure. That was before I was the founder and president of a club called the Extirpaters. Three of us would go around the house and make sure there were no creepy crawlies around. If they were, we'd catch them with a stick that had a sticky-gooey substance at the tip, then fry the bugs in the zapper lantern. We had official laminated cards and everything.
My little sister was left out of the club in all of this. One day, I found that my sister tried to make herself an "Extirpaters" card. She copied the design as best as she could, but the funniest (or saddest!) part was that she didn't really know about lamination, so she took a couple of pieces of clear plastic and sort of taped the edges together with the card in the middle. But the card would just sort of shake about inside the plastic pieces. I was so mean!
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^Talk about initiative! I'd hire her in a heartbeat. ;D
When I was younger I always pushed for letting a trusty girl or two into whatever we were getting up to. They often provided a "reality check" when thing started getting really stupid. And they were extremely valuable allies for getting adults to agree to something. (Never underestimate the power of a young female asking for a favor or permission.)
Most of them could also tell a lie (and be believed) much better than we could.
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Emma, Judy, Kim, Tawney, and all the other so-called tomboys I grew up with.
Kim would have been one of the first to 'sign up' for building something like a personal petabyte cloud. She was handy with a soldering iron, "good with tools", and liked to build stuff. She's the first person I ever knew who had a ham radio license (and shortwave rig) when I was a kid. Self-taught too. Her father owned a dry cleaner shop and her Mom was a homemaker.
So imagine all the contributions your little sister might have made to your club if she'd been allowed in. Given enough time and encouragement, her skills and talents might have really taken off. Which would have been great. Because you just never know when you might need the services of a good forger. ;D
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And they were extremely valuable allies fir getting adults to agree to something. (Never underestimate the power of a young female asking for a favor or permission.)-40hz
Agreed, the negotiating skills of young females (I have two daughters) is a sight to behold. :D
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^Agree. I have two nieces that have it down to a science. I have yet to meet a male that doesn't cave the minute they do that little 'prayer-hand & curtsy' thing they do when they say "Oh please can I?"
I just hope they continue to only use their superpowers for good. :P
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I don't get the "cutesy" act so much from my girls. I get the "lady logic" arguments that flummox me to the point that I can't even form a coherent sentence with which to reply. Personally, I find it awesome that a seven and eleven-year-old can make me speechless in this way. :-*
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I don't get the "cutesy" act so much from my girls. I get the "lady logic" arguments that flummox me to the point that I can't even form a coherent sentence with which to reply.-skwire
When cornered, the safest answer is always no. Beyond that fall back to go ask your mother ... Because only a true expert can win that game.
...At least that appears to have been my dad's strategy for dealing with my sister. :)
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^Talk about initiative! I'd hire her in a heartbeat. ;D
When I was younger I always pushed for letting a trusty girl or two into whatever we were getting up to. They often provided a "reality check" when thing started getting really stupid. And they were extremely valuable allies for getting adults to agree to something. (Never underestimate the power of a young female asking for a favor or permission.)
Most of them could also tell a lie (and be believed) much better than we could.
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to Emma, Judy, Kim, Tawney, and all the other so-called tomboys I grew up with.
Kim would have been one of the first to 'sign up' for building something like a personal petabyte cloud. She was handy with a soldering iron, "good with tools", and liked to build stuff. She's the first person I ever knew who had a ham radio license (and shortwave rig) when I was a kid. Self-taught too. Her father owned a dry cleaner shop and her Mom was a homemaker.
So imagine all the contributions your little sister might have made to your club if she'd been allowed in. Given enough time and encouragement, her skills and talents might have really taken off. Which would have been great. Because you just never know when you might need the services of a good forger. ;D
-40hz
I hear ya. I was not always very nice to my little sister, it makes me sad to think about it. She always wanted to do the things I was doing, and I would occasionally be a little mean and stuff about it, but most of the time we were good. I'm just a loner, though. I need space and time to myself more so than most people.
I agree with the girl power stuff. My problem is that if I hang around a cool girl like that for too long, I'm going to get "interested" in her (not my sister, by the way, in case it wasn't obvious...you guys are sick!). Seriously, every girl that I've been friends with, I eventually started having feelings for, and then things just change. So i don't care anymore, I don't get worked up about it. Those cute girls can seriously get anything they want...I "use" them that way also. Like in that Seinfeld episode where the drop dead blonde gets the sold-out movie tickets, and gets out of the speeding ticket. The area here in downtown where I have lunch, there are these three regulars that I call the "trinity", because if they ever asked me for ANYTHING, I'd do it. no question. The sight of them alone utterly defeats me.
I do love the tomboys, too. So cool and fun.
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Well, I've had some more time to work through this project. Before I give Geoff a call back, I'd like to review my server design here with you guys. It's pretty generic right now, but as we discuss things more, I'll fill in the details.
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Questions:
1) Let's say I order a Dell server for that first box shown (from Stallard). How difficult would it be to format the drive and freshly install a server OS (MS Server, Home Server, whatever it ends up being)? From what I've heard, doing a format/fresh install on a server is a lot more finicky than doing it with the regular OS's. I always do that whenever I get a new computer. But I don't want to run into an impossible to solve problem regarding drivers, OS configuration, hardware issues, etc.
2) The other thing I want you guys to pay attention to is the setup of the storage components. I have RAID5 going on based on previous discussions here and with Geoff. I also have this special shared drive, like a media drive, that will sync up with the media folders on the central storage. This is how I'll get around my never ending issue with VPN, and trying to access files remotely. I've given up on all that technology, none of them are good in my opinion. Things like Dropbox are limited by their cloud services, usually by price or storage size. I want nothing to do with monthly charges or cloud services. So instead, I'll just physically sync all the files to each remote device that I use. That way, I don't have to stream any videos, or read/write to a remote location. Everything is local. So I like this solution very much.
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How difficult would it be to format the drive and freshly install a server OS (MS Server, Home Server, whatever it ends up being)?-superboyac
Dell server hardware is all mainstream, so the drivers will most likely be in-box. So dificulty level = 0.
From what I've heard, doing a format/fresh install on a server is a lot more finicky than doing it with the regular OS's.-superboyac
Can't imagine why, it's the exact same Windows installer we've all used 100s of times before. ;)
But I don't want to run into an impossible to solve problem regarding drivers, OS configuration, hardware issues, etc.
-superboyac
Seriously? With us in your corner, something is going to be impossible to solve..?? I'm hurt. :(
(hehe)
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Thanks Stoic! You're right. Again, I've only HEARD these things. To me, as long as I can stick in an install dvd and it runs, I should be able to deal with it. Where I would have trouble is if the OS can't even start or get going...then I'm lost. Once it's up, you're right, I can always turn to the DC experts!
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OK, guys. I've changed my mind again, and yes, I'm going to go back to the NAS suggestions that you all recommended to me in the beginning. I've read around and asked about it, and I think there's no need for anything else really at this point.
The company I like so far is Synology (http://www.synology.com/dsm/index_dsm3.2.php?lang=us). I like them a lot. I'll just get a 4-bay drive, and have a RAID5 array in there. I think with the redundant disks, I can get 4 TB for now with it. And that's good enough for now. I might get two of these so I can store one in a remote location and sync it that way for backup.
Any thoughts? Does this seem more reasonable and not so much of the overkilling that I tend to do?
(er...I may change my mind back. sheesh. I'm annoying myself now!)
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P.S. Don't use RAID-5. If you have a good backup strategy and can afford occasional downtime to perform hardware maintenance or replacements, RAID-5 is more trouble than it's worth IMO.
40hz said that earlier. I'd like to understand this better. because Geoff from Stallard recommended using RAID-5, and it sounded good to me. If I don't use RAID-5, what are my alternatives? Keep in mind that I will be handling about 6-10TB of data that I want backed up and very safe. Also keep in mind that I am going to get a business quality RAID controller, not any consumer grade ones.
But I also shy away from RAID if I can help it. I just need to know what alternatives I have if I don't RAID, especially when it comes to backing up and redundancy and all that. I can only think of two things: RAID, and mirroring (file syncing). Is there any other way? Images are not the same, versioning is not really the same.
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For 6-10 TB that you need kept very safe and available, RAID-5 is a viable first line of defense if you go with "business grade" RAID controllers and hard drives. But as you probably already know, you'll still need to combine it with a backup or sync of some sort so you have a copy as well as a resilient original of your data. RAID mostly assures you of availability since an array drive failure won't take down the entire array. But it does nothing to get data back if a catastrophic failure occurs. For that you'll need a backup or mirror copy.
There are flavors of RAID (50 etc.) that combine striping with mirroring and parity check options. But they're expensive solutions and usually only found in data center level installations. In short - fuggeddaboutit!
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RAID5 is great (if you spend $$$ on a fast card or fast CPU to do the parity computation), right until a disk dies and you need to rebuild the array... and the second and third disks croak.
If you do end up building some form of RAID (and frankly, without a bunch of computers and a distributed file system, that's probably your only choice for that kind of storage), be sure to use drives from different vendors AND from different batches - that'll somewhat reduce the risk of your drives shitting themselves at the same time. Check out stuff like Everything you know about disks is wrong (http://storagemojo.com/2007/02/20/everything-you-know-about-disks-is-wrong/) and Is Your SSD More Reliable Than A Hard Drive? (http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-reliability-failure-rate,2923.html)... and cringe.
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For 6-10 TB that you need kept very safe and available, RAID-5 is a viable first line of defense if you go with "business grade" RAID controllers and hard drives. But as you probably already know, you'll still need to combine it with a backup or sync of some sort so you have a copy as well as a resilient original of your data. RAID mostly assures you of availability since an array drive failure won't take down the entire array. But it does nothing to get data back if a catastrophic failure occurs. For that you'll need a backup or mirror copy.
There are flavors of RAID (50 etc.) that combine striping with mirroring and parity check options. But they're expensive solutions and usually only found in data center level installations. In short - fuggeddaboutit!
-40hz
That's how I feel, thanks for confirming. That's why I'm thinking of having no RAID. Just the disks on their own. To merge them into larger directories (spanning), I can use Window 7 or the server's capabilities for that, right? And backing up is easy that way: just file sync onto an identical hard drive. I've been doing this for years now and see no real problems with it.
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Spanning & Striping are both incredibly dangerous for the same reason. If one disk fails (or just has a real bad day), everything on the array is gone. Now you have to rebuild the array and restore all of the data that isn't on it any more, from somewhere. So if it's a 4TB array and you have good backups, you can get everything back up and running. Sure. In a day or so...
Or you can just not be down (RAID5). Blow a drive, you're still running (instead of scrambling for backups while trying to keep your heart rate under 150). Replace the drive, let it rebuild itself, go on with your day. Sure, If something else fails during the process you get to have a catastrophic failure anyway. But, that's what backups are for.
The point is a single disk failure shouldn't automatically cut you off from all your data, until such time as the primary system can be brought back on-line. Because if you're not physically there (due to being at work/out of town) when the box goes poof. You're stuffed for the duration if you don't have a little on-the-fly redundancy cushion.
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re: Spanning
I don't go much for spanning or multi-drive striping for most personal or business uses.
About the only time RAID-5 makes sense (to me at least) is when you have something like an accounting or web application that can't experience unscheduled downtime for any reason. Usually because it interrupts "the flow of commerce" (i.e. sales) or some other key business function like issuing support tickets or software licenses to your customers. Having RAID allows you to stay up long enough to announce a maintenance period and get a good backup before you rebuild your array.
And don't be fooled by the "live rebuild" argument that says you can hot-swap and rebuild without taking your array offline. Yes, it can be done. But it's slow, and frustrating, and it drags server performance down so much that it's not practical for general purposes. About the only time it is viable is if you implement load balancing with automatic 'fail-over' to a secondary server that takes on the burden until the primary array gets rebuilt. Once again we're talking heavy-duty data center setups here. If you're something like a bank - go for it. Otherwise put it out of your head. <EDIT/UPDATE: see StoicJoker's comment below before taking the above as gospel. :mrgreen:>
Spanning is something I really don't understand except for very specialized circumstances - like streaming data collection, or media rendering. Basically where you don't know how big a file will be, other than it's gonna be humongous! Nothing can ruin your morning more then to discover your CGI project (which had been rendering for over 28 hours) aborted at the "94% completed" mark because it was a few hundred megabytes shy of the drive space it needed to finish. I've seen it happen. (There were tears...)
Pooling may be useful for a home media server. Especially where the owner is generally clueless about technology and keeps loading DVD after DVD rip onto their box. For people like this, pooling is probably the easiest and most practical approach. Run out of space? Just slap in another drive and add it to the pool.
But as Stoic pointed out above, it's still a dicey chance to take if it's data that's hard to replace or genuinely important to its owner.
Over time, I've begun to see the space limitations on physical drives as a blessing in disguise. The bigger the drive, the more disorganized they seem to become. And thanks to disk index/search utilities like Everything (http://www.voidtools.com/) :-*, most people can get away with it. Fling your stuff in folders - and put folders within folders out the kazoo - and screw organization! Just use a utility to root out where you put something when you need it.
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It works. But it's sloppy. And it's not a generally good way to handle file organization.
FWIW, I tend to assign specific drives specific types of data. That allows me to more easily setup backup and sync routines on a case by case basis. Critical files and directories may get mirrored in real time. Other directories may require version control. Others may get simple backups. Some don't get copied or backed up at all since they're kept for convenience and easily replaced with newer versions should they ever be lost. (Linux distro ISOs or Microsoft's WSUS files are a good example of that.)
Simpler is better when it comes to drive and directory setups. Especially on servers. And extra especially when you're as simpleminded as I am about these things. ;D
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And don't be fooled by the "live rebuild" argument that says you can hot-swap and rebuild without taking your array offline. Yes, it can be done. But it's slow, and frustrating, and it drags server performance down so much that it's not practical for general purposes.-40hz
I've actually never had a problem with it. If the server is under high (steady 50+% capacity) load, I can definitely see that as an issue. but for a SMB it just keeps them running, instead of being down for the duration of a full restore or (eek) Brick-Level rebuild. I've actually hot-swapped a dead drive (out of a 136GB RAID5 SCSI array) on our Exchange server, and let it rebuild during business hours ... Without anyone noticing. (Dell PowerEdge 1800)
Over time, I've begun to see the space limitations on physical drives as a blessing in disguise. The bigger the drive, the more disorganized they seem to become. And thanks to disk index/search utilities like Everything (http://www.voidtools.com/) :-*, most people can get away with it. Fling your stuff in folders - and put folders within folders out the kazoo - and screw organization! Just use a utility to root out where you put something when you need it.
(see attachment in previous post (https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/index.php?topic=20801.msg257046#msg257046))
It works. But it's sloppy. And it's not a generally good way to handle file organization.
FWIW, I tend to assign specific drives specific types of data. That allows me to more easily setup backup and sync routines on a case by case basis. Critical files and directories may get mirrored in real time. Other directories may require version control. Others may get simple backups. Some don't get copied or backed up at all since they're kept for convenience and easily replaced with newer versions should they ever be lost. (Linux distro ISOs or Microsoft's WSUS files are a good example of that.)
Simpler is better when it comes to drive and directory setups. Especially on servers. And extra especially when you're as simpleminded as I am about these things. ;D-40hz
Now this I totally agree with! I also like to keep things that fragment quickly (temporary files, logs, user folders) segregated from things that almost never fragment (long term archives, install images, reference materials (we have 17GB of service manuals)). And both of them away from databases that grow slowly and are best kept in one piece.
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I've actually never had a problem with it. If the server is under high (steady 50+% capacity) load, I can definitely see that as an issue. but for a SMB it just keeps them running, instead of being down for the duration of a full restore or (eek) Brick-Level rebuild. I've actually hot-swapped a dead drive (out of a 136GB RAID5 SCSI array) on our Exchange server, and let it rebuild during business hours ... Without anyone noticing. (Dell PowerEdge 1800)
-Stoic Joker
Doing better than me on that score with a couple of Dells I've tried it on. Neither were near capacity. But they both had remote users coming in via VPN to heavy duty client-server database apps so that may have had something to do with it.
Hmm...Gonna have to look into that a little more closely... :)
@SJ - Thx for sharing your experiences btw. 8)
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40hz, Stoic:
Thanks so much for the discussion. I'm really following along better than i expected, and I'm learning a lot. I think I'm getting a clearer picture of what I want. As far as taking "sides", I think very very much like 40hz in the simplicity approach, and the restrictions being a blessing in disguise. As you can see, I struggle with this concept when you also add in my desire to overkill and overengineer everything. It's a maturity thing right now...
Anyway, I like this: I'm not going to RAID. I'm pretty sure of that. I'll have different disks for different stuff. It's the videos that are the killer. I think everything can fit on one drive, and videos will have to span multiple derives. I'd like to pool them, I like that a lot. Using Windows 7 libraries, and if that proves insufficient for my desires somehow, I'll see what kind of third-party solutions can handle merging several directories on different hard drives so the client computers "sees" them as one drive (please offer ideas if you know of any).
To me, "rebuilding" is as simple as copying all my files over to a new drive. That's all I need, especially considering that multiple locations will have these copies readily available. Anything fancier than that just doesn't seem to hit home to me.
I think this discussion is very good. I've had several discussion int he past couple years about RAID, storage, backing up, etc., with a lot of people, and it seems to be a very divisive, confusing subject. A lot of people are saying things that don't make a whole lot of sense to me. I think if I could wrangle in this discussion into a short presentation, it would prove very useful to people. The question people have about all of this is "What should I do? What is the right balance?"
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It's a maturation process for all of us.
A lot of the blush has come off the rose when it comes to RAID. Most of us have modified our opinions about it over the years. Old school "received wisdom" used to be: always go RAID-1 for the OS, with RAID-5 for everything else - plus a separate small and very fast drive for log/swap/cache files.
That old formula is absolute overkill for most of today's far more reliable hardware.
RAID doesn't reduce the chance of hardware problems. Nor does it reduce costs. Each additional drive you add will increase the number of potential failure points. Plus they'll also create heat and increased operating expense. No getting around that. Having three drives in a RAID-5 doesn't reduce the likelihood of a drive failing. It actually increases the possibility a having a drive fail by a factor of three or more. Some even argue that the additional busywork that comes from constantly striping and writing parity data actually increases wear and tear on the drive and makes a hardware failure more probable in a RAID array. Good thing it at least allows you to repair it without too much hassle. Because you will need to repair them. About once every three years in my experience.
Properly implemented, RAID reduces your risk of downtime. It does nothing to improve your reliability from an engineering perspective.
But today, it's less fretting about reliability and more about configuring for efficiency and performance. Because, in the end, the only real hope for data protection and preservation comes from having "known good" snapshots, file copies, and backups.
And all the fancy drive controllers in the world won't automatically give you those. ;D
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It's a maturation process for all of us.
A lot of the blush has come off the rose when it comes to RAID. Most of us have modified our opinions about it over the years. Old school "received wisdom" used to be: always go RAID-1 for the OS, with RAID-5 for everything else - plus a separate small and very fast drive for log/swap/cache files.
That old formula is absolute overkill for most of today's far more reliable hardware.
RAID doesn't reduce the chance of hardware problems. Nor does it reduce costs. Each additional drive you add will increase the number of potential failure points. Plus they'll also create heat and increased operating expense. No getting around that. Having three drives in a RAID-5 doesn't reduce the likelihood of a drive failing. It actually increases the possibility a having a drive fail by a factor of three or more. Some even argue that the additional busywork that comes from constantly striping and writing parity data actually increases wear and tear on the drive and makes a hardware failure more probable in a RAID array. Good thing it at least allows you to repair it without too much hassle. Because you will need to repair them. About once every three or so years.
At least from my experience.
Properly implemented, RAID reduces your risk of downtime. It does nothing to improve your reliability from an engineering perspective.
But today, it's less fretting about reliability and more about configuring for efficiency and performance. Because, in the end, the only real hope for data protection and preservation comes from having "known good" snapshots, file copies, and backups.
And all the fancy drive controllers in the world won't automatically give you those. ;D
-40hz
That sounds very sound to me. 8)
I think I have this figured out. Dell server from Stallard. A hard drive storage unit, like a Norco. Whatever power supplies and cables and other stuff I need to make it all work together. Slap it all into a 3-4' cabinet. Connect it to my router. Boom. I'm done.
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...Boom? Boom does not sound like a good conclusion to any project that does not involve explosives.
:D
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;D
I got it from Dennis Reynolds in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia:
http://youtu.be/u_KIRUFbQiQ
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That's funny. I sometimes conclude a conversation with the word "whump!" which is my term for one of those ultra-low single "pulled" bass notes that end a rock song. Y'know...one of these notes:
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(Think something like at the very end of Jethro Tull's classic Aqualung.)
It's my weird way of saying "Ok. I'm done with this. Next song please!" ;D :Thmbsup:
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Properly implemented, RAID reduces your risk of downtime. It does nothing to improve your reliability from an engineering perspective.
-40hz
That is the most concisely stated view of RAID I've seen yet. Well said!
Regarding a presentation/article trying to clear up the RAID question, I think it's clearer than ever now that SSDs are widespread and relatively affordable:
For virtually all "home" users, including enthusiasts and gamers, RAID is unnecessary and, if anything, a potential liability. Don't use it. If you want speed, get an SSD. If you want redundancy, do regular backup. End of story. Those at an enterprise level who need RAID will know and don't need further explanation. That's my view anyway.
- Oshyan
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If you want speed, get an SSD. If you want redundancy, do regular backup. End of story.
-JavaJones
Bingo! :Thmbsup:
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If you want speed, get an SSD. If you want redundancy, do regular backup.-JavaJones
...and possibly couple it with RAID Mirroring. That does add real redundancy and isn't (just) for downtime reduction :)
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If you want speed, get an SSD. If you want redundancy, do regular backup.-JavaJones
...and possibly couple it with RAID Mirroring. That does add real redundancy and isn't (just) for downtime reduction :)
-f0dder
True. :)
Unless you have a controller issue which screws up both drives. :o
Weirdest thing about RAID-1. When it breaks, it sometimes takes out both drives. (https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/esmileys/gen3/1Small/beksa.gif)
I had this happen to clients twice in my career. So it can't be that rare an occurrence in the field. Which is why I'll only use RAID-1 for mirroring the OS drive thereby reducing it to a 'downtime reduction only' function.
Because I can always reinstall a disk image or (if it comes down to brass tacks) do a scratch reload of the OS (*choke*) without losing anything critical belonging to the client.
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Never tried RAID with SSD. (Not being wealthy has its downsides. ;D) Is anybody doing that? And if so, does it adversely affect the life of the SSD drives? Mirroring probably wouldn't. But RAID-5 should since there's so much extra R/W activity generated by all the striping plus parity info being written to the drives. (Note: Save a dinky 1 meg file to a server with RAID-5 and watch das blinkin' lights come alive with motion and color. Freekin' dance of fireflies is what it is! Save anything to a RAID-5 array and it goes nuts "gettin' busy.") That can't be good for an SSD drive over the long term.
Anybody know anything about this? :huh:
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Weirdest thing about RAID-1. When it breaks, it sometimes takes out both drives. (https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/esmileys/gen3/1Small/beksa.gif)-40hz
Shit happens :) - drives from the same batch can die shortly within eachother (especially if you have very disk-intensive rebuilds... mirroring isn't too bad, raid-5 is BAD). And then there's stuff like power surges etc. So yeah, stuff dies.
I had this happen to clients twice in my career. So it can't be that rare an occurrence in the field. Which is why I'll only use RAID-1 for mirroring the OS drive thereby reducing it to a 'downtime reduction only' function.-40hz
Backups tend to run nightly - so mirroring can potentially save you several hours worth of lost data. And of course reduced downtime is a nice bonus, that does require hotswap capability though :)
Never tried RAID with SSD. (Not being wealthy has its downsides. ;D) Is anybody doing that? And if so, does it adversely affect the life of the SSD drives? Mirroring probably wouldn't. But RAID-5 should since there's so much extra R/W activity generated by all the striping plus parity info being written to the drives.-40hz
Raid-5 (and other "big storage" schemes) would be silly on SSD until their storage capability goes massively up. The added writes of raid-5 is a real concern, but apparently the current crop of SSDs die off by crap electronics well before the erase cycle limit is reached :o :o :o
The drives are mainly useful for cache layers or or really I/O intensive stuff like databases. Mirroring might make sense, striping could (but you'll need expensive motherboard and I/O cards, SATA and PCI-e bandwidth considered?).
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Weirdest thing about RAID-1. When it breaks, it sometimes takes out both drives. (https://www.donationcoder.com/forum/esmileys/gen3/1Small/beksa.gif)-40hz
Shit happens :) - drives from the same batch can die shortly within eachother (especially if you have very disk-intensive rebuilds... mirroring isn't too bad, raid-5 is BAD). And then there's stuff like power surges etc. So yeah, stuff dies.
-f0dder
It wouldn't have been so disturbing if it were just the drives that failed. They're mechanical devices so you have to expect that. "Omnes vulnerat, ultima necat," as those old sundials used to say.
But it wasn't the drives that caused the problem. In both cases it was a controller issue (one HP and one IBM branded) using drives originally installed by the manufacturer. Since these are big league server manufacturers, I'm confident they did the necessary mix & match games to minimize the chance of getting two "bad batch" drives on the same machine.
In both instances the controllers unexpectedly started writing total garbage to both drives thereby rendering them useless. In the case of the IBM card, a firmware update corrected the "engineering issue." With HP, a replacement was necessary because there was a "marginal hardware condition" on the card.
Having it happen two different times on servers from two different manufacturers is a little too much bad luck AFAIC. ;D
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Raid-5 (and other "big storage" schemes) would be silly on SSD until their storage capability goes massively up. The added writes of raid-5 is a real concern,-f0dder
Okay, this has been bugging me. What added writes?? RAID5 is striping with parity...So 2 of the drives split the writes and each get half the file. Parity is written to drive 3 which is (in that config) its sole purpose for existing. What's extra? Traffic on the controller?
I'm not arguing the point, just trying to understand it.
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^ Um...actually the data chunks and parity info are distributed among all the drives in a RAID-5 array by the controller. There isn't a unique "parity drive" per se AFAIK. :)
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^ Um...actually the data chunks and parity info are distributed among all the drives in a RAID-5 array by the controller. There isn't a unique "parity drive" per se AFAIK. :)-40hz
Okay, I've spent a bit too much time spoon feeding end users and my brain is turning to mush (brightly colored hand puppet stuff...).
Never the less, the parity info is stagged between the drives. So if something is written to the array it will be striped between 2 of the drives, and a third drive will catch the parity info. for any given write operation. Which goes back to my original quandary ... Where is the extra per-disk write that would possibly cause it to prematurely fail?
A gets half
B gets half
C gets parity
All are on separate physical disks. So other than controller traffic (that's a given) I don't see where anything is really getting doubled-up...At the per disk level. The parity section of each disk isn't going to take any more or less of a hit than its corresponding data segments. So it's not like it's being subjected to exhaustive localized rewrites that are going to "burn-a-hole" in it.
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It's not so much the actual read/write is it is the fact that every drive in the array spins up for every read/write - so there's more wear and tear on the drive mechanics rather than the disk platter's surface.
If you saved a file to a single drive, only it would spin up and be written to (along with the housekeeping of finding sufficient free clusters. On a three element RAID-5, three drives would be spun up to accomplish the same thing, plus need to write additional information (i.e. parity) above and beyond that contained in the actual file itself. That's three times the disk activity plus "parity tax" plus three times the heat generated over a single drive save operation.
So when you add in the MTBF for each of the three drives, you have a higher probability of a drive failing all other factors being equal. And most arrays have more than three drives since that's the least cost effective RAID-5 configuration since you always sacrifice one drive to parity even if that drive doesn't exclusively hold the parity data.
Most times, the drives chosen for arrays are built to a higher quality standard than those normally deployed in PCs - so that may even up the failure occurrence rate up between server and non-server drives despite a higher utilization rate.
I'll have to see if I can locate any hard stats for drive reliability on a per disk basis when used in an array. I'm sure studies have been done. It's just a matter of finding them.
8)
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It's not so much the actual read/write is it is the fact that every drive in the array spins up for every read/write - so there's more wear and tear on the drive mechanics rather than the disk platter's surface.-40hz
Okay, now we're getting somewhere (i think).
If you saved a file to a single drive, only it would spin up and be written to (along with the housekeeping of finding sufficient free clusters. On a three element RAID-5, three drives would be spun up to accomplish the same thing, plus need to write additional information (i.e. parity) above and beyond that contained in the actual file itself. That's three times the disk activity plus "parity tax" plus three times the heat generated over a single drive save operation.-40hz
Hm... three times the disk activity regarding spinning up three drives, ok. But three times the i/o I ain't buying (I'm thinking closer to 1.5). The scenario also assumes the drives weren't already spun up for some reason (do SCSI drives ever spin down?).
Energy consumption/heat issues I can see (kinda) but it makes me wonder how much extra is another HDD actually gonna cost in a year (filed under why I hate accountants ;)) $5?
So when you add in the MTBF for each of the three drives, you have a higher probability of a drive failing all other factors being equal.-40hz
Granted statistics isn't my thing ... But if the MTBF for a given drive is 3,000 hours, then for 3 drives it should still be 3,000 hrs. Or is this just the Murphy's Law More moving parts... argument? <-I'll buy that - as it appeals to my cynical side (hehe)).
And most arrays have more than three drives since that's the least cost effective RAID-5 configuration since you always sacrifice one drive to parity even if that drive doesn't exclusively hold the parity data.-40hz
Funny, I would consider 3 or a multiple thereof to be the best choice for RAID5. As regardless of how many drives you have you're going to sacrifice 33% of the total storage for parity info. Goes back to the less moving parts is better argument. Use a smaller number of larger drives. *Shrug* Having 3 drives just makes the 33% parity "overhead" more obvious, not higher.
Most times, the drives chosen for arrays are built to a higher quality standard than those normally deployed in PCs - so that may even up the failure occurrence rate up between server and non-server drives despite a higher utilization rate.-40hz
I understand where you're going here, but I can't help but think that the design of a Server/Enterprise class drive would sort of have to be predicated on the fact that it would not be getting very much sleep (e.g. spinning down) ... Know what I mean?
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Keep in mind that when you RAID, you're not addressing at sector or filesystem cluster sizes anymore - you're addressing RAID block sizes. So a 1-byte change change to a file on RAID-5 can end up pretttty expensive - multiple drives as well as large blocks per drive.
But I guess you'd have a smart administrator that tries to match FS cluster size, RAID block size and, in the case of SSDs, erase-block sizes to something reasonable.
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Keep in mind that when you RAID, you're not addressing at sector or filesystem cluster sizes anymore - you're addressing RAID block sizes. So a 1-byte change change to a file on RAID-5 can end up pretttty expensive - multiple drives as well as large blocks per drive.
-f0dder
...sssSo, a 1 bite (file change) write automatically requires/results in (assuming 3 drives) a complete rewrite of both of the corresponding blocks? That does sound a bit pricey. But it does explain why the block size selection is so critically dependent on intended usage during setup.
But I guess you'd have a smart administrator that tries to match FS cluster size, RAID block size and, in the case of SSDs, erase-block sizes to something reasonable.-f0dder
Hm... Any chance you could give an example on the first part before I commit to a yes or no on that?? :D
The price, performance, reliability trinity will be keeping SSDs out of my range for a while yet. I just can't justify paying top dollar for cutting edge performance that might grenade if ya look at it funny. Pretty much the same reason I never got into overclocking heavily.
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...sssSo, a 1 bite (file change) write automatically requires/results in (assuming 3 drives) a complete rewrite of both of the corresponding blocks? That does sound a bit pricey. But it does explain why the block size selection is so critically dependent on intended usage during setup.-Stoic Joker
Yep - read+modify(inmemory)+write. Just like you've gotta do when dealing with a plain IDE drive, you're only dealing with a single drive and a single sector there, though.
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Okay, to add my 2 bits. SJ brought up a good point - if the main penalty is due to spinup/spindown, then an SSD shouldn't be affected WRT MTBF issues. There is still that nasty penalty that f0dder eluded to, a change as small as one bit requires all drives to be rewritten to (read data -> change bit -> recalculate parity -> write data+new parity) which will take it's toll on the write-life of an SSD, but that shouldn't change it's MTBF, just it's lifespan, if you will.
As to SJ's question on why Mean Time Between Failure -
Granted statistics isn't my thing ... But if the MTBF for a given drive is 3,000 hours, then for 3 drives it should still be 3,000 hrs. Or is this just the Murphy's Law More moving parts... argument? <-I'll buy that - as it appeals to my cynical side (hehe)).
You have the essence of it. MTBF measures any failure within the system. The more parts, the more pieces there are to fail, and the more failures there will be - eventually. This does NOT measure the severity of a failure or even provide a directly useful measure of lifespan, since most failures will occur as the device ages, but it does give a good idea of the expected quality. The correlation is that lower MTBF means it will fail sooner, and while that may statistically be the case, it doesn't mean that any one device (or system in this case) will last longer than any other one. It just means the one with the lower MTBF is statistically more likely to fail before the one with the higher MTBF.
Example cancelled - Can't find the formula's other than calculus that I don't want to get into....
One failure of MTBF Marketing is that redundant systems automatically have a lower MTBF even though they are actually more reliable (because they are redundant and can be fixed without loosing system operability). This is not a knock on the measure, but on the usurped use of the measurement for marketing purposes. Further research proved this false. Redundancy is one way to reduce MTBF at the expense of complexity since MTBF looks at the system holistically.
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Hm... (Let me scamper a bit further out on the limb...)
MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) as I understand it is the earliest statistically likely point for a given device to fail.
Now (operating completely without a net...), the odds of a coin landing heads up are 50/50. Which is to say that statistically there is a 50% chance of it coming up heads (I do believe it's safe to interchange them in that fashion ...Yes?).
The fun starts when you look at the odds of a coin coming up heads if it's flipped (oh lets say...) 3 times ... Because it is still 50/50 due to each flip being a separate event with 2 possible outcomes.
So I have a bit of trouble getting my head around the idea that the MTBF of 3 devices, is lower than the MTBF of 1 device. When they all individually have the same odds (statistically 0 until age X) of failure at any one given point in time.
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OK server experts, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the configuration shown below:
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So just to summarize, I want a server at home. My needs are simple, but because I'm so unreasonably picky and overengineer things, I make a big show out of it. I basically want a really big external hard drive. In this case, the really big external drive is the server, and the bigness comes from having several hard drives in the rack somewhere. That's the clearest way to describe what I want.
FYI...I have no idea what most of the stuff shown on that list is.
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OK server experts, I'd love to hear your thoughts on the configuration...
-superboyac
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8) ;)
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Ha!! brilliant. Reminds me of an idiotic question I was asked once by a supervisor:
"Why did you make this mistake?"
I just stared at him silently for a while, then I managed to say, "Well...it's not like I did it on purpose, so I don't really know what more I can say about that."
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"Why did you make this mistake?"-superboyac
Well, first a crucial piece of information is missed, and then the rest of it just falls into place naturally... :D
[Supervisors hate me]
two things bugging me about that config. It's a rack system, why? It's much easier to stuff a tower in a corner somewhere. Rack systems require a...Rack. Which is going to take up a good bit of room, or it'll have to sit on top of something large/flat. Which is still not a stellar option as cooling could get tricky.
6 drive bays with 4 1TB drives and 2 emptys, doesn't sound like a lot of room for expansion. I thought you were after something like 13TB+??
Although you could go with a Gen III 4U PowerEdge 2900 with 10 Drive slots...That'll give you some room to grow. :)
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"Why did you make this mistake?"-superboyac
Well, first a crucial piece of information is missed, and then the rest of it just falls into place naturally... :D
[Supervisors hate me]
two things bugging me about that config. It's a rack system, why? It's much easier to stuff a tower in a corner somewhere. Rack systems require a...Rack. Which is going to take up a good bit of room, or it'll have to sit on top of something large/flat. Which is still not a stellar option as cooling could get tricky.
6 drive bays with 4 1TB drives and 2 emptys, doesn't sound like a lot of room for expansion. I thought you were after something like 13TB+??
Although you could go with a Gen III 4U PowerEdge 2900 with 10 Drive slots...That'll give you some room to grow. :)
-Stoic Joker
Yeah, I noticed that too, but wasn't sure. I actually asked for a rack, so I want it that way. But I don't want to buy any storage stuff for the server component. For the drives, i want to buy one of those big Norco enclosures that hold 10-15 hard drives. So I may ask to remove any storage things that I don't need, but it's pretty cheap anyway, maybe I'll just keep it for now. I don't know. That's why I want to kind of figure it out here.
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So if the storage is going to be in an external enclosure, what's with the 4TB Server storage? Me confused.
I still think the more mainstream (and brutally tested) straight server hardware option is the best/safest. Those external boxes make me a bit nervous about getting parts/support in a few years down the road when something fails. Name brand server parts of today will still be available to our grandchildren out of a warehouse somewhere.
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SJ does make a good point about rack mounting. Resting it flat on a sturdy shelf is suboptimal since most rack enclosures are designed to have a few inches of airspace all round them. If you do go the sturdy shelf route (since equipment racks are expensive and generally unsightly in living spaces) try for one of those open wire shelving units that usually come in chrome or black. Get the chrome if at all possible since it absorbs less heat than a dark finish will.
Note too that most rackmount servers are NOISY because they have multiple high-velocity variable speed fans. The fan speeds are likely something like high and turbocharged. But they're designed for server rooms installations where noise levels usually aren't a consideration. I'd plan on keeping your rackmount beastie in a spare room - or down in a cool dry basement - unless you like the sound of fan noise.
The rest of your configuration is an absolute bear for a personal server! The phrase 'massive overkill' does not begin do it justice. I have business clients that aren't packing half of what your rig has. And they're running serious business functions on them.
I don't think you'll really be needing that remote access card unless you plan on doing a lot of out-of-band system management. That's more for remote service management types (like me and SJ) who might need to diagnose and reboot servers without going to a client's site. Read a bit more about it here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dell_DRAC). So unless it's required for your support contract, I'd forgo it if it will save you some decent money. It may not affect your price much since I'd guess it was part of the unit when it came in for refurbishment. In which case I'd just leave it in. (You might also want to play with it. Out-of-band management isn't a bad thing to have some experience with.) But it's normally an expensive accessory to buy - so it might be worth thinking about how much you'll really use it.
As far as storage capacity goes, SJ again makes a good point. But with what's happening (OMG! 3.0 and 3.5 TB drives now coming) in the marketplace it's kinda moot. Get what you need for now. You can always backfill and regroup if you actually do end up needing that much. I'd go with a separate basic OS storage server if I ever needed that much. By the time that came around we'd finally be using btrfs or a similar "super" file system.
8)
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I don't think you'll really be needing that remote access card unless you plan on doing a lot of out-of-band system management.-40hz
O_O Crap! ...I didn't even see that one (nice catch). That would be totally over the top for a home server (and they're not cheap IIRC).
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That's a holy-shit grade server for home usage... Performance-wise, not storage-wise. IMHO it's been over-engineered in the wrong way.
I basically want a really big external hard drive. In this case, the really big external drive is the server, and the bigness comes from having several hard drives in the rack somewhere. That's the clearest way to describe what I want.
-superboyac
6 bays with 2TB each (to many 1TB drive is a semi waste of slot space these days) would in theory get you 12GB of storage, however since we scared of losing all the eggs in one basket in one go you'll probably have to consider RAID 10 (or at minimum RAID 5 if you use all enterprise-grade drives), that'd leave you a usable capacity of 5.XTB-9.XTB.
You end up with slightly more than 9TB of practically non-expansible storage at best.
A plain but reliable home server coupled with one or more raid-enabled NAS boxes/appliances is probably a more cost-effective solution in this case. Much more flexible, expansible, less noisy, lower maintenance and cheaper! :)
P.S. If by any remote chance your projected storage growth increments by a few TB month over month, you might want look into periodically rotating out your data onto spindles of Blu-ray dual layer discs, and optionally getting a software/hardware disc cataloger. That's my current workaround anyway as I tried and was utterly unsuccessful in finding any affordable permanent solution going forward.
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Ok ok, I hear you guys loud and clear...
I can let go of the rack, since everyone is saying it's way too much overkill even for me. I agree. So let's say I build a normal tower instead, I still need some box that will be able to handle 5-10 drives. What is that box? How will it connect to the tower? Can I have everything in one enclosure somehow? Is there some kind of enclosure where I can stack a tower and an additional disk bank in?
I'd like to hear more about what options exists as far as the disk drive banks. I've settled on the Norco because it has the best bang for the buck by far, from what I've seen.
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Sheesh...
Why don't I just get one of these and attach it to my desktop? I know a lot of you really feel I should just go with a NAS. Check it out:
http://www.synology.com/products/img/top/DS2411+.jpg
(http://www.synology.com/products/img/top/DS2411+.jpg)
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Yes, do that (Synology). Let go of your over-engineering and save yourself $1000s. Seriously. Please. Dear lord. If you have money burning a hole in your wallet, I can help you spend it more usefully. ;)
There's overkill, and then there's just "will needlessly consume space and power, and generate lots of heat, with absolutely no benefit and increased cost and complexity to boot". You seem hell bent on making this impact your life in a big way and I'm not sure why. I feel like you can meet your *actual needs* with much lower cost and much less hassle. If you'd skipped the whole server idea you could have bought something by now.
Let go of the idea that "more = better". It doesn't. It really doesn't. Also, you will never get a perfect solution, ever. Trying to do so only makes it take longer until you have something, in the mean time your data is not as protected/secure/available as it could/should be.
- Oshyan
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The NAS above is still a bit of an overkill in many ways lol. One or more $300 4-bay NAS (no frills but with gigabit NIC and raid controller) will do. Plenty of these on eBay up for grabs.
Storage/Network/Server is really at the bottom of any quality home theater architecture... important infrastructure but do not affect audio/visual experience. Money is better saved from these areas and later spent on things that do directly affect your eyes and ears, such as a good HDTV and HTS. You'd be surprised to find out what $5,000 can buy you in an immersive, 100% digital HD HT setup, really not that much, maybe just a TV if you get a bargain.
Just a thought. :)
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Commercial grade hardware vs. consumer grade hardware ... I hate consumer grade hardware.
Just went through this with a client a week ago:
IO Mega StorCenter 150, power blip wiped the config. Something was corrupt because it couldn't be reconfigured in a fashion that allowed anyone access the the files.
Tech Support says... It can't be fixed without a firmware update, but the firmware update it needs frequently wipes all the data on the box. Can't pull the data off the drive externally, because it's using some type of *nix based software RAID ... Good Times!!!
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HAHAHA. Indeed. But there is no commercial grade NAS, only SAN. :D Using NAS for a serious business is like asking for trouble.
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as someone who has absolutely no clue, I'm getting mixed messages reading this thread -
- dont go the expensive server route
- do use NAS
- using NAS for serious business is like asking for trouble
if he has the money why shouldnt he get a business solution if it's more dependable?
or does it cost an arm and a leg more?
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does it cost an arm and a leg more
Definitely.
I believe all the above discussion was about just setting up a home theater, not trying to start up a baby YouTube-alike business. ROFL.
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as someone who has absolutely no clue, I'm getting mixed messages reading this thread -
- dont go the expensive server route
- do use NAS
- using NAS for serious business is like asking for trouble
if he has the money why shouldnt he get a business solution if it's more dependable?
or does it cost an arm and a leg more?
-tomos
Thanks tomos. That's how I feel also. Oshyan is right also, I am overkilling this. But I know that, this is how I work: I overkill to the extreme, and then start paring away. It's how I learn things.
So here is where I'm at now:
I'm probably NOT going to get a server, and just a NAS.
I would prefer to get commercial quality, as I too don't like consumer quality. But if it's not available or if it's like twice as expensive, then it's not worth it. But I do like commercial quality in an eccentric way.
I still may buy server, but I'm letting go of that. It sounds like a NAS connected to my router with my desktop managing whatever I have to do with it is the solution.
And why is using a NAS for serious business trouble? That is such a vague statement, it makes no sense to me. What does "serious business" mean? It's just files and folders to me, and moving them around, renaming them, copying them...what makes something more serious than another thing?
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...what makes something more serious than another thing?-superboyac
The desire to still have it available after something goes wrong.
95% of the businesses that lose their data go out of business within 3 years. <-That was critical information going poof!)
Can you redefine the actual requirements for the project for us? I keep thinking you are wanting to get like 13+TB of data stored in a (long term) stable environment. But I could be off in the weeds a bit. :)
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...what makes something more serious than another thing?-superboyac
The desire to still have it available after something goes wrong.
95% of the businesses that lose their data go out of business within 3 years. <-That was critical information going poof!)
Can you redefine the actual requirements for the project for us? I keep thinking you are wanting to get like 13+TB of data stored in a (long term) stable environment. But I could be off in the weeds a bit. :)
-Stoic Joker
Sure, I'll redefine it. I think you are still correct: I basically want to store anywhere from 4-10 TB of data is a long-term, stable, etc. environment. The reason for the huge range is because I don't know how quickly it can expand. Right now, I have about 4TB of stuff, a lot of it on external drives and discs. I want to centralize everything. I don't know why the amount of data bothers people. The knee-jerk reaction is always "Why do you need so much data?? What's the matter with you??" and I really don't get why it's such a crazy thing. First, hard drives are super cheap: 10 TB of hard drives is like $500, so what? Is that really that expensive and crazy?
The other thing that's a headache for me right now is backing stuff up. i want triple redundancy, which to me just means more hard drives. No big deal. I ain't losing my shit if I can help it. I've lost it once before, and I never want it to happen again unless there's an Act of God.
I just want a box that will store tons of data and will be expandable if I need to add drives. That's my only real requirement. Everything else will be dictated by how nice it is and how expensive it is. I like nice things and will pay for them...to a point. bang for the buck is what I do.
This is not the end of it. My master plan is to really tie down all of my file/folder access needs. I've been using Dropbox which is nice, but the 2GB limit is now an issue. I don't like cloud services, and I have have way too much data for cheap cloud services. I'm against paying monthly bills for anything if I can help it. So I will go to great lengths to create my own dropbox, and I've figured out a way to do it and it's awesome. I can't wait to try it out. You guys will think it's crazy, but believe me, it's awesome. It's a bit of an expensive project for something people would consider a luxury or a hobby, but it's important to me.
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First, hard drives are super cheap: 10 TB of hard drives is like $500, so what? Is that really that expensive and crazy?
-superboyac
Of course. When you can buy a complete computer for that money, most people are going to flip over at the prospect of blowing away $500 in a bunch of hard drives for personal use. Not everyone can afford that luxury.
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FWIW, I don't think 10+ TB of data space is over-the-top. I currently have 12TB of space in my Windows Home Server box.
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First, hard drives are super cheap: 10 TB of hard drives is like $500, so what? Is that really that expensive and crazy?
-superboyac
Of course. When you can buy a complete computer for that money, most people are going to flip over at the prospect of blowing away $500 in a bunch of hard drives for personal use. Not everyone can afford that luxury.-Lashiec
It ain't luxury, if you really need it.
Wasn't that long (4-ish years) ago I paid close to (if not a bit over) that for the 3 320GB drives that are (still) in my home machine now.
I've never seen a $500 computer that didn't make me wince (no that's a waste of money).
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there is no commercial grade NAS
-lotusrootstarch
Hmm...
There's a huge market for something bigger than a file server that doesn't entail the complexity and expense of implementing a SAN solution. That's where NAS really shines. Several of my corporate clients already use NAS appliances. And several others plan on getting one.
So...perhaps somebody better inform NetApp, HP, Hitachi, and a host of other manufacturers, that there's no such thing as what they're selling? :P
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Yeah, I'm not in the "your data needs are crazy" camp either. I've got, er... 20+TB at home. So yeah.
If you want "triple redundancy" and you *don't* need any of that to be off-site (or you're willing to do some schlepping on a regular basis to achieve off-site security), then I think your best bet is to get the largest NAS you can, buy 3 of them, use one locally to backup the other, then backup to a 3rd one on a weekly or monthly basis and keep it off-site the majority of the time.
NAS setups are simple, if you want future expansion capacity just get one with more drive bays. That Synology with 12 bays is pretty extreme, by the time you fill it up you might even want to just fully replace your NAS hardware anyway, but it's not completely unreasonable to get it. Personally I'd probably go for the DS1511+ with 5 bays and get 5x3TB drives = 15GB storage or ~11TB in RAID5. It's less than half the price of the DS2411+ as well which will help the pocket book if you want to buy 3.
Also, just because some people believe NAS is not acceptable for "enterprise use" doesn't mean A: everyone thinks that B: that "enterprise use" applies to you. Plenty of businesses (where do you draw the line between small business and "enterprise"?) use NAS products and there are business-oriented systems that have reasonable reliability, configurability, etc. The Synology units are among them.
Not to mention that with triple redundancy, well, no high-end enterprise solution is going to give you *more* reliability in a single box for less money than it would cost to achieve true triple redundancy on lower-end hardware. In other words you can have a high-end SAN system for tens of thousands of dollars that is super-reliable with redundancy and self-corrective systems, but unless you plan to buy 2 or 3 and keep one off-site, your house burning down can still kill it. With cheaper hardware, buy more of them and keep copies, with one off-site you're as protected as you're likely to get.
- Oshyan
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Also, just because some people believe NAS is not acceptable for "enterprise use" doesn't mean A: everyone thinks that B: that "enterprise use" applies to you. Plenty of businesses (where do you draw the line between small business and "enterprise"?) use NAS products and there are business-oriented systems that have reasonable reliability, configurability, etc. The Synology units are among them.-JavaJones
...not to mention that some of the really heavy enterprise storage systems are actually NASes and not SANs :)
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there is no commercial grade NAS
-lotusrootstarch
Hmm...
There's a huge market for something bigger than a file server that doesn't entail the complexity and expense of implementing a SAN solution. That's where NAS really shines. Several of my corporate clients already use NAS appliances. And several others plan on getting one.
So...perhaps somebody better inform NetApp, HP, Hitachi, and a host of other manufacturers, that there's no such thing as what they're selling? :P
-40hz
True. I'm not trying to deny the business merits of NAS appliances, I was just saying that there are a bunch of factors that prevent NAS from playing a serious role. :)
To list a few:
1. The NIC becomes a serious bottleneck with increased capacity. How long will it take to back up a 10TB NAS with a SMB transfer speed of ~35MB? Very cumbersome to move large chunks of data for purposes like archiving/making backups.
Think about it even in a home usage scenario, a normal BD burning session at 8x from a NAS can easily max out its link.
2. Lack of fine-grained access management even with AD integration.
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The schism/stepping off point is (or seems to be) cost. For the cost of 10TB of BestBuy class NAS boxes one could easily just get a refurbished commercial server that will always have parts available, is designed to take 100+ times the beating you'll ever give it, and it has a proper true hardware RAID controller ... With a year warranty ... For roughly the same price.
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The schism/stepping off point is (or seems to be) cost. For the cost of 10TB of BestBuy class NAS boxes one could easily just get a refurbished commercial server that will always have parts available, is designed to take 100+ times the beating you'll ever give it, and it has a proper true hardware RAID controller ... With a year warranty ... For roughly the same price.
-Stoic Joker
Amen. Exactly right! :Thmbsup:
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there is no commercial grade NAS
-lotusrootstarch
Hmm...
There's a huge market for something bigger than a file server that doesn't entail the complexity and expense of implementing a SAN solution. That's where NAS really shines. Several of my corporate clients already use NAS appliances. And several others plan on getting one.
So...perhaps somebody better inform NetApp, HP, Hitachi, and a host of other manufacturers, that there's no such thing as what they're selling? :P
-40hz
True. I'm not trying to deny the business merits of NAS appliances, I was just saying that there are a bunch of factors that prevent NAS from playing a serious role. :)
To list a few:
1. The NIC becomes a serious bottleneck with increased capacity. How long will it take to back up a 10TB NAS with a SMB transfer speed of ~35MB? Very cumbersome to move large chunks of data for purposes like archiving/making backups.
Think about it even in a home usage scenario, a normal BD burning session at 8x from a NAS can easily max out its link.
2. Lack of fine-grained access management even with AD integration.
-lotusrootstarch
I haven't found that to be the case in many of the "commercial grade" products. Most support CIFS, NFS, NCP, HTTP and FTP protocols. And virtually all have multiple 1GB NICS provisioned for failover, load-balancing, and teaming. So there's no dearth of usable bandwidth there. And many either currently have, or will soon have, FCT -so they're also SAN ready should you ultimately need to take you NAS box in that direction. Same goes for access granularity. The management software and OS is top-notch.
But this is commercial grade ($5k range and up) we're talking about right? I'm not talking about a SnapServer or something similar.
:)
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The schism/stepping off point is (or seems to be) cost. For the cost of 10TB of BestBuy class NAS boxes one could easily just get a refurbished commercial server that will always have parts available, is designed to take 100+ times the beating you'll ever give it, and it has a proper true hardware RAID controller ... With a year warranty ... For roughly the same price.
-Stoic Joker
The running cost, the noise, the heat, the storage space... all for just 10TB in a home storage context? Hardly worth it IMHO.
I'm going OT a bit to look at this from another perspective, do we really need the "redundancy and high availability" for this kind of usage? I used to deploy RAID 10, get my AV content carefully ripped, well organized, double-checked for corruption... only to have the majority of content replaced in less than a year due to newer releases which entail better content, higher definition, 2D->3D, etc.
Take Avatar (2009) for example (I assume most of you have watched it by now), I had over 150GB data turnover on this particular title alone.
1. Avatar BD 1080p - Ripped, organized, verified, gave away and removed from storage.
2. Avatar BD 3D 1080p - Ripped, organized, verified, gave away and removed from storage.
3. Avatar Extended Collector's Edition 1080p - Ripped, organized, verified, gave away and removed from storage.
4. Avatar Extended Collector's Edition 3D 1080p - Ripped, organized, verified, currently in use, hopefully it'll last another year or so before they re-master it to go beyond 1080p.
Same theory applies to audio as well, at least in the genres that I listen to (DTS Master HD soundtracks and classics).
Thus there's not much reason to spend so much money and effort to have HA storage in the home media context. :) The content is disposable and is likely to be phased out before you have a clue.
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The schism/stepping off point is (or seems to be) cost. For the cost of 10TB of BestBuy class NAS boxes one could easily just get a refurbished commercial server that will always have parts available, is designed to take 100+ times the beating you'll ever give it, and it has a proper true hardware RAID controller ... With a year warranty ... For roughly the same price.
-Stoic Joker
The running cost, the noise, the heat, the storage space... all for just 10TB in a home storage context? Hardly worth it IMHO.-lotusrootstarch
You can't possibly be serious. Servers went green to ya know?? running cost is dependent on load. no load. no cost. Sure it draws a bit at idle but without a monitor... less that any other desktop I'd wager.
Noise? Total bullshit. Anything from a PowerEdge 1800 or newer has fan speed controls. Sure under peak load they sound like a vacuum cleaner, but at idle - where they'll be spending all their time - they're whisper quiet.
Heat? Fans say there really ain't much to speak of (See above), especially if you spec it with its actual usage in mind. No 2nd Xeon, no extry 20GB of RAM, etc. etc.
Oh, and it up to the individual to decide if their data is worth keeping ... There are whole TV channels dedicated to movies from the friggin 20s. So obviously somebody had to be hanging on to that shit for some time now... Huh??
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Noise? Total bullshit. Anything from a PowerEdge 1800 or newer has fan speed controls. Sure under peak load they sound like a vacuum cleaner, but at idle - where they'll be spending all their time - they're whisper quiet.
-Stoic Joker
Well I cannot comment on the PowerEdge 1800 since it looks like it's barely entry level and you'd probably better off getting a beefy quality desktop for the price anyways. I was referring to normal servers such as DL385/R710/R810.
Oh, and it up to the individual to decide if their data is worth keeping ... There are whole TV channels dedicated to movies from the friggin 20s. So obviously somebody had to be hanging on to that shit for some time now... Huh??
-Stoic Joker
Much less applicable for young generations but granted you've got a point. :)
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Hm... (Let me scamper a bit further out on the limb...)
MTBF (Mean Time Between Failure) as I understand it is the earliest statistically likely point for a given device to fail.
Now (operating completely without a net...), the odds of a coin landing heads up are 50/50. Which is to say that statistically there is a 50% chance of it coming up heads (I do believe it's safe to interchange them in that fashion ...Yes?).
The fun starts when you look at the odds of a coin coming up heads if it's flipped (oh lets say...) 3 times ... Because it is still 50/50 due to each flip being a separate event with 2 possible outcomes.
So I have a bit of trouble getting my head around the idea that the MTBF of 3 devices, is lower than the MTBF of 1 device. When they all individually have the same odds (statistically 0 until age X) of failure at any one given point in time.
-Stoic Joker
Only a month behind on this particular post but whateva....:D
Just thought I would try to explain where you went wrong here...You are right in your example, any given time, there is a 50/50 chance of it coming up heads. The idea of MTBF is not that it will come up heads any one time, but rather what is the chance of it coming up tails any one of the 3 times. It isn't how likely it is SOMETHING is going to fail at any given time, it is the likelyhood of ANYTHING NOT failing at a given time. Another example may make it clearer: It isn't the chance of the coin coming up heads or tails any 1 time, but rather the chance it will come up heads EVERY time. MTBF is the average number of flips that will statistically guarantee heads comes up every time. With a coin it is 50/50 (as is any even distribution), but with something designed NOT to fail, it has a lifespan that can be used as a reference to statistically determine how long the product should last before it fails.
Note that statistically means you are still 50/50 on your one device/component/whatever but that all devices/components/whatever will average out to that number. When you see an MTBF of 5 years, that doesn't mean it will last 5 years, what it means is the average life of any given sample of that product will work out to about 5 years. YMMV. The real value is determining between manufacturers and/or product lines. An MTBF of 3 years for one device and 5 years for the other means you are likely to have the 5 year one significantly longer.
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Hm... I'll have to mull that over for a bit, as it's early, and statistics tend to annoy me... :D
But thanks for taking a crack at it!
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... it's early, and statistics tend to annoy me... :D
-Stoic Joker
Wow! Really?
I'm gonna have to introduce you to my Mom some day. She feels the same way about facts.
Facts make her angry. ;)
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I have no problem with facts. I like facts. However statistics are not facts ... They are mathematically bases guesses, or assumptions if you will.
It's a side effect of spending a great deal of my life pushing a (two wheeled) vehicle right up to and well beyond the very ragged razor edge ... of what it statistically was not capable of doing.
As Hon Solo said in the original Star Wars, "Never tell me the odds...". ;)
I am a fan of the chaos theory, and I tend to root for the X factor.
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They are mathematically bases guesses, or assumptions if you will.
-Stoic Joker
Actually, they're a lot more than that. The only problem for the general public is that statistics is such a little understood branch of mathematics that most people neither respect nor 'get' what it's about.
And considering how widely misused and misquoted statistics are, it's small wonder. :)
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The setup I posted above is not that expensive (~$1500). A Q-NAP or Synology NAS that can hold 10 drives would cost me $1500-2000. So the price is not really an issue. Now, I still like having commercial grade stuff, so I'm not sold on the NAS yet. What I want to add to that quote is some kind of rack that can hold at least 10 drives. Something like a Dell PowerVault:
(http://i1.lelong.com.my/Malaysia/NEW-DELL-POWERVAULT-NAS-MD1000-Network-Attach-Storage-6TB-1001-26-server@1.jpg)
If I add that to my setup, buy all the hard drives, and find a nice 4-foot tall cabinet for it, I think I'm set. Right?
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They are mathematically bases guesses, or assumptions if you will.
-Stoic Joker
Actually, they're a lot more than that. -40hz
Only to the person that created them. Because only they know the (true) reasoning behind whatever deviation(s) has/have been used to achieve said target number(s). Statistics are projections of what might be if ... All of the other formulaic assertions used fall into place in accordance with the known factual parameters used, and nothing odd happens. To anyone else there simply an educated guess, that leverages their level of trust in whom ever ran-the-numbers.
Much unlike facts, which require empirical evidence/reproducible results, "valid" statistics merely have to avoid being dead wrong.
Discussion that happens frequently at the office (usually on rush jobs):
Brass: So, how's the testing going?
Me: Well, the first test went well.
Brass: So it works then...
Me: No. The first test didn't fail... But a statical sampling of one doesn't prove shit to anyone (or at least it shouldn't...)
Brass: Oh... Okay, I'll come back later.
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Scampering back on topic...
Only issue I foresee with the Uber NAS is that without some manner of high speed backbone connecting the NAS to something that can manipulate the files on it. File maintenance could be agonizingly slow. And if you gotta buy something to run it (eek!) cost with no real return.
If you got your heart set on a rack system, that's fine. But best bang-for-the-buck would IMO be one of the 2U 6 slot rack servers. That way you always can go in and manipulate the files locally instead on over the wire.
2U PowerEdge 2950 with 6 hot-swap bays
3 3TB drives
4GB RAM
Dual Xeon 5150 processors
and a legally licensed copy of Win Server 2003 (32 or 64 bit)
Came out to $1,934 from the site configurator.
You get plenty of room for expansion, and the convenience of local file access. Then if the project really gets huge you can easily add the uber NAS to the rack and let the server handle it.
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Only to the person that created them. Because only they know the (true) reasoning behind whatever deviation(s) has/have been used to achieve said target number(s). Statistics are projections of what might be if ... All of the other formulaic assertions used fall into place in accordance with the known factual parameters used, and nothing odd happens. To anyone else there simply an educated guess, that leverages their level of trust in whom ever ran-the-numbers.
-Stoic Joker
You're drastically oversimplifying. And you know it too! (I say that because I'm assuming you took at least two semesters of college-level stats.) ;D
Besides, you're mixing sociological and political arguments in with a discussion of a branch of mathematics. Nothing good ever comes from doing that. ;)8)
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@superboy - Scampering back on topic myself, I'll +1 w/SJ on that 2U/6-slot bang-for-the-buck opinion. The config he specc'ed gives you 12TB (or 8 usable w/RAID-5) plus a set of Xeons for a very good price - with room for an additional three drives if/when it turns out you need them. Getting that licensed copy of Win2k3 Server thrown in as part of the deal is an extra dollop of sweet sauce.
Nice work SJ! :Thmbsup:
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Scampering back on topic...
Only issue I foresee with the Uber NAS is that without some manner of high speed backbone connecting the NAS to something that can manipulate the files on it. File maintenance could be agonizingly slow. And if you gotta buy something to run it (eek!) cost with no real return.
If you got your heart set on a rack system, that's fine. But best bang-for-the-buck would IMO be one of the 2U 6 slot rack servers. That way you always can go in and manipulate the files locally instead on over the wire.
2U PowerEdge 2950 with 6 hot-swap bays
3 3TB drives
4GB RAM
Dual Xeon 5150 processors
and a legally licensed copy of Win Server 2003 (32 or 64 bit)
Came out to $1,934 from the site configurator.
You get plenty of room for expansion, and the convenience of local file access. Then if the project really gets huge you can easily add the uber NAS to the rack and let the server handle it.
-Stoic Joker
I don't understand how this is different than the configuration I posted on the previous page. I don't mean technically, I mean conceptually. Isn't this a rack/server type setup just like the one I posted from Stallard?
Only issue I foresee with the Uber NAS is that without some manner of high speed backbone connecting the NAS to something that can manipulate the files on it. File maintenance could be agonizingly slow. And if you gotta buy something to run it (eek!) cost with no real return.
i am not following this at all, please explain. What is a high speed backbone? Why would file maintenance be slow? What's the point of something like this if file maintenance is agonizingly slow? Also, is there a high speed backbone missing on the configuration I posted? You're obviously seeing some issue that is totally transparent to me.
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superboyac, if you are able to configure NIC teaming (with your switch) or proper load-balancing it should work out fine.
If the plan is to rely on single Gig link to the backbone switch please be very patient during file operations. :o
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I don't understand how this is different than the configuration I posted on the previous page. I don't mean technically, I mean conceptually. Isn't this a rack/server type setup just like the one I posted from Stallard?
-superboyac
It's not. I think SJ was arguing for going with a standard server as opposed to a NAS device and worked up this configuration as an example of what could be gotten for similar money. (Hope so anyway - because that's why I was agreeing with him. ;D )
re: high-speed backbone
I think what's being said here is that a NAS is usually strictly a storage device. You can't log onto it and do things to the files stored there. So any file manipulation operations (i.e. conversions, ripping, directory management, etc.) need to be done on a PC and pushed/pulled over the network as opposed to being done directly on the server. Same with directory management and moving files. So with huge files, the speed of the network can become a bottleneck. And since a standard Windows server is also a workstation, you could further avoid network overhead by running things like a DVD rip directly on the server.
:)
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I don't understand how this is different than the configuration I posted on the previous page. I don't mean technically, I mean conceptually. Isn't this a rack/server type setup just like the one I posted from Stallard?
-superboyac
It's not. I think SJ was arguing for going with a standard server as opposed to a NAS device and worked up this configuration as an example of what could be gotten for similar money. (Hope so anyway - because that's why I was agreeing with him. ;D )
re: high-speed backbone
I think what's being said here is that a NAS is usually strictly a storage device. You can't log onto it and do things to the files stored there. So any file manipulation operations (i.e. conversions, ripping, directory management, etc.) need to be done on a PC and pushed/pulled over the network as opposed to being done directly on the server. Same with directory management and moving files. So with huge files, the speed of the network can become a bottleneck. And since a standard Windows server is also a workstation, you could further avoid network overhead by running things like a DVD rip directly on the server.
:)
-40hz
Oh wow! This is very enlightening to me. I most definitely DO want to do a bunch of work on the server drives themselves. I absolutely don't want to do the work on my desktop and push/pull it from the storage. No way. I have some big plans for this server. I want to create some really nice interactive stuff for myself on it. I'm getting a server, that's it. No NAS. Thanks 40, always a big help.
superboyac, if you are able to configure NIC teaming (with your switch) or proper load-balancing it should work out fine.
If the plan is to rely on single Gig link to the backbone switch please be very patient during file operations. :o
-lotusrootstarch
I'm not trying to be funny, but I have no idea what in the world you are talking about. I don't know what you think I know, but it sounds to me like I don't know jack about this stuff. Let me break down my thoughts on your two sentances there:
This is the very first time I've heard of NIC teaming.
What switch?
I don't know what load I'm balancing. I wouldn't know what the "proper" way to do it is, nor would I know what the improper way of doing it would be.
I don't know what Gig link is. I still don't know what a backbone switch is. I definitely am lost on what I'm being patient about when the single gig link is doing whatever to the backbone switch while I'm trying to do file operations. You could have said the following and it would have made just as much sense to me:
superboyac, if you are able to configure TRB tomfoolery (with your blanket) or proper angularizing it should work out fine.
If the plan is to rely on single Lop link to the hardnose pulley please be very patient during file operations. ohmy
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LOL, that's ok. I remember the times I was happier being clueless. Whatever works for you, good luck. ;)
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superboyac, in regards to a backbone switch, what they're referring to is the ethernet switch you're going to be using in this setup of yours. In other words, you have your desktop and this forthcoming server. You're going to have to network them together using an ethernet switch of some sort. Knowing your preferences, this will certainly have to be a gigabit speed switch. The load-balancing and NIC teaming that's being spoken of is more commonly called aggregated ethernet. This means that your server has two or more gigabit network cards that, along with the switch, can be configured to act as one multi-gigabit capable network interface. Obviously, the switch itself must have this capability, too (and not nearly all switches do). Does this help clear things up?
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Nice quote SB, but you really will want to look into that kind of stuff before you start really looking at a server. Really, from what I have read in these 6 pages, SJ and 40 are trying to lead you back to where you should really be looking and that is a heavy-duty workstation class machine (and really even that is way overkill). Looking at a good i7 based workstation with commercial grade SATA hard drives (maybe even Solid State hard drives if speed is critical) should work faster and better for what you are looking for. Then, if the space isn't there, you can look at a NAS for storing completed projects (say fully ripped, indexed, and re-encoded video for example) to make it available to the machine again if/when needed with the side benefit that other machines on the network can access it too. A side benefit of that route is you have much more flexibility in case choices and design considerations for it's location (instead of dealing with the jet engine running next to the TV you are watching the movie on, if that were appropriate - e.g. you don't have the whole house wired CAT6).
I just got my first server with the express purpose of configuring it and giving to our church. It is a really nice HP DL380 G3 that I got for free, so I can't complain. I really have no need for it personally though, and the fans running in the same room as my computer equipment makes the room noisy and even hotter - in other words even less desirable to be there in the first place. I like overkill just as much as anyone, but really, servers are really good at one thing and that is what they do. If you have big plans to do lots of things - that is what desktops/workstations are really good at. You may just want to rethink how you are attacking the problem you are trying to solve.
In fact - do this. You already have a really beefy machine, right? Use VMware and build your servers as virtual servers. Build bunches of them if you want, they are only software, so you can create and destroy VM's as often as needed. Create specialized ones and general purpose ones. Create machines that work with alternative solutions. Once you have everything working the way you want using test files and test data (you can add data storage later to do the same thing over and over again) sit back and see how it was done. Determine the relative performance of each option. Did it require certain server software? Did it require multiple machines that specialized in specific tasks? Was it flaky and temperamental? If the answers here are generally yes, then a server may well be the way to go. But if you want simple elegance and set and forget features, you will likely find better, more refined answers on a workstation where everything runs in one box with a single client OS (or a consumer grade Home Server if you prefer). Regardless of which answer you come up with though, the beauty of setting it all up in a hypervisor is you can then roll it up and drop the entire system pre-set onto the new box and be running in minutes using something like ESXi on the new box instead of windows.
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Well summarized Steel. :Thmbsup:
A caveat: one problem with having ESXi is that you won't be able to take advantage of gfx-accelerated transcoding using CUDA/DXVA, that is, if you MUST "re-encode" videos.
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OK...this is all very good advice. I really am not sure what to do again.
My my basic need in all of this is this:
What is the easiest way to add 10+ hard drives to my current setup? And I want access to those hard drives in exactly the same way I use my regular hard drives now. That is, no kind of restrictions like 40hz brought up above.
I don't know if I need a NAS, or a server, or what. But I don't want something that is not meant to easily deal with a lot of hard drives. I don't want like 4 or 6 or even 10 hard drives to be the maximum. I want it to be something that can easily take in 20 drives if necessary, once everything is set up. And I definitely don't want any difficulty with access to any of them. I don't want it to become something like where the drives need to be "mounted" to a client pc in any sort of special way, and the connection can be unstable and disconnect occassionally. I don't want anything like that. i don't want transfer speeds any different than my regular sata drives I use right now. I don't want speeds like a dorky USB stick. So this is kind of what I want.
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What is the easiest way to add 10+ hard drives to my current setup?
-superboyac
According to my research, there's none on the market as yet. The closest solution for you is probably getting one or more mega USB3.0/e-SATA enclosures with a shitload of bays on each... directly connected to the desktop/server. Last time I checked there was no such thing. Even if it does come to existence some time on the road, I'd imagine heat dissipation and costs being significant obstacles for adoption.
The dilemma is that, at some stage, within that single device, whether it being a beefy server or desktop, the constraints like the physical room/capacity, connectors, heat, and other performance factors will force you to take the networked, distributed approach.
And the biggest problem with a networked solution is obviously the network itself... Let's look at your requirements:
i don't want transfer speeds any different than my regular sata drives I use right now.
connection can be unstable and disconnect occasionally
You can actually achieve these using:
1. Gigabit ethernet aggregation (minimum 2Gb/s aggregrated single direction)
2. Powerful switching backbone capacity (heaps of switches that have gigabit ports do not have corresponding switching fabric to support the performance)
3. SMB 3 / NFS / iSCSI as transfer proctocols
At this level of requirement, it is the networking components that demand the biggest budgets. Switches that will properly support Ethernet aggregation with a beefy backplane performance that deliver all the data transfer at line rate do not come cheap. Early this year I deployed a home theater set up for a long-time friend, the wired networking plus storage part of Bill of Material boiled down as follows:
1. Backbone: Cisco 3750G x 2, @ 2 x $3500 each
Running two 4Gb/s ethernet aggregation via CAT6 cables to two distribution layer switches located in major entertainment hubs in the residence.
2. Distribution/Access: Cisco 3560G x 2 (model with 4 uplinks), @ 2 x $2800 each
Running 4Gb/s ethernet aggregation back to the backbone switches
3. Miscellaneous customer-grade Gigabit switches, @ $2000 total
Uplinking to backbone/distribution via single gigabit link.
4. 6 x ReadyNAS 1500 with 4 x 2TB drives, @ 6 x $2400 each bundled
Connected directly to backbone switches via dual Gigabit ethernet aggregation (maximum uni-directional transfer speed of 2Gb/s)
5. One PowerEdge server, 64GB memory, dual quad-core Xeon with 12Gb/s ethernet aggregation, @ $3500
Connected directly to backbone switches, and thus to all the NAS appliances.
YET there's only less than 40TB of useable storage and there's still noticeable performance degradation when the load is concentrated on a few NAS boxes. There has been no solution, just bear with it.
So... focus your budget on the stuff that you value most, be prepared to make compromises, everybody has to, even for people among craziest of the crazy. :)
In your case, a few NAS boxes plus a customer-grade gigabit switch is really the best solution.
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I was just thinking...
Since this will be a personal server with most likely only a few people accessing it at any given time, a single 1GB network link on the LAN side should be sufficient for anything being streamed to the users. That's more bandwidth per user than most people get already - and some have multiple family members streaming (via wireless no less!) simultaneously.
Most playback software is aware of this, so its gotten very good at buffering and caching to avoid any stutters or freezes.
If there are problems after that, then it becomes a QoS issue - and that's a whole 'nother tweak&tune discussion we'll leave for another day.
But if the actual scenario is one (or three) people mostly pulling from the server (even HD) I doubt you'll ever see a problem there.
If it does, I'd first try "multihoming" the server by enabling a second NIC LAN port, and point some users to that as their IP gateway address. Put yourself on your own port and let everybody else share the second. Because you paid for the damn thing so "screw them" right? (kidding...just kidding...)
On the WAN side, even a 100Mb port is usually sufficient - unless some ISP is finally allowing faster backbone connections for it's customers. Because most ISPs throttle or lock your link throughput somewhere in a range any 100Mb NIC can easily handle. If you actually can benefit from having 1Gb on the WAN side then use a 1Gb NIC for that too. No big deal.
So if you're letting your server handle most of the heavy-lifting, and basically only using your LAN side to pull files down, a single (or dual) switched 1Gb network on the LAN side should be plenty.
If you take a look at many preconfigured servers, you'll see one 100Mb and two 1Gb NIC ports built in.
Now you know why. :)
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My observation is that media traffic can easily be "crowded out" by traffic such as file transfer, network backups etc. And due to whole bunch of factors (everyone's got his/her own opinion on this), I see the actual maximum aggregated speed over a 1Gbps link seldom goes above 40MB/s for a single session (such as one SMB file sharing session), and tend to drop below 20MB/s when you have multiple sessions (such as file transfer, heavy Internet downloading, streaming) going on concurrently.
Don't forget 1Gbps is just a theoretical max, and a bunch of factors slow it down to a disappointing real world speed -- host CPU power, switching/routing infrastructure, host NIC card quality, cable quality/length/distance along the path, disk IO speed, TCP congestion avoidance mechanism, etc.
100Mbps is unusable but don't put too much trust in 1Gps either, it ain't that good.
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100Mbps is unusable
-lotusrootstarch
Except in the USA where most connections to your ISP don't even get to use all of that.
Ain't leaving something as important as your Internet connection completely at the mercy of private corporate interests a grand thing? The competition was supposed to make things better. Instead it resulted in higher prices and less bandwidth than what's found in many other industrialized nations. And lets not even talk about the joke the US cellphone system has rapidly become.
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In fact - do this. You already have a really beefy machine, right? Use VMware and build your servers as virtual servers. Build bunches of them if you want, they are only software, so you can create and destroy VM's as often as needed. Create specialized ones and general purpose ones. Create machines that work with alternative solutions. Once you have everything working the way you want using test files and test data (you can add data storage later to do the same thing over and over again) sit back and see how it was done. Determine the relative performance of each option. Did it require certain server software? Did it require multiple machines that specialized in specific tasks? Was it flaky and temperamental? If the answers here are generally yes, then a server may well be the way to go. But if you want simple elegance and set and forget features, you will likely find better, more refined answers on a workstation where everything runs in one box with a single client OS (or a consumer grade Home Server if you prefer). Regardless of which answer you come up with though, the beauty of setting it all up in a hypervisor is you can then roll it up and drop the entire system pre-set onto the new box and be running in minutes using something like ESXi on the new box instead of windows.
-steeladept
Oh man! Brilliant! And so obvious...(40hz smacks forehead and laughs at himself for being so blind.)
Steel's suggestion above is some of the absolute best advice I've ever read here.
Steeladept!!! Come up here and take a bow! :Thmbsup:
Before you buy anything I'd definitely give virtual a try to get a better handle on how to implement this project. No need to worry about hardware right away. They'll build plenty more by the time you're ready to buy something.
Who knows? It might even end up staying in a virtual environment if it works for you. :)
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100Mbps is unusable
-lotusrootstarch
Except in the USA where most connections to your ISP don't even get to use all of that.
Ain't leaving something as important as your Internet connection completely at the mercy of private corporate interests a grand thing? The competition was supposed to make things better. Instead it resulted in higher prices and less bandwidth than what's found in many other industrialized nations. And lets not even talk about the joke the US cellphone system has rapidly become.
-40hz
I was talking about using 100Mbps link for LAN sharing. :D
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Steel's suggestion above is some of the absolute best advice I've ever read here.
-40hz
A few things to consider when going for an ESXi server configuration for purposes beyond file storage, esp. in the multimedia area:
1. Performance tends to be a hit or miss
In addition to the overhead caused by virtualization, Disk IO/RAM/CPU resource allocation/throttling can majorly affect your experience under load.
2. Free version of ESXi hypervisor enforces limitation on hardware utilization
3. Graphic card accelerated computing is not supported (not even on the roadmap iiuc)
Essential for transcoding large 1080p videos (a lot of online benchmark reports suggest that the performance difference is staggering without CUDA/DXVA)
4. The yet unproven capability/performance of USB 3.0 pass-through (to guest VM) in ESXi vSphere 5.0
I don't assume that you'll have a Blu-ray built-in on the server. To work around this, an external USB 3.0 Blu-ray reader/burner attaching to a USB port on the server is likely needed. For guest VM to access this device, you have to create a mapping that pass-through this device to the guest VM. USB 3.0 support is only just recently introduced in vSphere 5.0 and I haven't got time to test it out.
P.S. Blu-ray and USB 2.0 do not go together, at 2x speed you may wait half a day to just burn a single disc, and any other intensive IO operation during the burning process may cause it to fail.
Update:
It's no go. See: http://virtualizationreview.com/blogs/virtual-insider/2011/07/vsphere-5-top-10-vm-capabilities.aspx
"it is limited to USB devices that are connected to the machine on which you are using the vSphere client or web client. So, you still cannot connect a USB in the ESXi server and pass it through."
Creating/deleting VMs in a lab does not give you much indication of limitations mentioned above until you run into problems in real world production environment. ;)
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OK, I'm now backtracking big time. I'm going to nix the whole server thing right now. The fundamental need here is just massive amounts of storage. I found the xbmc forum discussions about this stuff, and I was very happy to find out that a lot of people have already gone around this wheel already.
There's an OS out there made specifically for this sort of thing, called unRAID. That seems to be what most of the xbmc guys are using, with a Norco box. I'll take that, connect it to my router, and manage it from my current desktop. And it's pretty cheap, won't cost me more than $1500 (minus the drives). So I'm going to settle on that.
My business will soon be changing locations anyway, this server thing is too confusing for me right now to deal with. I just want the storage right now.
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re: unRAID
Interesting concept. There are a few caveats (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-standard_RAID_levels#UnRAID). Not sure I'm totally wild about some of how this works. But since it's primarily being used as a media storage server (where there's nothing that can't be replaced) it seems to be an OK compromise. Definitely not a good choice for a standard data server however. But who cares? As long as you understand what it is - and what it's good for - there shouldn't be any bad surprises. I'd definitely want to run it on new and good quality hardware. This isn't one of those "raid your junk closet for parts" projects.
@SB - thanks for sharing. I'm generally clueless about this type of product so it's always great when somebody points something like this out to me.
Note: Revision 3 did a segment w/walkthru on unRAID a few years back. Look at it here (http://revision3.com/systm/unraid). It's 2+ years old so some of the commentary may be (likely is?) out of date with the current release.
Addendum:
Getting this (see below) when attempting to go to http://lime-technology.com didn't exactly give me the warm fuzzies. ;D
[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]
8)
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The registration is tied to the serial number of a flash drive?? Yeesh. It was interesting until I got there.
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I also noticed how there were some possible GPL violation questions that had been brought up about Lime Technologies and unRAID. :-\
Does anybody know what the status or resolution was on that point? :huh:
Because if there's an unresolved GPL issue, that's a total showstopper for me no matter how good a product might be. :(
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OK, forget the unraid thing. I'll just go with a normal windows server. I'm close guys, I'm close!!
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OK, forget the unraid thing.-superboyac
Well that frees up my evening ... Now I can work on the local Humane Society's website. :)
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OK, forget the unraid thing. I'll just go with a normal windows server. I'm close guys, I'm close!!
-superboyac
@StoicJoker - Aw man! Now look what we've gone ahead and done. We wore SBoy out! :'(
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OK, forget the unraid thing. I'll just go with a normal windows server. I'm close guys, I'm close!!
-superboyac
@StoicJoker - Aw man! Now look what we've gone ahead and done. We wore SBoy out! :'(
-40hz
Yeah, at this point I'm afraid the poor guy's close to impersonating a Ping-Pong ball. :(
I had to be quiet for a bit while you and Lotus went over the media stuff, as that ain't my bag.
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A few things to consider when going for an ESXi server configuration for purposes beyond file storage, esp. in the multimedia area:...
-lotusrootstarch
WRT ESXi, I only meant it for whatever "server" machine was actually used and only for this machine that is already created. My suggestion would be to start with a VM in Workstation, for example, to get it all working virtually first. That said, I did know about a lot of these things, so I will address a few of them, but it is good to point them out.
1. Performance - Yes, it can be hit or miss, but unless you are KILLING the machine, in a home environment these shouldn't be an issue. I can't imagine throttling a single VM for ANY resources as it wouldn't make any sense.
2. Hardware limits - True, but again, in this particular environment it wouldn't need to be anything more. If it turned out it did, there are other routes to go (Like V2P).
3. Graphic Card Acceleration - True. I forgot that may end up playing a big part of any Multimedia setup. This could be a deal breaker for permanent setup, but you can alway V2P back once everything is setup.
4. USB Pass-through et. al. - I am not sure why you would think this to be the route to take with ANY server. It was already mentioned that the right way to handle this would be to pull/push the data from the server to do intensive multimedia manipulation on his regular machine. This takes the USB and Blu-Ray issues out of the picture.
The lab environment doesn't give any indication of many things, but it does help to determine what he would want to look at for actual hardware. If it works out to be a multibox setup, you can figure out how to do so. If it were just to determine what software is needed, again it works. Even network issues can be found this way, though that can be (read usually is) difficult to determine and I am not sure if it carries over outside of the paid versions of ESXi. I only pointed out a great way to create a proof of concept, and if it works well in the PoC, then you can move it wholesale to another machine as is. If not, you have options, including a V2P if performance is the only issue and you are inclined to believe that it is due to the virtualization. It is really just a cheap way to figure out what's what.
Steeladept!!! Come up here and take a bow! :Thmbsup:
Before you buy anything I'd definitely give virtual a try to get a better handle on how to implement this project. No need to worry about hardware right away. They'll build plenty more by the time you're ready to buy something.
Who knows? It might even end up staying in a virtual environment if it works for you. :)
-40hz
Thanks. That last line is the point I was making about the ESXi. It isn't the only option, but if it works well, it is definitely the way to go.
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I think one thing has become abundantly clear from this thread: if you want to implement an "ideal" solution for yourself, you need to understand both your own needs (comprehensively) *and* the technology available to meet your needs.
Now obviously you've been trying to learn about the tech by asking for options here, but the key point is this is just a *starting* point. We can point out possible options - and now there seem to be 3 or 4 on the table - but we can't really pick one "best" one for you. Even you can't do that right now, and that's because you don't fully understand the underlying tech.
I suspect that, even if you were to go with one of our recommended solutions, there would be some caveat in it, or lack of understanding of some feature of it, that would end up being an issue for you. The best way is for you to really understand all this stuff. That will take a lot of time but if you're willing to invest a lot of *money* into it, I think it only sensible to invest a similarly significant amount of *time* into learning the technology so you can make your own well informed decision.
What we've got here in this thread is a starting point for much, much more further research. When you can look at all this stuff and say confidently for yourself something like "I feel RAID is the best solution", and be saying that from a position of understanding and knowledge of the technology underlying the options, then you'll be making your best decision. Until/unless that happens, I suspect you'll keep flip flopping until you make a decision, maybe even one made more or less on a "coin toss", and so - not being fully aware of the limitations through your own deeper understanding - you may well be disappointed in what you end up with.
That being said I hope that's not the case. I hope you settle on a solution and it does everything you want it to. But I do frankly suspect this will just be the beginning and that whatever you go with, you will spend a lot of time trying to make it do exactly what you want.
That's my last "2 cents" input on the matter. ;)
- Oshyan
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I think one thing has become abundantly clear from this thread: if you want to implement an "ideal" solution for yourself, you need to understand both your own needs (comprehensively) *and* the technology available to meet your needs.
Now obviously you've been trying to learn about the tech by asking for options here, but the key point is this is just a *starting* point. We can point out possible options - and now there seem to be 3 or 4 on the table - but we can't really pick one "best" one for you. Even you can't do that right now, and that's because you don't fully understand the underlying tech.
I suspect that, even if you were to go with one of our recommended solutions, there would be some caveat in it, or lack of understanding of some feature of it, that would end up being an issue for you. The best way is for you to really understand all this stuff. That will take a lot of time but if you're willing to invest a lot of *money* into it, I think it only sensible to invest a similarly significant amount of *time* into learning the technology so you can make your own well informed decision.
What we've got here in this thread is a starting point for much, much more further research. When you can look at all this stuff and say confidently for yourself something like "I feel RAID is the best solution", and be saying that from a position of understanding and knowledge of the technology underlying the options, then you'll be making your best decision. Until/unless that happens, I suspect you'll keep flip flopping until you make a decision, maybe even one made more or less on a "coin toss", and so - not being fully aware of the limitations through your own deeper understanding - you may well be disappointed in what you end up with.
That being said I hope that's not the case. I hope you settle on a solution and it does everything you want it to. But I do frankly suspect this will just be the beginning and that whatever you go with, you will spend a lot of time trying to make it do exactly what you want.
That's my last "2 cents" input on the matter. ;)
- Oshyan
-JavaJones
I agree Oshyan! Thanks for your input so far, it's been very helpful. What I really want to do is find someone who has already done this, go to their house, and just check out their setup. That one guy I posted about lives in Redondo beach, which is just a few minutes away. I'm very tempted to ask him to show me his setup, but that's "weird" in this day and age for some reason.
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What is the deal with DAS? It sounds like something I can connect directly to my workstation, without any OS in between. If I want to avoid all the complications from my previous setups, this is where I would start. I understand now what NAS is, and I like SANS but even I can tell that's overkill for me at this point. So it sounds like DAS is what I want.
Here's where I'm confused...let's say I find some box that is a DAS that will connect to my workstation. I don't understand how it connects. Right now, I have an external box connected with two hard drives in it. The connection is esata. What's annoying is that each drive needs its own esata cable. I only have so many esata ports on my workstation, and they are currently full. How can I put 10 drives in an external box and connect it? I don't, nor will I ever, have 10 esata ports. Nor do I want it. Isn't there a way of doing this with just a cable or two?
I like DAS because it's directly attached, with no middle man OS or anything. I'll do all my file management through my main workstation anyway, so that's fine. As far as access from remote places, that's negligible at this point, and I've already figured out how to cleverly avoid those kinds of complications.
So my two questions right now is:
1) What is a box that is NOT a rackmount thing that will hold 10+ drives?
2) How do I connect this box to my PC using fewer cables than the number of drives (ideally one cable)?
I will absolutely not consider USB as the connection, nor will I consider firewire. I like esata very much. I'm hoping there's a better way with some kind of card that plugs into a PCI bus or something.
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OK, I went back and reread this thread (ping-pong is exactly the correct term!). But that's how I work, sorry if it's frustrating. Believe it or not, all of this helps me a lot, and I appreciate everyone's assistance. Good will come of this, I promise!
So I went back to some of the previous links, and the product I'm really liking is this one:
[ You are not allowed to view attachments ]
This will be my box of drives. This box will be directly connected to my current workstation through these SAS cables (which I don't know much about right now). But it sounds perfect. I'll need to buy a SAS controller for that box, which are relatively expensive. I think this is the item that a few of you here have talked about to make sure I get a business grade quality, which I want to do. If you have any advice as to which manufacturer/model I should get, please let me know.
Next is the connection to my computer. My computer doesn't have any SAS stuff right now, so I'm guessing I need to buy a card or something for it. Any direction on suggested models would be appreciated. Same goes for any cables involved, in case I have to be careful about it.
So that gets mucho storage attached to my desktop. After that, I can experiment to my hearts content. I'll try doing some server stuff with VM's. But mostly I'll just use the storage directly from the desktop.
How is that? I can't really see much overkill in this one, and it's relatively cheap. The box and related items will run me about $1500, and then I'll just hunt around for good hard drive deals. The ones with 5 -year warranties are my fav.
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Now I can work on the local Humane Society's website.-Stoic Joker
You must be barking mad! 8)
Good for you :Thmbsup:
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Hi superboy, have u checked the pricing on 2TB SAS drives? I think that's one important step before you commit to buying that big box.
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Hi superboy, have u checked the pricing on 2TB SAS drives? I think that's one important step before you commit to buying that big box.
-lotusrootstarch
Agreed, but one good point of this route is it IS backward compatible with SATA. I don't know how WELL it is compatible, but they will work with drives at least.
I will absolutely not consider USB as the connection, nor will I consider firewire. I like esata very much. I'm hoping there's a better way with some kind of card that plugs into a PCI bus or something.
-superboyac
I don't *think* anyone ever suggested USB or firewire. I wouldn't consider anything less than esata, I know I wouldn't suggest it unless it were *MAYBE* USB3.0, and not even likely then. As for DAS, I believe you are right in that being something very close to what you want. I believe most DAS solutions provide a proprietary card that connects their solution to the machine making it essentially appear as another internal drive controller. However, I have never really researched them or even know much about them so I can't guarantee that statement. Also, I don't know that any of them allow you to build your own out of your own box such as that.
If you really want to roll your own SAN, there is a way to do it. It will take a lot of time to get setup but you can do it in any form you desire. You may even be able to build a DAS on it, I don't know. It is using OpenFiler - a sourceforge project IIRC. Don't know how responsive it would be compared to one you can just buy, but it is always an option if you really want to become a storage expert :-\
On the other hand, a really nice (if somewhat expensive and otherwise potentially limited option) would be buying something like a Drobo. They have pretty much everything from a basic 2 disk NAS up to a 24 disk rack mount SAN. Many have multiple setup options. I think it is probably the easiest, most elegant storage solution for SMB's in general, but that elegance doesn't come cheap, and may not be the most efficient system (performance-wise) out there.
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Hi superboy, have u checked the pricing on 2TB SAS drives? I think that's one important step before you commit to buying that big box.
-lotusrootstarch
Why not have the benefit of cheap SATA drives with the speed of an Multilane Infiniband connection?
eg.
Storage - Addonics Rack System (http://www.addonics.com/products/raid_system/rack_overview.asp) (it doesn't need to sit in a rack since there's no ventilation slots on the bottom of the case.)
1 or 2 x Addonics Multilane Bridge (http://www.addonics.com/products/multilane/connector.asp) coupled with Addonics 5x1 SATA Port Multipliers (http://www.addonics.com/products/host_controller/ad5sapm.asp) (Each host Multilane controller could then run, conceivably, 20 HDDs. However, I'd be looking at probably only 1 or 2 Port Multipliers per Multilane which would still give you from 14-20 HDDs that could be connected to 2 host controllers.)
PC end - 1 or 2 x Multilane 4x RAID 5/JBOD Controller (http://www.addonics.com/products/multilane/ADSA3GPX8-ML.asp) (Doesn't have to be in RAID/JBOD mode.)
Going completely berserk, 2 Infiniband cables could conceivably connect you to 40 SATA HDDs.....big enough? :D
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What's the hardware BOM and total cost of this solution for an aggregated storage space of, let's say, 20TB?
Then we can nail it down to dollars per TB and compare.
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Basing this on using 2TB HDDs, (so at least 10 of them), since they're still significantly cheaper than 3TB - the cheapest option which allows room for upgrading later:
1x Multilane 4x RAID5/JBOD PCIe 8x Controller (http://www.addonics.com/products/multilane/ADSA3GPX8-ML.asp) @ $185
1x 3M Infiniband cable (http://www.addonics.com/products/multilane/ADSA3GPX8-ML.asp) @ $85
1x 4X Multilane bridge for SATA storage (http://www.addonics.com/products/multilane/connector.asp) @ $29
2x 5X1 Internal SATA Port Multiplier (http://www.addonics.com/products/host_controller/ad5sapm.asp) @ $62
1x Storage Rack DA base unit with ATX power supply (http://www.addonics.com/products/raid_system/rack_overview.asp) @ $355
2x Disk Array 5SA (black bezel) (http://www.addonics.com/products/raid_system/ae4rcs35nsa.asp) @ $129
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$1036
More thoughts: If you wanted to forego the Infiniband links to start with then you could do the following:
1x Storage Rack DA base unit with ATX power supply (http://www.addonics.com/products/raid_system/rack_overview.asp) @ $355
2x Disk Array 5SA (black bezel) (http://www.addonics.com/products/raid_system/ae4rcs35nsa.asp) @ $129
2x 5 Port HPM-XA Enclosure Version (http://www.addonics.com/products/host_controller/AD5HPMSXA.asp) @ $89
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$791
This uses a pair of eSATA ports which are probably on the host PC already.
HDDs are a personal choice but if you use WD 2TB WD20EARS, (Caviar Green), @ $79.99 each from Newegg, then the total is approximately: $1836
If you go for WD 2TB AV-GP WD20EURS, (designed for always on streaming), @ $89.99 each, then the total is approximately: $1936.
NOTE: I don't know what kind of performance you'd get over Infiniband links but since they're used for server farms, etc, they must be halfway decent but SJ or 40hz would be more likely to have had some kind of experience/knowledge with/of them.
Also, this is still more expensive than simply building a new PC with the requisite amount of ports in a decent size case and running it using FreeNAS, WHS or similar.
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plus a $500+ Infiniband PCI-e host adapter when you attach this to the PC?
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plus a $500+ Infiniband PCI-e host adapter when you attach this to the PC?
-lotusrootstarch
First item on the list.
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Quick one: how do we connect one 4x Multilane bridge to 10 SATA drives, isn't there a shortage of 6x? :)
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Quick one: how do we connect one 4x Multilane bridge to 10 SATA drives, isn't there a shortage of 6x? :)
-lotusrootstarch
Fourth item on the list ;) (Will actually give you the capacity for 12 drives.)
Just for a laugh: 1 x WD 2TB SAS drive is ~$250 @ Newegg.
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Ah... makes sense... there's an onboard host SATA port. :Thmbsup:
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4wd, thanks for your posts above. I have to study them this week. But I have a question, maybe you or lotus can help:
I've read that if I get a sas controller card for whatever box I end up using, that the controller is compatible with sata drives. Is this true, and are there any bad side effects of doing this? I like the sas controller with sata drives because the sas controller will allow me to have fewer cables, and the sata drives are way more convenient to buy and use vs sas drives, which i'm not really interested in. Also, the total cost in the end is not that different. So I like the sas way, and you've posted addonics' clever sata setup. I've always like addonics, but you're setup seems to be a little more complicated and more cable-y than what I'm picturing in a sas setup. Any thoughts on that?
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4wd, thanks for your posts above. I have to study them this week. But I have a question, maybe you or lotus can help:
I've read that if I get a sas controller card for whatever box I end up using, that the controller is compatible with sata drives. Is this true, and are there any bad side effects of doing this? I like the sas controller with sata drives because the sas controller will allow me to have fewer cables, and the sata drives are way more convenient to buy and use vs sas drives, which i'm not really interested in. Also, the total cost in the end is not that different. So I like the sas way, and you've posted addonics' clever sata setup. I've always like addonics, but you're setup seems to be a little more complicated and more cable-y than what I'm picturing in a sas setup. Any thoughts on that?-superboyac
Yes, an SAS controller can run SATA HDDs - check out the HP SC08Ge 8-port SAS PCI Express Controller (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815990007&Tpk=sas).
...provides support for both 3Gb SAS and 1.5Gb SATA devices.
I have no idea whether SATA port multipliers will work off of a SAS host controller I'm going to err on the side of caution and say they won't.
Stoic' probably the best guy to ask about this stuff...him being a HP tech and all :D
Regarding the external cables: Infiniband cables are used for the connections, see Wikipedia for SASw and Infinibandw. If you can't use port multipliers then you'll need more Infiniband cables. If you can use port multipliers then it's conceivably one (1) cable per twenty (20) SATA HDDs, (assuming a four (4) port SATA compatible host at the PC end).
Addendum: Plus you'll need some way to break out from the storage box' Infiniband input to individual SATA connectors, so possibly an Infiniband socket to SAS plug adapter, then something like this (http://www.dealextreme.com/p/sas-controller-32-pin-to-4-x-sata-hard-disk-hdd-converter-cable-20168).
OOPPSS! To answer your final question: Number of cables will be the same or more using SAS controllers, (due ambiguity of port multiplier suitability).
Please NOTE: Nothing I'm saying in my above posts was in any way designed to push you towards Addonics products or even SATA/SAS. Their site just happens to have all the stuff to put together what you wanted without jumping all over the place.
As I said previously, SJ, 40Hz or f0dder, (sorry if I've missed someone), are probably the best people to ask about the suitability of what I proposed.
Added addendum: If you have 4 spare Intel SATA ports on your motherboard, (or will be making a total of 4 available by moving HDDs to the external enclosure), then a slightly different setup as follows:
1x Storage Rack DA base unit with ATX power supply @ $355
2x Disk Array 5SA (black bezel) @ $129
1x 4X Multilane bridge for SATA controller (http://www.addonics.com/products/multilane/connector.asp) @ $29
1x 3M Infiniband cable @ $85
2x 5X1 Internal SATA Port Multiplier @ $62
1x 4X Multilane bridge for SATA storage @ $29
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$880
You save on the cost of the controller by using the Intel SATA ports, (ICH9+ Southbridge support port multipliers IIRC).
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4wd has inspired me to create a similar list of things to do before my project can be ready for purchasing. I'm now thinking more clearly about these things, thanks to everyone's help here. So my list is posted below, and I'll continue to update it as I progress. I'm not going to tally any price totals right now because too many things are up in the air. My first task is to figure out what my "x" and "y" numbers are so I know how much space I need to get. But anything with a question mark needs to be resolved before I'm done with this.
DAS
Storage estimate:
2TB currently
x TB stored on discs
y TB stored on spare drives
Total space CURRENT = 2+x+y
Future space needed = (current total x 2)
Backup --> two backup copies
total space to build for = [(2+x+y)x2]x3 (yikes!, I know)
<<Equipment to purchase>>
Storage Unit:
istarUSA storage tower
http://www.istarusa.com/raidage/products.php?series=CUSTOM%20STORAGE%20TOWER&model=DAGE840-ES
8-bay
2TB x 8 = 16TB
additional internal cables?
additional external cables?
additional controllers or cards for current desktop?
Hard drives:
SATA III
5-year warranty desired
model = ?
capacity = 2TB (will consider 3TB depending on price)
store = ? (wherever a good deal for bulk orders can be found)
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<<Equipment to purchase>>
Storage Unit:
istarUSA storage tower
http://www.istarusa.com/raidage/products.php?series=CUSTOM%20STORAGE%20TOWER&model=DAGE840-ES
8-bay
2TB x 8 = 16TB
additional internal cables?
additional external cables?
-superboyac
Well, it doesn't get much simpler:
Internal cables: 8 x SATA to SATA HDD cables, ie. normal SATA cables.
External cables: 8 x eSATA to eSATA cables.
You require 8 eSATA ports on the computer, one for each drive - in this type of wiring situation I'd forget about RAID if you were thinking of it, too many chances for a cable to be dislodged.
It's the same as stacking 8 separate external eSATA enclosures one on top of the other.
I don't know whether you've noticed or not but:
DAGE840DE-ES (http://www.istarusa.com/raidage/products.php?series=Custom%20Storage%20Tower&sub=eSATA&model=DAGE840DE-ES) - Trayless
DAGE840-ES (http://www.istarusa.com/raidage/products.php?series=Custom%20Storage%20Tower&sub=eSATA&model=DAGE840-ES) - The one you selected, doesn't say trayless.
Alternative using their products:
Storage end:
1x DAGE840DE-2MS (http://www.istarusa.com/raidage/products.php?series=Custom%20Storage%20Tower&sub=miniSAS-SFF8088&model=DAGE840DE-2MS) - 8 bay trayless storage tower using the following as inputs, (not the ones it comes with.)
2x ZAGE-D-4SA70 (http://www.istarusa.com/raidage/products.php?series=Bridgeboard%20Adapter&model=ZAGE-D-4SA70) - These as a replacement for whatever comes with the box.
PC end:
2x ZAGE-H-4SA70 (http://www.istarusa.com/raidage/products.php?series=Bridgeboard%20Adapter&model=ZAGE-H-4SA70) - Adapts 4 SATA ports to one Infiniband/Multilane connector.
2x CAGE-AAMM05 (http://www.istarusa.com/raidage/products.php?series=STORAGE%20ACCESSORIES&sub=cAGE%20Cables&model=CAGE-AAMM05) - Infiniband cables: RaidAge, Addonics, etc.
You'll also need 8 spare SATA ports in your computer but you would have needed them anyway for the box you selected, so a good quality multi-port SATA controller, (there are alternatives to this, eg. SAS controller with Infiniband output or SAS to SATA adapter).
The above only requires 2 external cables.
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I'm liking this. Here's a question about the cabling:
1) If I do a SATA to SAS thing, can I get away with just one cable connecting the storage tower to the desktop?
2) Let's say I want to put the DAS in another room. How would I connect the DAS to my desktop? The SAS or SATA or eSATA cables are only a few feet maximum. So would I have to connect the tower to my router, which would bring it to my desktop? Or does that change the whole setup into a NAS and now I need to have a motherboard, OS, etc. on the tower?
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I'm liking this. Here's a question about the cabling:
1) If I do a SATA to SAS thing, can I get away with just one cable connecting the storage tower to the desktop?-superboyac
Infiniband connectors support a maximum of 4 devices, see Wikiw - under Architecture (SFF 8470).
I'm not saying you can't do it, just you probably can't using the normal Infiniband cables. Addendum: Unless you use 2 port multipliers - then you only need 1 cable.
2) Let's say I want to put the DAS in another room. How would I connect the DAS to my desktop? The SAS or SATA or eSATA cables are only a few feet maximum. So would I have to connect the tower to my router, which would bring it to my desktop? Or does that change the whole setup into a NAS and now I need to have a motherboard, OS, etc. on the tower?
Maximum length of eSATA is indeed a few feet, 6.6 feet or 2 metres. SAS is a little longer. From Wiki again:
Because of its higher signaling voltages, SAS can use cables up to 10 m (33 ft) long, SATA has a cable-length limit of 1 m (3 ft) or 2 m (6.6 ft) for eSATA.
However, remember you're trying to work with SATA HDDs, not SAS HDDs which use a higher signaling voltage. So I'm guessing that you might have trouble trying to push it past 3 metres unless there is an active SAS host/client on the ends of the cable.
To get 10 metres from it you might have to go:
PC---SAS Host Controller---10 metre Infiniband cables---SAS Client---SATA HDDs
(SAS Client is probably not the correct terminology but it illustrates the idea of an active component rather than a simple passive adapter.)
What I suggested is:
PC---SATA/SAS Adapter---3 metre Infiniband cables---SAS/SATA Adapter---SATA HDDs
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...connect the tower to my router, which would bring it to my desktop? Or does that change the whole setup into a NAS...
-superboyac
If the answer to this is not obvious by now, you need to do more research. If the storage unit is attaching to your network, it is a...
- Oshyan
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Yes, that's probably the first most important question to answer:
Do I want:
a) storage that will always require a host computer with a specific connector to work or;
b) a NAS that requires just a power cord and network connection and that can be taken anywhere and used with no special requirements?
Having lugged along various external drives to LAN nights and friends homes over the years, I'd go for a mini tower based NAS every time now.
But if you never envision it being connected to another computer or being able to access it from another device, (without having to turn on your main computer to interface it), then a big old box of dumb HDDs might be your thing.
;D
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Also keeping in mind that a NAS will never match the performance of local storage (assuming equivalent data devices and configuration - the limitation is in the connectivity).
- Oshyan
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new Compulab server (http://compulab.co.il/products/embedded-pcs/usvr/)
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