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1076

Living Room / Re: PLease help superboyac build a server (2013 edition).

« Last post by superboyac on August 06, 2013, 10:52 AM »

(intermission)
http://arstechnica.c...data-77-tb-in-month/

Yes, Virginia, there is a limit to what Verizon will let you do with FiOS' "unlimited" data plan. And a California man discovered that limit when he got a phone call from a Verizon representative wanting to know what, exactly, he was doing to create more than 50 terabytes of traffic on average per month—hitting a peak of 77TB in March alone.

"I have never heard of this happening to anyone," the 27-year-old Californian—who uses the screen name houkouonchi and would prefer not to be identified by name—wrote in a post on DSLreports.com entitled "LOL VZ called me about my bandwidth usage Gotta go Biz." "But I probably use more bandwidth than any FiOS customer in California, so I am not super surprised about this."

Curious about how one person could generate that kind of traffic, Ars reached out to houkouonchi and spoke with him via instant message. As it turns out, he's the ultimate outlier. His problem is more that he's violated Verizon's terms of service than his excessive bandwidth usage. An IT professional who manages a test lab for an Internet storage company, houkouonchi has been providing friends and family a personal VPN, video streaming, and peer-to-peer file service—running a rack of seven servers with 209TB of raw storage in his house.

Spoiler

DC, please make sure this doesn't happen to me!

1077

Living Room / Re: PLease help superboyac build a server (2013 edition).

« Last post by superboyac on August 06, 2013, 09:22 AM »

But it's kinda moot now. Unless I missed something WHS has been officially discontinued. Microsoft is suggesting its very stripped down "Windows Server Essentials" server as the replacement.

-40hz (August 06, 2013, 08:26 AM)

It's not moot to those people (i.e. me) hit by it.  If they paid me, I wouldn't use it in any iteration.  It's one thing to be hit by something like this in beta software- but that was supposedly production-ready.  Nope.  Nuh uh.  Not even if they swore on their children's lives would I use it again.

-wraith808 (August 06, 2013, 09:06 AM)

Wow this is really surprising to me.  I had heard such rave reviews about WHS and the drive pooling the past couple of years.  OK, this will convince me to go with FreeNAS and ZFS

1078

Living Room / Links to info for analog-mimicing digital recording techniques?

« Last post by superboyac on August 06, 2013, 12:30 AM »

As the local techy guy in the crowds I run in, I often am pulled into this debate of "recordings these days just don't sound as good as analog".  And it's true in a lot of ways, but also difficult to really understand the details of why that is.  First, there's way too much BS in the recording industry with their gold plated plugs and stuff, so that doesn't help, it turns any kind of inquiry into a needle in the haystack thing.  But there is something to it.  Check out this article:
http://www.engadget....05/john-vanderslice/

And I've read several like that.  If anyone can post informative articles that can shed light on this debate, I'd really appreciate it.  The goal for me is, how close can a home studio get for mimicking this analog sound that is often preferred by the people in the know?  Part of it (but which part?) is not even the equipment or analog vs digital, but just people want it to sound bassier or louder, etc...so that's something that can be fixed.  but if there is truly some quality that can't be replicated going on in a tape vs. digital, then i'd like to figure out those specific points.

i have a book by bob katz or something dealing with mastering, but i'm not sure if it talks about this particular issue.

my assumption is that i should be able to get pretty close to the "right" analog sound with digital equipment, at least close enough where people wouldn't complain too much.  but i could be way off.

1079

Living Room / Re: Where/how do you mostly watch movies/videos?

« Last post by superboyac on August 06, 2013, 12:14 AM »

computer attached to tv, all the way.  PLay files directly in video player of choice.

if i'm somewhere else, it's usually netlfix or hulu etc, usually with an interface built in by the tv or the cable service box.  i have little patience for those, and it's just getting worse.  typing letters in with the arrows on the screen. blech.  the bloop-bloop sound of the dvr.  lol.  i'm even getting irritated enough with dvds with all the non skippable screens that i don't even watch them until i've ripped it on my computer. 

1080

Living Room / Re: What books are you reading?

« Last post by superboyac on August 05, 2013, 10:19 PM »

I've finally started reading "Tragedy and Hope" by Carroll Quigley:



https://en.wikipedia...iki/Tragedy_And_Hope

You can download it for free here:

http://archive.org/d...s/TragedyAndHope_501

I've heard and read a lot about it, and it sounds fascinating.

It will take me a while as it's around 1,300 pages. So far, it's really good. Extremely well written and simply packed with information.

-Renegade (August 05, 2013, 10:42 AM)

good luck with that one!  i've skimmed through it a couple of times, really interesting.  i wish i could find more online academic debates for the book instead of the conspiracy-focused thoughts people usually write about it.

1081

General Software Discussion / Re: Music player for FLAC files with multiple columns for albums?

« Last post by superboyac on August 05, 2013, 08:41 PM »

Oups

-tomos (August 03, 2013, 01:55 AM)

Please say that was on purpose!

1082

Living Room / Re: PLease help superboyac build a server (2013 edition).

« Last post by superboyac on August 05, 2013, 08:33 PM »

Interesting, regarding FreeNAS and replacing drives:

The recommended method for expanding the size of a ZFS pool is to pre-plan the number of disks in a vdev and to stripe additional vdevs using the ZFS Volume Manager as additional capacity is needed.

However, this is not an option if you do not have open drive ports or the ability to add a SAS/SATA HBA card. In this case, you can replace one disk at a time with a larger disk, wait for the resilvering process to incorporate the new disk into the pool completes, then repeat with another disk until all of the disks have been replaced. This process is slow and places the system in a degraded state. Since a failure at this point could be disastrous, do not attempt this method unless the system has a reliable backup.

Don't like the sound of that last bit.  I guess it is saying, when you run out of space, it's best NOT to try to replace the existing drives with bigger ones, but rather, just add storage.  That is certainly possible with my setup.
But I still have questions about how to deal with drives dying that need to be replaced.  And also, exactly how do i incorporate an additional (new) disk into an existing volume?  Or is it better to add a separate volume?  Maybe I need to understand better what people mean by disk vs. volume vs. server.

Here's the goal...let's say all my shows are in a pool spanning 3 drives, that pool is called "TVshows".  Now, I run out of space.  I want to add a new 4TB drive to the "TVshows" volume.  I don't want a new volume because now all my tv shows are in two different places.  So how do I do that?

1083

Living Room / Re: PLease help superboyac build a server (2013 edition).

« Last post by superboyac on August 05, 2013, 08:27 PM »

oh yeah...never used the pool feature in Windows server.

But that's only because the servers I spec are purpose built and configured for specific tasks, so the storage configuration in them remains static for their service life. And to date, none of my clients were looking for anything quite as big as what you're planning.

I also tend to veer towards multiple smaller rather than one large server purely to avoid a single point of failure scenario and also to provide some flexibility down the road.

YMMV. 

-40hz (August 05, 2013, 06:48 PM)

I'll check out FreeNAS.  The primary purpose of this particular server is just plain old file storage.  So I don't need all the Windows Server stuff, it's just that it's the only one I've seen that could do drive pooling the way i'm imagining.  All the other ones were either RAID related, or using software to do the drive pooling.  So FreeNAS will be my next experiment.  I'd actually prefer if a Linux system could do it nicely.

I guess for multiple servers, i don't understand what methodolgy I'd use to split the servers up.  Are you saying multiple boxes each running FreeNAS on it?  Or one FreeNAS install, with multiple storage boxes connected to it?  Or maybe even one FreeNAS install, with VM's of other FreeNAS's?

What I've been trying to do all these years is to avoid even drive pooling.  So music on one drive, videos on another, etc.  but the videos quickly take over the space.  So then it's like, do i have one drive for tv shows, another for feature films, another for family videos (uncompressed, quickly take up all the space, gah!)?

Good progress so far, I'm getting excited.  Looks like I've figured out my enclosure, so that's done.  Now which OS do I need?  It's all about drive pooling now.

1084

Living Room / Re: PLease help superboyac build a server (2013 edition).

« Last post by superboyac on August 05, 2013, 05:58 PM »

Here's a nice article discussing Storage Spaces (not for 2012 R2 though):
http://mcpmag.com/ar...s-storage-pools.aspx

1085

Living Room / Re: PLease help superboyac build a server (2013 edition).

« Last post by superboyac on August 05, 2013, 05:51 PM »

I just installed Windows Server 2012 R2 in a VM so I can explore the drive pooling options.  If anyone has any experience with it, please discuss it here.  It looks pretty nice, though without the actual drives, i can't explore it too much.  I'm curious how it handles a pool made of multiple physical drives.  What happens if one of the drives in the pool dies?  how do you replace?  It's not RAID, so it doesn't necessarily rebuild things.  Also, do files reside on multiple drives?  If I pool one drive out independently and stick it in another computer, is it readable?  How does this thing actually work?

Also, regarding that Cooler Master Stryker tower, it's pretty nice.  I don't need any screws or tools to slip the drives in and out.  it also can be configured to slip the drives in front-back, or even from the side.  So I don't even really need the istarusa drive bays unless I plan to do a lot of hot-swapping (which I don't).  I might get one just to try it, and maybe even to use as an emergency transferring bay, like backing up someone else's stuff (even though I have external enclosures for that).

So looks like I'm almost good to go.  I guess the remaining items are the moetherboard, cpu, ram, and expander card choices.  The expander card is what i need help with most, I think.  what card is good for attaching all these drives?  i have one in my notes, i'll post eventually.

1086

Living Room / Re: PLease help superboyac build a server (2013 edition).

« Last post by superboyac on August 04, 2013, 05:04 PM »

With all this potential gear, you have considered the electricity bill increase, eh?

-skwire (August 04, 2013, 04:40 PM)

Sure, I know it's inevitable.  PS (i work for the utility).

1087

Living Room / Re: SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps Specification Set and Ready for Development

« Last post by superboyac on August 04, 2013, 04:08 PM »

Windows is nasty with USB. There are bugs where speeds crawl and the only way to fix it is to sacrifice several endangered chickens while chanting black magic in ancient Egyptian as you... etc. etc.

Try deleting the device in the device manager then rebooting. Idiotic? Yes. Does it work? Kind of. But you can try the chicken thing too. It probably works better.

-Renegade (August 03, 2013, 07:20 AM)

That's kinda how I feel also.  That's why I never really liked USB, fromt he beginning days, for anything really serious.  yeah, I love it for peripherals, thumbdrives...but for any serious work like backing up, syncing reliably, migrating drives, etc. I always try to stay away from it.  When esata came out, i really wanted it to replace usb for everything, like make it extinct.  I love esata.  now we have thunderbolt, but nothing is really taking advantage of it.  Like, i want thunderbolt enclosures, thunderbolt thumbdrives, etc. And I don't know what all the specific issues are, so that's all I can say , is what i want.
so whatever.  I want things like a thunderbolt external plug on a tower, where I plug in a thunderbolt hub, connect like 5 external drives to it, and move files around to each of them with >100 MB/s speeds.  things like that.  That would be progress that i'd consider to be very exciting.

1088

Living Room / Re: PLease help superboyac build a server (2013 edition).

« Last post by superboyac on August 04, 2013, 03:38 PM »

Worst case scenario, i was thinking of modifying the ac system so that one room gets 24/7 ac. i have my license for that, so i should be able to figure that out!

-superboyac (August 03, 2013, 03:26 PM)

Let me save you some time (since I just tried that with our new server room) it won't work. A central A/C unit doesn't cycle fast enough to deal with the localized heating produced by that much equipment. This however will do it quite nicely for about $278.
 (see attachment in previous post)

-Stoic Joker (August 04, 2013, 08:44 AM)

Nice, thanks man!  That saves me a ton of research.  I'm guessing it has a tube going outside somehow (yes it does, saw the pics).  That's pretty damn convenient for my purposes, brilliant.

1089

Living Room / Re: PLease help superboyac build a server (2013 edition).

« Last post by superboyac on August 03, 2013, 04:28 PM »

What specifically did you not like about it?  What features would you have preferred to see as your server box?

-superboyac (August 03, 2013, 02:32 PM)

Screws for the enclosures.  They're thumb screws, but in a server, I really don't want any screws.  Take off the side to access the inside.  On a server, I like for it to be a door.  Airflow.  It was good for a computer with two drives... but when I really started to use all of the bays as a server, heat became a real problem.  And that cool looking fan was *no* help.  I was also upgrading from a metal case... and I really wish I had a metal case back for my server.  That's just a personal preference.  Getting to the other side.  Not very easy at all.  The one door... like I said, thumbscrews.  But the other door was a pain.  And no motherboard tray.

It's just not a server box, IMO.

-wraith808 (August 03, 2013, 04:25 PM)

Nice, thanks.

1090

Living Room / Re: The fun of installing custom router firmware (tomato, dd-wrt) - an introduction

« Last post by superboyac on August 03, 2013, 03:44 PM »

^If you're happy with the current performance...and if it ain't broke...

Just sayin'

Especially if it's a snazzy new 'ac' router. It might be a while before there's Tomato or DD-WRT firmware available for it - assuming it becomes available at all.

If you just want to play with alternative router software, grab an old PC, put two or three NICs in it and start experimenting with a firewall or gateway NIX distro like: Vyatta, IPCop, m0n0wall, Smoothwall Express, or pfSense. Or if you want to try something really fancy, check out Untangle Gateway  or ClearOS. Links and info here.

-40hz (August 03, 2013, 03:14 PM)

Yes, advice well taken.  I was about to do it, but ran out of research time, so i got nervous and said forget it.  i was going to revisit it, but since i don't have any issues so far, and i'm doing so many other things...i'm leaving it alone.

1091

Living Room / Re: PLease help superboyac build a server (2013 edition).

« Last post by superboyac on August 03, 2013, 03:26 PM »

^The only fully metal drive bays I'm familiar with are all for the notebook form factor. Most of them use trays too.

FWIW I wouldn't want to put more than 10 fullsize SATA drives in a single tower enclosure, no matter who makes it. 10 drives cranks out about as much heat as I think standard air cooling (and a fan array that won't blast your ears out) could handle.
 

-40hz (August 03, 2013, 02:51 PM)

OK, if we take that into consideration, that might actually make the decision easier.  So most of these big towers have 9 bays, so let's say 9 drives per tower max.  that also reduces the cramming of drives into those cages, which should be better for air flow.  For more drives, I'll just duplicate towers...18 drives --> 2 towers, 24 drives--> 3 towers.

and I'll just buy single drive bays from the same manufacturer...here's a good video review:

this is a good option because it maximizes modularity too.  if i want even numbers for whatever reason, i do 8 drives per tower.  and the spare bay i can use for a lcd display for temp or something.  I'm liking this option.

Yes, I'd like it to be as quiet as possible for normal house conditions.  I was wondering if this is a situation where'd i'd have to leave the ac running 24/7 (i don't necessarily like that).  Or can i have a fan on 24/7 and the ac on only when i'm home?  Worst case scenario, i was thinking of modifying the ac system so that one room gets 24/7 ac. i have my license for that, so i should be able to figure that out!

So now, it's looking like...8-9 drives per tower.  No fancy cooling necessary other than fitting the tower with it's default fans.  perhaps a room fan also.  the storage tower(s) can be connected to my current desktop, or i can build a new desktop.  I kind of have this current one doing everything just the way i like, i don't want to install a server OS on it now and go through all that, so maybe i'll make a new one.

1092

Living Room / Re: The fun of installing custom router firmware (tomato, dd-wrt) - an introduction

« Last post by superboyac on August 03, 2013, 02:49 PM »

Thanks mouser and everyone!  I was always hoping someone here would talk about this.  I just got an 802.11ac router, and was looking into these third party firmwares.  i was also about to try the tomato shibby version, but never got around to it.  I do use VPN and was wondering what improvements it might add to that experience.  the current admin interface of my router is a little too simple for me.  it's working fine right now, but it literally has like 3 things to tweak, lol, and that just bothers me for no good reason.

1093

Living Room / Re: PLease help superboyac build a server (2013 edition).

« Last post by superboyac on August 03, 2013, 02:35 PM »

Here's another review for the istarusa model, this time with the current model.  Still can't tell if it's all metal!  But I think I still prefer this one.  Maybe I'll just get one unit for now and examine it myself:
http://www.motherboa...ive-enclosure-review

The reviewer says the holes in the front are machined.  That tells me it's metal.  So maybe I'll go with these.

1094

Living Room / Re: PLease help superboyac build a server (2013 edition).

« Last post by superboyac on August 03, 2013, 02:32 PM »

For 9-bay cases, the ones that I like are the following:
Antec nine hundred: (see attachment in previous post)I like this one because it has the full 9-bays, but also the huge 200mm fan on top.  Looks kind of hip too.

-superboyac (August 03, 2013, 02:16 PM)

I have this one, and I loved it for my primary box.  Now that its been relegated to my backup box/server... not so much.  For the role that you're anticipating, I personally wouldn't choose it.  And the fan on top doesn't help with heat exchange as much as it might seem that it would.

-wraith808 (August 03, 2013, 02:25 PM)

What specifically did you not like about it?  What features would you have preferred to see as your server box?

1095

Living Room / Re: PLease help superboyac build a server (2013 edition).

« Last post by superboyac on August 03, 2013, 02:31 PM »

Here's an in-depth review of the iSTARUSA bays that I like.  Just FYI, it's not the latest version of their design, so I don't know what has changed.  What I really want to know is if the whole thing is metal or if the door is still plastic.  Seems like the latching tongue is metal for sure, but not sure about the rest of the door.

1096

Living Room / Re: PLease help superboyac build a server (2013 edition).

« Last post by superboyac on August 03, 2013, 02:16 PM »

For 9-bay cases, the ones that I like are the following:
Antec nine hundred:

I like this one because it has the full 9-bays, but also the huge 200mm fan on top.  Looks kind of hip too.

Addonics storage tower IX:
What's good about this one is that it's specifically built just for drive storage.  Compared to the antec, though, it doesn't have the nice fan options.  So i think i'd choose the antec over this one.

Actually, check that!  I'm a big fan of the coolermaster cases.  They have a couple of 9-bay options, check out this one!
Stryker:

1097

Living Room / Re: PLease help superboyac build a server (2013 edition).

« Last post by superboyac on August 03, 2013, 02:09 PM »

Of course if this is all getting way too science faire, you can always stock up on some of these from Icy Dock:
 (see attachment in previous post)
Find a tower with 9 drive bays and you could put 15 drives in it with three of these units. Or just create your own open cage to hold as many as you want. They're 5.75" wide, so 20 drives in a row would take up 28".

Hmm...5.75" x 3 = 17.25" so that should mean 15 drives should fit in a standard 19" equipment rack...

-40hz (August 02, 2013, 11:17 PM)

ok, if we're back to the drive bay design (which I like, seems the easiest)...
The icy dock bay you linked looks really nice feature wise.  I've looked at several of these trayless drive bays over the years.  I really don't like plastic parts at all for them if I can help it.  The icy dock one is aluminum EXCEPT for the door which is plastic, and already a newegg customer mentioned it breaking.  That's why I ended up preferring the istardock one because it's all aluminum.  Here at home, I have maybe 3-4 of these different types of designs, but none of them are all metal, most have the door being plastic minumum.  The best one i have is from dat optic, and even that has the plastic door.
{edit} ACTUALLY...turns out that even the istarusa model is not fully aluminum.  But i can't tell which part is not aluminum.  I want an all metal cage, meaning both the chassis and doors and locking mechanisms are all metal.  Of course, the pcb and stuff on the inside can be plastic, but those three items i'd prefer to be metal.

1098

Living Room / Re: Sci-fi novel now available from DC member kyrathaba!

« Last post by superboyac on August 02, 2013, 04:30 PM »

@k - liked that picture of you over at Columbia Magazine.

My GF said to say she thinks you look like John Cusack in the movie The Italian Job.
 (see attachment in previous post)
High praise indeed. She likes John Cusack.

-40hz (August 02, 2013, 02:34 PM)

er...isn't that Ed Norton?

Maybe she meant John Cusack in the Raven?

1099

Living Room / Re: SuperSpeed USB 10Gbps Specification Set and Ready for Development

« Last post by superboyac on August 02, 2013, 04:15 PM »

Maybe I'm overreacting again.  My desktop motherboard is perhaps a year older than when USB 3.0 was rolled out.  And maybe I just had bad luck with the PCIe card I got.

I do have a nice laptop with a raided SSD dual drive inside, and when i tested it through the usb 3.0 connection, it was crazy...like 180 MB/s.  But I always like modular options for desktops like addon card or hubs etc.  But I keep forgetting that the desktop market is dying.

1100

Living Room / Re: PLease help superboyac build a server (2013 edition).

« Last post by superboyac on August 02, 2013, 12:25 PM »

I think instead of mounting the drives stacked vertically, it would be better to have just one "story" (i.e. flat like backblaze) for more stability.  So the bottom of the box would have some silicone heat-resistant pads or rails for the drive to rest on.  Then for the top, i can use din rails (or something with a lot of holes like that).  Then I put the bungee cords there as spacers.  Then I just slip the drives into the slots.  Should be quiet, no problem with heat, open air circulation with the room fan plus central AC.  How's that?