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vanilla slimfast posted:At some point soon-ish, I'd like to replace the 4x500gb drives in my HTPC with larger drives, and move the old drives into a NAS for general backup purposes. The Synology devices look really nice, but I'm curious about the difference between the 411J and the 411+? Is it purely the faster processor and the eSata port? Trying to decide if that is worth the extra 200 dollars Massive differences but below are the key things: 1.2Ghz CPU vs 1.6Ghz dual-core CPU no hardware encryption vs hardware encryption 128MB of DDR2 soldered to motherboard vs 1GB DDR2 stick that is upgradeable no eSATA vs eSATA The CPU and RAM make up the largest differences. I have a DS410j sitting next to me that choked when you tried to run extra services and it pegged out the RAM. Being non-upgradeable it kind of pointless for stuff beyond just streaming files. Torrent downloading, web servers, etc all choked the poor thing. The DS411+ I have at my house can take anything you can throw at it and begs for more. The CPU is also very slow. If you care about transfer speeds, photo compression, video streaming, etc there are also pretty large differences: 38MB/s write vs 103MB/s write 82MB/s read vs 107MB/s read Time to convert photos on the onboard photo manager thing DS411J: 259 seconds DS411+: 48 seconds  Yea if you have any questions about the Synology stuff, I have a DS411+, DS410j, DS211, and DS411slim on hand. dietcokefiend fucked around with this message at 02:45 on Mar 31, 2011 |
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Mar 31, 2011 02:43
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^^^ good stuff thanks  The extra services thing isn't a big deal for me, already have that covered on the HTPC (which is a C2D that runs 24x7 anyways). That being said, not being able to upgrade/swap hardware and getting significantly lower performance seems like the extra spend is worth it. Will probably be a few months before I'm seriously considering the purchase in any case
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Mar 31, 2011 05:57
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dietcokefiend posted:1.2Ghz CPU vs 1.6Ghz dual-core CPU The major part of that is the 1.2Ghz is an ARM and the 1.6Ghz dual core is an x86 Atom. It may not be a huge factor but something to be aware of.
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Mar 31, 2011 15:44
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Regarding the DS411+... Once you get into the $600+ range and assuming you care about performance, wouldn't you be better off just building a PC using a micro ATX board and slim case? I have a DS211J and it's pretty nice for a low cost/low power device, but if I wanted something with real horsepower, I don't think I'd invest in something with an atom CPU and busybox vs. a full blown OS.
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Mar 31, 2011 16:10
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Sizzlechest posted:Regarding the DS411+... Once you get into the $600+ range and assuming you care about performance, wouldn't you be better off just building a PC using a micro ATX board and slim case? I have a DS211J and it's pretty nice for a low cost/low power device, but if I wanted something with real horsepower, I don't think I'd invest in something with an atom CPU and busybox vs. a full blown OS. The thing is, you have an extremely limited selection of cases, especially if you want 1) the same easy access to drives via a hotswap bay, and 2) roughly the same footprint and/or volume. In fact, unless you go rackmount, there are almost no choices at all, just a Chenbro mini-ITX pedastal and a few other obscure, hard-to-find cases.
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Mar 31, 2011 17:42
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I had considered going the build-a-box and FreeNAS route but honestly having something that's already put together and ready to rock with a small footprint and low-ish power consumption is more appealing. edit: that being said, I'm scoping out some of the pedestal server cases just to see what my options and costs there are. Getting an 8-bay hotswap chassis would be nice for future expandability but that might be a bit too off the crazy packrat deep end, even for me vanilla slimfast fucked around with this message at 18:37 on Mar 31, 2011 |
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Mar 31, 2011 18:02
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Factory Factory posted:The thing is, you have an extremely limited selection of cases, especially if you want 1) the same easy access to drives via a hotswap bay, and 2) roughly the same footprint and/or volume. In fact, unless you go rackmount, there are almost no choices at all, just a Chenbro mini-ITX pedastal and a few other obscure, hard-to-find cases. Sure. If space and/or access to the drives is important to you, that counts towards your decision. If you're going to stick this under a desk or someplace away from your work area, then maybe that's not as important as being able to install Windows 2008 Server and implement volume shadow copy, or FreeBSD/FreeNAS and implement a ZFS file system, etc. In my case, I'm satisfied with the DLNA server in my Synology unit since it works pretty well out of the box with Samsung TVs. Then again, I don't care about subtitle support, or if I had a different brand TV in another room, I'd probably want to use something more advanced like Serviio. Yes, I can install Serviio on my DS211J, but it's not nearly as straightforward and easy to do on a regular OS. In fact, you can gently caress things up royally in the process if you're not careful. If he doesn't care about DLNA at all, then it's a moot point.
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Mar 31, 2011 18:11
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Sizzlechest posted:Regarding the DS411+... Once you get into the $600+ range and assuming you care about performance, wouldn't you be better off just building a PC using a micro ATX board and slim case? I have a DS211J and it's pretty nice for a low cost/low power device, but if I wanted something with real horsepower, I don't think I'd invest in something with an atom CPU and busybox vs. a full blown OS. Well there are always advantages to doing it yourself, but it is never a turnkey solution. Yea my old Ubunutu server kicked rear end for most stuff, was probably faster than my DS411+, but it also used 2-3 times more power, was never "user friendly", was a PITA to get DLNA streaming going, and took about 30x longer to get up and running than the Synology. It all comes down to how much time you want to invest, what your goals are, and what budget you can spend.
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Mar 31, 2011 22:04
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dietcokefiend posted:Well there are always advantages to doing it yourself, but it is never a turnkey solution. Yea my old Ubunutu server kicked rear end for most stuff, was probably faster than my DS411+, but it also used 2-3 times more power, was never "user friendly", was a PITA to get DLNA streaming going, and took about 30x longer to get up and running than the Synology. The price is comparable once you get in the $600 range. There are pre-packaged free OSes for NAS, but if you like GUIs, you could always install Windows 2008 Server. Sandy Bridge CPUs will probably eat up more power, but then again, if you didn't care about CPU power, you wouldn't be spending the extra money for a "+" over a "j" unit. Serviio is a user friendly DLNA server and is much more usable than the no-frills implementation you get from Synology. Setting it up is a breeze on Windows or Linux, but it's a nightmare on a Synology unit. If you're satisfied with the offerings "out of the box" from a Synology unit, then go for it. While it's possible to add on third party apps, it's never going to be as safe, bug free, or easy as a full-fledged OS.
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Apr 1, 2011 02:58
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Sizzlechest posted:If you're satisfied with the offerings "out of the box" from a Synology unit, then go for it. While it's possible to add on third party apps, it's never going to be as safe, bug free, or easy as a full-fledged OS. Are you saying the OS as shipped will never be as safe as a full-fledged OS or the 3rd party add-ons?
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Apr 1, 2011 03:50
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In some sense, yes. A number of the kernels shipped on some of these NAS devices are a little on the old side as well as the services on them, it's very likely that in the future the manufacturer won't be maintaining it anymore and you'll have to update it yourself. Now, if it's going to stay permanently internal to your network it might not be so bad, but all hardware eventually starts to break down and well, let's just say that silent corruption and memory errors are things I don't want to even think about. It's why I'm going to upgrade my file server to a platform using ECC memory and server grade hardware overall - it's more likely to hang on for several years than my old Athlon setup.
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Apr 1, 2011 04:10
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necrobobsledder posted:In some sense, yes. A number of the kernels shipped on some of these NAS devices are a little on the old side as well as the services on them, it's very likely that in the future the manufacturer won't be maintaining it anymore and you'll have to update it yourself. Now, if it's going to stay permanently internal to your network it might not be so bad, but all hardware eventually starts to break down and well, let's just say that silent corruption and memory errors are things I don't want to even think about. It's why I'm going to upgrade my file server to a platform using ECC memory and server grade hardware overall - it's more likely to hang on for several years than my old Athlon setup. "Some of these NASs" isn't Synology from as much as I can tell. They also aren't a fly by night shop that's going to be gone anytime soon. Now you can make the argument that you can get better hardware for less, but their software is very up to date and secure. Right now DSM 3.1 is setup with 2.6.32.12, which appears to be the stable current version from earlier this year. Since the Synology models don't "ship" with any software, at setup they are by design going to get the latest software when you run through the initial setup. The default setup also locks down a lot of features to force you through the web portal.
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Apr 1, 2011 04:28
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dietcokefiend posted:Are you saying the OS as shipped will never be as safe as a full-fledged OS or the 3rd party add-ons? The act of adding apps will never be as safe, easy or bug free. A "stock" unit should function in a predictable manner. Adding something like "Time Backup" is easy and relatively safe. However, adding something outside the prepackaged software is a whole different experience. For example, here's how to add Serviio to the Synology OS: http://pcloadletter.co.uk/2011/02/07/serviio-on-synology-nas-with-arm-cpu/ Check out this part: quote:Be very careful editing this file. A wrong move here could trash your system. Notice that the serviio user has a shell of /sbin/nologin. Change this to /bin/sh like the admin user has. Nano may try to line wrap this line as you type if you added an long account description. If it does, delete the carriage return before the line break and pull it back onto one line. Save and exit. What happens when you need to update when a new release comes out? What are the steps to upgrade? How does adding Java and running Java apps affect the rest of the unit's performance? The advantages of these units is their ease of use, low cost, low power, small footprint, and built-in functionality. That's why I bought mine. A DS211J as a media server/file server/print server for $199 (minus hard drives) is a no-brainer. To spend more than triple that amount for a slightly better CPU and two more drive bays, I probably would have just slapped a PC together for about the same price.
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Apr 1, 2011 04:44
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I picked up a PERC H700i and two SFF-8087 cables. The card doesn't seem to be able to see the 3 sata drives I have attached to it. All of Dell's documentation seems to indicate that the card can support SATA drives so I'm not understanding why it isn't working. Any ideas? Edit: Nevermind. Dell locked the card to dell only devices. A firmware to fix the issue is forthcoming. Goon Matchmaker fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Apr 2, 2011 |
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Apr 2, 2011 00:47
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I'm looking for a cheap NAS with about 4 bays to act strictly as backup storage. I don't need anything fancy, I already have a server. All I'm looking for is a maintenance free NAS that I can throw about 4 hard drives into, RAID them and then have my server backup to the NAS via rsync or something. What's the cheapest way to do this?
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Apr 2, 2011 02:12
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IT Guy posted:I'm looking for a cheap NAS with about 4 bays to act strictly as backup storage. I don't need anything fancy, I already have a server. All I'm looking for is a maintenance free NAS that I can throw about 4 hard drives into, RAID them and then have my server backup to the NAS via rsync or something. What is your idea of a cheap NAS? The DS411j would work for that. Its basically the duty I give to my DS410j (its a backup box).
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Apr 2, 2011 02:22
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dietcokefiend posted:What is your idea of a cheap NAS? The DS411j would work for that. Its basically the duty I give to my DS410j (its a backup box). I was thinking about $300-$500 (without the hard drives) At the moment, I only have a measly 2TB of storage on my server. I plan to expand the mdadm RAID5 soon but at the moment I don't have a good backup solution. I've been relying on my RAID not failing (I know). So, before I attempt to expand my RAID, I need a backup solution that doesn't suck. I haven't been reading the thread so I'm not current on the goon recommended devices, but I'll take a look at that DS411j you mentioned.
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Apr 2, 2011 02:30
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Based on what you said, the DS411j fits the bill. It's about $360-$380 without disks. Here's my 2 cents: Don't get the WD Green drives. They have a power saving feature that has caused a lot of people grief. The Samsung 2TB drives had a firmware issue that has been resolved and they work very well now. What size drives are you looking to use?
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Apr 2, 2011 02:34
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Sizzlechest posted:Based on what you said, the DS411j fits the bill. It's about $360-$380 without disks. Here's my 2 cents: Don't get the WD Green drives. They have a power saving feature that has caused a lot of people grief. The Samsung 2TB drives had a firmware issue that has been resolved and they work very well now. What size drives are you looking to use? I currently have 3 of the WD green 1TB drives in RAID5 with mdadm on my server. Haven't had any issues with them, but I'll take your word for it. I'm probably looking at getting a couple 2TB drives to start and running RAID1, once I have a bigger storage on the server, I'll get a couple more 2TB drives and RAID5 them.
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Apr 2, 2011 02:54
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IT Guy posted:I currently have 3 of the WD green 1TB drives in RAID5 with mdadm on my server. Haven't had any issues with them, but I'll take your word for it. Its the parking issue he is talking about, easy to fix and manage permanently with a utility WD has on their support page. This guide covers all the steps: http://www.storagereview.com/how_stop_excessive_load_cycles_western_digital_2tb_caviar_green_wd20ears_wdidle3 Sizzlechest posted:Based on what you said, the DS411j fits the bill. It's about $360-$380 without disks. Here's my 2 cents: Don't get the WD Green drives. They have a power saving feature that has caused a lot of people grief. The Samsung 2TB drives had a firmware issue that has been resolved and they work very well now. What size drives are you looking to use? Caviar greens are fine if you use WDIDLE3 first and change the parking time to something that isn't 2 seconds. I just disable it outright and don't get excessive load cycles. And yea the firmware issue on the F4EGs that eats your data... talk about a bit of a problem 
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Apr 2, 2011 03:18
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dietcokefiend posted:And yea the firmware issue on the F4EGs that eats your data... talk about a bit of a problem It was a bit esoteric to actually trigger, though. You had to simultaneously have a NCQ depth greater than 1, be executing a cached write, and be executing an ATA Identify command all at the same time for that write to drop. Certainly bad, but also not going to hit a lot of people's use patterns.
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Apr 2, 2011 03:23
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dietcokefiend posted:Its the parking issue he is talking about, easy to fix and manage permanently with a utility WD has on their support page. what's the best option if using something like FreeNAS that let's you sleep your drives?
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Apr 2, 2011 03:50
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I have never set up a raid before, and I'd love to play around with my own home server with it than do it at work where I have the potential to gently caress things up. I am tempted to just make my own Win2008r2 server at home than go the WHS route, as I have enough technical know-how that I don't mind the extra initial work of installing Win2008 than just paying to have a pre-installed WHS server from HP or such-- plus I can get a licence of Win2008 for free via my job. (Plus WHS's Drive Extender just seems easy to use, but kind of a lazy-knowledge route of trying to learn new job-applicable skills rather than learning how to make raids in a real windows server). I get the technical knowledge behind RAIDS(0,1,5,etc), and JBOD. I am just curious what the current raid setup that the cool kids use for their home server. My setup will most likely be system disk+5-6 drive raid array, for use of archiving home media and files (with raid just as a drive-loss prevention, not as a backup solution). However when I researched raids, I've seen a lot of sites saying RAID5 is horrible and should never be used anymore, due to bad performance/headache issues. Is this just people who run real professional data servers talking (as they have the amount of drives to use something crazy like other bigger raid modes), or is RAID5 still the preferred home raid setup for people who don't need exact duplication of mirroring? (I don't mind losing a whole drive worth of space for Raid5 just for the peace of mind of knowing my entire raid won't die if one drive goes bad, especially since Lian-Li case has a bananas six HD spaces and is only barely bigger than an MediaSmart tiny server (as long as I remove the horrible front LED fan). jeeves fucked around with this message at 04:31 on Apr 2, 2011 |
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Apr 2, 2011 04:27
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dietcokefiend posted:Caviar greens are fine if you use WDIDLE3 first and change the parking time to something that isn't 2 seconds. I just disable it outright and don't get excessive load cycles. You forgot to mention that he can't do that in the Synology unit. He needs to have a desktop PC with SATA or he needs to get a converter to connect to his PC. Maybe this isn't an issue for him, but so many people don't have desktop PCs these days, it's important to point that out. I still wouldn't recommend them when there are other drives just as reliable, silent, cool, and low power. Let's put it this way... Synology has an entire forum called the "Western Digital Green Drives Slowness Room." They don't have one of those for any other brand drive. dietcokefiend posted:And yea the firmware issue on the F4EGs that eats your data... talk about a bit of a problem And was fixed since December. Unless he bought drives prior to that, he's fine.
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Apr 2, 2011 04:27
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jeeves posted:However when I researched raids, I've seen a lot of sites saying RAID5 is horrible and should never be used anymore, due to bad performance/headache issues. Is this just people who run real professional data servers talking (as they have the amount of drives to use something crazy like other bigger raid modes), or is RAID5 still the preferred home raid setup for people who don't need exact duplication of mirroring? What sites? RAID 5 is pretty much the standard for three to six drives. Above that, you start using multiple RAID 5 arrays or RAID 6. Enterprise-level stuff that's speed-needy will sometimes to RAID 50, which is two identical RAID 5 arrays used as the volumes in a RAID 0 stripe, or they'll start going into ZFS or other, crazier, things which use dozens of drives in different roles all presented as a single logical storage pool.
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Apr 2, 2011 04:55
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Sizzlechest posted:Let's put it this way... Synology has an entire forum called the "Western Digital Green Drives Slowness Room." They don't have one of those for any other brand drive. That's hilarious, never ventured too far into their forums to ever see that area before.
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Apr 2, 2011 04:55
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Factory Factory posted:What sites? RAID 5 is pretty much the standard for three to six drives. Above that, you start using multiple RAID 5 arrays or RAID 6. Enterprise-level stuff that's speed-needy will sometimes to RAID 50, which is two identical RAID 5 arrays used as the volumes in a RAID 0 stripe, or they'll start going into ZFS or other, crazier, things which use dozens of drives in different roles all presented as a single logical storage pool. Yeah, I think I just accidentally read some sites/commentaries written by people who work with big time production servers and thus were bemoaning Raid 5 over something like Raid 5+0 without realizing it was not meant for a home server audience. I think I'll pull the trigger on that Lian-Li setup. It's not as compact as a MediaSmart for sitting on my desk in my bedroom, but I'd rather have full control of installing Win2008 to replace my current EEEBox+Win2003 setup instead of buying into a now-discontinued HP WHS series stuff with paying for tons of add-ins I'll frankly never use.
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Apr 2, 2011 05:03
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dietcokefiend posted:
Yeah it sucks that there was an initial issue with the Samsung F4's, but frankly they've made good with releasing a firmware to fix it, so good on them. It sucks that you have to do it, but they fixed it, unlike Seagate which would have probably denied the issue even happening or something. Plus they don't do head parking like WD drives. Samsung is really becoming a huge player in the large storage size market drives quite quickly. As long as you're not adding the F4's into a WHS/Win2003 (and thus dealing with advanced formatting sector issues on pre-Vista/2008 machines) then they are honestly amazingly awesome drives.
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Apr 2, 2011 05:06
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RAID question: To make a raid do all drives have to be on the same controller? I am guessing yes, but it seems most Mini-ITX mobos are only 4 SATA ports, which sucks for my new 6 HD bay case I am considering. Plus most PCI raid cards are only 4 SATA ports too. Can I stick 4 SATA connections on the PCI card, with the extra 2 coming off of the Mobo's ports and still have them in the same Raid5? Or is this a horrible idea that would cause endless headaches down the road? Edit - looks like this is a moot point for my own personal use, as I found a 50$ more expensive 8 port PCI card here that is not bananas 400$+ expensive like the others. I'm still curious if putting a single raid on separate controllers is a general no-no or what? jeeves fucked around with this message at 06:00 on Apr 2, 2011 |
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Apr 2, 2011 05:57
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Are you trying to do hardware RAID (which I would strongly recommend against at that price point) or software RAID? Hardware RAID will almost never work across controllers (I'd bet there's some crazy one-off situation where it could, but it's still a bad idea). Software RAID, like md-raid in Linux, works great regardless of how your drives are connected.
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Apr 2, 2011 06:14
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jeeves posted:RAID question: For ZFS and SoftRAID (like mdadm or Dynamic Disks), using different controllers is not ideal in the sense of peak performance OMG, but it's perfectly fine. For FakeRAID and hardware RAID, you can't do arrays across controllers anyway unless you're using the hardware arrays as component volumes in another SoftRAID array.
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Apr 2, 2011 06:15
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I got a free license to Win2008r2 from my job, so I'm probably just going to stick to software raid via that as yeah there is most likely a reason that card is 100$ whereas all of the other options for 8-port PCI cards are like 400-800$. I'll probably just pick up the card anyhow, as I can save a small amount of money buying an Mini-ATX mobo with less internal SATA slots and use that bit of saving to apply to this card, as the case I'm looking at has space for a PCI card I highly doubt I'll use that PCI slot for anything else like a real video card in a dedicated headless server. I was just curious if cross-controller RAIDS were a slight 'no-no' or a 'OH GOD DONT DO IT EVER OH THE HUMANITY". I forgot all about the hardware/software raid distinction. jeeves fucked around with this message at 06:25 on Apr 2, 2011 |
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Apr 2, 2011 06:21
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I am finally looking to build my very first NAS. It is mostly for personal media (movies, music, tv). I was wondering from you experienced raiders if I could get a your opinion on the hardware and/or setup. Hopefully someone who has some experience could foresee some of the problems that my setup might have. At the moment I'm planning on just using a basic raid 5 setup with Four 2TB drives (if I understand it that means 6 TBs of storage). I am not planning on buying a separate raid controller, so that means I will be using a software based raid. I intended to use Windows Home Server as my software raid controller. Hardware: I currently have two Samsung 2TB drives sitting around. I was planning on buying two more. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822152245&Tpk=SAMSUNG%20Spinpoint%20F4%20HD204UI%202TB I was going to use this motherboard, CPU, and ram for it also as I have these sitting around. The motherboard claims to support raid 5. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813500019 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115056&Tpk=Intel%20Core2%20Duo%20E7500%20Wolfdale%202.93GHz%20LGA%20775 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...5-184-_-Product As for the other parts. I am going to use on-board video. I'm still very undecided about a case that is small and quiet. I was undecided if I would use after market cooling fans to keep it yet more quite. I am also very unsure about what power supply to get. How do you judge what wattage you need to support the four HD's? Is there a recommended cost vs quality (in terms of how quiet)? I could consider like an Antec Earthwatts PSU maybe. Any advice you have would be welcome.
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Apr 2, 2011 17:07
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Zach the Drifter posted:At the moment I'm planning on just using a basic raid 5 setup with Four 2TB drives (if I understand it that means 6 TBs of storage). I am not planning on buying a separate raid controller, so that means I will be using a software based raid. I intended to use Windows Home Server as my software raid controller. Yep, you'll get 6 TB total usable space in that configuration. quote:I was going to use this motherboard, CPU, and ram for it also as I have these sitting around. The motherboard claims to support raid 5. If you are doing software RAID then the motherboard support for it is irrelevant. As far as it's concerned it will just be four hard drives plugged into it as normal
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Apr 2, 2011 17:16
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Zach the Drifter posted:I am finally looking to build my very first NAS. It is mostly for personal media (movies, music, tv). I was wondering from you experienced raiders if I could get a your opinion on the hardware and/or setup. Hopefully someone who has some experience could foresee some of the problems that my setup might have. WHS Vail (2011) or WHS v1? v1 is based on Windows Server 2003, and you will run into two problems: 1) You will need an 80 GB boot drive, and 2) the Samsung 2 TB drives are 4 KB sector Advanced Format drives, which do not play well with Server 2003 (it is a major, major headache to align them properly). If it's WHS 2011, you will need a 160 GB boot drive, but you won't need to worry about alignment. As for the other hardware, it's pretty overpowered unless you're going to be hosting a VM farm or running Folding@Home all the time. Just serving out media doesn't take a lot of oomph. Especially if you are concerned about noise, you should be concerned about power use, as power = heat = need for cooling. If you need oomph, a Core i3 will be better choice. Even a first-gen model, with a higher TDP than that Core2, has better power-saving and will draw less power when it's not under load (say, when not transcoding media). And Zotac is not the world's best brand - they tend to have a higher error and failure rate than bigger-name board manufacturers like Intel, Asus, Gigabyte, and MSI. RAID 5 support on the board refers to FakeRAID, by the way, which is hardware-assisted software RAID. If you're going with WHS, you don't need to worry about FakeRAID as you can use Dynamic Disks softRAID. If you don't need a ton of oomph (like, for example, you aren't transcoding BluRays to three different formats after every rip), you can probably do well for yourself with an AMD E350 mini-ITX board with an external USB-based optical drive or an add-in SATA controller). While the board won't have FakeRAID, it'll provide just enough SATA plugs for your hard drives, be snappy and capable enough for HTPC work and light transcoding, and will just sip electricity rather than guzzle it. Asus does a model with 5 internal SATA if you have to have your optical drive internal, and Sapphire (good graphics cards, looks like they're breaking into the mainboard business) does a model with a mini-PCI-E slot that could be used for a small Intel 310 SSD, though it wouldn't be big enough for a WHS 2011 install. As for cases, the WHS thread just started drooling over a Lian-Li case that uses standard ATX PSUs, mini-ITX motherboards, 6 3.5" drive bays, and a standard 5.25" bay, yet isn't huge. The popular option for 4-drive storage is a Chenbro server pedastal that's really designed for business use, but is quite serviceable. There's another version with a 180W power supply. The 120W is plenty for an E350 build, but if you want to use a Core i3 I'd get the 180W version. The Chenbro also has spots inside for a 2.5" boot drive (like a 160 GB laptop drive for your WHS 2011 install) and a slimline optical drive. Just be sure to keep track of your SATA ports; you need a board with six to plug in every drive the case can offer.
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Apr 2, 2011 17:34
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Factory Factory posted:WHS Vail (2011) or WHS v1? v1 is based on Windows Server 2003, and you will run into two problems: 1) You will need an 80 GB boot drive, and 2) the Samsung 2 TB drives are 4 KB sector Advanced Format drives, which do not play well with Server 2003 (it is a major, major headache to align them properly). If it's WHS 2011, you will need a 160 GB boot drive, but you won't need to worry about alignment. Thank you so much for all of the advice. I do understand the the mobo/CPU is way overpowered, but it is what I have sitting around. I LOVE the Chenbro server pedastal, but as I already have the other atx board, I won't be able to use it. Based on our advice I'm going to use WHS 2011 for sure. I do have a another drive I can use as a boot drive.
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Apr 2, 2011 17:56
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Zach the Drifter posted:Thank you so much for all of the advice. I do understand the the mobo/CPU is way overpowered, but it is what I have sitting around. I LOVE the Chenbro server pedastal, but as I already have the other atx board, I won't be able to use it. Based on our advice I'm going to use WHS 2011 for sure. I do have a another drive I can use as a boot drive. Ah, sorry, my eyes skimmed over where you said you had those parts already. For a PSU, then, I wouldn't go under a high-quality 300W just to give enough room for peak power draw when starting up and to give it years of life, though the system will draw much less than 300W almost all the time and you could probably get by with less. Antec Earthwatts would be fine, but I'm a fan of Seasonic - they do a nice 80+ Bronze 300W single-rail PSU, the SS-300ES.
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Apr 2, 2011 18:10
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I'm looking for a mini-ITX board, but most have 3-4 SATA ports, meaning if I want to fill out a 6-7 drive system I'd have to buy a PCI-E expansion card. I've seen a lot of cards with slots called "SAS". What are those? And I've seen a few SAS to SATA cords (1 to 4), so is it just like a high density SATA port?
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Apr 2, 2011 18:32
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jeeves posted:I'm looking for a mini-ITX board, but most have 3-4 SATA ports, meaning if I want to fill out a 6-7 drive system I'd have to buy a PCI-E expansion card. SAS stands for "Serial Attached SCSI" and basically yes it is an interconnect that has the bandwidth to support multiple SATA channels simultaneously http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_attached_SCSI The only practical use for SAS I could see in a home environment is if you wanted to have your drive enclosure with multiple drives separate from the server itself, you could then use SAS interconnects to still get full bandwidth to each drive (whereas something like eSata port multipliers have to share bandwidth across a single link)
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Apr 2, 2011 18:38
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Factory Factory posted:WHS Vail (2011) or WHS v1? v1 is based on Windows Server 2003, and you will run into two problems: 1) You will need an 80 GB boot drive, and 2) the Samsung 2 TB drives are 4 KB sector Advanced Format drives, which do not play well with Server 2003 (it is a major, major headache to align them properly). If it's WHS 2011, you will need a 160 GB boot drive, but you won't need to worry about alignment. This is a lot of good info, and I would highly recommend going the AMD route for a file server versus Intel. I am quite an intel fanboy, but honestly there are no good mini-itx motherboards that have: more than 3 SATA slots AND eSATA AND USB3.0 AND PCI-E for expansion AND mini-PCI if you wanna put in a tiny SSD. The E350 has just that right here, by Sapphire at a good price for an excellent motherboard+cpu: combo http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813154019&cm_re=AMD_E350-_-13-154-019-_-Product If you get a Chenbro case, then you don't have to worry about ever making use of the PCI-E slot, but if you want the monster Lian-Li case (6 normal drive bays + full size optical + 2.5" system drive bay-- so 8 drives if you just put HDs in each) then you'd need an extra PCI-E controller card. (Note: Chenbro case is NOT an overall quiet one. It uses weirdly sized 70mm case fans that are like re purposed cheap CPU stock coolers and thus are pretty non-quiet compared to most HTPC/mini server cases). Also keep in mind that WHS2011 is not going to have Drive Extender, relying solely on RAIDs. As I asked before in the thread, it's probably not an absurdly great idea to make a raid across both a motherboard's SATA and a PCI-E controller card, as that sounds like something drive-extender would make a breeze versus raids. But WHSv1 has all sorts of aging problems like trying to get new huge advanced format drives aligned correctly. (Which of course can be done, it just requires reading like a 5 page tutorial here: http://www.mediasmartserver.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10097) jeeves fucked around with this message at 18:57 on Apr 2, 2011 |
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Apr 2, 2011 18:50
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