Was 3.7TB - then 2.7TB, now 19.1TB "quiet" server
Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee
Dude your build inspires me! I need this so bad. I currently have 4 to 5TB worth of HDD space lying on my desk, I really need a machine like this to start stacking more HDDs. It'd be great to help others in my house stream all the media I download, which is roughly 600GB a month haha 8Mbit isn't so bad. I have 7Mbit
Performance progression with tweaking etc:
I discovered that I am cpu bound while doing FTP transfers, wasnt expecting that, maxing out at around 800mbit/s thus far. Might have to pick up a P4 3.4GHz from ebay (dual core preferably)...
After mirroring over the contents of my 9.1TB box:
Chocolinx: Get a big case with lots of 5.25" bays, then toss in 4in3 modules with nexus fans, and youre on the right track.. A server like this will never be silent, maybe not even very quiet, but its feasible to make it quiet enough that you dont mind the machine being on. This server is currently in the home cinema, where it blends in quite well with the (low) fan noise from my Epson TW700...
I dont download nearly enough to justify this server in the short run, average download speeds have been less than 1mbit/s the last few months, tho much of that is because the old server has been nearly full. But it was never planned as a short-term solution either, I dont foresee upgrading untill late 2010, maybe early 2011, where monster (9.1TB in sig) will get a similar treatment
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2.6.30-amd64 kernel on 32bit etch userland - first testing, bad results:
Version 1.03 ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
-Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks--
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
Oberon 4G 73935 16 67499 20 498156 51 145.2 0
Oberon,4G,,,73935,16,67499,20,,,498156,51,145.2,0,,,,,,,,,,,,,
2.6.26.2-amd64 debian - 64K Chunk size (8192 stripe cache, 16384 readahead), 3ware write cache enabled:
Version 1.03d ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
-Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks--
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
oberon.lan.wibla 4G 118752 34 110140 38 491916 59 284.5 1
oberon.lan.wibla.net,4G,,,118752,34,110140,38,,,491916,59,284.5,1,,,,,,,,,,,,,
2.6.26-2amd64 debian - 256K chunk size (16384 readahead, 8129 stripe cache), 3ware write cache enabled:
Version 1.03d ------Sequential Output------ --Sequential Input- --Random-
-Per Chr- --Block-- -Rewrite- -Per Chr- --Block-- --Seeks--
Machine Size K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP K/sec %CP /sec %CP
oberon 4G 46975 85 203242 32 130643 25 49964 85 451722 51 454.4 1
------Sequential Create------ --------Random Create--------
-Create-- --Read--- -Delete-- -Create-- --Read--- -Delete--
files /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP /sec %CP
16 2193 16 +++++ +++ 1721 13 1654 15 +++++ +++ 1421 12
oberon,4G,46975,85,203242,32,130643,25,49964,85,451722,51,454.4,1,16,2193,16,+++++,+++,1721,13,1654,15,+++++,+++,1421,12
After mirroring over the contents of my 9.1TB box:
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/dev/md0 20T 8.9T 11T 47% /mnt/raid
I dont download nearly enough to justify this server in the short run, average download speeds have been less than 1mbit/s the last few months, tho much of that is because the old server has been nearly full. But it was never planned as a short-term solution either, I dont foresee upgrading untill late 2010, maybe early 2011, where monster (9.1TB in sig) will get a similar treatment
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Think a AMD Athlon LE-1660 will be fast enough to be in a server? My basic setup was going to be about half the size of yours... Thinking of only needing to hold 8HDDs 1.5TB each, so only 12GB. I was thinking of picking up an Antec 300, and changing the 3 5.25 with suspension for more hdds, it already has 6 spots for hdds.
Is 1GB of ram enough? or 2GB minimum? The Motherboard was going to be a 785GM board from Gigabyte since it has 6 SATA slots, and I was going to throw in a random SATA PCI-e card that adds another 4. Anything I'm missing? Or should look into? I plan on using it to stream 720p and 1080p videos through out the house, over ethernet 100mbit.
Is 1GB of ram enough? or 2GB minimum? The Motherboard was going to be a 785GM board from Gigabyte since it has 6 SATA slots, and I was going to throw in a random SATA PCI-e card that adds another 4. Anything I'm missing? Or should look into? I plan on using it to stream 720p and 1080p videos through out the house, over ethernet 100mbit.
So i realized.. and most of it is enabled already...
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# ethtool -k eth3
Offload parameters for eth3:
Cannot get device flags: Operation not supported
rx-checksumming: on
tx-checksumming: on
scatter-gather: on
tcp segmentation offload: on
udp fragmentation offload: off
generic segmentation offload: on
large receive offload: off
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I have a Le-1660 AMD in my fileserver (6TB on 4 drives, soon upgrading to 6 drives) and it does its job with 2GB of RAM.Chocolinx wrote:Think a AMD Athlon LE-1660 will be fast enough to be in a server? My basic setup was going to be about half the size of yours... Thinking of only needing to hold 8HDDs 1.5TB each, so only 12GB. I was thinking of picking up an Antec 300, and changing the 3 5.25 with suspension for more hdds, it already has 6 spots for hdds.
Is 1GB of ram enough? or 2GB minimum? The Motherboard was going to be a 785GM board from Gigabyte since it has 6 SATA slots, and I was going to throw in a random SATA PCI-e card that adds another 4. Anything I'm missing? Or should look into? I plan on using it to stream 720p and 1080p videos through out the house, over ethernet 100mbit.
Mind you, i dont use RAID (should have when setting it up, but didnt have enough storage elsewhere to format the drives with all my data on, so kept things how they were. set up automatic backups every other day, it does its job).
Building my mini-server (compared to Wibla's) this week. I ended up going with the following parts.
Fortron 400W
AMD Sempron 140 (Unlocks into a Athlon II X2)
Antec 300 (6 HDD Slots, More with Modding)
Giga 785GM Board
1GB DDR2 Ram (NCIX didn't price match my $70 4GB So using RAM that I found laying around the house)
HDD that I'm starting off with:
400GB Seagate as Boot Drive (Because it's not being used)
1x 1.5TB WD Green
And maybe these ones that are sitting in another box:
2x 1.5TB Seagate 7200.11
2x 500GB WD
Since I'm only storing files, I probably won't RAID anything since there's no real advantage over a 100mbit connection. Simply using this machine to share files between all the computers in the house (Total of 4). Probably just enable file sharing in WinXP and be done with it, or TVersity.
Just wanted to say thanks Wilba for your thread, inspiration is appreciated I'll take pictures when I finish making it. Somehow I'll try and silence the drives haha
Fortron 400W
AMD Sempron 140 (Unlocks into a Athlon II X2)
Antec 300 (6 HDD Slots, More with Modding)
Giga 785GM Board
1GB DDR2 Ram (NCIX didn't price match my $70 4GB So using RAM that I found laying around the house)
HDD that I'm starting off with:
400GB Seagate as Boot Drive (Because it's not being used)
1x 1.5TB WD Green
And maybe these ones that are sitting in another box:
2x 1.5TB Seagate 7200.11
2x 500GB WD
Since I'm only storing files, I probably won't RAID anything since there's no real advantage over a 100mbit connection. Simply using this machine to share files between all the computers in the house (Total of 4). Probably just enable file sharing in WinXP and be done with it, or TVersity.
Just wanted to say thanks Wilba for your thread, inspiration is appreciated I'll take pictures when I finish making it. Somehow I'll try and silence the drives haha
Got all my parts and the system is finally built. Antec 300's fans are damn loud... and the stock cooler for the Sempron is hell loud, swapping those out when freezer64 and yateloon fans come in... Although maybe it was all in vain since it's a file server and the harddrives alone will produce so much noise I'll have to turn it off at night.
Either way, everything went smoooothly Starting off with 5 HardDrives in the case. Notebook harddrive as the main OS drive. 3x 1.5TB and one 400GB. Then I have a box that can hold 4 more HDDs. I don't have an SATA card yet but I'll buy one off DealExtreme The Sempron Unlocked fine and the cores are very stable. So now I have a $40 Dual Core CPU that's faster then all the other systems in my house except for my Q9450.
Either way, everything went smoooothly Starting off with 5 HardDrives in the case. Notebook harddrive as the main OS drive. 3x 1.5TB and one 400GB. Then I have a box that can hold 4 more HDDs. I don't have an SATA card yet but I'll buy one off DealExtreme The Sempron Unlocked fine and the cores are very stable. So now I have a $40 Dual Core CPU that's faster then all the other systems in my house except for my Q9450.
I don't want to hijack your thread, but if you create a partition > 2 TB (using a 64-bit OS or something that can handle it), does Windows XP 32-bit on a separate machine have issues seeing the full size? I know for 32-bit Windows, there's a 2TB limit for drives on the machine itself, but I think this might not matter for a network drive since the 32-bit OS isn't managing the partition.
Depends on if you're using staggered spin up or not. A 4-pin molex can handle about 10-12A (during normal temperatures) with standard AWG 18 wires. The drives I'm using requires about 32W at spin up, you do the math. (Or I can do them for you: 32W * 6 drives = 16A @ 12V.) These SATA-power splitters are much worse, they are rated at 1.5A per pin (and since there is 3pins for each voltage, you get 4.5A... just two drives spinning up at the same time could require more). Now personally I don't bother to much with it, but one might want to be aware of the factWibla wrote: http://bilder.wibla.net/albums/oberon-r ... .sized.jpg
6 drives off one molex, probably not the smartest thing in the world...
Wow. 'You a smoker? Because that looks really filthy. My dust bunnies are light grey, that stuff looks like it could be dangerous to the touchWibla wrote:Seems like it
http://bilder.wibla.net/albums/pcstuff/ ... .sized.jpg
Tagan PSU that was in this box for 2 years, damn nasty...
Edit: Now I know what it looks like! Semi-decomposed fur from roadkill left in the snow for a couple of months. Ehhh... Hm.