I want to build a server that will handle: email, light sql, light web hosting, file/ printer sharing, and active directory/roaming profiles. It will be used in my home, and will be on 24/7. I anticipate starting it off with 3+ HDD's in RAID5 for storage + 1HDD for the OS. It needs to have GbE (not bounded by the limitations of the PCI bus.)
Because it is for personal use, I want it to be as low-power as possible. I thought about EPIA, but I wouldn't have GbE, and would have to share the PCI bus bandwidth for my RAID array and network traffic. What is my best bet?
Low power server
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pandamonium54
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A serious suggestion:
Pentium III / Celeron Coppermine.
I've got a box that draws ~35W at the wall. It has a cheap PSU, whatever motherboard, and a 400MHz Celeron. The P3's are more efficient than my P2-based Celeron, even. Drop in ethernet and RAID daughtercards, and you'll be in business at a minimum of cost. Throw it in the basement, and you won't even need to make it inaudible like mine.
Erm... that's what I'd do, anyway. I think it would work just fine, but it looks like you've got a much larger budget than I do.
If you don't think a PIII is powerful enough, then I'm sure a VIA chip won't do, either. You may consider a deep undervolt / underclock of a modern chip, or maybe a laptop CPU on a desktop mobo.
Pentium III / Celeron Coppermine.
I've got a box that draws ~35W at the wall. It has a cheap PSU, whatever motherboard, and a 400MHz Celeron. The P3's are more efficient than my P2-based Celeron, even. Drop in ethernet and RAID daughtercards, and you'll be in business at a minimum of cost. Throw it in the basement, and you won't even need to make it inaudible like mine.
Erm... that's what I'd do, anyway. I think it would work just fine, but it looks like you've got a much larger budget than I do.
If you don't think a PIII is powerful enough, then I'm sure a VIA chip won't do, either. You may consider a deep undervolt / underclock of a modern chip, or maybe a laptop CPU on a desktop mobo.
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pandamonium54
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The only problem with that is that my network and HDD traffic can potentially saturate the PCI bus. This machine is going to stream my video archives, and there is a good chance that it will need to feed multiple streams simultaneously. I am planning this build to last me between 5-10 years, so I'm trying to account for HD feeds.
I also know that I'll be very upset if my roaming profile loading time is much increased over a local profile. This is honestly the main reason I want GbE, heh.
What should be my best bet with a modern underclock/volt? I would consider recycling my undervolted XP 2500+, but GbE would be on the PCI bus and the power draw would probably be higher than I desire.
I also know that I'll be very upset if my roaming profile loading time is much increased over a local profile. This is honestly the main reason I want GbE, heh.
What should be my best bet with a modern underclock/volt? I would consider recycling my undervolted XP 2500+, but GbE would be on the PCI bus and the power draw would probably be higher than I desire.
I've built a server using a S754 Sempron on a Gigabyte K8NE board (NF4-4X chipset, 4 SATA ports, onboard GbE). This board does not allow for undervolting, but with the Sempron that hardly matters -- I've got a fanless Ninja on the Sempron and it's quite happy (maxes out at ~45C even under load). This is an ATX board, if you want uATX you might be struggling to find one with both 4 SATA and GbE.
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pandamonium54
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pandamonium54
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The only problem with that is that I have no need for that much computing power. This server is for home use. It is going to contain the primary copy of my data (I still need to figure out an affordable means of performing data backups), share my printer, host roaming profiles, and host a few small personal websites. A 500MHz CPU should be more than sufficient for me.
The problem is that I lack data on CPUs/power usage. I want my storage and networking subsystem to be top notch. The current plan is to have RAID5 or RAID1, and GbE natively through the southbridge and off the PCI bus. That pushes me to more modern platforms, which usually have more powerful CPUs. I don't need that much CPU power, and quite frankly, I don't want it.
What I do want is a machine that when powered on 24/7, hits my utilities minimally. If I can get one that will cost me <$100/yr, then I'll be a happy man.
If I could pair an EPIA cpu with a Core2 motherboard, I'd be pretty happy.
The problem is that I lack data on CPUs/power usage. I want my storage and networking subsystem to be top notch. The current plan is to have RAID5 or RAID1, and GbE natively through the southbridge and off the PCI bus. That pushes me to more modern platforms, which usually have more powerful CPUs. I don't need that much CPU power, and quite frankly, I don't want it.
What I do want is a machine that when powered on 24/7, hits my utilities minimally. If I can get one that will cost me <$100/yr, then I'll be a happy man.
If I could pair an EPIA cpu with a Core2 motherboard, I'd be pretty happy.
Less computing power could well cost you a lot more money to build, if for example you go the EPIA or Geode route. EPIA and Geode are specialist items, low market volume, and therefore $$$$'s.pandamonium54 wrote:The only problem with that is that I have no need for that much computing power.
An undervolted Sempron consumes ~30W I believe (search around the other forums here for numbers).The problem is that I lack data on CPUs/power usage.
As a data-point the power draw of my server is 100W from the wall (measured with a watt-meter), and as I said it's not undervolted. ~20% of that will be PSU losses. Of the remaining ~80W around 40W will be the hard-drives (I'm guessing, maybe a bit less at idle).
That I can sympathise with, though spending an extra $300 in build costs to save yourself $20 per year doesn't make much sense, for example.What I do want is a machine that when powered on 24/7, hits my utilities minimally. If I can get one that will cost me <$100/yr, then I'll be a happy man.
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SideshowBOFH
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That puts a twist on it, needing it to last you 10 years. To give you some perspective of what 10 years in the IT industry means, I'll tell you the story of my P3-450.
I have a P3-450 that is coming up to 7 years old now, and still throws files around my network with little effort. It started off with 64MB of memory and two 6.4GB 5400RPM hard disks, it now has 512MB of memory (sometimes, sometimes 384MB) and two 40GB 7200RPM hard disks. I have had to replace the video card (oil leak from the CPU fan killed it) and the power supply twice, but apart from that it's still going strong, and is not showing any signs of slowing down at the tasks I give it (web server, email server, proxy server, file server).
So, as for what to buy, a good motherboard (with as many PCI-E slots as you can get - PCI-Ex16 isn't just for graphics cards), a mid-range CPU, a couple of gigs of memory, and enough storage space to get you started. You'll probably do a mid-life refresh after 5 years or so, and add more memory and more (and faster) hard disks. And a good case, because nothing sucks more than trying to install new components into a crappy case
I have a P3-450 that is coming up to 7 years old now, and still throws files around my network with little effort. It started off with 64MB of memory and two 6.4GB 5400RPM hard disks, it now has 512MB of memory (sometimes, sometimes 384MB) and two 40GB 7200RPM hard disks. I have had to replace the video card (oil leak from the CPU fan killed it) and the power supply twice, but apart from that it's still going strong, and is not showing any signs of slowing down at the tasks I give it (web server, email server, proxy server, file server).
So, as for what to buy, a good motherboard (with as many PCI-E slots as you can get - PCI-Ex16 isn't just for graphics cards), a mid-range CPU, a couple of gigs of memory, and enough storage space to get you started. You'll probably do a mid-life refresh after 5 years or so, and add more memory and more (and faster) hard disks. And a good case, because nothing sucks more than trying to install new components into a crappy case
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smilingcrow
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What’s your budget?
How much disk space do you require?
Is disk write speed an issue? (RAID 5).
The more data you give, the easier it is to give more precise answers.
Don’t be concerned whether a CPU is over specified; as long as its low power and affordable who cares if its overkill. I say this because I found the Core Duo desktop systems very power efficient but they are over specified for your needs. I have a cheap Yonah based Celeron M arriving on Monday, so I’ll post back how power efficient it is.
The CPU is one of the least important components here as the motherboard, power supply and disk drives will affect power consumption more.
Look at power supplies that are 80Plus certified, as they offer a higher efficiency at lower power draw. The FSP Zen fanless P/S is particularly efficient at 40W DC.
Since you are hosting webs sites is it safe to assume that they are accessed frequently enough to mean that the drives are running 24/7?
If not, you could use a PicoPSU and save power, especially at idle.
You do know that Intel and Nvidia have absolutely appalling write performance with their RAID 5 implementations? Their read speeds are fine though. If you need decent RAID5 write speed you’ll need to budget for a decent RAID controller; PCIe makes more sense at this point.
RAID 10 gives better overall performance but with higher costs in terms of hardware and power consumption.
How much disk space do you require?
Is disk write speed an issue? (RAID 5).
The more data you give, the easier it is to give more precise answers.
Don’t be concerned whether a CPU is over specified; as long as its low power and affordable who cares if its overkill. I say this because I found the Core Duo desktop systems very power efficient but they are over specified for your needs. I have a cheap Yonah based Celeron M arriving on Monday, so I’ll post back how power efficient it is.
The CPU is one of the least important components here as the motherboard, power supply and disk drives will affect power consumption more.
Look at power supplies that are 80Plus certified, as they offer a higher efficiency at lower power draw. The FSP Zen fanless P/S is particularly efficient at 40W DC.
Since you are hosting webs sites is it safe to assume that they are accessed frequently enough to mean that the drives are running 24/7?
If not, you could use a PicoPSU and save power, especially at idle.
You do know that Intel and Nvidia have absolutely appalling write performance with their RAID 5 implementations? Their read speeds are fine though. If you need decent RAID5 write speed you’ll need to budget for a decent RAID controller; PCIe makes more sense at this point.
RAID 10 gives better overall performance but with higher costs in terms of hardware and power consumption.
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smilingcrow
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I didn’t make it clear just how bad it is; a 4 drive RAID 5 setup has about 30-50% of the write performance of a single Drive.smilingcrow wrote:You do know that Intel and Nvidia have absolutely appalling write performance with their RAID 5 implementations?
See Techreport for details.
As for streaming video, a decently encoded stream in DVD quality (DivX/XVid) takes about 1-2 Mbit/s, so even if you stream 20 of those you shouldn't have any trouble with the limit of a 100Mbit network (or PCI: 133 MB/s). This is of course assuming that decompression is done by the computer you play the video on and not the server. Now, if you're talking about HD video it might be necessary to upgrade the network.
Offtopic about RAID5: I recently tested nForce 570U RAID5 with 3 Seagate 160GB single platter SATA disks, 1G RAM, W2K3. Copying 2GB file from RAID5 to normal SATA (same batch) was about 50-90MB/s, from SATA to RAID5 initially 70-90MB/s, after exhausting W2K3 system cache speed decreased to 800kB/s... To the end it averaged somewhere between 5-10MB/s - apparently not suitable for multiple stream writing. I will test RAID0+1 someday with same disks (need to add one though).
Conclusion: nForce (and Intel) onboard SATA RAID5 is suitable only for reading.
One more link about SATA/RAID5 speed: http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content ... 505&page=9.
Conclusion: nForce (and Intel) onboard SATA RAID5 is suitable only for reading.
One more link about SATA/RAID5 speed: http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content ... 505&page=9.
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SideshowBOFH
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More offtopic about RAID-5: Raid 5 is evil. As was mentioned, it's only really any good in read-heavy loads, if there are other constraints (e.g. server chassis only has 6 drive bays and you need as much disk space as you can get with at least some fault tolerance), and you have a good controller with a lot of onboard cache.
With a 3-disk RAID-5, every single write requires at least 1 read and 2 writes - it needs to read the other half of the data in the parity set, write the data block, then write the parity block. It gets worse the more disks you have, a 4-disk RAID-5 requires 2 reads, it has to read the other two data blocks to re-calculate the parity. This is part of the reason that RAID-5 controllers have a lot of cache - most server-grade RAID controllers come with at least 64MB if cache. To make it worse, hard disks aren't that fast at switching between reading and writing, so big caches are a must to get decent performance out of streaming writes.
RAID-5 is also worse for data redundancy than RAID-10, you can only lose a single disk in the array, after that your array is toast (ignoring things like RAID-6 with 2 parity blocks, but that only buys you a little bit more time). RAID-10 can tolerate losing half the disks in the array, as long as the disks aren't part of the same mirror set of course. With a 4-disk RAID-10, you only have a 1 in 3 chance that the next disk that fails will take out your array. With more disks, the chance gets lower. Of course, as soon as you notice the little red light on the disk, replace it.
To top it all off, RAID-5 is worse for recovery too. A RAID-5 rebuild needs to read every sector off every other disk in the array, and re-calculate the parity or missing data. RAID-10 only ever needs to read a single disk, it just copies the mirror block for block back to the replacement disk.
About the only thing that RAID-5 has going for it is the low amount of capacity lost to redundancy, you lose only 1 disk worth, so you lose less and less the more disks you have in the array. With any mirroring, you immediately lose half of your capacity so you need to spend more to get the same capacity. Of course, the people most likely to use RAID-10 are governments and large enterprises, who have deep pockets anyway[/url]
With a 3-disk RAID-5, every single write requires at least 1 read and 2 writes - it needs to read the other half of the data in the parity set, write the data block, then write the parity block. It gets worse the more disks you have, a 4-disk RAID-5 requires 2 reads, it has to read the other two data blocks to re-calculate the parity. This is part of the reason that RAID-5 controllers have a lot of cache - most server-grade RAID controllers come with at least 64MB if cache. To make it worse, hard disks aren't that fast at switching between reading and writing, so big caches are a must to get decent performance out of streaming writes.
RAID-5 is also worse for data redundancy than RAID-10, you can only lose a single disk in the array, after that your array is toast (ignoring things like RAID-6 with 2 parity blocks, but that only buys you a little bit more time). RAID-10 can tolerate losing half the disks in the array, as long as the disks aren't part of the same mirror set of course. With a 4-disk RAID-10, you only have a 1 in 3 chance that the next disk that fails will take out your array. With more disks, the chance gets lower. Of course, as soon as you notice the little red light on the disk, replace it.
To top it all off, RAID-5 is worse for recovery too. A RAID-5 rebuild needs to read every sector off every other disk in the array, and re-calculate the parity or missing data. RAID-10 only ever needs to read a single disk, it just copies the mirror block for block back to the replacement disk.
About the only thing that RAID-5 has going for it is the low amount of capacity lost to redundancy, you lose only 1 disk worth, so you lose less and less the more disks you have in the array. With any mirroring, you immediately lose half of your capacity so you need to spend more to get the same capacity. Of course, the people most likely to use RAID-10 are governments and large enterprises, who have deep pockets anyway
[/url]Ehm - actually it will not got worse anymoreSideshowBOFH wrote:It gets worse the more disks you have, a 4-disk RAID-5 requires 2 reads, it has to read the other two data blocks to re-calculate the parity.
N-disk RAID requires two reads as well, but because you have to read just same stripes (disks and tracks) where you need to write afterwards, you need no more seeks. You can easily recalculate parity, using old data, old parity and new data - other stripes are not required. If you happen to write to two related stripes (having same parity block), then you need only 3 reads and 3 writes to update 2 stripes (and parity) and so on.Well, I'm not sure that onboard RAID5 does optimize its write strategy. Good controllers can postpone writes, they optimize seeks, they can serve many requests simultaneously and so on.
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pandamonium54
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Hmmmmm... looks like I've got a lot of things to consider.
The server will be near my primary machine for the next year or so. After that, I anticipate having a closet dedicated to computer gear. As far as noise, I intend only to use as many fans as are necessary to keep the drives within safe operating temperatures.
You bring up some good points about RAID levels. If I scrap plans for data backup (currently debating tape vs eSATA drives...), I could put the funds for that towards extra drives to go with RAID 10.
My access patterns are fine for cheapo raid chipsets. Large chunks of data will remain unaltered after their initial storage. I anticipate writes for small files, but generally it's the read speed that I am concerned about.
I feel like 1TB is a healthy starting point for disk space. My budget is undetermined. I can allocate ~1-3k for a server, new bedroom television, and assorted toys as I see fit. I could probably pull another ~1-2k if I wanted, but I have enough spare parts/machines around that I feel that I should not spend too much on a hobbyist project.
One idea I'm considering is getting a new desktop, then outfitting my current workstation ([email protected]) with a RAID card and drive cages. Another is postponing the workstation upgrade, and outfitting an older machine (700MHz or 550MHz workstation class Dells) with RAID cards and drive cages. Then I have to consider power consumption, minimum CPU requirements, whether it's possible to move the Dell machines into new casing, etc. Another alternative is to convert my HTPC into a server and upgrade that. I've got too many choices. =P
The server will be near my primary machine for the next year or so. After that, I anticipate having a closet dedicated to computer gear. As far as noise, I intend only to use as many fans as are necessary to keep the drives within safe operating temperatures.
You bring up some good points about RAID levels. If I scrap plans for data backup (currently debating tape vs eSATA drives...), I could put the funds for that towards extra drives to go with RAID 10.
My access patterns are fine for cheapo raid chipsets. Large chunks of data will remain unaltered after their initial storage. I anticipate writes for small files, but generally it's the read speed that I am concerned about.
I feel like 1TB is a healthy starting point for disk space. My budget is undetermined. I can allocate ~1-3k for a server, new bedroom television, and assorted toys as I see fit. I could probably pull another ~1-2k if I wanted, but I have enough spare parts/machines around that I feel that I should not spend too much on a hobbyist project.
One idea I'm considering is getting a new desktop, then outfitting my current workstation ([email protected]) with a RAID card and drive cages. Another is postponing the workstation upgrade, and outfitting an older machine (700MHz or 550MHz workstation class Dells) with RAID cards and drive cages. Then I have to consider power consumption, minimum CPU requirements, whether it's possible to move the Dell machines into new casing, etc. Another alternative is to convert my HTPC into a server and upgrade that. I've got too many choices. =P
You certainly have a lot of choices.
Some time ago, while planning and building my current PC (in sig), I was contemplating another PC, for server/light duties, and a seperate PC for gaming.
I came to the conclusion that it is possible with modern equipment to build just one PC to do everything, I am very satisfied with what I have achieved.
I am not using RAID in any way shape or form, and wont either, as I have no real usage for it, that is something for me to consider in the future. Right now, I have 4 drives, 3 of which are backup/additional storage and spend most of the time turned off via power management.
This route, has restricted my capabilities, as it is one machine and not two, but has allowed me to do everything that I want in one box that is virtually silent.
You might want to consider a system like mine, + external backup drives.
From your perspective, if its done right, it will be virtually silent, it will have all of the performance you need, will be relatively cheap, but you will have to drop the idea of RAID 5 and go for backups on exteral drives instead. Overall I would guess that the one PC/Server approach would not be any more expensive than two seperate machines, and would not consume any more power, and on top of that you wont have to worry about network performance.
Andy
Some time ago, while planning and building my current PC (in sig), I was contemplating another PC, for server/light duties, and a seperate PC for gaming.
I came to the conclusion that it is possible with modern equipment to build just one PC to do everything, I am very satisfied with what I have achieved.
I am not using RAID in any way shape or form, and wont either, as I have no real usage for it, that is something for me to consider in the future. Right now, I have 4 drives, 3 of which are backup/additional storage and spend most of the time turned off via power management.
This route, has restricted my capabilities, as it is one machine and not two, but has allowed me to do everything that I want in one box that is virtually silent.
You might want to consider a system like mine, + external backup drives.
From your perspective, if its done right, it will be virtually silent, it will have all of the performance you need, will be relatively cheap, but you will have to drop the idea of RAID 5 and go for backups on exteral drives instead. Overall I would guess that the one PC/Server approach would not be any more expensive than two seperate machines, and would not consume any more power, and on top of that you wont have to worry about network performance.
Andy