Recently i made a thread in the storage forum asking about the best way to store my increasing number of HDD's without splashing out a big expensive NAS. MikeC suggested making a cheap low power file server with some of the spare parts i have and put it in a separate room or closet. This seemed like the easiest and cheapest option, but having never set up a file server id just like to make sure all these parts seem like the best value for money. Silence isn't as important as low power.
I already have a LGA775 Motherboard (el cheapo thing) and a power supply (not an ideal one, but it'll suffice for now). Here is what i am looking at buying.
Celeron 440 CPU - This should be enough for my purpose, and its 35w TDP (and in real life should be much lower than that) is good news.
1GB DDR2 RAM - Probably 533Mhz stuff. Not much to say.
A cheap case - Specifically this one as its dirt cheap, lots of bays and 120mm intake and exhaust fans.
800rpm S-FLEX's x2 - Because i cant get 800 slipstreams in the UK easily and the sflex's are quiet enough at stock to forget about them.
1TB GP WD10EACS HDD's x3 - To go with the one i have already and the 2 640GB Blue's i have in my main PC.
cat5e ethernet cable - Does its job.
Total: minus the HDD's £89 shipped. With the drives it comes to about £311.
The plan is to set this up with some sort of lightweight linux client that's good for file server needs. any recommendations for OS's here?
For now this will only connect to my main PC and so a simple gigabit cable connection between the 2 will do.
My current PSU is a spare one i got given a while back. Its 620w and not very quiet. This system is unlikely to ever push more than 100w even with all the HDD's. I don't know what efficiency the PSU has since its not well known to them interweb folks, but at such low load its going to be pretty poor indeed. So eventually im going to swap it out for a more appropriate PSU. A picoPSU doesn't have enough connectors to be of any use here, so ideally id be looking at something with plenty of connectors and good efficiency in the sub 100w range. Any ideas?
EDIT: This seasonic looks pretty nice, ill need a few IDE to SATA power adapters, but i can get these for pretty cheap as well.
Low Budget File Server
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FartingBob
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Nick Geraedts
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That setup should do alright for you. If you can get the Seasonic for cheap, then go for it.
Just a quick question though... how are you going to connect 6 drives to that motherboard? It only has 4 internal SATA headers.
As for an OS - I'll recommend plain old Debian Etch. I've recently been converted from the RH branches back to Debian (one of the first distros I tried). Ubuntu releases "major" revisions far too often to be a reliable server platform (even their LTS releases... 18 months?). They just patch over problems with new releases.
Just a quick question though... how are you going to connect 6 drives to that motherboard? It only has 4 internal SATA headers.
As for an OS - I'll recommend plain old Debian Etch. I've recently been converted from the RH branches back to Debian (one of the first distros I tried). Ubuntu releases "major" revisions far too often to be a reliable server platform (even their LTS releases... 18 months?). They just patch over problems with new releases.
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FartingBob
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Will to begin with im only having 4 drives in their (the 2 640GB Blue's staying in my main system storing the OS and programs), but if I need any more drives later on i plan on buying a PCI SATA add-on card, but four 1TB drives should keep me happy for a while.
I've heard good things about debian. The only linux ive ever used is kubuntu, but i couldn't get my wireless network working on it so gave up. But i remember debian can come with a ton of programs on the DVD so hopefully i wouldn't need to connect to the internet to get it set-up. I've also ordered a trial version of WHS since MS gives it out on a 120 day trial. I expect it wont be that ideal for the low power server, but it wont cost me anything to try it out if debian annoys me.
I've heard good things about debian. The only linux ive ever used is kubuntu, but i couldn't get my wireless network working on it so gave up. But i remember debian can come with a ton of programs on the DVD so hopefully i wouldn't need to connect to the internet to get it set-up. I've also ordered a trial version of WHS since MS gives it out on a 120 day trial. I expect it wont be that ideal for the low power server, but it wont cost me anything to try it out if debian annoys me.
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protellect
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I'd get the least expensive antec earthwatts supply. I've seen the 330W for 30$ many times.
It certainly may be overkill, and you might not get the best efficiency, but when you're dealing with such a low load, more efficiency doesn't help *that* much in the long run when you're spending a lot more on power supply.
It certainly may be overkill, and you might not get the best efficiency, but when you're dealing with such a low load, more efficiency doesn't help *that* much in the long run when you're spending a lot more on power supply.
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Nick Geraedts
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Why wouldn't it be ideal? WHS is the best setup you could hope for if you're only dealing with Windows clients on your network (far better than trying to properly configure Samba shares and permissions - ugh).FartingBob wrote:I've also ordered a trial version of WHS since MS gives it out on a 120 day trial. I expect it wont be that ideal for the low power server, but it wont cost me anything to try it out if debian annoys me.
It'll cost you a bit more, but the time and headaches saved are well worth it in my opinion.
I have a Antec earthwatts 380W in my server and it works well. The loudest thing in the PC is the 3 seasonic 1TB drives (got them for free so I have to deal with the noise) so I don't hear the fan. The earthwatts is certainly not the quietest PSU out there but it is high efficiency, cheap, and often quiet enough.
I use unRAID for my media storage server. It was extremely simple to set-up (much easier than installing Windows) and it's working great for me so far. The OS runs off of a flash drive and doesn't require much processing power (I use a Celeron 430). Kinda picky about hardware, though (motherboards, to be specific). 
It doesn't have WHS's bells and whistles, but it does provide some measure of redundancy. Closest description I could give is it's a protected JBOD. Think RAID 4/5 without the striping. Read is pretty much limited by spindle and connection speed. Writes are kinda slow, though, but can be circumvented with the use of a temporary cache drive. Drives can be set to spin down after a certain amount of time to lower power consumption. Also, since it's a JBOD configuration, only the drive containing the file will be spun-up during reads.
There's a free 3-drive (1-parity, 2-storage) version that you can test with your hardware. If you wanna install more hard drives, license for 6-drives (1-parity, 5-storage) is US$69 and license for 16-drives (1-parity, 15-storage) is US$119.
It doesn't have WHS's bells and whistles, but it does provide some measure of redundancy. Closest description I could give is it's a protected JBOD. Think RAID 4/5 without the striping. Read is pretty much limited by spindle and connection speed. Writes are kinda slow, though, but can be circumvented with the use of a temporary cache drive. Drives can be set to spin down after a certain amount of time to lower power consumption. Also, since it's a JBOD configuration, only the drive containing the file will be spun-up during reads.
There's a free 3-drive (1-parity, 2-storage) version that you can test with your hardware. If you wanna install more hard drives, license for 6-drives (1-parity, 5-storage) is US$69 and license for 16-drives (1-parity, 15-storage) is US$119.
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Nick Geraedts
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FartingBob
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Nick Geraedts
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Not sure who you're asking, but my system is ~80W idle and ~140W with drives thrashing (parity check). I blame the Seagates for the high power consumption.AznJason wrote:Just wondering, what's the power consumption of your rig? I'm thinking of doing something similar with a Celeron 440 and I'm wondering about the power consumption vs. a low power AMD chip.
Specifications:
Antec Three Hundred
Corsair 520HX
Abit AB9 Pro
Intel Celeron 430, stock
Kingston 2x1GB DDR2 667 SDRAM
ATI Rage XL 8MB
Sandisk Micro 1GB USB
Seagate 7200.11 Barracuda 1.5TB x8
Samsung Spinpoint F 1TB x1
Antec Tricool 120mm on high (exhaust)
Antec Tricool 140mm on high (exhaust)
Scythe Slipstream 120mm 800RPM x2 (intake)
unRAID doesn't have power management available for the CPU so I reckon it's possible to still shave off a couple of watts by undervolting/underclocking. Seagate drives use considerably higher idle power than either Western Digital or Samsung. Even moreso if you use the 5400RPM models.