Low-power Seedbox/File-Server/NAS?

[krille]

I want to put together a low-power file server that will act as a BitTorrent seedbox (on a 100/100 Mbps connection) as well as NAS (Network Attached Storage) for streaming up to Blu-Ray (40 Mbps) content to my main PC. RAID-5 capability is a must. It will be put it in my closet.

I guess the priorities are low power consumption, reliability (RAID-5) and 24/7/365 stability. The functionality I really need is:

• Gbit Network Card (NIC)
• RAID-5 (for at least four SATA drives)
• IGP (as integrated graphics should save both power and $)

1. What setup would you suggest for this?


At first I was thinking Intel Atom, but it appears to lack RAID-5.
VIA Nano is about as expensive as a proper Intel C2D or AMD X2 system and I'm not even sure VIA Nano has RAID-5.
Intel Core 2 Duo Mobile CPUs are very low-power, but about three times as expensive as a 45W AMD Athlon X2 CPU.
So I'm currently leaning towards a 45W AMD.


2. If AMD X2, what motherboard would you suggest?


Remember, this is not an HTPC. No fancy features such as hardware video decoding, 7.1 sound, etc is required. Features like that will probably be deactivated (to save power) if possible. The board won't have to be a good overclocker as I doubt any overclocking will be necessary. Again, rock solid stability is a must of course.


Thanks!

[lowpowercomputing]

I don't quite get what you mean by saying "[CPU] lacks RAID-5." Do you mean the boards most likely don't support it or the CPU won't be powerful enough to give satisfying read/write speeds from the array (if done in software)? You say you want to connect four SATA disks, so you'd need a board with at least four SATA ports. Not sure if there's an Atom/Nano board with that much. The Intel D945GCLF with an Atom 230 only has two, so has the ECS Atom board. A "hardware" RAID-5 would require an additional PCI(e) controller card anyway which is not cheap if you go for one with a CPU, RAM, cache of its own.

[krille]

Well, when I say Intel Atom I mean that you usually buy the Atom+mobo combo in the same box. And those combos (at least those my local distributors carry) lack RAID-5 (not to mention the four SATA slots). That's what I meant (ie I refer to Intel Atom as a platform rather than the mere CPU). Excuse the ambiguity, I trimmed down the OP quite heavily to make it shorter, thinking that people would read between the lines and understand anyway. And yeah, a HW RAID-5 controller is expensive. Thus I see no need to get one for a home-grade seedbox/NAS when integrated RAID solutions can do RAID-5 via software anyway.

[vincentfox]

There is a Gigabyte mini-ITX board with 6 SATA.

GA-EG45M-DS2H

If you want redundancy, mirror a couple of large disks. This is not 1990 so it's just insane IMO to do RAID5 any more.

http://www.baarf.com

If I have terabyte or so of data, it's probably something that matters to me enough not to expose it to the dangers of RAID5. I've seen enough failures of RAID-5 arrays for one lifetime. Had a fellow admin nearly lose his job 4 years ago over RAID5 when a fat Gateway server trashed everything, and then infuriated manager gets told the filesystem is toast and will take days to recover from tape.

[krille]

(cut to conserve space)

That was a very interesting read, thank you. I think I will avoid RAID-5 and the problems inherent in the technology then. And no, most of my data is not sensitive (my music collection - both lossy MP3 and lossless FLAC/APE - is really the only stuff that's difficult and very time consuming to restore).

The thing is, I got the impression (from another thread in the silent storage section) that the failure rates of BitTorrent seedboxes are quite high (due to the constant stress on the HDDs).

I guess I could store sensitive data, backups and the actual system partition on a dedicated 2-drive mirror. So I need RAID-1 at the very least. Still a minimum of 4 drives total, the capability to have 6 drives would probably be good, in case of future expansions.

As for G45, I don't think I'm going Intel at all. Intel don't seem to carry desktop CPUs with a TDP lower than 65W. AMD carries 45W desktop CPUs. Besides, AMD is considerably cheaper at this point and I doubt I need much crunching performance at all for this build. And while the Gigabyte 780G boards are very popular, they're HTPC boards with lots of extras this 'server' hardly needs.

[colin2]

I've had similar thoughts and the VIA NAS 7800 jumped out in a search

http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/mainb ... ard_id=610
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5xyJ9An4E8

but apparently it's "not a consumer product" and the closest I can find to one on sale is

http://www.e-itx.com/via-nas-7800-15lst.html

The server mobos I find on Newegg seem overpowered for mere serving.

I guess you could just get a regular VIA mini-ITX board and stick a RAID controller card in it, but it would be nice to have something more compact. I'm looking for the capacity for at least 8 drives.


This was educational: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5Smc4Vz ... re=related

Oh, and a dumb question: is a basic RAID (like 1+0) SATA system in principle hot-swappable? That is if one disk dies does something tell you, and does the array rebuild on its own if you pull that disk out and put in a new one?

[CoolGav]

As for G45, I don't think I'm going Intel at all. Intel don't seem to carry desktop CPUs with a TDP lower than 65W.

Have you looked at the Celeron's, particularly the slightly older ones based on the Conroe core (420, 430, 440). They're single core, and rated at 35W. Or go with a C2D and fold for SPCR!

BTW, what OS are you planning on running?

[lm]

If you make it a linux box, you can use software RAID even if your mobo does not support any RAID, so you could still go for atom.

[smilingcrow]

I don't think I'm going Intel at all. Intel don't seem to carry desktop CPUs with a TDP lower than 65W. AMD carries 45W desktop CPUs.

AMD might well be the better platform due to the generally low power motherboards and low cost. AMD’s CPUs do consume a lot more power than Intel’s under load and you can’t compare TDP values as Intel don’t label their chips in the same way as AMD; some 65W Intel chips actually consume under 25W.
Intel’s Core 2 Duo platform is good if you require performance as the CPUs are very power efficient at load. Chipsets for the AMD platform are generally low power which means for a system that is not stressed much it will be more power efficient and cheaper to buy.

[Nick Geraedts]

If you want redundancy, mirror a couple of large disks. This is not 1990 so it's just insane IMO to do RAID5 any more.

http://www.baarf.com

If I have terabyte or so of data, it's probably something that matters to me enough not to expose it to the dangers of RAID5. I've seen enough failures of RAID-5 arrays for one lifetime. Had a fellow admin nearly lose his job 4 years ago over RAID5 when a fat Gateway server trashed everything, and then infuriated manager gets told the filesystem is toast and will take days to recover from tape.

Excuse me? The dangers of RAID5? The BAARF page was last updated almost a year ago. RAID5 is a very stable, well understood RAID solution. There's a reason why the majority of webhosting companies do their bulk data storage on RAID5 arrays. Furthermore, just about every major server manufacturer offers RAID5 as a storage solution. If it was really as bad as you say, the world would have fallen apart by now.

From my reading of the papers and webpages on that site, they're either severely out of date, or simply spreading FUD. Yes, RAID5 is slower than other RAID levels, but that was never what it was meant to do. Another observation - just about every real-world example refers to Oracle servers. Oracle isn't really known these days for their extreme performance in the first place, and they hammer disks on IO like there's no tomorrow compared to other solutions. If you're looking for the fastest read and write performance, RAID10 is your best bet. Your fellow admin was in an unfortunate position to have an irate manager, but should also have been down Gateway's throats for their error on their servers.

That was a very interesting read, thank you. I think I will avoid RAID-5 and the problems inherent in the technology then. And no, most of my data is not sensitive (my music collection - both lossy MP3 and lossless FLAC/APE - is really the only stuff that's difficult and very time consuming to restore).

The thing is, I got the impression (from another thread in the silent storage section) that the failure rates of BitTorrent seedboxes are quite high (due to the constant stress on the HDDs).

Unless you're hardwired into a 100Mbps connection, the "stress" on your hard drives should be minimal at best. Furthermore, dispite the "problems" listed on the BAARF site (which I wouldn't take without a grain of salt), a seedbox is mainly doing reads, which in the case of RAID5 is a single operation on a single drive.

[m0002a]

I am running the Asus M2A-VM with a 45 watt AMD 4050e 2.1 GHz dual core (they also have 2.3 and 2.5 GHz models). It has RAID 0, 1, and 10 support (no RAID 5); however, you would be better off with two large drives in RAID 10 than 3 or more drives in RAID 5 if you want low power. I am using the extremely quiet and low power WD 500 GB Green Drive (also comes in 640 and 1 TB versions). The board has 1 GB Ethernet.

Here is my complete build:
viewtopic.php?t=49610#4

[m0002a]

AMD’s CPUs do consume a lot more power than Intel’s under load and you can’t compare TDP values as Intel don’t label their chips in the same way as AMD; some 65W Intel chips actually consume under 25W.

The AMD 45 wat CPU's actually consume 7 watts at idle.

[m0002a]

Furthermore, dispite the "problems" listed on the BAARF site (which I wouldn't take without a grain of salt), a seedbox is mainly doing reads, which in the case of RAID5 is a single operation on a single drive.

Since when does a read (or a write for that matter) on RAID 5 use only a single physical drive? RAID 5 is stripped across all the drives in the array, which in the case of RAID 5 must be a minimum of 3 drives.

[smilingcrow]

AMD’s CPUs do consume a lot more power than Intel’s under load and you can’t compare TDP values as Intel don’t label their chips in the same way as AMD; some 65W Intel chips actually consume under 25W.

The AMD 45 wat CPU's actually consume 7 watts at idle.

Both ‘teams’ have CPUs that idle at low power; AMD’s advantage is with the low power chipsets.

[m0002a]

Both ‘teams’ have CPUs that idle at low power; AMD’s advantage is with the low power chipsets.

I don't know the exact prices, but my guess is that the AMD is a lot cheaper. I paid $59.00 (free shipping) about 2 weeks ago (newegg.com) for my AMD 4050e 2.1 GHz dual core 45 watt CPU.

[smilingcrow]

Both ‘teams’ have CPUs that idle at low power; AMD’s advantage is with the low power chipsets.

I don't know the exact prices, but my guess is that the AMD is a lot cheaper. I paid $59.00 (free shipping) about 2 weeks ago (newegg.com) for my AMD 4050e 2.1 GHz dual core 45 watt CPU.

And the AM2 motherboards are cheaper to. It’s hard to ignore AMD if you’re looking for good value and low power systems with low to medium performance; they pretty much own that market segment.

[Nick Geraedts]

Since when does a read (or a write for that matter) on RAID 5 use only a single physical drive? RAID 5 is stripped across all the drives in the array, which in the case of RAID 5 must be a minimum of 3 drives.

The actual data block for a particular file is only stored on a single disk. The RAID controller only needs to read the one data block from the single disk. There isn't any parity calculation done during a read operation, so there's no need to read from multiple disks.

Writes are more complicated though. At bare minimum, you require two reads and two writes. To write to a data block, you need to read the current data on that block as well as the parity block corresponding to the parity block. The parity of those two is calculated (which is the parity of the blocks on the remaining disks), and then used to calculate the new parity bit (along with the new data). That parity is then written to the parity block, and the data is written to the data block.

[bobbyto]

If you want redundancy, mirror a couple of large disks. This is not 1990 so it's just insane IMO to do RAID5 any more.


If I have terabyte or so of data, it's probably something that matters to me enough not to expose it to the dangers of RAID5. I've seen enough failures of RAID-5 arrays for one lifetime. Had a fellow admin nearly lose his job 4 years ago over RAID5 when a fat Gateway server trashed everything, and then infuriated manager gets told the filesystem is toast and will take days to recover from tape.

Excuse me? The dangers of RAID5? The BAARF page was last updated almost a year ago. RAID5 is a very stable, well understood RAID solution. There's a reason why the majority of webhosting companies do their bulk data storage on RAID5 arrays. Furthermore, just about every major server manufacturer offers RAID5 as a storage solution. If it was really as bad as you say, the world would have fallen apart by now.

From my reading of the papers and webpages on that site, they're either severely out of date, or simply spreading FUD. Yes, RAID5 is slower than other RAID levels, but that was never what it was meant to do. Another observation - just about every real-world example refers to Oracle servers. Oracle isn't really known these days for their extreme performance in the first place, and they hammer disks on IO like there's no tomorrow compared to other solutions. If you're looking for the fastest read and write performance, RAID10 is your best bet. Your fellow admin was in an unfortunate position to have an irate manager, but should also have been down Gateway's throats for their error on their servers.

That was a very interesting read, thank you. I think I will avoid RAID-5 and the problems inherent in the technology then. And no, most of my data is not sensitive (my music collection - both lossy MP3 and lossless FLAC/APE - is really the only stuff that's difficult and very time consuming to restore).

The thing is, I got the impression (from another thread in the silent storage section) that the failure rates of BitTorrent seedboxes are quite high (due to the constant stress on the HDDs).

Unless you're hardwired into a 100Mbps connection, the "stress" on your hard drives should be minimal at best. Furthermore, dispite the "problems" listed on the BAARF site (which I wouldn't take without a grain of salt), a seedbox is mainly doing reads, which in the case of RAID5 is a single operation on a single drive.

Using a RAID-5 system is not entirely secure and you still have to do another backup of the full system. Thats why replication, tape engines, ... exists...

For example, if one hard drive fails in your Raid5, you can still reconstruct it. However, if a second drive fails (the highest probability is during the reconstruction phase), you lose ALL your data. Thats why you must never rely on RAID5 as a backup.

[Nick Geraedts]

Using a RAID-5 system is not entirely secure and you still have to do another backup of the full system. Thats why replication, tape engines, ... exists...

No, and RAID was never designed or intended to be a backup solution. There are a lot of poorly informed people out there who claim this, but it's not the case. RAID is intended to reduce the risk of downtime in the event of hard drive failure.

For example, if one hard drive fails in your Raid5, you can still reconstruct it. However, if a second drive fails (the highest probability is during the reconstruction phase), you lose ALL your data. Thats why you must never rely on RAID5 as a backup.

When was the last time you had two hard drives of the same make and age fail within a few days of each other? In my experience (home systems, servers, NAS backups), it's luckily been never *touch wood*.

Yes, the array is vulnerable if a single disk dies, but that's the point of RAID5. Your data still exists and is accessible. I've rebuilt a number of RAID5 arrays, both because of failure (either disk, cable, or controller) and on purpose (I wanted to test the Linux RAID5 setup we're using), and at no point was there the dreaded failure of a second drive. I'm sure it's happened to others, but to disregard RAID because of the possibility of dual drive failure is (I don't mean to sound rude) silly.

[nutball]

Yes, the array is vulnerable if a single disk dies, but that's the point of RAID5.

It's also the point of RAID6, and of patrol read.

[m0002a]

The actual data block for a particular file is only stored on a single disk. The RAID controller only needs to read the one data block from the single disk. There isn't any parity calculation done during a read operation, so there's no need to read from multiple disks.

That is correct. But it is very unusual for a read operation to only read one data block. The data blocks for a file are distributed round-robin across all the disks in the array, so typically to read a file (or even part of a file) all the disks will be accessed. This stripping is actually good for read performance in that it spreads the load across multiple drives.

[Esben]

My old media centre changed role into being a storage server, also running Bittorrent. It's a 4800+ Athlon X2, underclocked and undervolted to 1 GHz at 0.8v. I've removed the fan from the stock heatsink, so that it's running fanless. With 4 WD 1 TB GP drives, it currently has an uptime of 103 days.
I remember a power draw of about 35W with the system only running on the CF SSD system drive. With all the drives, power consumption should be about 50W. Loading the processor increases power draw 5-6W.