RAID controler and OS for storage++ server

[Brusfantomet]

I am going to build myself a server for storing files, home network is 1 Gbit. I am also going to try to make it possible to access the files over the Internet since i currently have a ok fiber concretion (25/25) that, if needed, can be upgraded (60/60) for a small fee.

In this server i was planing on starting out with fore drives of eiter 3 GB or 4GB in RAID 5 or RAID 6. the question then becomes what kind of RAID controller is needed. Seeing as the network is going to become the bottleneck anyway i am tempted to use software RAID in the OS as this acutaly works rather good under windows (am running two 120 SSDs in RAID 0 ATM).

Ass for OS, i have legal keays for both Windows server 2008 R2 (datacenter and enterprise) and Server 2012 (datacenter, standard and essentials). Linux is probably also a possibility but i may want to run game servers on the server in the future, something that i think is going to be easier with windows.

Price wise ha no exact budget, and ass all the parts i going to be sourced from Norwegian stores i was hoping to keep it below 1600 USD (10000 NOK) but, the budget is as stated flexible.

I have considered NAS boxes as well, but the bulk of the price is gona bee the hard drives anyway, and its of utmost importance that the server becomes silent, witch i can do with standard hardware.

 

[remixedcat]

Thejesus can be of assistance with RAID stuff

 

[freaksavior]

Look at a mid range Adapatec, 5805, 6805, 7805. You can usually find them in the f/s section much cheaper than new.

Adaptec RAID 5805 2244300-R SATA/SAS 8 internal po...
Adaptec RAID 6805 2271200-R 6Gb/s SATA/SAS 8 inter...
Adaptec 2274200-R Controller Card - Newegg.com

Raid you would want cache memory with a battery in case of power failure so make sure to get a bbu for the machine and the controller.

Get drives designed to run for extended periods of time with lots of read/writes. WD SE are a good option since they are designed around nas usage.

$279 -- Western Digital WD SE WD4000F9YZ 4TB 7200 RPM 64MB...
$229 -- Western Digital WD SE WD3000F9YZ 3TB 7200 RPM 64MB...

Web accessible just depends on what you are wanting to do. Just a basic file server you could load an easy distro like ubuntu/debian or rehl/cent. You also have free nas, or even server 20xx os (not my recommendation) Core i3/i5 is fine, 4gb of ram is good. I currently run a VM of centos with 1gb and 1 core and it streams all my stuff.

 

[Brusfantomet]

Look at a mid range Adapatec, 5805, 6805, 7805. You can usually find them in the f/s section much cheaper than new.

Adaptec RAID 5805 2244300-R SATA/SAS 8 internal po...
Adaptec RAID 6805 2271200-R 6Gb/s SATA/SAS 8 inter...
Adaptec 2274200-R Controller Card - Newegg.com

Raid you would want cache memory with a battery in case of power failure so make sure to get a bbu for the machine and the controller.

Get drives designed to run for extended periods of time with lots of read/writes. WD SE are a good option since they are designed around nas usage.

$279 -- Western Digital WD SE WD4000F9YZ 4TB 7200 RPM 64MB...
$229 -- Western Digital WD SE WD3000F9YZ 3TB 7200 RPM 64MB...

Web accessible just depends on what you are wanting to do. Just a basic file server you could load an easy distro like ubuntu/debian or rehl/cent. You also have free nas, or even server 20xx os (not my recommendation) Core i3/i5 is fine, 4gb of ram is good. I currently run a VM of centos with 1gb and 1 core and it streams all my stuff.

Those RAID cards cost about 4000 to 5000 nok here. Since the network is going to be the tougthput limiter and its only going to serve media files latency wont be a big issue (50 extra ms form the raid controller is tolerable) i was hoping to use a cheaper version, something more like LSI SAS9207-8i (2000 nok) or just use the cheapest controlers and use the internal RAID options in the OS.

Is there a reason for not using windows based server OS? Considering the price is the same for a Linux version for me?

7200 RPM drives are not an option, to loud. considering either WD red or SEAGATE NAS HDD in either 3 or 4 GB. Got any recommendations?

 

[freaksavior]

If the data is important, then don't skimp the controller or the drives. Don't. I've dealt with cheap controllers and some of the higher end ones. The LSI you mentioned should be fine but the drives I am skeptical of.

 

[Brusfantomet]

hmm, only problem is that all the drives you suggested is 7200 rpm drives, and that will not work. Also, does going for Highpoint Rocketraid 2720SGL count as skimping on the controller, as its cheaper than the LSI one but supports RAID 5 and RAID 6, as opposed to the LSI one that only does 0, 1 and 10.

 

[freaksavior]

hmm, only problem is that all the drives you suggested is 7200 rpm drives, and that will not work. Also, does going for Highpoint Rocketraid 2720SGL count as skimping on the controller, as its cheaper than the LSI one but supports RAID 5 and RAID 6, as opposed to the LSI one that only does 0, 1 and 10.

I absolutly understand what you are saying. Lets try a different aproach. What's this being used for. Are you just going to use it for personal space?

I guess ultimate it won't make much difference. A 1Gbps nic is only going to do 125MB/s. Consider the TCP overhead and you'll get around 112 unless you plan to dual nic everything.

How many drives are you planning to run? I was looked at the WD RED NAS drives you mentioned but I don't see a actual speed, maybe they are varible. It looks like they would max around 100MB/s so you would need 2 drives in raid 0 or at least (i would say) 4 if you want raid 5. The larger raid 5 is the longer it takes to rebuild as well. If you plan to exceed 10TB's there is an alternate raid that's does this better but I sadly can't remember the name right now.

 

[Wrigleyvillain]

You sure about RAID 5? 1 or 10 is probably better for simpler "home needs"; you need a controller with a battery backup (BBU) and onboard cache for proper RAID 5 with any kind of decent performance which def ups the price. If you do want 5 I would look at a used IBM M5015 which is a rebranded LSI card. If no 5 then the IBM M1015 (LSI 9220) is an absolute steal on eBay and can be flashed per your needs with certain LSI firmware.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trk....Xibm+m1015&_nkw=ibm+m1015&_sacat=0&_from=R40

http://www.servethehome.com/ibm-m1015-part-1-started-lsi-92208i/

 

[freaksavior]

You sure about RAID 5? 1 or 10 is probably better for simpler "home needs"; you need a controller with a battery backup (BBU) and onboard cache for proper RAID 5 with any kind of decent performance which def ups the price. If you do want 5 I would look at a used IBM M5015 which is a rebranded LSI card. If no 5 then the IBM M1015 (LSI 9220) is an absolute steal on eBay and can be flashed per your needs with certain LSI firmware.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_trk....Xibm+m1015&_nkw=ibm+m1015&_sacat=0&_from=R40

http://www.servethehome.com/ibm-m1015-part-1-started-lsi-92208i/

Raid 10 takes a lot of drives, raid 5 is outdated for high storage capacity.

What you want is this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS

Raid-z3. Designed for more 6-10TB
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/a...e/raid-strategy-hi-capacity-drives-170907.pdf

 

[Brusfantomet]

I am going to move all the spinning devices from the main computer, so that is becomes even more silent. The files are mostly movies, series, music and some ISO files. Its only one client at the moment (my own pc) but could be a few more in time, nothing high demand. Maybe running some game server on it, and if i could make the files stored on it accessible outside the home network that would be nice, but not a must. At the moment i am planing on 3 or 4 drives to make a array from 6 TB to 12 TB (dependent on size of drives and number of drives), but maybe adding extra drives when that capacity is full (have 4 TB of data ATM)

For a comparison of the drives Anandtech have a review here.

ZFS is not possible on a windows server i think, and is there any good reason (except ZFS) against Win server? Because i have this feeling its easier to do on a windows OS.

 

[Wrigleyvillain]

No I guess not in your case as you already have the licenses and yeah Windows will generally be easier (assuming not experienced with Linux System Admin).

 

[Rhyseh]

Personally I would recommend looking at Synology NAS devices. It's what I ended up doing when I was looking at the same options. LOT's of features on those things. Haven't regretted my decision so far.

 

[Killer_Rubber_Ducky]

If you want to use it for a File server, go with something like FreeBSD with the ZFS file system or OpenSuse or Debian or CentOS with the XFS file system. AFAIK these are all free offerings.

If you are more into the Paid-For method, you can not go wrong with SLED or Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop Server edition for ~300$.
Or try RHED or Red Hat Enterprise Desktop.
But the CentOS is the free version of Red Hat. While openSuse is the free version of SLED.

Also, if you want to make your own NAS you can use FreeNAS.


http://www.serverfocus.org/reiserfs-vs-ext4-vs-xfs-vs-zfs-vs-btrfs#ZFS
XFS:

XFS is packed full of cool features like guaranteed rate I/O, online resizing, built-in quota enforcement, and it can theoretically support filesystems up to 8 exabytes in size. It’s been used on Linux since about 2001, and is available as an install option on many popular Linux distributions. With variable block sizes, you can tune your system like a sliding scale to tweak for space efficiency or read performance.
Best for extremely large file systems, large files, and lots of files
Journaled (an asymmetric parallel cluster file system version is also available)
POSIX extended access controls
The XFS file system is Open Source and included in major Linux distributions. It originated from SGI (Irix) and was designed specifically for large files and large volume scalability. Video and multi-media files are best handled by this file system. Scaling to petabyte volumes, it also handles great deals of data. It is one of the few filesystems on Linux which supports Data Migration (SGI contributed the Hierarchical Storage Management interfaces into the Linux Kernel a number of years ago). SGI also offers a closed source cluster parallel version of XFS called cXFS which like cVxFS is an asymmetrical model. It has the unique feature, however, that it’s slave nodes can run on Unix, Linux and Windows, making it a cross platform file system. Its master node must run on SGI hardware.
Recommended Use: If you really like to tweak your system to meet your needs, XFS is a great way to go.

ZFS:

ZFS is a combined file system and logical volume manager designed by Sun Microsystems. The features of ZFS include data integrity (protection against bit rot, etc.), support for high storage capacities, integration of the concepts of filesystem and volume management, snapshots and copy-on-write clones, continuous integrity checking and automatic repair, RAID-Z and native NFSv4 ACLs. ZFS is implemented as open-source software, licensed under the Common Development and Distribution License (CDDL).
Recommended Use: ZFS is the best choice for FreeBSD and Solaris users.