Home server queries

[kevin7.1]

I have started to put together a home server. I intend to use it to back up the other PC's in my house and also to store my ripped cd's to send to the media players I have. For the moment that's ps3 and blu ray players and an onkyo receiver. I do have a couple of beep players on order.
I have a couple questions, first is which software/is to use. I have been looking at Ubuntu but wouldn't know if server or desktop would be better for me. I can also get windows server.
I know there are more options but I have no experience in any of this server stuff.
The second question is hard drive related. I was going to go for wd caviar greens for the energy efficiency. I think reds are more suited to this application but I was thinking about energy usage. I have since read that greens are most prone to failure and are the slowest drives. So should I just go with reds or can anyone recommend a cheaper, better alternative.
I plan to use an ssd for the os and initially 2 x 2tb drives in a raid that will have one drive backup the other. Then add another couple when funds permit.
Hardware up to now is a supermicro server mobo running two dual core zeons with 8gb ram
Probably over kill but I got them for next to nothing. As I learn what I am doing I will use more of its capabilities.
Thanks in advance for any advice you can give.
Kev.

 

[michael hoy]

Hi Kev,

I can tell my experience with my setup.

I have a HP Micro Server and a Fujitsu TX100 both with 8GB ram and running Windows Home Server 2011, I have used both makes for streaming music and video.

The Fujitsu streams video better, but there is no difference in music using wireless.

Linux will cost you no money for the OS and WHS 2011 about £34.00, for ease of set up £34.00 is not a lot to pay.

I also use WD Red drives (4 x 2TB) and had no issues with them, they are on 24/7.

 

[kevin7.1]

Thanks for the reply Michael.
I have decided to go with Amahi installed on ubuntu.
as ubuntu is free, more secure than Windows and I don't need a fancy gui at the server itself. The apps on Amahi look interesting and provide everything I am going to Need and more. Plus it will give me a great learning exercise/project building , installing and figuring out how to get it all working and secure.
I went with the wd reds in the end. I need to grab one more before I start as I now want to build a raid 5 array. I thought you could build raid 5 with two discs and add one at a later date but you can't. Anyways, this will leave my current 1tb nas to back up my pc's and I will buy a separate external drive to back up the server.
If anyone can add any pointers regarding Amahi I would really appreciate it.
Thanks
Kev.

 

[cheeseboy]

ok, a couple of things you might want to consider. Obviously feel free to ignore

Firstly the hardware you are using. A couple of dual core xeons - nice, but yes overkill. More importantly is the power usage. Xeons are not power friendly chips and you could find yourself racking up quite a big electricity bill if you plan to leave it turned on 24x7. If the nas things works for you I would seriously consider changing hardware - have a look at the HP microserver as already suggested. If you look around they used to have them with 100 quid cashback, so they were *dirt* cheap. It might save you a lot of money in the future.

Secondly. This is something compski's bang on about but it's very very important. Raid *is not* backup. It's redundancy. Keep backups to those external hard drives and/or cloud storage. This can save a lot of possible tears in the future. Also bear in mind that most forms of commonly used raid, bar raid 0, you will lose storage space for the parity. Raid 1, you lose half your storage, raid 5 iirc is 1/3. You need to factor this in to account when setting up as to how much space you need, as opposed to how much will be available to you. If you are taking backups, then have think if you actually need raid or not, as it you might gain more from just having them as stand alone drives and thus giving you more storage. Also, like I said earlier, Raid is not a backup, and if say in your raid 5 array 2 drives go, you will lose the data off *all* of the drives, hence the suggestion of maybe think about not using raid, as that way if one drive goes, you will only lose the data off one drive. There's a trade off to be done here, and it's up to you which you feel the most comfortable with.

Thirdy Amahi. I have personal problems with this as they are wrapping up open source software and selling it. It's a massively grey area, and one I'm not to keen to see expanded, however, this is a personal view. Don't get me wrong, Amahi is quite nice and does the job. You could try freenas, as that would do what you want and it has plugins as well, but that's free. It's also possible to load the synology software on to you computer, so basically making a home made synology, and that would give you the full synology functions and plug ins. So there are other options if you find Amahi doesn't work for you.

Either way, good luck

 

[kevin7.1]

Thanks for that cheeseboy. I was looking at the microserver. The server mobo I have now just popped up on eBay for penny's so I dived in head first. Didn't really consider power useage. But was hoping there would be a low power mode it would go into when not being accessed. I guess I could just try it and see. And swap out the motherboard if it proves to expensive. I have power monitoring so I will see the power usage/cost quite quickly
The reason I sided with Amahi over freenas was it appears to be easier to work with and set up. as I Only have basic knowledge this appealed to me.
I do have one question. If I have one disc failure which will be easier to restore and have my server back up and running. Separate drives with a backup or the raid five array from the parity.
also is the read performance boost with raid five worth it over having separate disks.

 

[cheeseboy]

Thanks for that cheeseboy. I was looking at the microserver. The server mobo I have now just popped up on eBay for penny's so I dived in head first. Didn't really consider power useage. But was hoping there would be a low power mode it would go into when not being accessed.

if you can dig up the cpu model numbers, you can have a look at a website like cpu boss. Here is a random comparison of a xeon 3040 vs and amd turion 2 (the type found in the HP microserver) http://cpuboss.com/cpus/Intel-Xeon-3040-vs-AMD-Turion-II-Neo-N54L

Typical low power usage for the xeon is approx 52/53w and the AMD is approx 20w.

I guess I could just try it and see. And swap out the motherboard if it proves to expensive. I have power monitoring so I will see the power usage/cost quite quickly

yeh, it's more the cpu's rather than the mobo. Cpu's are designed with certain power usages. Xeons are designed for 24x7 business class use.

The reason I sided with Amahi over freenas was it appears to be easier to work with and set up. as I Only have basic knowledge this appealed to me.

and in fairness to Amahi, it is very good at that. Like I say, my gripes with it are purely person, so just ingore me Although I would still reccomend trying freenas, as you can boot it from a usb stick and have a quick play. That is if you can be faffed

I do have one question. If I have one disc failure which will be easier to restore and have my server back up and running. Separate drives with a backup or the raid five array from the parity. also is the read performance boost with raid five worth it over having separate disks.

See what LHC says, he's right The only reason I suggest thinking about having them as seperate disks and not in a raid array is just that you can then use all the space - it's a tightwads solution. I'm a tightwad As a general rule of thumb though, it's better to keep operating systems and storage array seperately. So, single disk or Raid 1 for the os - if you can afford it, an ssd. Then have your raid array just for storage. Once you have your OS up and running how you want it, always worth taking an image of the disk so you can quickly restore if you need to.

To be honest, on a home network doing the types of things you are talking about, I don't think you'd notice much difference in performace between a single disk and a raid 5 array. Could be totally wrong though

 

[The_Lhc]

I do have one question. If I have one disc failure which will be easier to restore and have my server back up and running. Separate drives with a backup or the raid five array from the parity. also is the read performance boost with raid five worth it over having separate disks.

You don't really "restore" from the parity with RAID 5, you just remove the failed disk and put a new one in and it'll start to rebuilt itself, so from that point of view RAID 5 is much better as the server won't actually stop running at all (in fact if you're not paying attention you may not even notice a disk has failed).

RAID 5 is NOT a backup though, you would still be advised to keep a separate backup. If you accidentally delete a load of files for example you can't get them back via RAID 5.