[denywinarto]

Hi, i plan to share multimedia files (around 40tb) to 30 clients from ubuntu server.
I have 2 options.
1. 1 server with asrock extreme 6 pro motherboard (10 SATA), i3 haswell, 4TB x 10 green WD, 8 gb ram and 700 watt power supply
2. 3 servers with minimum specs, probably dual core, each with 4x 4tb 4x 4tb and 2x 4tb

Now my concern with 3 computers is the electrical consumption (it's not cheap in my country) and the maintenance cost which in this case is tripled compared to the first option (except the HDD)

But with single server, my concern if, what if all clients access the file simultaneously?
Would it be enough to handle them?
I need the clients to be able to play 1080p movies smoothly btw...
I'm afraid if the transfer rate slows down it will cause movie lags

I can't find similar case on internet so i hope i can get help here..

thanks before.

[prae5]

You don't say what your network setup is or the bitrate of your content. How do you plan on setting your hd's up, etc...

[denywinarto]

You don't say what your network setup is or the bitrate of your content. How do you plan on setting your hd's up, etc...

By network setup you mean the LAN? I plan to use MB lan not GB..
The content is shared with samba..
the content mostly, like i said above 1080p, some are 720p...
Filesystem, i prefer NTFS because i plan to use the HDD on both windows and ubuntu..

The clients use win xp

sorry if i miss anything else let me know..

[capslock118]

what prae5 said.

You may need to get a mainboard with dual gigabit ethernet (or buy a second ethernet card) and the bond the two together to increase throughput...but that all depends on what your expected load would be.

EDIT: posted at the same time you defined your LAN. If you are only pushing out on a 100Mb ethernet card you might have troubles. That type of speed is fine for a couple clients but you will find that it will be lacking at 30.

[Mettbrot]

And keep in mind Windows XP is not supported in the latest and greatest XBMC Gotham.

[denywinarto]

what prae5 said.

You may need to get a mainboard with dual gigabit ethernet (or buy a second ethernet card) and the bond the two together to increase throughput...but that all depends on what your expected load would be.

EDIT: posted at the same time you defined your LAN. If you are only pushing out on a 100Mb ethernet card you might have troubles. That type of speed is fine for a couple clients but you will find that it will be lacking at 30.

Hmm i guess my expected load would be,
1080p movies being played together on 30 clients smoothly..

Double ethernet, never thought of that before...
But wouldn't that mean 2 ip's?
And those 2 ip's still stream from the same content dont they?
Hmm gonna have to take a look at this..

EDIT : ok but that means i'm gonna have to replace LAN card on the server side only correct?
Wait, i think the motherboard already has GB lancard, it's the clients that have MB lancard..
So it shouldn't be a problem right?

Hasu0bs : I'm using Frodo

[Mettbrot]

You can pretty easy calculate this stuff by yourself:
Gigabit Ethernet is 1000 Mbit/s is 125 MB/s. This is most certainly lower than the speed of a single HDD so this is what to look on.
Now if your 1080p movie is 20 GB and 90 minutes long this means an average bitrate of 3,8 Mb/s.
This means that theoretically up to 32 clients could watch this movie. With 100/10 Ethernet only 3 clients could watch it.

[denywinarto]

You can pretty easy calculate this stuff by yourself:
Gigabit Ethernet is 1000 Mbit/s is 125 MB/s. This is most certainly lower than the speed of a single HDD so this is what to look on.
Now if your 1080p movie is 20 GB and 90 minutes long this means an average bitrate of 3,8 Mb/s.
This means that theoretically up to 32 clients could watch this movie. With 100/10 Ethernet only 3 clients could watch it.

20GB 90 minutes = 3.8 Mb/s

I see, another alternative that i consider is minibrrip 1080p,
which is usually 1-2GB... so that makes the bitrate 38 - 76 Mb/s
That should be enough, am i right?

[Mettbrot]

in this calculation 2 GB would mean 380 kB/s. But as you saw it should even work with the 20 GB Movie. Considering also this is a worst case iteration. Movies are normally smaller than 20 GB, normaly longer than 90 minutes (at least mine) and not every client watches something at the same time.

[nickr]

in this calculation 2 GB would mean 380 kB/s. But as you saw it should even work with the 20 GB Movie. Considering also this is a worst case iteration. Movies are normally smaller than 20 GB, normaly longer than 90 minutes (at least mine) and not every client watches something at the same time.

You only need gigE between the server and the switch. 100M will be fine to each client.

[denywinarto]

in this calculation 2 GB would mean 380 kB/s. But as you saw it should even work with the 20 GB Movie. Considering also this is a worst case iteration. Movies are normally smaller than 20 GB, normaly longer than 90 minutes (at least mine) and not every client watches something at the same time.

in this calculation 2 GB would mean 380 kB/s. But as you saw it should even work with the 20 GB Movie. Considering also this is a worst case iteration. Movies are normally smaller than 20 GB, normaly longer than 90 minutes (at least mine) and not every client watches something at the same time.

You only need gigE between the server and the switch. 100M will be fine to each client.

Lol yeah sorry i meant 380 kB/s
yeah so i just have to make sure the drives are used evenly right?
I'll see if i can spread the movies evenly...

@nickr, the switch is still mb though... so it's advisable to replace it to gigE?

[nickr]

You can get switches with just one or two gigE ports and the rest 100M. That might be cheaper than going gigE for every port.

[calibos]

What client devices are you using?

My house is wired with Cat5e. Gigabit on my 2 NAS boxes to a gigabit switch. I only paid about €60 for my 24 port gigabit switch.

My plan is to eventually move my current 10 HDDs spread across desktops and NAS boxes to a DIY server build with 29 hotswap bays. The mobo I use only has to have 5 sata ports because the other 24 will come from 3x super micro SAT2-MV8 8 port sata controller cards. €40 Each S/H on eBay. These are Sata II 3gb/s but that's plenty to stream 1080p media content to lots of clients. HDDs don't even saturate SATA II. You only need SATA III for SSDs.

I'll be installing WHS2011 which is only about €50 afaik and Flexraid (€70) for drive pooling and data protection.

---

30 clients sounds like you are in the hospitality industry though. Even if you are ripping your own purchased content as opposed to downloading you'd be breeching copyright by public 'exhibition'. Are you not worried about inspection by the powers that be?

[CaptainPsycho]

yeah so i just have to make sure the drives are used evenly right?
I'll see if i can spread the movies evenly...

You should use a raid for this usecase.

With 10 disks i would suggest a raid 6 so you'll end up with 32TB usable drive space.

All data will be spread even on all disks automatically.

Put at least 16GB RAM into this box so it has a big cache. Could be usefull when serving 30 clients.

And take a smaller PSU. 500W should be more than enough.

And DON'T use NTFS as filesystem. It is very very very slow and not really stable under linux. Use ext4 f.e.. You can interact through samba with your server from windows. You don't need ntfs and really should not use ist!

mdadm software raid 6 + lvm + ext4 would be my suggestion. This has a fault tollerance of 2 disks, and is easiely expandable with further disks of this size.

[denywinarto]

@nickr
About the gigE switch.. wouldn't it cause bottleneck?
If my clients are still using mb port?

What client devices are you using?

My house is wired with Cat5e. Gigabit on my 2 NAS boxes to a gigabit switch. I only paid about €60 for my 24 port gigabit switch.

My plan is to eventually move my current 10 HDDs spread across desktops and NAS boxes to a DIY server build with 29 hotswap bays. The mobo I use only has to have 5 sata ports because the other 24 will come from 3x super micro SAT2-MV8 8 port sata controller cards. €40 Each S/H on eBay. These are Sata II 3gb/s but that's plenty to stream 1080p media content to lots of clients. HDDs don't even saturate SATA II. You only need SATA III for SSDs.

I'll be installing WHS2011 which is only about €50 afaik and Flexraid (€70) for drive pooling and data protection.

---

30 clients sounds like you are in the hospitality industry though. Even if you are ripping your own purchased content as opposed to downloading you'd be breeching copyright by public 'exhibition'. Are you not worried about inspection by the powers that be?

My clients are using xp..
I'm running ubuntu for the server..
I see thats another option too..
How would the performance be compated to the built in sata?

About the regulations, well lets just they still allow us to view but not copy but im not gonna discuss it further cause it oot..

yeah so i just have to make sure the drives are used evenly right?
I'll see if i can spread the movies evenly...

You should use a raid for this usecase.

With 10 disks i would suggest a raid 6 so you'll end up with 32TB usable drive space.

All data will be spread even on all disks automatically.

Put at least 16GB RAM into this box so it has a big cache. Could be usefull when serving 30 clients.

And take a smaller PSU. 500W should be more than enough.

And DON'T use NTFS as filesystem. It is very very very slow and not really stable under linux. Use ext4 f.e.. You can interact through samba with your server from windows. You don't need ntfs and really should not use ist!

mdadm software raid 6 + lvm + ext4 would be my suggestion. This has a fault tollerance of 2 disks, and is easiely expandable with further disks of this size.

How bout zfs or btrfs?
Im using ubuntu btw
About the filesystem, well i plan to unplug the drives quite often and use them to copy files from windows.. so ext4 is gonna be a problem for this isnt' it?