[AaronD]

Hi all,

Sorry for this post - it may have been covered here, there are certainly many posts about people building there own servers, but I couldn't find an answer to my question.

I now have an XBMC setup I am very happy with (touch wood), and am turning my thoughts to building my own back-end dedicated server. I use to run WHS on a small form factor PC with a couple of drives in it, but now I am reaching the limit of HDD space I think I am best to build something from scratch.

I want to build something that will cope with the demands of storing videos, music, photos, install sets, etc for many years to come, so to me this means lots of hard drives. This is not a question on software, but more on hardware.

How do you build a machine that can handle say 8 or more drives? What do I need to look for, and what are the catches or pitfalls I should be wary of? Its the mundane physical things I am unsure about here - in the past (around 3 years ago now) when I built my last PC I remember that the MOBO I used could only handle a maximum of 4 SATA drives, and the power supply had a limited number of SATA power connectors as well. So do you need special equipment built to work with a large number of drives, or are the "expansion" modules you can get that allow you to add additional capacity to the system?

Any pitfalls with MOBO, CPU, powersupply, etc that I should be careful of? Cases also I would assume need to be really large to handle a large number of drives. Any recommendations? Any software issues I should be aware of?

Many thanks for any advice.

[AaronD]

I forgot to say - I have read about people saying that have 15TB or 20TB servers - I really would like to know how the hell you go about building one of those!

[jmarshall]

Hey Aaron,

You might want to investigate the UnRAID forums. I personally built a server with one of the AMD motherboards (785 I think it is) - many of them have 6 SATA ports which gives you a good start. Anything with lots of SATA ports and gigabit ethernet will do the trick though. Might pay to think about power usage as well - mine uses about 50W continuous, spiking up to 65W or so if all drives are spun up (hardly ever). The AMD boards were better in this regard when I was looking.

With 8+ drives then you do get into territory where things like the BIOS can affect things (not detecting all the drives) - so picking a motherboard that others have used would probably be a good idea. UnRAID also offers some hardware - not sure how good value it is though, but I guess you can be pretty confident that it'll scale well.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[poofyhairguy]

Fun topic.

Let me just tell you what I used for my newest server (since its in the range you want), then general advice.

I have:

Antec 1200 case

I got Four of the:

Scythe Hard Disk Stabilizer x4


With a Cooler Master 4 in 3 in top.

That combo gives me 16 bays for the cheap, that run really cool. With 2TB drives I hope to get well over 20GBs (like 7TB in it currently).

Mobo:
EP35-DS3R

With 8 sata ports. Hard to find that mobo as its older, but more sata ports and PCI Express slots are a must.

To hook up enough drives I will use a few of these:

Rosewill SIl3132 Cards


And one of these:

Rosewill PCIe 4x Card


My 12TB server is similar in an Antec 900.

Other Hardware Advice:


-Stick to single rail PSUs- most PSUs are multirail. The best are either Corsair PSUs (most are single rail) or Antec Neo PSUs. I have the Antec Neo 620c 620Watt PSU.

-Invest in good fans, your ears will thank you

-Avoid regular PCI Sata cards. All PCI slots share bandwidth and really the entire PCI bus can only run two modern sata drives at once. Stick to PCIe or PCIX cards.

-Avoid 7200 RPM drives. They are much hotter and Green drives are more than fast enough for multiple HD streams

-If you want to go to 20 HDs, or you want hot swap bays, then nothing is a better value than the:

NORCO RPC-4020


Personally I went the tower route to be able to use larger and quieter fans.

What software do I use? Unraid.

Why? Unraid gives you every advantage of JBOD-add any disk you want to the array of any size/speed you want and get full use of it- with the bonus of RAID 5 like single disk parity. Since it doesn't stripe the data its not nearly as dangerous as RAID 5- if three disks die the maximum you can lose is the data on those three disks, unlike RAID 5/6 where you are toast. Its single disk parity system (up to 20 drives!) makes way better use of space than WHS.

With my Unraid server, I can buy the disks one at a time from many vendors like WHS. My current build has a WD Green drive, a Samsung drive, a Hitachi drive, and a Seagate drive. It is literally impossible for me to get bit by a bad run of production at a single factory. Of course, WHS has the same benefit which is why I consider the two to be the only acceptable options for a home server.

Why is RAID 5/6/Z useless for a media server?


In my experiance my Unraid and WHS easily maxes my gigabit network- anyone that thinks they need more performance for a home server is kidding themselves.

Plus who really wants to buy all those expensive business class RAID cards when the max throughput needed is at most for a few HD movie streams at once.

I hope I helped....

[AaronD]

Thanks for this thorough explanation. Full of useful information, which I have already had to Google something on multi rail vs single rail PSUs I will continue to digest this.

One of my problems is that I recently moved from New Zealand, where hardware was reseasonably abundant, to Dubai where all of this equipment is difficult to find. If you're looking for the latest in HD TVs, then they are a dime a dozen, but if you are looking for a 4 in 3 harddrive cage then I am sure I will be searching in vain!

But I went to the "dingy compluter plaza" in old Dubai this afternoon and found a shop with good cases and the latest in Gigabyte motherboards, so some stuff is available.

I couldn't agree more on your comments on avoiding Raid. This is why I was leaning towards WHS - I get great control over exactly which folders in the pool I want duplicated. But I didn't know Unraid only used 1 drive in 20 for parity - I'll have to take a closer look at it.

My only other requirement was that I was planning on using it to do some other things as well - MySQL for a shared XBMC library, maybe a mail server, and of coure automatically backing up the other computers on the home network. Curious whether Unraid can do this as well? I've heard that it is based on Linux, so I'm assuming it is expandable?

Many thanks for taking the time to respond.

[Kode]

There are a fair few 3rd party plugins for unraid which allow things like php, mysql, ups shutdown, subversion, torrent, usenet etc

*edit* Its also possible to install a full slackware distro (UnRAID is a cut down version) to really expand your options.

[burritoboy9984]

Here is an example of a simple 20 bay tower build, just something simple I threw together to show you what you need to run 20 disks in a tower. If rackmount can work for you, I recommend checking this out for what you would need. Also, if you didn't care about the hot swapping ability, you could keep it a LOT cheaper and just get internal drive adapters instead of the external.

-Erik

Edit: You can also this out. It talks about building a server for unraid specifically. You could also buy a server from them prebuilt that has unraid preinstalled. The prices seem good. Good Luck!

[AaronD]

Thanks for that, very interesting. If only I could be sure I could get this stuff in Dubai!

[burritoboy9984]

You could email them to build you one. Then I bet they could figure out a way to ship it.

-Erik

[tarataqa]

I have a question for you, PoofyHairGuy.
I have roughly the same set up as you. (Antec 1200 with Cooler Master 4-in-3 on top)

Now that I've filled it up with 13 drives, I'm looking at the Scythe 4-in-3 stabilizers to get up to 16 drives. Did you use them inside the Antec brackets and fans? Or did you buy new fans for the stabilizers? I was trying to figure out how to use them with the current Antec fan gear as the fans are nice with the controller on the front of each.

Thanks for your help in advance!

Fun topic.

Let me just tell you what I used for my newest server (since its in the range you want), then general advice.

I have:

Antec 1200 case

I got Four of the:

Scythe Hard Disk Stabilizer x4


With a Cooler Master 4 in 3 in top.

That combo gives me 16 bays for the cheap, that run really cool. With 2TB drives I hope to get well over 20GBs (like 7TB in it currently).

Mobo:
EP35-DS3R

With 8 sata ports. Hard to find that mobo as its older, but more sata ports and PCI Express slots are a must.

To hook up enough drives I will use a few of these:

Rosewill SIl3132 Cards


And one of these:

Rosewill PCIe 4x Card


My 12TB server is similar in an Antec 900.

Other Hardware Advice:


-Stick to single rail PSUs- most PSUs are multirail. The best are either Corsair PSUs (most are single rail) or Antec Neo PSUs. I have the Antec Neo 620c 620Watt PSU.

-Invest in good fans, your ears will thank you

-Avoid regular PCI Sata cards. All PCI slots share bandwidth and really the entire PCI bus can only run two modern sata drives at once. Stick to PCIe or PCIX cards.

-Avoid 7200 RPM drives. They are much hotter and Green drives are more than fast enough for multiple HD streams

-If you want to go to 20 HDs, or you want hot swap bays, then nothing is a better value than the:

NORCO RPC-4020


Personally I went the tower route to be able to use larger and quieter fans.

What software do I use? Unraid.

Why? Unraid gives you every advantage of JBOD-add any disk you want to the array of any size/speed you want and get full use of it- with the bonus of RAID 5 like single disk parity. Since it doesn't stripe the data its not nearly as dangerous as RAID 5- if three disks die the maximum you can lose is the data on those three disks, unlike RAID 5/6 where you are toast. Its single disk parity system (up to 20 drives!) makes way better use of space than WHS.

With my Unraid server, I can buy the disks one at a time from many vendors like WHS. My current build has a WD Green drive, a Samsung drive, a Hitachi drive, and a Seagate drive. It is literally impossible for me to get bit by a bad run of production at a single factory. Of course, WHS has the same benefit which is why I consider the two to be the only acceptable options for a home server.

Why is RAID 5/6/Z useless for a media server?


In my experiance my Unraid and WHS easily maxes my gigabit network- anyone that thinks they need more performance for a home server is kidding themselves.

Plus who really wants to buy all those expensive business class RAID cards when the max throughput needed is at most for a few HD movie streams at once.

I hope I helped....

[poofyhairguy]

Now that I've filled it up with 13 drives, I'm looking at the Scythe 4-in-3 stabilizers to get up to 16 drives. Did you use them inside the Antec brackets and fans? Or did you buy new fans for the stabilizers? I was trying to figure out how to use them with the current Antec fan gear as the fans are nice with the controller on the front of each.

Thanks for your help in advance!

Yep. I used the Antec Fans and filers, but I separated them from the built in hard drive mounts. The 1200 allows you to attached the fan+cover with a screw, and the stabilizers fit perfectly in the space where the default Hd mounts fit previously.

Once you do it if feels like the stabilizers were meant for the case. I especially like how you can tuck wires around them!