40 TB HTPC Monster: What components to buy?
#61
(2014-06-03, 02:10)kwanbis Wrote:
(2014-06-03, 02:04)mobias1313 Wrote: Additionally don't look for a motherboard that supports 10+ drives. You would be better off looking at a motherboard with multiple PCI-E slots and utilizing an LSI based controller, such as the IBM M1015. Each one is capable of supporting 8 SATA3.0 drives. Additionally you can flash these to run in IR (RAID Mode) or IT (JBOD Mode).
Why would a card with 8 satas work best than a mother with 10? If it is quality constructed, it should be the same.

So say you buy your board with 10 SATA ports. How many different controllers will it use? What if one of those controllers has a known performance issue? What if one of the controllers dies? My board in one of my servers has 3 different controllers for 8x SATA ports. 1 of those controllers has a known performance problem that has never been corrected. If you are worried about the possibility of losing your data at all why would you risk everything being connected to a single non-replaceable source. I consider it non-replaceable because you would need to replace the whole board if an issue occurs. Whereas a separate controller offers you the ability to swap out just a controller as if nothing happened.

It sounds like you already know what you want to do with your setup. Personally I don't like the idea of 10 hard drives in my HTPC for the obvious issue of space and noise. 10 hard drives are going to require a good deal of cooling. Plus whatever you decide to do on the CPU/GPU side of the house to support your requirements. Really you can do whatever you want but having gone down a similar road before I can tell you for me having a giant tower with lots of fans to keep my temps adequate was too loud for my taste. Moving to a server located in a different room and a nice small HTPC was the best decision I ever made.
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#62
(2014-06-03, 18:14)two515ty Wrote: I'm still a little confused on what you want to do, but I'll start off with a basic suggestion: If you already have a decent HTPC that works well as a HTPC, don't bother replacing it with another HTPC/server device unless it's going to improve the HTPC function in some way. Otherwise, leave the HTPC alone and just build another server.
That is the option I'm evaluating on the "40 tb server" thread. My main concern is cost, and then, how easy would it be to access the files from a Linux, unRAID, or whatever server over cable. But again, I'm evaluating on the other thread.

(2014-06-03, 18:14)two515ty Wrote: Ideally, the best situation would be having all the disks on the same server, but I'm going to assume that building such a server would be out of your budget. I think the next best solution would be to build another server, and then connect your two Mediasonic towers to that server. I would suggest keeping the server and Mediasonic towers in a separate room, and accessing everything over a wired connection. This would help reduce the noise and heat issues, and also give your TV area a much cleaner look.
I'm already to a point where it seems very much feasible to have all 10 hdd + 1 ssd on one case. The mediasonic towers would be connected to that server so that they work as backup of the server itself. If I go the server route, they would go on another room.

(2014-06-03, 18:14)two515ty Wrote: Also, how bad is the noise from your current HTPC? If it is indeed noticeably noisy, you may want to consider swapping it out for an i3 or i5 NUC. It would perform similarly, but make far less noise than all those extra fans in your current HTPC.
The noise is coming mostly from the mediasonic towers, not from the server itsel. It is already an i3.

(2014-06-03, 18:35)MrCrispy Wrote: Why can't you use your existing pc as playback HTPC and just build a separate server. It sounds like your external enclosures already work, are you planning to sell them off? Not sure why you want to build yet another server when you could just reuse the existing components and get a cheap playback device instead. Maybe I'm missing something.
that is one of the two options I'm evaluating on another thread.

(2014-06-03, 18:48)two515ty Wrote: He said he's about to fill up the two 20 TB towers, so he's going to build another 40 TB tower and back up the data on that 40 TB tower on the two 20 TB towers.
correct

(2014-06-03, 18:48)two515ty Wrote: @kwanbis I know RAID is not a permanent backup solution, but if it's your media collection that can be re-ripped, I think the best overall solution would be to build your new server with some sort of software RAID that has at least a 2 drive failure tolerance. This would cause you to lose 8 TB of storage, but you wouldn't have to worry so much about having to manually backup your data as often, and whatever storage you are missing could be compensated for with your already existing 20 TB towers.
I would investigate.

(2014-06-03, 02:04)mobias1313 Wrote: So say you buy your board with 10 SATA ports. How many different controllers will it use? What if one of those controllers has a known performance issue? What if one of the controllers dies? My board in one of my servers has 3 different controllers for 8x SATA ports. 1 of those controllers has a known performance problem that has never been corrected. If you are worried about the possibility of losing your data at all why would you risk everything being connected to a single non-replaceable source. I consider it non-replaceable because you would need to replace the whole board if an issue occurs. Whereas a separate controller offers you the ability to swap out just a controller as if nothing happened.
Well, same way I can swap the motherboard? My point is that silicon is silicon, and a mother can fail as can fail the pci controller. It doesn't means I'm not evaluating pci controllers, but the ones I have found are either very expensive, 100 or more dollars, or cheap but not so good. If I can get a motherboard with 10 satas, for 170, justifying spending 100 dollars only on the controller is difficult to justify. But I'm looking for a controller around 50~60. If you know of one, let me know.

(2014-06-03, 02:04)mobias1313 Wrote: It sounds like you already know what you want to do with your setup. Personally I don't like the idea of 10 hard drives in my HTPC for the obvious issue of space and noise. 10 hard drives are going to require a good deal of cooling. Plus whatever you decide to do on the CPU/GPU side of the house to support your requirements. Really you can do whatever you want but having gone down a similar road before I can tell you for me having a giant tower with lots of fans to keep my temps adequate was too loud for my taste. Moving to a server located in a different room and a nice small HTPC was the best decision I ever made.
I understand your comment is in good faith, and I appreciate it. But I'm interested on knowing what is the best option for a htpcserver setup and not a htpc+server setup. I'm evaluating both options on different threads like I said. Doing so in just one thread is very chaotic.

So I would appreciate comments on the htpcserver solution. Thanks!
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#63
(2014-06-04, 02:28)kwanbis Wrote: So I would appreciate comments on the htpcserver solution. Thanks!

Well it's certainly doable, mostly depending on the type of harddrive you're planning to get I guess. I run 5x Western Digital Red 2TB in a box across the room, and the whole box under load is barely above ambient noise at night (and I have _very_ good hearing). But running 20 "desktop" class harddrives in your living room is probably going to be like living at an airport.
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#64
(2014-06-04, 03:33)sadboy Wrote: Well it's certainly doable, mostly depending on the type of harddrive you're planning to get I guess. I run 5x Western Digital Red 2TB in a box across the room, and the whole box under load is barely above ambient noise at night (and I have _very_ good hearing). But running 20 "desktop" class harddrives in your living room is probably going to be like living at an airport.
Thanks. But It is actually going to be 10, and just 2 more than I run today. I think I have made up my mind. I would get back to update.
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#65
deleted.
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