[Christer K]

Translation:

Parts:

Intel Core i5-3470 (3,2ghz quad)
ASUS P8H77-I (mini-itx)
Corsair Vengeance 8GB (2 x 4gb) 1600Mhz DDR3
Corsair CX 430W
Fractal Design Node 304
Seagate 2TB x 2 in RAID 0

OS: Win7

All tests is done with a 1080p mkv (3,5GB)

Idle: CPU 1-2% @42w

One unit (iPhone w/o transcoding: CPU 5-10% with spikes up to 40%, wattage unchanged.

One unit (iPhone w transcoding: CPU starts at 50% and 70w. After 2 minutes CPU is down to 10% but jumping up to 50% from time to time (45 - 60w)

Two units (iPhone & iPad w/o transcoding: Same as above.

Two units (iPhone & iPad w transcoding: CPU jumps between 50/70% and wattage 50-70.

Three units worked fine but adding a fourth device things got choppy and CPU at 100% and 92w

(How I hate writing this much lol)

HTH

[jammyb]

On i5? Sheesh!

[benholtby]

At least that will cover me for the foreseeable future as I can barely see me using 3 devices but it will happen at some point. I will start pricing up the components. Can you fit an optical drive into the Node?

[Christer K]

At least that will cover me for the foreseeable future as I can barely see me using 3 devices but it will happen at some point. I will start pricing up the components. Can you fit an optical drive into the Node?

No

[benholtby]

Bugger. I will have to use an external one then. Thanks for your help on this!

[Christer K]

Glad to help

[benholtby]

Revive an old thread. Never got around to building anything so I have decided on either a 4 Bay Synology or HP MicroServer and then offloading the leg work to an external machine.

The synology tempts me with its ease of use and their Hybrid Raid which lets me build me HDD amounts over time (i.e. start with 1 HDD and add more later).

However the Microserver will be considerably cheaper to buy, but I will only have 1 HDD to start so need a system to run in a similar fashion to the Synology. Is this possible?

[Christer K]

I would go for the Mictoserver with XPEnology installed.

Here´s a good thread to read http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthr...t=18528018

[CaptainPsycho]

However the Microserver will be considerably cheaper to buy, but I will only have 1 HDD to start so need a system to run in a similar fashion to the Synology. Is this possible?

If you are going to use disk of same size you can do the following under Linux with mdadm

1st disk:
- create a degraded raid1 array
- put lvm on top
- create your filesystem

2nd disk:
- add disk to existing raid array
- rebuild
- you now have parity and no data loss when 1 disk dies

3rd disk:
- change raid level from 1 to 5
- rebuild
- add disk to array
- grow array
- grow lvm
- grow filesystem
- you now have 1 disk full of storage more

4th disk:
- add disk to array
- grow array
- grow lvm
- grow filesystem
- you now have 1 disk full of storage more

every additional disk:
- you can do steps like at the 4rd disk
OR
- once migrate from raid5 to raid6 so two disks can fail without dataloss ( recommended from 5 disks on)
- add disk to raidarrai
- change raid5 to 6
- rebuild


EXPANSION:
To expand you can also swap all disks for new bigger ones f.e. 2TB -> 4TB.
For each disk:
-swap
- wait for rebuild

After this:
- resize lvm, filesystem

You are also free to reduce the number of disks later.

f.e. 10x2TB in raid6 ~ 16TB Storage
to
6x5TB in raid6 ~ 20TB Storage -> less disks, more space, no need to swap all disks at once ($$$), expandable with further disks later. AND you can use the remaining 4 2TB disks as extra storage.

You can even build a raid5/6 from the remaining 4 2TB disks and add this raid to your lvm.

You can even remove the 2nd array from the lvm again.

With ZFS you could not remove anything.

[benholtby]

I would go for the Mictoserver with XPEnology installed.

Here´s a good thread to read http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthr...t=18528018

Wow. Literally the best of both worlds!

Thanks

[Christer K]

I would go for the Mictoserver with XPEnology installed.

Here´s a good thread to read http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthr...t=18528018

Wow. Literally the best of both worlds!

Thanks

YW