February 4, 201214 yr I'm volunteering at a non-profit that has no money for anything, but their whole operation is being served by one machine running Debain v5.0.3 with no backup. I got the go ahead to build a server and tried to keep it super cheap. It sucks that hard drive prices haven't gone down to a normal level, but they only need about 200GB at least. I want to ask the community just to look over the specs and make sure its workable please... OKGEAR 18" SATA 6 Gbps Cable APEX SK-393-C Black Steel ATX Mid Tower 3 x Western Digital Caviar Blue WD1600AAJS 160GB GIGABYTE GA-78LMT-S2P Rosewill Stallion Series RD500-2DB 500W Kingston HyperX Blu 2GB 240-Pin DDR3 AMD Sempron 145 Sargas 2.8GHz
February 4, 201214 yr The PSU is a multi rail. This means that only one of the rails is available for all of the HDDs and the MB. It is not appropriate for unRAID. A single 12V rail is desired. See here: http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12219.0 Consider PSUs by the number of amps on the single 12V rail. Ignore the wattage value. The Realtek 8111E chipset on the MB may cause problems. You have better luck with this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813186205
February 4, 201214 yr Author Thank you dgaschk for your input. How about this PSU? COOLER MASTER GX 450W RS450-ACAAD3-US The fact you brought up the 8111E chipset had me look into the issue more. I built my server a few years ago and didn't have this problem. I came across the Greenleaf Technology 3 Drive microServer I may build this server, but omit the Mobile Rack. It sucks that hard drive prices still have not pre-Thailand flood prices. So with that Greenleaf server (without hot-swap racks) and 3 WD1600AAJS 160GB drives it comes to $466.17 (with shipping & tax).
February 4, 201214 yr Was this server to unraid or to replace the debian one? With the HDDs you could get a larger one for a bit more and cut it down to 2 drives. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822145531 Cheaper ram will save you a few bucks. The kingston valueram is good. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139640 You could also get a cheaper sata 2 cable. hdds won't go faster than sata 2 and also most motherboards when you buy will include a few sata cables so you probably won't need them. This PSU is also cheaper http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139026 seems to be a few bad reviews on newegg but I generally like corsair stuff. Josh
February 4, 201214 yr Author In a nutshell, they have a single Debian v5.0.3 server which uses an old Paradox DB. It serves a large amount of files from /home too. I want to build this unRaid server to serve those files and a location to create images of the current system since that have no backup whatsoever. 1. You need at least 3 drives for unRAID to be protected (right?). I will see if I can spend a little more for the larger drives. 2. That motherboard does come with 1 SATA cable. I could just get 2 for a 3 drive system. 3. The RAM you picked out is DDR3 and the MB in the Greenleaf only supports DDR2. 4. The PSU you picked is the same.
February 4, 201214 yr 1. You need at least 3 drives for unRAID to be protected (right?). I will see if I can spend a little more for the larger drives. wrong. You can be protected with a single data disk paired with a parity disk. (two disks total)
February 4, 201214 yr Author Thanks Joe L. (don't know what I was thinking). It would be cheaper to get 2 of the 500GB drives.
February 5, 201214 yr The motherboard that you linked to (GIGABYTE GA-78LMT-S2P AM3+ AMD 760G Micro ATX AMD Motherboard) looks like it uses DDR3 ram which is also what you picked. As joe said, 2 drives are enough for protection so just 2 larger drives would be cheaper. one sata cable would be enough if you get one with your motherboard. Josh
February 5, 201214 yr I would just go ahead and order an HP proliant N40l micro server, right now it is $300 shipped. it works right out of the box with most OS's including unRAID. Right now it comes with a free 2TB drive at $300 shipped and tax free (unless you're in cali). http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16859107052 That is probably close to the same price if not less then what you are looking at for buying just parts. you don't have to build it, nice specs, 2GB ram, 2 HDDS included, a 1 year warranty, Name brand quality, can expand to 5 drives, looks professional and is completely silent. Add the 2Tb for parity and the 250GB for storage. when you fill the 250, just add another drive.
February 6, 201214 yr Author Thank you for all the input! Johnm, I like the little HP server you pointed out. If I use the 2TB that comes with it and get a second 500GB drive for $70, it comes out to about the same price as the Greenleaf Micro system. Although, they would have more space to expand and I wouldn't need to put the computer together. They are only using about 200GB now. I might also run MySql on the server too. The AMD Sempron 145 would be better over the HP 1.5Ghz. I have been wanting an offsite unRaid to rsync my main machine and the HP looks to be perfect for that. Right now, I just have a HDD dock I use once a month for my offsite copy. My server doesn't change too often so it's an acceptable system for now. Thanks for pointing me to it
February 7, 201214 yr don't exactly know the load (i'm guessing not too high), but you might want to look at how performant the db may be on a unraid-protected drive .. speeds will be around 30Mb/sec
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