January 30, 201016 yr Hi! At the moment I store my data on my PC like this: 1* WD 500gb re2 - system 3* WD 1000gb gp - data 1* Samsung 1500gb - data I'm willing to expand my storage capacity with at least 3 disks soon, and will move to an unRAID based dedicated storage server. What the server needs to be able to deal with is 6-10 paralell connections with total throughput of 3MB/sec, and 1-2 local connections to stream music/movies over a GBit LAN, guess this shouldn't be an issue. Having limited budget, I came here to ask for a few advice. What I had in mind is this config: (with Hungarian prices in brackets) COOLER MASTER RC-590-KKN1 Centurion 590 case (87$) Asus M4A78L-M mb - 6 sata, gbit lan (84$) AMD Sempron 140 boxed - cheapest cpu at 45w tdp (39$) 2gb ram 3*Cooler Master 4in3 stackers (26$ each) 3*Samsung EcoGreen F2 1.5TB (126$ each - by far the best GB/$ here) one goes for parity Need recommendations on the following: -psu - good enough for 10 hdds -ups - enough so the system has time to shutdown properly -sata controller - something budget -At the moment I have an Abit AB9 (6 sata ports) + C2D E4300 in my rig. Is it worth moving this combo to my dataserver, or a combo of Asus M4A78L-M and Sempron 140 would do as well? The second seems to be a cheaper solution. -Is this ASUS board recommended, or anything similar that the majority prefers here? -The CM 4in3 stackers seem to be fine, but anything better at this price range? (IcyDock is way too expensive, and I don't care for hot-swap) -1 bonus question, that doesn't belong here but I don't wanna make a new thread: Is there any way to run Dc++ on the box, and if not now, maybe in 5.0 beta versions? Thanks in advance -balu
January 30, 201016 yr One tip is that the $ per GB sweet spot should include the slot cost. If you assume that your data requirements will always go up (which is normally a fair asumption) at some point you will no longer be able to fit more drives in your case without either a major investment in a SATA card or a complete new server. So if you can fit 10 drives and your server + license cost $500 then the slot cost is $50. i.e. each live drive actually costs you $50 than just the drive cost. That "can" mean buying more expensive per GB but bigger HDDs will actually be cheaper.
January 30, 201016 yr Author You are right. But situation in Hungary regarding prices is a bit different... Cheapest 2TB HDD I can find (that is not Hitachi - I don't like that brand) is 203$ for a Samsung Ecogreen, while WD and Seagate are 5-20$ even higher respectively. That's just way too expensive imho.
January 30, 201016 yr Sounds like your spot on with your math then was just pointing it out incase you had not considered. -psu - good enough for 10 hdds A Corsair one. Eco greens use like 10W at max tilt (confirm this) so 10 drives only = 100W The days of monster PSU for NAS are over. Buy an 80+ CERTIFIED PSU regardless -ups - enough so the system has time to shutdown properly APC. CHoose the model based on price, availabilty once your system design is complete. -sata controller - something budget You want something PCIe. Lots and lots of chat about this on the forums. Also consider port multipliers. One sata port (assuming it support it) will happily support 3 drives with no blocking. In a small userbase situation you can probably load up more at the expense of slower parity. Also there's alot of excitement about the new Supermicro Atom board. Similar money to your current choice but much lower power consumption and truly tiny with 6 SATA ports from a server MB manufacturer. This in itself is a big deal.
January 30, 201016 yr Author Damn, that Supermicro board looks amazing, thx for the suggestion. I know nothing about port multipliers, but if they could be used in my system, it would be awesome from a price perspective. Could you elaborate a little bit on PMPs? Any specific product that is widely used in this community? (my case will fit 12 drives, and I'm not planning to go above that in the close future) edit: regarding the PSU, the Corsair CX400W that's available here seemed to get good results and is fairly priced (65$), so I'll stick with it then.
February 12, 201016 yr Author So, the plan seems to be to make a full Slackware install, and follow bubba's guide here to install unRAID like that. Then to use VNC to access the computer, and run a dc client with gui. The question is: is the popular Supermicro Atom Board capable of handling this, or I should look for a c2d build with more cpu power? The sole purpose of the fileserver is to share files to me on lan and to a few other users over the internet.
February 13, 201016 yr One other hardware note. That case comes with a 4into3 adapter with a 120mm fan. You only need 2 more of them to fill the case. The front driver covers on the case are perforated and have lgiht filters. The whole front cover of the case just pops off with an easy pull. So, take the plastic pieces off those other adapters and everything will fit behind the case front cover. Peter
February 13, 201016 yr Author thx for the input, in this case I'm 100% sure that I'll stick with CM 590
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