some suggestions: On Wed, Apr 18, 2012 at 01:53:01PM +1000, Dave Oxley wrote:
I have an 7 year old dell server that is in need of replacement. It's uses among others are MythTV backend, Asterisk, Web server, email, IP routing, various Java web apps. I had spec'ed and almost bought a new Dell server but got really disenchanted with their crappy sales guys.
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I've since been looking into building my own server but I'm not sure what to do for a case. I'm after a case with 6+ hot-plug backplane, preferably redundant PSU and tool-less. I found the Chenbro SR11269 which is mostly what I need but various places sell different PSU's for it. There's the C2W-3820V-R and C2W-5820V which differ in price by about $200 but I can't find any information about what's differences between them. Also they state '*For Tylersburg' so I'm not sure if they'll work with the motherboard I've chosen (S2600COE). I've also looked at Intel cases for this motherboard but they come at a premium.
Norco 4224, 24 SAS/SATA hot-swap bays in a 4RU case, $459 from techbuy. http://www.techbuy.com.au/p/149123/CASINGS_SERVER_-_4U/Norco/RPC-4224.asp they have 4220 and 4216 models with less bays, but they cost about $100 more. My ZFS box at work is in one of these cases, and i'm very tempted to get a 4224 for myself at home. I don't have that many drives, but having lots of room for expansion and drive-swapping would be nice. they also have a bracket available for the internal fan mounts that allows you to replace the 4 x 80mm fans (which are extremely loud) with 3 x 120mm fans - there are some very nice quiet ones available. you'll also want to replace the 2 80mm fans at the back of the case. they are meant for server rooms where you wouldn't hear them over the AC anyway. the fans are not at all compatible with home use (if you value your peace and quiet...or your hearing, for that matter) http://www.techbuy.com.au/p/152644/CASINGS_SERVER_-_ACCESSORIES/Norco/120mmf... it's only $10.95, not including fans (expect to pay about $30 each for nice quiet fans). get it. it would be worth it if was an extra $100. add an IBM M1015 8-port SAS/SATA 6Gbps card (on ebay for about $69 + $30 postage from the US). you'll need two SAS SFF-8087 cables to connect the card to the host swap bays. You can find these on about for about $10. http://www.servethehome.com/ibm-m1015-part-1-started-lsi-92208i/ http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/IBM-ServeRAID-M1015-SAS-RAID-Controller-FRU-46M08... t_1191 to connect the motherboard's SATA ports to the bays, you'll need a *REVERSE* SATA to SFF-8087 cable. these also cost about $10 on ebay. it is important to get the reverse cables. the normal ones are for connecting a SAS card to a SATA drive, the reverse cables are to connect a SATA port to a SAS or SATA hotswap backplane. techbuy also sell the cables. but they'll cost 3-5 times as much. if you ever needed to use the other 16 bays (minus what the motherboard ports give access to) in the case, you can add another M1015 card or two. just make sure your motherboard has enough 8x PCI-e slots.
So does anyone have any suggestions of where I go from here? I'm happy to buy a pre-built server but not happy about buying Dell anymore. I'm also happy to build my own.
The budget is about $3000 and the specs I'm after are roughly are: 1x 6 core Intel Xeon processor Motherboard with 2 processor sockets, 2+ Gigabit LAN, 6+ SATA 12+ GB or ram upgradable 6+ hot plug case with SATA backplane
techbuy also have several models of supermicro and tyan server motherboards in stock. i'd compare any prices with either shopbot.com.au or staticice.com.au - maybe you'll find a better deal. personally, i prefer Opteron to Xeon. much better value for money, imo. and the latest AMD "interlagos" CPUs currently have up to 16 cores. some of the motherboards have SAS controllers built-in (but you'll need two of the reverse SATA to SFF-8087 cables to connect them to the backplane). it's probably cheaper to just buy an M1015 card and put it in an 8x PCI-e slot, and makes it easier to upgrade/replace the motherboard later. you might also want to look at pre-built servers from either xenon.com.au or ipspty.com.au - the price difference isn't all that great compared to building it yourself....but you'll still have replace the fans to make it quiet enough for home use. pre-built will probably break your $3K budget, though.
redundant PSU
redundant PSU will add a lot to the price - at least $800. maybe that money would be better spent on a good sized UPS.
9+ TB raid 5 Disk space
use ZFS as your filesystem, all the benefits of raid and lvm and more without the hassle - raidz-1 is roughly equivalent to RAID-5 (actually, better than RAID-5). add a 120GB or 240GB SSD as either boot/OS + ZIL write cache + read cache, or boot off ZFS and just use the SSD for the ZIL log and the read cache. The ZIL write cache smoothes out random writes, and gives the same effect as the non-volatile write cache in a hardware raid-card (i.e. write performance doesn't suck. it sucks badly in software raid) 4 or 5 x 3TB drives would give you 9 or 12TB of RAID-5/raidz-1 storage. $800 or $1000. note that there is a minor but noticable performance benefit in ZFS (maybe in mdadm too, i can't recall) if the number of data disks (i.e. total disks minus parity disk(s) is a power of two). or if the budget will stretch to it, 8 x 3TB (or perhaps 8 x 2TB) drives in a raidz-2 (raid-6 equivalent) array. 18TB and $1600 for 3TB drives, or 12TB and $1110 for 2TB drives. either would take all 8 ports on an M1015 SAS card. here's a good page: http://www.servethehome.com/midrange-diy-storage-server-buyers-guide-october... the entire site is worth reading. some good stuff there, although with a fairly strong windows focus. ignore that, the hardware stuff is mostly generic and applicable to linux too. also, unlikely as it may sound for an overclocking site, but overclockers.com.au has a fairly decent forum on home and semi-professional storage servers. http://forums.overclockers.com.au/forumdisplay.php?f=44 craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au> BOFH excuse #407: Route flapping at the NAP.