Not to rain on their parade
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 4
But for those wanting to build a 1 TB servers, cheaper options already exist with commodity components. For example:
18(*) WD 60 GB hard drives ($2250)
3 Hotrod ATA/100 controllers ($180)
Powered enclosure ($200)
Custom extra-long IDE cables ($150)
Get a motherboard with 4 IDE channels (most "raid versions" have this) and plug 12 drives into the Hotrods, 4 into the motherboard's raid channels, and 2 into the secondary ide channel. The boot hard drive goes on the primary ide channel.
The total cost of this server is still under $3500 after supplying the rest of the computer. As long as you don't need 24/7 uptime or massive throughput, this is enough for 1 TB of directly available storage.
(*) This is a bit more than 1 TB but you have to account for space lost during formatting.
Re:Not to rain on their parade
by
adjuster
·
· Score: 5
Get a motherboard with 4 IDE channels (most "raid versions" have this) and plug 12 drives into the Hotrods, 4 into the motherboard's raid channels, and 2 into the secondary ide channel. The boot hard drive goes on the primary ide channel.
Ouch! Spend a few hundred more, and get an Escalade Storage Switch. They perform very well and aren't wildly expensive (you should be able to have an 8-channel 32-bit, 33Mhz version for under $500.00). You also have your motherboard IDE channels free for things like DVD-ROM drives... heh heh... Lots of DVD-ROM drives... Heh heh...
Ahh, yes-- and there are Linux drivers available for the Escalade controllers. If you're looking for wild amounts of performance, they do have a 66Mhz, 64-bit PCI version available, too. Wowza.
Promise has their SuperTrak controller, which looks very interesting, but based on some messages I saw flying around on the Kernel List, apparently it's not as straightforward as just compiling in I2O support to use it under Linux. Grrr...
Check out this review and this review if you want to see how the Escalade stacked up to other "high end" IDE RAID controllers.
There are plenty of uses. I work in a radiology department where all our images are acquired digitally instead of on film. We acquire an estimated 4-5 TB worth of images each year. Our current archives (optical disk) will only hold about 1 months worth of data online before patient images get taken offline and put on a shelf. The ability to have a cheap TB online archive would mean significantly faster image retrievals when radiologists want to compare a patient's images with a previous study. Especially important when hospitals are cutting budgets back in a big way, but workloads keep going up.
-- "For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Long Words Bother Me"
I guarantee you that N, the cost for however many layers of redundancy it would take to make you comfortable with using these as production servers, where N = $5,000 * your preferred number of layers, is cheaper than your Netapp filers.
1 Tb for $5000 is nice. Size is one thing, but the underlying software is another thing.
Netapp filers are expensive, but excellent because the filesystem (designed by former SGI employees, who designed XFS) rocks. It's fast, it's damn reliable, and the "snapshot" feature kicks ass. Also, their NFS implementation works flawlessly (and this is a *rare* thing) .
So SDSC has a nice project on the hardware part, but I wouldn't trust them for production servers.
--
Pure FTP server - Upgrade your FTP server to something simple and secure.
Hmm.. A Terabyte fileserver under 5000 bucks, that's easy (unless you are a SCSI freak):
- 180$ for Motherboard ABIT KT7A-RAID
- 138$ for 1GHz Thunderbird
- 130$ for 3 * 256Mt Dimm PC-133
- 71$ for GeForce 2 mx (Overkill for a fileserver)
- 83$ for 10GB MAXTOR (for booting:)
- 38$ for A CD-Rom drive (might be needed when installing OS)
- 51$ for Inter EtherExpress PRO100
- 58$ for HTP370 IDE Raid controller
- 290$ for BIIIG Case
- 2900$ for 10 * MAXTOR 100GB
- 145$ for 10 * IDE Rack (It is nice to have a cooler for each HDD)
Total: 4085$ for Big Ass Fileserver
This leaves us 900$ (plus discount) for extra stuff like gigabit ethernet, monitor, keyboard and mouse etc.
Wayne and Garth, computer geeks, in an MS dominated world. (In some twisted alternate reality.)
Wayne: "Hi, everyone. Today, we're gonna make a cheap 1TB file server"
Garth: "That's right. We're going to be using the new Windows XP OS."
Wayne: "Yes, Apple's stuff is too proprietary. MS is the open alternative."
Both: "MS rules. Apple sucks. MS rules. Apple sucks."
Wayne: "Alright, that was cool. Anyway, we've got an Intel chip {ed note: No AMD, either}, some RAM, case, power supply. We've just got one drive hooked up to see if this thing will boot."
Garth: (Turns on power) "Alright Wayne, I'm installing XP. It will take a while. Commercials?"
Wayne: "Yeah, we'll be right back."
{Commercials}
Wayne: "Alright, we're back. Had to call MS to register, but we're up. Everything looks good. It's a little slow, so we're going to add some memory while we add drives."
{Time passes}
Garth: "OK. Well, XP says that we need to re-register. Commercial?"
Wayne: "Alright."
{Commercial}
Wayne: "Well, the nice lady at MS chastised us for changing our system, but she let us off with a warning." {W&G both laugh} "Anyway, we've got a new registration code and we're well on our way to 1 TeraByte of storage!"
Both: "Woohoo! MS Rules. MS Rules."
Garth: "Alright, so we're up to 256 MB of RAM, 200GB of hard disk space. We'll add a new controller, add some more memory since this thing still seems a little slow and we'll be right back."
{Time does its thing}
Wayne: "OK, we're back. Had to call MS again. They were a little peeved this time." {Shoots Garth a knowing look and both kind of chuckle} "Anyway, they were gracious enough to let us have another registration code. Thanks, Bill." {Laughs}
Garth: "Yeah, and someone called and wanted to know why we need 1TB of storage."
Wayne: "Yeah, like that's not obvious. Between us and all our friends, we've been to every major rock concert in a 500 mile radius of Chicage for about 10 years now."
Garth: {Whispering, looking furtively around} "And, even though nobody knows..."
Both: {Yelling in glee} "We've taped every show."
Wayne: "Thousands and thousands of hours of rock. We're going to rip 'em all - Hey, Garth, 'Rip em all', is that a Metallica album?"
Garth: {chuckles} "Good one, Wayne. Good one."
Wayne: "Thanks. Anyway, we're going to rip 'em all, catalog 'em, rate 'em, and listen to 'em until we get sick of 'em."
Garth: "OK Wayne. Things look good. It's still a little slow. Maybe a faster chip and some more RAM. Perhaps we should've gone SCSI. It should be alright for just serving MP3's, though."
Wayne: "OK. We'll be right back."
{Time, again}
Garth: "We're back. Wayne's getting some water. He got a little hoarse begging MS for another activation code. For a minute, it looked like we weren't going to get it, but Wayne talked 'em out of one. Here he is now."
Wayne: "Thanks, Garth. It's alright, just some red tape. No problems. MS rules!"
Garth: {Sounding not so sure} "Yeah, MS rules!"
Wayne: "OK, Garth what do we have?"
Garth: "We got a faster chip, we're up to 512MB of RAM, and..." {drumroll} "...we've got 1 TeraByte of storage!!"
Wayne: "Alright, Garth. Party on. Are we ready to serve up some MP3's?"
Garth: "No. I think we're going to need to up the RAM again, this thing is still slow. Also," {Laughs ruefully} "We don't have a network card yet. No sound card, either."
Wayne: {laughs too} "Alright then, Garth. Down one more time and this will be it. Right?"
Garth: "Sure thing, Wayne."
{The commercial break seems to last forever.}
Wayne: "Sorry we took so long. We ummm... ran into a slight snag. It appears that MS won't give us any more access codes for 6 months."
A carousel that holds 200-300 CDs or DVDs (just like they have for home theaters for around $800)
Sort of like the stuff PowerFile makes. (http://www.dvdchanger.com)
Add to it room for at least two slot-load drives (although four would be even better, one in each corner) so you can access at least two CDs at any given time.
Throw in a Linux thinserver (like the stuff Linksys or any number of companies use) to manange the contents of each CD/DVD.
Result? Over 1TB of storage for around $1000. The only catch is that it is not meant for more than a handful of users at a time.
But considering what an equivalent RAID would cost it doesn't seem like a bad idea. You could put every file you've ever downloaded into one box and each CD/DVD could show up as a separate directory on one master volume. Imagine that. Near-instant access to TB of info.
If you use DVD-ROM drives, it's 1TB of read-only storage but if you use DVD-R/RW/RAM drives then it is 1TV of read/write storage! Wow, you could open your own Avalon!
Please please someone start a project to help build something like this! I desperately want one but the crappy PowerFile version is junk because it relies on crappy Windows/Mac software and ties up a whole computers just to access the damn thing. Plus having to manually mount/unmount the discs like individual drives instead of having just one volume.
- JoeShmoe
-- --
I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
Well, here's how we did our 525GB server for $4200 last December (would've been 600GB, but we decided to go RAID5.)
Key parts, both hardware & software:
PIII-933
256MB PC133 SDRAM
4 Promise ATA/100 controllers
8 IBM 75GB Deskstars
3c905CTX (We don't have Gigabit yet)
Linux 2.4.x kernel
ReiserFS
Big F*cking Case
We went this way because of the nature of the files to be stored (mean size=120MB, many over 200MB), and their purpose (download once, read a few times, delete.)
NFS read times are around 20-25 MB/sec, just fine for us.
A few points:
Use only ONE drive per bus -- remember, this is IDE.
Get a Big F*cking Case (tm) with at least a 350W power supply -- you're going to get some serious heat from 9 drives (the 9th is a 45GB drive, our boot device), so you'll need some pretty decent cooling going on.
There is a hardware hack (check Tom's Hardware) that'll make the Promise ATA/100 controller into a IDE RAID controller -- try at your own risk. We didn't feel like messing with it.
If I get some pictures up, I'll post the URL later. The Qu+xum has spoken. Nyaaah!
-- DrQu+xum: Proof that the lameness filter doesn't work.
Slashdot Mirror
But for those wanting to build a 1 TB servers, cheaper options already exist with commodity components. For example:
18(*) WD 60 GB hard drives ($2250)
3 Hotrod ATA/100 controllers ($180)
Powered enclosure ($200)
Custom extra-long IDE cables ($150)
Get a motherboard with 4 IDE channels (most "raid versions" have this) and plug 12 drives into the Hotrods, 4 into the motherboard's raid channels, and 2 into the secondary ide channel. The boot hard drive goes on the primary ide channel.
The total cost of this server is still under $3500 after supplying the rest of the computer. As long as you don't need 24/7 uptime or massive throughput, this is enough for 1 TB of directly available storage.
(*) This is a bit more than 1 TB but you have to account for space lost during formatting.
There are plenty of uses. I work in a radiology department where all our images are acquired digitally instead of on film. We acquire an estimated 4-5 TB worth of images each year. Our current archives (optical disk) will only hold about 1 months worth of data online before patient images get taken offline and put on a shelf. The ability to have a cheap TB online archive would mean significantly faster image retrievals when radiologists want to compare a patient's images with a previous study. Especially important when hospitals are cutting budgets back in a big way, but workloads keep going up.
"For I am a Bear of Very Little Brain, and Long Words Bother Me"
I guarantee you that N, the cost for however many layers of redundancy it would take to make you comfortable with using these as production servers, where N = $5,000 * your preferred number of layers, is cheaper than your Netapp filers.
A quick search on google yields this:
$20k for a terabyte of rackmountable RAID5
Believe it, folks: Terabytes really are as cheap as the Slashdot headline makes it seem like they are.
1 Tb for $5000 is nice. Size is one thing, but the underlying software is another thing.
Netapp filers are expensive, but excellent because the filesystem (designed by former SGI employees, who designed XFS) rocks. It's fast, it's damn reliable, and the "snapshot" feature kicks ass. Also, their NFS implementation works flawlessly (and this is a *rare* thing) .
So SDSC has a nice project on the hardware part, but I wouldn't trust them for production servers.
-- Pure FTP server - Upgrade your FTP server to something simple and secure.
{{.sig}}
Hmm.. A Terabyte fileserver under 5000 bucks, that's easy (unless you are a SCSI freak):
:)
- 180$ for Motherboard ABIT KT7A-RAID
- 138$ for 1GHz Thunderbird
- 130$ for 3 * 256Mt Dimm PC-133
- 71$ for GeForce 2 mx (Overkill for a fileserver)
- 83$ for 10GB MAXTOR (for booting
- 38$ for A CD-Rom drive (might be needed when installing OS)
- 51$ for Inter EtherExpress PRO100
- 58$ for HTP370 IDE Raid controller
- 290$ for BIIIG Case
- 2900$ for 10 * MAXTOR 100GB
- 145$ for 10 * IDE Rack (It is nice to have a cooler for each HDD)
Total: 4085$ for Big Ass Fileserver
This leaves us 900$ (plus discount) for extra stuff like gigabit ethernet, monitor, keyboard and mouse etc.
- Raynet --> .
Wayne and Garth, computer geeks, in an MS dominated world. (In some twisted alternate reality.)
Wayne: "Hi, everyone. Today, we're gonna make a cheap 1TB file server"
Garth: "That's right. We're going to be using the new Windows XP OS."
Wayne: "Yes, Apple's stuff is too proprietary. MS is the open alternative."
Both: "MS rules. Apple sucks. MS rules. Apple sucks."
Wayne: "Alright, that was cool. Anyway, we've got an Intel chip {ed note: No AMD, either}, some RAM, case, power supply. We've just got one drive hooked up to see if this thing will boot."
Garth: (Turns on power) "Alright Wayne, I'm installing XP. It will take a while. Commercials?"
Wayne: "Yeah, we'll be right back."
{Commercials}
Wayne: "Alright, we're back. Had to call MS to register, but we're up. Everything looks good. It's a little slow, so we're going to add some memory while we add drives."
{Time passes}
Garth: "OK. Well, XP says that we need to re-register. Commercial?"
Wayne: "Alright."
{Commercial}
Wayne: "Well, the nice lady at MS chastised us for changing our system, but she let us off with a warning." {W&G both laugh} "Anyway, we've got a new registration code and we're well on our way to 1 TeraByte of storage!"
Both: "Woohoo! MS Rules. MS Rules."
Garth: "Alright, so we're up to 256 MB of RAM, 200GB of hard disk space. We'll add a new controller, add some more memory since this thing still seems a little slow and we'll be right back."
{Time does its thing}
Wayne: "OK, we're back. Had to call MS again. They were a little peeved this time." {Shoots Garth a knowing look and both kind of chuckle} "Anyway, they were gracious enough to let us have another registration code. Thanks, Bill." {Laughs}
Garth: "Yeah, and someone called and wanted to know why we need 1TB of storage."
Wayne: "Yeah, like that's not obvious. Between us and all our friends, we've been to every major rock concert in a 500 mile radius of Chicage for about 10 years now."
Garth: {Whispering, looking furtively around} "And, even though nobody knows..."
Both: {Yelling in glee} "We've taped every show."
Wayne: "Thousands and thousands of hours of rock. We're going to rip 'em all - Hey, Garth, 'Rip em all', is that a Metallica album?"
Garth: {chuckles} "Good one, Wayne. Good one."
Wayne: "Thanks. Anyway, we're going to rip 'em all, catalog 'em, rate 'em, and listen to 'em until we get sick of 'em."
Garth: "OK Wayne. Things look good. It's still a little slow. Maybe a faster chip and some more RAM. Perhaps we should've gone SCSI. It should be alright for just serving MP3's, though."
Wayne: "OK. We'll be right back."
{Time, again}
Garth: "We're back. Wayne's getting some water. He got a little hoarse begging MS for another activation code. For a minute, it looked like we weren't going to get it, but Wayne talked 'em out of one. Here he is now."
Wayne: "Thanks, Garth. It's alright, just some red tape. No problems. MS rules!"
Garth: {Sounding not so sure} "Yeah, MS rules!"
Wayne: "OK, Garth what do we have?"
Garth: "We got a faster chip, we're up to 512MB of RAM, and..." {drumroll} "...we've got 1 TeraByte of storage!!"
Wayne: "Alright, Garth. Party on. Are we ready to serve up some MP3's?"
Garth: "No. I think we're going to need to up the RAM again, this thing is still slow. Also," {Laughs ruefully} "We don't have a network card yet. No sound card, either."
Wayne: {laughs too} "Alright then, Garth. Down one more time and this will be it. Right?"
Garth: "Sure thing, Wayne."
{The commercial break seems to last forever.}
Wayne: "Sorry we took so long. We ummm... ran into a slight snag. It appears that MS won't give us any more access codes for 6 months."
Garth: "Bummer, dude!"
Combine:
A carousel that holds 200-300 CDs or DVDs (just like they have for home theaters for around $800)
Sort of like the stuff PowerFile makes. (http://www.dvdchanger.com)
Add to it room for at least two slot-load drives (although four would be even better, one in each corner) so you can access at least two CDs at any given time.
Throw in a Linux thinserver (like the stuff Linksys or any number of companies use) to manange the contents of each CD/DVD.
Result? Over 1TB of storage for around $1000. The only catch is that it is not meant for more than a handful of users at a time.
But considering what an equivalent RAID would cost it doesn't seem like a bad idea. You could put every file you've ever downloaded into one box and each CD/DVD could show up as a separate directory on one master volume. Imagine that. Near-instant access to TB of info.
If you use DVD-ROM drives, it's 1TB of read-only storage but if you use DVD-R/RW/RAM drives then it is 1TV of read/write storage! Wow, you could open your own Avalon!
Please please someone start a project to help build something like this! I desperately want one but the crappy PowerFile version is junk because it relies on crappy Windows/Mac software and ties up a whole computers just to access the damn thing. Plus having to manually mount/unmount the discs like individual drives instead of having just one volume.
- JoeShmoe
-- I wonder which will go down in history as the bigger failure: the War on Drugs or the War on Filesharing
"The computer you want always costs $5000".
If it ain't broke, it doesn't have enough features yet.
That's easy, but how about building a webserver that can survive the Slashdot Effect for $5000?
This is the place where you write something that will make you seem like a complete idiot.
Key parts, both hardware & software:
We went this way because of the nature of the files to be stored (mean size=120MB, many over 200MB), and their purpose (download once, read a few times, delete.)
NFS read times are around 20-25 MB/sec, just fine for us.
A few points:
- Use only ONE drive per bus -- remember, this is IDE.
- Get a Big F*cking Case (tm) with at least a 350W power supply -- you're going to get some serious heat from 9 drives (the 9th is a 45GB drive, our boot device), so you'll need some pretty decent cooling going on.
- There is a hardware hack (check Tom's Hardware) that'll make the Promise ATA/100 controller into a IDE RAID controller -- try at your own risk. We didn't feel like messing with it.
If I get some pictures up, I'll post the URL later.The Qu+xum has spoken. Nyaaah!
DrQu+xum: Proof that the lameness filter doesn't work.
Less than 10 comments at 8:00 am EST and the sight is unreachable. Look out Code Red Worm, The Slashdot Effect is not to be trifled with!