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Building a Budget Storage Server
An anonymous reader noted an article running over at Firingsquad talking about
building a budget storage server. Talks about cooling, power, RAID, expandability, etc. Good overview type article, with practical application.
Building A Budget Storage Server/Workstation
November 09, 2003 Alexis Dang
Summary: Storage Servers. They're not simply computers with a bunch of hard disks, nor are they another name for RAID storage. In this article, Alexis builds a budget storage server and explains why you can't take a random desktop and add a bunch of disks. Like the previous Opteron article, even if you're just into building gaming systems, you'll want to read this article to see our thoughts on cooling and power.
Introduction Page:: ( 1 / 9 )
Today we are going to be building a budget, high performance storage server. So what exactly is a storage server? We'll first go over the technical requirements and operational goals for our system, then move onto the design and assembly of the system.
First we need to discuss why we need a storage server. It is useful for a workgroup environment, where there are multiple users that need to share data across a network. In addition, it facilitates backup of data since the storage is centralized. Where cost is an issue, it is much cheaper to build a robust server with high levels of reliability than to submit that level of reliability and performance to all the network nodes.
At the most basic level, a storage server needs to be able to hold a lot of hard drives. To accomplish this, we could go out and buy a network attached storage device, but remember this is a budget system. Our goal is to maximize the functionality, reliability, and performance of the server, while keeping costs under control. It sounds like you could just add a bunch of hard drives to any networked PC and call it a "network attached storage device," but if you want it to be reliable, you have to think about cooling, power, and anticipated usage. So, if you're only interested in building a hardcore gaming PC, you'll still want to read this article to see our thoughts on cooling and power.
We wanted a server that would serve only data files and not program files. This would limit our network bandwidth and maximize performance. At the same time, we wanted this server to act as a workstation with as much capability as the other systems attached to the storage server. Our minimum storage requirement would be one terabyte. Not too long ago, terabyte storage was reserved for government labs like Sandia National labs, Lawrence Livermore labs, or science fiction.
Another consideration specific to storage is expandability; how we will cope with increases in storage requirements over time. Some network attached systems are great in the first year, but as needs expand, you basically have to double your initial investment to double your storage, by duplicating your initial purchase. The technology that you bought the first time does nothing for your future expansion, this is something that we tried hard to prepare for.
Let's start with discussing what we need to have and then build around that. First the hard drives.
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Hard Drives Page:: ( 2 / 9 )
A storage server should have a hard drive for the operating system and an array of drives for the shared storage. We feel that the most important feature for a storage hard drive is reliability. We went with IDE drives because of their superior price to performance ratio, as compared to SCSI. In our case, we don't even need the bandwidth of the SCSI drives - quantity rather than blistering speed was important. With respect to SATA or parallel ATA, both are more then adequate for our needs.
With these needs in mind, we chose the Maxtor Maxline II Plus 250GB 7200rpm 8MB buffer hard drives. These drives are rated at 1,200,000 hours MTBF as compared to 600,000 hours for standard consumer drives. This does not mean that you can run your hard drive for 137 years, but does imply that it is more reliable than a standard desktop drive. Maxtor has advertised this drive as one designed for 24/7 applications, this is in stark contrast to the old line of I
A tip which I don't see mentioned very often: when using multiple drives in a raid-array, use drives from different batches. Or even better: from different vendors. Why? You don't want your complete raid-array failing because to much drives fail because of a common problem in their hardware/firmware.
Ok, chances on that might be slim, but in my opinion you're better safe then sorry.
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Article is lame when it comes to the important stuff. Its great he gave us the hardware to do it, but thats not the important part now is it? Software.... something that can do backup's to harddrive and then take backups and archive on tape. we went with tapeware because of price, but we cannot archive a current backup to tape, so that means we have 4 week online and no archive really (bad). Are there any open source solutions? I saw a couple but they look hard to setup and manage. Tapeware gives a powerful interface and makes it easy to backup from multiple machines... plus linux boxes don't need special server license (unless they have a tape drive) where any Windows 2000 Server box needs a server license.
Lots of motherboards come with 4 IDE channels now, and onboard IDE raid. Very common, not expensive.
I don't think they used RAID. Drives aren't as reliable as they've been spec'd out to be.
I guess if they have everything important backed up on DVD and/or their data wasn't worth much, it'd just be a hassle... But when the system fails you end up with a big panic: running out to buy a new drive, then trying to get everything back up and running again.
I've built similar configurations and lost a drive (twice now!) and it's a big mess. At least with a separate system drive they eliminated one problem... if they lose the main drive they can reinstall and if they lose a data drive, they can at least reboot.
I would recommend raid -- at least raid 5 which would give them 3/4 terabyte and less headaches.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
We needed a moderate amount of storage (print shop dealing mostly with 1/2 Color Offset and moderate color copy work).
We purchased 4 160GB drives and an Adaptec 1200 IDE Raid card. Yields 298GB as RAID 0/1. About $480.
How would you rate us? Good, bad, okay? Shoulda, coulda?
Just yesterday I brought up a server here at work to server as a 1.0 TB-range backup server using 8x200gb WD 8mb cache drives strung off a 3ware escalade controller (raid5, two hot spares). The build process was suprisingly painless (used an athlon-based solution but that's relatively unimportant. you'll want 64bit/64mhz pci slots for things like the 3ware storage card, scsci card to drive a tape drive, etc. the cheapest board I found that could do this was ironically a dual CPU MPX chipset board from gigabyte, sub-$200), with a total cost for a total beast of a machine coming in at about 3400 USD with shipping and such. I'd recommend heartily the 3ware controller cards if you want to try something like this, they're worth every penny of their ~200-300 cost simply for the increased performance and reliability they bring to the table as well as the reduced hassle (the array just shows up as a single huuuuuge scsi drive to linux... always nice when /dev/sda is
reported to contain something like two billion 512 byte sectors ;)). I went with a black aluminum Lian-Li case because it has enough 3.5" drive bays to hold all those drives, comes with lots of fans by default (as well as cooling a bit better than your average plastic / steel case due to the thermal properties of the material), and a monster 550w "vantec stealth" powersupply for reliability and the ability to sustain all the devices in the system. Debian stable installed with zero hassle and now I'm just left with the pain of fighting with backup software. ;) True, I'd trust something from Sun or similar more than this homebrew thing, but this is also a mere fraction of the cost of something from the commercial Unix vendors, so for the same total cost I could have multiple redundant servers... or more ale-and-whores money in the departmental budget. ;)
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Somebody didn't RTFA...
At the same time, we wanted this server to act as a workstation with as much capability as the other systems attached to the storage server.
"How to build a budget file server without knowing what we're talking about"
3 grand is on a budget? What happened to raising from the grave an old AMD K5-166, throw some big IDE drives and you really got a budge file server.
This is a test. This is a test of the emergency sig system. This has been only a test.
This article should have been passed around a bit more before publication and maybe these errors would have been fixed.
You are right. They are probably unbalanced gaming twits. Ignore them.
Few to no real servers actually need 3D, and 8MB is often judged to be plenty enough if you look at the boards designed for server use.
The only exception is if these people are making their every day system into a server, which may not be advisable for anything.
If you believe the numbers, running a drive in RAID mirror will double the effective MTBF, we have done that by choosing the Maxline series vs a standard consumer IDE hard drive.
(Shakes head and bangs it violently against concrete wall)
MTBF and RAID is about entirely different things. The R in RAID stands for REDUNDANCY. You can have a MTBF approaching infinity and you would still have no redundancy.
Mirroring does NOT just double MTBF. It folds two probability functions. With RAID1 not only have both disks to die for data loss, but both disks have to die at the same time! (Or in fact, during the recovery window.) With a MTBF of 1.2 mio hours and a recovery window of maybe 5 hours, this really makes the difference.
Using non-RAID IDE disks, especially on a server, no matter how small the budget, is just playing russian roulette with your data. With at least 5 chambers loaded. It's wantonly negligent. It's unprofessional. Don't do it.
(As a side node, the MTBF is an utterly useless bit of information. It is determined by e.g. running 10,000 disks for 10 hours, with one disk failing. That is one dead disk in 100,000 hours of operation, so MTBF is 100,000. It's a bit like saying that if one woman can make a child in 9 months, 9 women can make a child in 1 month. Reality just doesn't work like that.)
--- The light at the end of the tunnel is probably a burning truck.
As a side note, engineers *never* use the term "self-destruct" in a technical report. The same goes for "explode" and other synonyms. The correct term is:
"Spontaneously Disassemble"
If your laughing, make note that I am being completely serious. I've seen this term on paper too many times.
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
OS X is quite fine on that hardware, especially if you turn off the GUI (Which ain't needed on a server anyways). Yes, you can turn off the GUI on OS X. It's a one-line change.
"You've got an invalid haircut" -Warren Zevon - Life'll Kill Ya
An ok "budget" fileserver with 1TB of space can be built for around 1k$. And maybe even cheaper if you don't care what it looks like :-)
I built a 1.4TB array for about 2500$ two+ years ago. That was with 80GB drives. So, I know damn well it can be done much cheaper than this guys box. (We tested it as a full news server for a month. [click] yeah, you lose a lot putting a filesystem on it.)
I used a belkin omni somthing 8 port had no problems at that res.
ej
Firing Squad is a gaming site, and their goal is to also make it a workstation, and a 1337 one at that. As such, they dumped money into silly things like LED displays, rounded cables, an uber kewl case, graphics card, DVD burner, etc., all of which upped the price with out improving the performance that one would look for in a "storage server".
First, the last thing I would want is someone doing daily work on such an important computer. I don't need Word or IE to crash & burn and eat the OS with it, rendering everybody else's work unavailable to them.
Second, no comments are made about the OS, or even about what the performance of their "Budget Storage Server" will be. It seems odd that they so blithely dismissed RAID, even though the performance and reliability improvements are known.
Finally, there's no mention of tape backup, pretty much the quickest and cheapest way to archive tons of data; why collect a terrabyte worth of information and leave it to the reliability of the HD?
Based on the title, I was hoping the article would be about a file server with high performance-to-cost ratio, something like integrating a BSD/Samba machine into an mixed NT, MAC, & UNIX enviornment, with some concreate numbers regarding sustained data transfer or multiple users in an office workspace. Instead, it was an article about stuffing 5 HDs into a gaming rig. BFD; I find the case mod articles to be more interesting than that.
Tapes are guaranteed to survive a bumpy truck ride off site, and the time you accidentally drop it. You also don't have to worry about wether your tape will spin up after sitting unused on the shelf for a few years. You get no such guarantees with a hard drive.
If your data is worth anything to you, or you have any interest in archiving, hard drives are a poor choice for backups.
The mini-ITX spec only calls for 55W of power, which isn't enough for a bunch of disks. Of course you could use a mini-ITX mainboard with an ATX power supply in some custom or semi-custom case.
As for the rest, I agree the author's goals are unclear.
I have a 533Mhz Via Mini-ITX motherboard driving my file server. Here's what I built:
MB: Via 533Mhz Mini-ITX
Video: Built into MB, crap, but who cares?
NIC: 100 Base-TX built into motherboard
RAM: 1x 512MB DIMM
Storage:
- 1x 20GB Maxtor hard drive for the OS
- 2x Maxtor 120GB drives plugged into a Promise Ultra 66 PCI IDE controller, mirrored
Case: Some old piece of crap mid-tower ATX case
PSU: PC Power and Cooling 300W
It's not uber-leet, but it gets the job done. The system also has a minimum of fans: on for the PSU and one for the drives. Neither the CPU nor the video have fans.
My needs were for a reasonably large capacity (yeah, 120 MB is hardly "large" anymore), reasonable responciveness, low-as-possible power consumption and noise.
I wouldn't use this thing in a production environment or as a mission critical system, but for a home file server feeding files out to four/five client systems it works fine. (And yes, I am planning to put a backup system in there.)
This attrocity tha these idiots specced out is a sad and pathetic joke.
Boobies never hurt anyone. - Sherry Glaser.