[tvieson]

This is what I have put together for a media server based on what I have read. Looking for thoughts, concerns, or suggestions on my build. I am planning to use Xraid with Windows Server. I placed this setup on neweggs public wish list under BIG TS Media Server but its not showing up for some reason.

- x2 WD Green 2TB Hard Drive
- WD Green 250GB Hard Drive

- ASUS EN8400GS Silent/P/512M GeForce 8400 GS 512MB 64-bit DDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card

- CORSAIR HX Series CMPSU-750HX 750W ATX12V 2.3

- ASUS P6T WS PRO LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Core i7 / Xeon Intel Motherboard

- Intel Core i7-860 Lynnfield 2.8GHz LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor
- SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 64-bit PCI-X133MHz SATA Controller Card

- NORCO RPC-450TH 4U Rackmount Server Chassis
- Kingston ValueRAM 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 ECC

[burritoboy9984]

This is what I have put together for a media server based on what I have read. Looking for thoughts, concerns, or suggestions on my build. I am planning to use Xraid with Windows Server. I placed this setup on neweggs public wish list under BIG TS Media Server but its not showing up for some reason.

- x2 WD Green 2TB Hard Drive
- WD Green 250GB Hard Drive

- ASUS EN8400GS Silent/P/512M GeForce 8400 GS 512MB 64-bit DDR2 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready Video Card

- CORSAIR HX Series CMPSU-750HX 750W ATX12V 2.3

- ASUS P6T WS PRO LGA 1366 Intel X58 ATX Intel Core i7 / Xeon Intel Motherboard

- Intel Core i7-860 Lynnfield 2.8GHz LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor
- SUPERMICRO AOC-SAT2-MV8 64-bit PCI-X133MHz SATA Controller Card

- NORCO RPC-450TH 4U Rackmount Server Chassis
- Kingston ValueRAM 6GB (3 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 ECC

First off, your mobo and cpu are not compatible. Second, what are your long term goals for this? If you are SOLELY wanting to use this to store media, you have the entirely wrong case. You should check out the norco 4020/4220. Also, you do not need such a stout cpu/mobo. I run vm's on mine, that is the only reason I went overboard on mine.

-Erik

[PANiCnz]

Once the server is up and running what will it be used for? If it sole use is to serve media consider something like FreeNAS, it can fun from a compact flash card and doesn't require such powerful hardware. With the money saved buy a third harddisk and consider RAID5 or ZFS

[tvieson]

Thanks for catching the error on the CPU, I changed it up to this
Intel Core i7-930 Bloomfield 2.8GHz LGA 1366

The server will be used for the sole purpose of storing media. I may expand in the future as a web server, but its not a primary focus or concern at this point.

As far as my mobo choice. I was going off the advice I had read about trying not to use PCI slots for Sata cards and instead stick with PCIx or PCIe slots. That PCIx and PCIe would offer better performance. In searching for a mobo I found it very difficult to find a mobo that had atleast 2 or more PCIx or PCIe slots on them.

As far as the case goes, I felt 10 bays would be more than enough to meet my storage needs.

I don't really want to go with a mobo/cpu combo on that big of scale, but based on what was available with PCIe or PCIx mobos. This was actually the most cost effective solution. Another important feature to me was dual gigabyte nics on the mobo.

This is why I am posting here. Trying to get multiple inputs to put together what I want/need.

The storage size I am shooting for is around 8TB. 4 for actual storage and 4 to mirror as a backup. I am trying to stay away from RAID 5 as based on my knowledge and experience I have heard on RAID 5. I don't want to lose everything because 1 drive failed. Additionally right now 2TB hard drives are the best size for the price. In a year it might be 3 or 4TB. I don't want to play the match game down the road. I want to just buy 2 4TB hard drives and through them in to add on to my storage.

From a performance stand point I want to be able to stream content up to 4 computers in my house at the same while a 5th computer maybe uploading some new movies I have ripped to the server and not interrupt anybody else.

[jmarshall]

If you're purely serving media then you need only a really light CPU, and hardly any RAM. You want low power in that case as it'll likely always be on.

Take a hunt around here for those that use unRAID setups, and you may wish to try the unRAID forums as well. It's software designed exactly for what you're after.

I'm using a low power Athlon 64 in an AMD 785g board (6 SATA ports on the motherboard). 1GB of RAM, nice quite power supply (500W corsair I think it is) in a case with nice large (120mm and 140mm) fans. On board GPU, Gbit ethernet.

The disks don't get over 28 degrees celcius with stock cooling (no extra fans for the disks) - 5 HDD in the machine currently, and the one that does get that hot is about 4 years old - the newer disks are down at 25 degrees celcius.

Cheers,
Jonathan

[poofyhairguy]

tvieson, I just built a ten bay Mediaserver that is basically EXACTLY what you want, so let me weigh in:

-Your CPU is WAY too powerful. You waste so much with that thing. My ten bay media server can stream my Blu Rays/mkvs to all my clients (up to gigabit network limits- so all four of my clients) and it has a dual core 1.6GHZ celeron CPU and 2GB RAM. If you really are going to be JUST serving media, then get a weaker CPU.

-The power supply is WAY too big for ten drives. Here is what I have for my ten bay server:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...-_-Product

Its actually on sale right now. Seriously, any larger and you will be wasting big time.

-Go for a PCI GPU so you can save the PCI Express slot for something like this:

http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=AOC-...dd-on-Card

Here is a good PCI gpu card:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6814130188

-The case is ok, but if you would prefer a tower (with larger and more quiet fans) I just built my ten drive media server in an Antec 300:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...-_-Product

With one of these in the top:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...6817993002

I easily have ten drives, and each is cooled by 120mm fans. Very nice setup.

-Then take the money I just saved you on a CPU, and put that money towards an Unraid License. Unraid is exactly what you want, and its what I use.

Unraid is a perfect mix of JBOD and RAID 4/5. You get one drive parity for your machine just like RAID4/5- if one disk dies you can replace it and not lose data. But unlike RAID 5 Unraid DOES NOT stripe the data- you can still pull the drives out independently and read them on another system. So if more than one drive dies you just lose whats on the drive.

Unlike real RAID Unraid DOES allow you to mix and match any type of drives you want- on my newest box I have drives from four different vendors (of different sizes!) working great together. you state you want this ability, and Unraid is the only decent way to get it.

Like real RAID Unraid allows you to pool the data- so single large directories (called "User Shares") that span disks for simplicity. With Unraid you don't need $300 RAID cards- the ports on the mobo work just fine plus the one card I linked above.

Unraid is based on Slackware Linux, and I must say its SMB speeds out of the box are amazing. It can stream a Blu Ray via SAMBA better than I ever could coming from a vanilla Ubuntu install. It works perfectly with XBMC.

Unraid runs off a pen drive, so all your sata ports go to HDs. It's a really smart media server OS.

The downsides to Unraid? There are two: writing to the server is slower than writing to individual drives, and it costs money. The writing problem makes sense as it keeps up with the parity as you add stuff to the server (its about half as slow), and if you need fast writes you can make one drive a dedicated cache drive which gets the speed back up. As for the money, you were looking at a i7 when you need a celeron so something tells me you got the $ for a Pro key.

Unraid is not a good solution if you want a box that multitasks (aka BE the media player, download torrents, etc), but if you want a pure media server there is no solution better on the planet:

http://www.lime-technology.com/

If you decide to go Unraid, scrap the CPU and mobo and pick something off the recommended list:

http://www.lime-technology.com/wiki/inde...ed_to_Work

Honestly I don't like PCIx. The Supermicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 I linked above gives you 8 drives off a PCI Express slot. Since any mobo has at least four sata ports, you will be set for 12 drives then! You rather have 12 drives? Then get an Antec 900:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...-_-Product

Plus three of the above linked Cooler Master 4 in 3s. You want more? My newest build (since my 10 drive Unraid server is full) is based on an Antec 1200:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.as...-_-Product

I am building for 16 drives in that one.