HA Server configuration

[RobWalker]

I am putting together a server that will form the backbone of my automation system. My preference in the past has been for multiple single purpose machines, but growing power costs and maintenance requirements are driving me towards putting as much as possible on one system.

Before I pull the trigger on this I would like to throw the spec out there to see if anyone has any comments.

The primary roles for the server will be:

• General file/media repository
• MLServer
• JR Media Center (to provide multi-zone audio through a M-Audio Delta card)
• SageTV recorder
• Managing a few serial connected devices (e.g. 1-wire)

The hardware spec I have developed is:

• Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3R mainboard
• Intel Q9300 Quad Core processor
• 4GB RAM
• 2x 320GB drives configured as RAID1 for system drive
• 3x 750GB drives configured as RAID5 for data
• Some cheap PCIe graphics card
• 2x M-Audio Delta 410
• Case with at least 6 internal drive slots (recommendations?)
• Seasonic S12II 430W Active PFC 80PLUS

The Gigabyte mainboard supports two RAID arrays, and benchmarks online suggest that RAID5 performance from the onboard chipset is more than adequate. The main downside I can see is that the RAID controller doesn't support RAID expansion so there I am having to trade off up-front cost (3 vs 4 or 5 drives) against storage space and the hassle to expand it later.

I am going with the RAID for local resiliency, and have given up on the idea of off-site backups for most media. For documents/photos I use an online backup service. In the worst case I willing to lose anything else unless there is a simple, cheap, low-effort solution for backing up the odd TB of video I am missing.

I have a PVR-250 capture card that will be used with SageTV for now, but hopefully upgraded to a component capture card in the future for HD.

I have an existing XP professional license I could use on this or I could go with Windows Home Server. Any have any experience running WHS for this purpose?

Anything else I should be considering?

Thanks!

 

[CalypsoCowboy]

About how many clients are you wanting to serve?

One thing that stuck out to me was the two 410 cards. What about a 1010 card?

I'm just getting my WHS setup. Sage will run on well from what I understand. But I'm not sure if it can run JR Media or MLServer. You should do some research on that before committing to WHS. Also you may want to rethink things if using WHS due to the corruption bug. I'm planning things a bit different so the server is a lot more read only vs. write.

-Josh

 

[IVB]

Why would you need 2 410 cards? You can do 4 output sources on one card, how many people are in your family and would you really listen to more than 4 songs at once?

If you're doing it to do software-synchronization, and fake-out multiple zones, I think you'd be better off getting a low-end Autopatch off eBay for ($100ish? $150ish) and doing it via hardware.

 

[RobWalker]

Thanks for the input.

There will be a couple of main lobby touch screen clients eventually, and also some web clients (iPod Touch?). For SageTV there will likely be at most 3 simultaneously clients (and more usually only 2).

My understanding was that the M-Audio Delta 410 provides 4 in/10 out whilst the 1010T provides 10 in/10 out. I don't care (I think...) about the in's and the 410 is $50 on ebay vs $200 for a 1010T. So I am $100 better off with the 410 ... plus I can stage it, and only buy one to start with.

The audio plan calls for 6 zones: 4 bedrooms and two downstairs, one of which has three sets of speakers / volume controls.

My plan was to go with a simple A-Bus system where each zone is connected to an output of the sound card(s). I had been planning to use a Russound CAM but I can't find a good reason to spend the extra money. We are not audiophiles so anything better than elevator muzak would sound fine; I don't see a need for multi-source ... everything would be on the server and there is no good way to browse an MP3 collection from a keypad ... so rather than pay extra for the fancy features I can have a system with simple volume controls on the wall (anyone can use those!) with no need to worry about source selection or routing. The extra budget can go for a couple of iPod touches to use as remotes.

I'll have to go read some more about the auto-patch option and see how it fits in.

What is the corruption bug in WHS? I am very familiar with Windows Server 2003 from work but can't justify the license cost for home!

 

[jwilson56]

Keep it in mind that 2 of the 10 on the 410 are digital and 8 are analog RCA. So unless you have a system that can handle SPID your only going to get 4 pairs out of the card. I love the card though. Great specs

John



The Delta 410 functions as a 4-input, 10-output digital recording/playback
interface. Two analog inputs and eight analog outputs plus coaxial S/PDIF I/O
give you the highest quality analog (unbalanced) and digital I/O available -- all
up to 24-bit data width and any sampling rate from 8kHz to 96kHz.

Thanks for the input.

There will be a couple of main lobby touch screen clients eventually, and also some web clients (iPod Touch?). For SageTV there will likely be at most 3 simultaneously clients (and more usually only 2).

My understanding was that the M-Audio Delta 410 provides 4 in/10 out whilst the 1010T provides 10 in/10 out. I don't care (I think...) about the in's and the 410 is $50 on ebay vs $200 for a 1010T. So I am $100 better off with the 410 ... plus I can stage it, and only buy one to start with.

The audio plan calls for 6 zones: 4 bedrooms and two downstairs, one of which has three sets of speakers / volume controls.

My plan was to go with a simple A-Bus system where each zone is connected to an output of the sound card(s). I had been planning to use a Russound CAM but I can't find a good reason to spend the extra money. We are not audiophiles so anything better than elevator muzak would sound fine; I don't see a need for multi-source ... everything would be on the server and there is no good way to browse an MP3 collection from a keypad ... so rather than pay extra for the fancy features I can have a system with simple volume controls on the wall (anyone can use those!) with no need to worry about source selection or routing. The extra budget can go for a couple of iPod touches to use as remotes.

I'll have to go read some more about the auto-patch option and see how it fits in.

What is the corruption bug in WHS? I am very familiar with Windows Server 2003 from work but can't justify the license cost for home!

 

[ginigma]

You should just bite the bullet and buy 1TB drives for the RAID5 array. I just got done upgrading my NAS to 1TB drives (WD10EACS). It was a hassle backing up all the data, verifying it, replacing the drives, restoring the data, verifying it. Those WD drives are "green" drives and use less power. BTW, my NAS is an Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ with 3 WD drives. I'll probably add another drive in a few months giving me 3TB usable space.

 

[RobWalker]

You should just bite the bullet and buy 1TB drives for the RAID5 array. I just got done upgrading my NAS to 1TB drives (WD10EACS). It was a hassle backing up all the data, verifying it, replacing the drives, restoring the data, verifying it. Those WD drives are "green" drives and use less power. BTW, my NAS is an Infrant ReadyNAS NV+ with 3 WD drives. I'll probably add another drive in a few months giving me 3TB usable space.

You are probably right ... the problem is knowing where to stop!

750GB drives are ~ $120 (Cdn) on sale, 1TB is $270, so the options are:

• * 3x750 for 1.5TB (RAID5) at 23.4c\GB
  * 2*1024 for 1TB (RAID1) at 52.7c\GB
  * 3*1024 for 2TB (RAID5) at 39.6c\GB

We have run the last couple of years with a MythTV box and <200GB of space, so I'm hoping 1.5TB will last until 2TB drives are cheap, and then I can just replace the whole lot ... but backing up the data certainly sounds like a pain.

I'll definitely have to check out the 'green' drives option ... noise isn't particularly a concern, but saving a few W always helps.

 

[bfisher]

I didn't bother with RAID in my media server. 99.9% of my media can be recreated, and the stuff that is a pain (all my music) is just archived on another machine on my network. If a TV drive failed - oh well... I can download the few shows I really want to see. I have an extensive DVD library (mostly my kids stuff) and while it might be a pain to recreate - it wouldn't take very long or be very hard.

I hear a lot of people talk about putting RAID in their server, but haven't heard too many afterwards talk about how it saved them. To me... more drives, more money, more heat, more disk activity, very little value.

Nothing on a media server is that critical... and if it is - back it up via a network in minutes.

 

[hucker]

I didn't bother with RAID in my media server. 99.9% of my media can be recreated, and the stuff that is a pain (all my music) is just archived on another machine on my network. If a TV drive failed - oh well... I can download the few shows I really want to see. I have an extensive DVD library (mostly my kids stuff) and while it might be a pain to recreate - it wouldn't take very long or be very hard.

I hear a lot of people talk about putting RAID in their server, but haven't heard too many afterwards talk about how it saved them. To me... more drives, more money, more heat, more disk activity, very little value.

Nothing on a media server is that critical... and if it is - back it up via a network in minutes.

RAID has saved me many times over the last few years. For the 150 bucks for the second drive it is money well spent IMO

 

[RobWalker]

I didn't bother with RAID in my media server. 99.9% of my media can be recreated, and the stuff that is a pain (all my music) is just archived on another machine on my network. If a TV drive failed - oh well... I can download the few shows I really want to see. I have an extensive DVD library (mostly my kids stuff) and while it might be a pain to recreate - it wouldn't take very long or be very hard.

I hear a lot of people talk about putting RAID in their server, but haven't heard too many afterwards talk about how it saved them. To me... more drives, more money, more heat, more disk activity, very little value.

Nothing on a media server is that critical... and if it is - back it up via a network in minutes.

RAID has saved me many times over the last few years. For the 150 bucks for the second drive it is money well spent IMO

I can see the rationale of not needing RAID for something I don't care that much about and could (eventually) recreate ... but there are lots of things I could do and just not enough time to do them, so that added peace of mind is worth it to me. In fact, just not having to explain to the kids that they just lost all their recorded shows would be worth it!

 

[GraysonPeddie]

I don't trust RAID0 for extra performance (higher chance of failure) or RAID1 for data backup.

 

[RobWalker]

I don't trust RAID0 for extra performance (higher chance of failure) or RAID1 for data backup.

I run RAID0 on my machine at work, and am fairly happy with the performance, though I didn't benchmark it extensively. I consider the increased risk of failure a benefit ... it would provide a good excuse to rebuild the machine and clean up the crud that accummulates over time. Obviously there is nothing of consequence on the machine that isn't backed up very to source control or the network.

Why not trust RAID1? Do you mean as a full back strategy, or you wouldn't rely on it for protection against single disk failures (which I'd guess is the second most common cause of data loss after user error)

 

[bfisher]

Regarding performance - I don't think Raid0 is needed if you have a couple hard disks that can be used. Sage records to the drive that's the emptiest, so if you are recording a couple shows at the same time, it usually ends up recording these shows to different disks (not always - depends on which shows have recently been deleted, etc).

I've never had a hard disk throughput issue - recording up to 5 things at once and playing 3-4.

I don't think Raid0 is worth the risk. Raid for backup might be worth it if you really are concerned about losing something - but for those items, I copy them to another machine. I guess it's all personal preference.

 

[felixrosbergen]

I looked at NetGear ReadyNAS, but $1500 for 1TB or $2000 for 2TB seems awfully expensive...that about $1/GB

I'd like a NAS but not at that pricerange. If i can get it empty and just buy the drives as needed that would help...

Anybody have other suggestions on rackmounted NAS solutions??

I plan on having a rackmounted server..anybody to make the drives in that hotswappable?

 

[sic0048]

I plan on having a rackmounted server..anybody to make the drives in that hotswappable?

Hotswappable sounds great, but it is really expensive, and a feature that you really won't use IMHO. It's not like you are going to be swapping out drives regularly. Personally I would just mount them normally and save the $$.

I think the cheapest hotswappable plates I could find run about $30-40 a drive.