Building a Home Server and need some tips

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SNC

I've built the last 10 computers ( the wife and I have separate machines and
like to try and stay relatively close to "the bleeding edge" ) in my house
and I would like to try and build a raid server... the reason?... I have a
lot of files (around 500 gigs) on my machine that I would like to dump off
onto a raid-1 type server....

I can't really burn the files to disc... I need "instant" access to the
data....
Currently, the data is on 3 - 250 gig hd's on my machine... but this currant
build is about a yr old and I am starting to get antsy about a hd failure...

my desire is to have "storage"... instant access storage

Currently, there are 3 computers in my house... my wife's, mine and one for
my grandson to play games and surf the internet on.... all three of these
machines are on the network sharing one cable internet connection....

I would like to have about 8 - 300 gig hds or around 1 terabyte mirrored -
raid-1

So, am I going to have to SCSI? or can I achieve this with ide hds

Is there a website or link that can give me a "how to" on this project?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

Thanx
SNC
 
I've built the last 10 computers ( the wife and I have separate machines and
like to try and stay relatively close to "the bleeding edge" ) in my house
and I would like to try and build a raid server... the reason?... I have a
lot of files (around 500 gigs) on my machine that I would like to dump off
onto a raid-1 type server....

I can't really burn the files to disc... I need "instant" access to the
data....
Currently, the data is on 3 - 250 gig hd's on my machine... but this currant
build is about a yr old and I am starting to get antsy about a hd failure...

my desire is to have "storage"... instant access storage

Currently, there are 3 computers in my house... my wife's, mine and one for
my grandson to play games and surf the internet on.... all three of these
machines are on the network sharing one cable internet connection....

I would like to have about 8 - 300 gig hds or around 1 terabyte mirrored -
raid-1

So, am I going to have to SCSI? or can I achieve this with ide hds

Is there a website or link that can give me a "how to" on this project?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated
Click to expand...

Get a Promise SX6000 RAID card and you can have 6 x 250GB drives
installed in a hardware RAID 5 setting - that gives you over 1TB of
space.

I like the ASUS PC-DL Deluxe Dual Xeon CPU system - has all you need for
a nice small business server.

SATA Drives can rival the regular SCSI drives.
 
Get a Promise SX6000 RAID card and you can have 6 x 250GB drives
installed in a hardware RAID 5 setting - that gives you over 1TB of
space.
Click to expand...
is is possible to put two cards on one machine.... once again, im looking
for maximum data protection.... 1TB "mirrored" (2TB total)

thanx
 
SNC,
Do some reading about RAID and you'll learn that RAID 5 is one of the
most efficient ways to utilize hard drives in a redundant fault-tolerant
manner. RAID 1 is safe, but it wastes 50% of your disk space. RAID5 uses
at least 3 drives, and wastes "only" 1 drive's worth of space.

So - RAID 5 with two drives = RAID 1 = 50% wasted space
RAID 5 with three drives = 33% wasted space
RAID 5 with four drives = 25% wasted space
RAID 5 with five drives = 20% wasted space

NOTE: the space isn't truly "wasted" as it is the redundant data needed to
be tolerant of a single drive failure. Usually in RAID 5, you can also
designate a HOT SPARE drive that will join the array in the event one drive
goes bad. It will then be rebuilt by the other drives in the array.
 
is is possible to put two cards on one machine.... once again, im looking
for maximum data protection.... 1TB "mirrored" (2TB total)
Click to expand...

RAID 5 is the best protection and method for your solution. A mirror
would waste a ton of space and not provide any more protection. The Raid
5 array will provide better reads on a busy server.
 
Thanx guys... will research the different forms of raid... but sounds like
Raid-5 is the answer....
 
DanO said:
SNC,
Do some reading about RAID and you'll learn that RAID 5 is one of the
most efficient ways to utilize hard drives in a redundant fault-tolerant
manner.
Click to expand...

Do some more reading and you'll learn that RAID 5 sucks ass for
database performance. RAID 1+0 is what you'll be wanting if you
want good write performance.
 
Ronald,

To put your answer into perspective:

RAID 1 - mirroring is inefficient in terms of disc drives since there is
always 1 'spare' for each 'live' drive.
RAID 5 - is not so efficient at writing. It is efficient at reading and
comparable to RAID 1. To borrow a term RAID 5 writes suck. However the
reader should ask: what is the ratio of reads to writes? normally is is 5 to
1 or 10 to 1. If the OP has a large archive then the ratio may be even
higher since it is predominantly an archive, so overall a RAID 5 controller
may not give any noticeable degradation due to low frequency of writes.

With todays RAID controllers - there are an enormous number - the correct
answer will depend on the OP's requirements & priorities - budget vs
resilience vs performance. So no one answer is ever best.

Somewhat off Topic:

With 1TB of data the OP has several options for backups: 250 or more DVD's,
25 or more tapes (EG 20 - 40 GB on DAT-4 using compression, or 10 x 100 GB
on AIT-2 etc. assuming good compression), and / or a highly resilient disc
storage sub system. DAT looks very attractive here due to the number of
tapes that would be needed and the low cost of each tape, but may not be
that rosey considering a) drive reliability, and b) tape capacity /
reliability. AIT drives seem to be coming down in price, but I see 'good'
references to DLT not AIT in news groups - not sure why...

- Tim
 
SNC said:
Thanx guys... will research the different forms of raid... but sounds like
Raid-5 is the answer....
Click to expand...

I'll just throw this in......

You setup/needs sounds very similar to ours at home. A couple of points:
1. You might be better off having the 2TB of storage arranged as his n
her machines, each having 1TB. Just have duplicate copies of the
important files on both machines.
2. If the PSU blows up and fries everything, server gets stolen, dropped
etc, you stand a better chance of not loosing everything.
3. If you've got that much storage (as have we) its probably large
multimedia files. These take a bloody age to transfer over a network.
We've gone over to gigabit LAN because of it and its still nowhere near
fast enough. (But its great to do the periodic LAN backups)

Just a thought.

--
__________________________________________________
Personal email for Gareth Jones can be sent to:
'usenet4gareth' followed by an at symbol
followed by 'uk2' followed by a dot
followed by 'net'
__________________________________________________
 
ronald@forte- said:
Do some more reading and you'll learn that RAID 5 sucks ass for
database performance. RAID 1+0 is what you'll be wanting if you
want good write performance.
Click to expand...

Actually, raid 10 (1+0) is great, but since this is a HOME based system
(or even a SOHO) a 1+0 array would cost more than it's worth.

Most databases, before 1+0, were setup with transaction logs on RAID 1
and data on RAID 5. RAID 5 is not slow by any means when it comes to
reads - the limit to number of spindles is only a hardware limit. This
means that I could have 15 drives in a RAID 5 array and get some serious
RANDOM performance out of the system.

1+0 is nice, but small businesses and home users, except in extreme
cases, don't benefit from it and most can't afford it.
 
Any advice would be greatly appreciated
Get a Promise SX6000 RAID card and you can have 6 x 250GB drives
installed in a hardware RAID 5 setting - that gives you over 1TB of
space.
Click to expand...

Nahhh, buy anything but Promise.

I suggest 3ware: they are the best in IDE raid, the pro choice :-)

Check www.3ware.com
 
Tim said:
Ronald,

To put your answer into perspective:

RAID 1 - mirroring is inefficient in terms of disc drives since there is
always 1 'spare' for each 'live' drive.
RAID 5 - is not so efficient at writing. It is efficient at reading and
comparable to RAID 1. To borrow a term RAID 5 writes suck. However the
reader should ask: what is the ratio of reads to writes? normally is is 5 to
1 or 10 to 1. If the OP has a large archive then the ratio may be even
higher since it is predominantly an archive, so overall a RAID 5 controller
may not give any noticeable degradation due to low frequency of writes.
Click to expand...

There are other problems with RAID 5 in practice:

<http://groups.google.com/groups?q=a...-8&[email protected]&rnum=4>
 
Leythos said:
Actually, raid 10 (1+0) is great, but since this is a HOME based system
(or even a SOHO) a 1+0 array would cost more than it's worth.

Most databases, before 1+0, were setup with transaction logs on RAID 1
and data on RAID 5. RAID 5 is not slow by any means when it comes to
reads - the limit to number of spindles is only a hardware limit. This
means that I could have 15 drives in a RAID 5 array and get some serious
RANDOM performance out of the system.

1+0 is nice, but small businesses and home users, except in extreme
cases, don't benefit from it and most can't afford it.
Click to expand...

In case you forgot, the "I" in RAID stands for "inexpensive". RAIDing
U320 SCSI is for the rich and well off. If one can't afford to RAID
1+0 a bunch of bargain basement IDE drives, then one should buy a
ruggedly well built fast U320 SCSI and back it up to tape.
 
Me again,

Since it is a 'given' that you will be getting a raid card with a capacity
of at least 5 drives (raid 5 for 1 tb with 250 GB drives), the I do suggest
some benchmarking prior to commiting to the configuration *and* rehearsing
what to do when a drive fails so that you get no surprises later on when one
does. Get a hot spare. I believe hitachi has a new 400GB drive out...

Multiple drive failures do occur in raid 5 so be aware and do have some form
of backup.

This review may be handy:

http://www.gamepc.com/labs/view_content.asp?id=9500s4lp&page=1&cookie_test=1

- Tim


SNC said:
Thanx guys... will research the different forms of raid... but sounds like
Raid-5 is the answer....
Click to expand...
 
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