working on a server first time, need advice.

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JaceZing

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alright. i want the server to be open to anyone public or private (so if i go to go to the library, i can watch one of my movies on their computer from my server);
windows PC, MACs, linux users, desktops, laptops, tablets, (probably not phones) and if possible wii and xbox360...

the server will be used for:
streaming movies and pictures. (can i run a single player game (like bioshock infinite? (haven't bought or played SO NO SPOILERS)))
holding files/storage. (like those movie, games, and picutures... along with software?
gaming server, for tekkit lite (minecraft)

itll be a smaller server only expecting 8 AT MOST but average will be 1 - 2 people at a time.

OS: freeNAS?

right now im stuck at the basics on hardware...
i was thinking of getting two raid controllers. and putting 16 hard drives between the two. and at a raid 5 (only level redundancy if im not mistaken. will give me:
# of HDDs x size of HDD
16x3=48
size - 1 HDD for the redundancy
48-3=45
then subtract more space for the system because you never get the full size...
i expect 40TB to be usable!

hard drive:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148844

ive looked at raid controllers, and found this one. but im still new here, so if theres better for the buck, glad to take recommendations!
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115100
+wires to connect the HDDs
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115064

no idea on good motherboards, processors, power supply, and if i should get a graphics card or not.

what id like to be easily up-gradable.

i was thinking for RAM to start off with 16GB and add more sticks later to boost up to 32GB.

to be able to add two more raid cards, and stick in another 8 drives...

i was planning on leaving the motherboard, CPU, GPU in there for several years before upgrading

id like the build (without the HDDs) to be under $1000, and even cheaper $500-$800 would be nice, but doubt that because parts i want are expensive -.-
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Back up a step or two.
Where do you live and who is your ISP? Most ISP's in the use do not allow 'servers' on a regular home connection.
 
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COLGeek

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...and most ISPs restrict your upload speed significantly as compared to your download speed. Opening up your server to provide public access to copyrighted material (like your movies) may also be a problem as well.

Opening a hole in your router (or setting up a DMZ) is easy and will allow access to a system from outside your home network, but that really isn't the issue. Just be careful on how you intend to use your server.
 
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molletts

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For that many drives, you'll probably want to use RAID60 for several reasons:

  • ■ You'd have to have all 16 drives on one RAID controller (using port multipliers) to do RAID5 as you can't spread one array across two controllers.

    ■ If you had 16 drives on one controller, you wouldn't want to do RAID5 anyway - you'd want at least RAID6 because of the sheer number of drives in the array.

    ■ With an array of that size, it's debatable whether you'd be able to rebuild it successfully - the datasheet for the drives you plan to use shows an unrecoverable read error rate of 1 per 10^14. A 45TB array is about 4x10^14 bits so there's a good chance that, assuming another drive didn't fail in the week or so it would probably take to rebuild, at least one of the drives would return a read error and cause the rebuild to fail.

    ■ Even RAID6 would be a little shaky with that many drives and just two parity stripes. Splitting the array into two smaller ones would help reduce the chance of a failed rebuild.

    ■ Performance would probably suck donkeys on a cheap controller like that. Even an Adaptec ASR-51605 would probably struggle to push enough data to keep up with the drives. Smaller arrays will alleviate the performance bottleneck a bit, although I suspect that the controller will still be a bottleneck because of the sheer complexity of the RAID6 parity computations.
So, with these controllers and that many disks, I'd suggest having two 6+2 RAID6 arrays (one per controller), configured in the OS as a RAID0 giving an overall capacity of 12x3TB=36TB with two redundant drives for each stripe of the logical volume. (Or just use software RAID throughout and eliminate the controller bottleneck altogether.)

Alternatively, you could have 4xRAID5 arrays, two per controller, configured as a 4-way RAID0 in software. (Hey, you could do RAID55 for a laugh! I'd hate to have to work out the optimal filesystem tuning parameters for that!) This would make the size of the rebuild a little more manageable although I'm not sure how it would perform and what the failure probability would be.

It's likely to be a dedicated NAS box rather than a general-purpose PC so you won't need a graphics card (you probably won't even have a monitor attached to it most of the time) and CPU and memory aren't going to be heavily utilised either unless you've got dozens of people in your household hammering it constantly.

Minecraft servers tend to be CPU-intensive but they only tend to use one core (the 4-core Xeon server I use for the Minecraft server at work [a school, of course!] reaches 15-20 users then begins to lag badly with one core pegged at 100% and the other three virtually idle). So I'd go for a higher-clocked processor rather than one with a bazillion cores. (You can also get the "bouncing cow" phenomenon when you've got a heavily uneven load on a big multi-core system, where the CPU-bound task starts jumping between cores, incurring cache misses and killing performance.)

If it wasn't for the possible MC server requirement, I'd say a basic Athlon II X2 with 2-4GB of ECC RAM would be plenty. To allow for the MC server, perhaps a high-clocked Phenom II X3 or X4 or FX-4000-series would be better, coupled with 8-16GB of ECC RAM. (You can't use ECC RAM with Intel processors, except for Xeons, so I always recommend AMD for entry-level servers that use desktop CPUs. If you decide to go with an all-hardware RAID solution, you could probably get away with non-ECC RAM but with software RAID, memory errors will royally screw your data.)

One question to consider - how do you plan to back up that much data?
 
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JaceZing

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my ISP is AT&T verse with speeds of 32,325 kbs down and 5,040 kbs up... so its not a horrible connection...

@molletts
dang... lots of good stuff here...
so if i get a 1 raid card that can hold 16 HDs and then split it up with two RAID5 with a RAID0?

ive never done raid before... and im bad at algebra so when you say "4x10^14" i see "you're idea is stupid. try again."

so in other words... what would you (or anyone who is reading) recommend for something with a ton of storage 40TB+
 
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USAFRet

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Personally, I wouldn't try to manage 40TB (!) of stuff from a home connection.
Before you get to "what hardware", you have to address "security", and "how much do I really need on a daily basis?", and "who will be accessing this".

Any opening in your firewall (port forwarding, DMZ, whatever) introduces intrusion risks.
Maybe contact AT&T about a business class connection (and the associated extra cost). Then you will be able to run a server no problem.
 
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JaceZing

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is there a way to set up a smaller size. like 1 card with 8 HDDs with RAID50. and then have that wired to my computer (so its decently fast for me (the main user)), and a wireless option (so others can use it, and i can get rid of drop box, and office 360, and google drive)? itll only be used by me, my family, and a couple friends ive known for way to long, and able to trust them with such power...
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Size doesn't matter. Be it 1.44MB or 40TB, once you open it up to beyond your home cable modem/router, it is open. Take precautions to prevent anyone else from accessing it.
 
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COLGeek

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Prior to my current ISP, I had ATT Uverse and what you are proposing is likely not allowed (as I recall). USAFRet is right about getting the proper type of service. The advice mollets provided is very important. What he is telling you is that should a drive ever fail, it would take days to rebuild the array. 40TB+ is a lot of data.

Also, forget about trying to run a game remotely (like you would locally), it won't work. Running a server is different altogether. Your server does not need a GPU beyond integrated graphics as well.
 
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molletts

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I won't reiterate what USAFRet and COLGeek have said about securing the server properly and ISPs' Acceptable Use Policies - "You have been warned!", as they say. Ultimately, it's your choice what you do with your internet connection and your data.

As for the maths... I'm not just saying that it'll take freakin' ages to to rebuild an array that big but that you may find that a RAID5 will actually fail to rebuild with that much data to process and you'll be faced with having to copy all your data off onto (lots of) other drives, build a new array, then copy the data back.

The scary-looking maths I used works like this: (engage teacher mode :))

Seagate estimate that the drives you plan to use will return an unrecoverable read error (i.e. "sorry, I can't read that bit, I've tried lots of times but it's no good") once for every 100,000,000,000,000 (100 trillion) bits that they attempt to read. (That's 10^14 - a 1 with 14 zeroes after it. Likewise, 10^3 is a thousand. It's just a handy way of writing very big numbers. It should really be written as a 10 followed by a small 14 "up the top" but I can't figure out how to get the forum to do that.)

It is, of course, purely probability. The drive may read 100 times that amount of data without an error happening, or you may get an error the first time you read the boot sector. (It's like tossing a coin - on average, the odds of getting heads are 1 in 2 but you could toss 100 times and get 100 heads; it's just very unlikely and I'd want a closer look at that coin of yours, thanks!)

1 in 100 trillion sounds like pretty remote odds (say, maybe I shouldn't go out today in case I get hit by a meteorite while collecting the Lotto jackpot...) but 45TB is an awful lot of data. About 400 trillion bits, in fact. (The 4x10^14 I mentioned.)

Rebuilding the array involves reading every one of those bits accurately and successfully in order to "fill in the blanks" on the replacement drive. When you've got to read in 400 trillion bits, those 1-in-100-trillion odds of an error start to sound a lot less favourable.

Add in the fact that drives are more likely to fail during an array rebuild anyway because they're working very hard and you start to get onto shaky ground. (I've had a few close shaves in the past - I had to borrow a drive from a desktop PC on one occasion because, a few hours after rebuilding a RAID5 onto the spare drive that was already in the server, another drive failed, leaving it degraded again. The third drive failed just after the replacements for the first two were delivered.)

Hope this makes it a little less confusing!
 
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JaceZing

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alrigjht, so what yall are saying is its not a good idea to make 1 server 40TB... what about getting multiple servers, and making the computer read them as 1? <- not sure if thats possible, just trying to think of a way, i can build a smaller server, then be able to easily upgrade it without having to spend days transfering/backing up all my data...

as far as security, im going to be taking a class on that this fall XD so hopefully thatll start me off right... + who would want to hack a server full of game development software, game betas, project worksheets, movies, and night time movies? ;)

+ill be seeding the movies... so its not like im keeping them for myself... as for my ISP, ive never had a problem with the 2 terabytes ive already DLed and several terabytes ive uploaded...

i understand maths now! thanks!
 
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USAFRet

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Not trying to be an asshole or corporate shill, but this is straight up 'piracy'. People have been sued for hundreds of thousands, even millions for doing exactly what you propose.

Have you heard of the recent "6 Strikes" rule? Look into it. AT&T is a participant.

I'm not saying you/we should bow down to our corporate overlords, just be aware of what you are getting into.

One class in the fall is merely the beginning of how to secure a server farm. People will hack on it 'just because'.
 
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JaceZing

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OH! thats not what i meant. my movies are homemade about how we should not drink out of date milk. and why guns are bad and we should get rid of all of them! and why westboro baptist church is good! :p XD
but all seriousness.
any good links to videos or good walk throughs about servers, the different types. in depth RAID/storage options?
 
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USAFRet

USAFRet

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Well then. If these are your homemade personal productions, good!
I'll leave the 'content' alone.
 
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molletts

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You can make one server 40TB but I'd shy away from attempting to make a single RAID5 or RAID6 array that big.

That's where dividing it up into several smaller arrays then combining those comes in. You have more "overhead", of course, but with that many drives, you really want more than just one or two "redundant" drives anyway. (Although there's not actually a specific drive in a RAID5/6 that carries the parity information - it's spread across all the drives in rotation to improve performance.)

As I suggested, you could have 4 RAID5 arrays of 3+1 drives each. That would give you 9TB per array (3 x 3TB - a manageable size). These could then be combined using software RAID0 to give a 36TB RAID50 array. You could lose any one drive in one of the RAID5 arrays without losing any data (or even one drive in each of the RAID5s!) but, of course, if you were unfortunate enough to lose two drives in the same RAID5 set, which would cause that set to fail, you would lose everything because of the RAID0 (which isn't really RAID at all - there's no Redundancy).

It's a hard one to call...

I don't know whether FreeNAS can do it but there are file storage systems (either actual filesystems or file server software) that can combine completely separate volumes (disks or arrays) into an apparent single filestore by spreading the files across them then making them appear to be all on one volume. Some of them can even do away with RAID altogether by ensuring that there is more than one copy of each file (or some kind of recovery records such as Reed-Solomon codes) stored on different physical hard drives. I don't know much about this yet but I really ought to start investigating it for work. (We'll be needing to look into storage on a similar scale to your proposed server to hold the school's burgeoning repository of audio, video and photos. A proper commercial NAS system would be the ideal solution but unfortunately, the Headteacher nearly died of shock when I showed him the quotes I'd got for it.)
 
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What you want pretty much that what i want, close to three yrs ago.

My targets are:
- Capable of streamming multiple BD.ISO (full 1080p and DTS-HD). This mean this NAS has to be FAST in random read/write
- BT
- Back up my data automatically
- Lowest power consumption, cuz it runs 24/7 - I do not want to see the electrical bill jump
- Expand storage volume as I need it.

Base on these criteria.

Here is what I build 40TB NAS base on FreeNAS
http://www.mpcclub.com/forum/showthread.php?t=22898&page=4

Note: Three yrs ago, 2TB is the most cost effective, the system can handle 4TB HDD easily., so if I use 4TB I could have 80TB NAS
 
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