File server

Hey all,

I'm setting up a small file server (20 users connected at max at any given time let's say) and am trying to decide which processors to get. The plan is to setup a wireless 108mbit G router- most people are on laptops here with wireless connections; that seems easiest. I don't have much of a budget but was able to get 4 200GB 7200 RPM ATA133 drives that I plan to hook into a RAID 0. Hopefully that should sustain a decent transfer rate, I don't think people will need more than 1 megabyte/ second so I'm hoping that should be sufficient- I assume the drives should be able to pull 100MB/s.
Now, for the processors, I'm trying to figure out what do. I can get 2 Opteron 242's for $135 and then get a corresponding mobo and ram for a nice dualie system. I'm wondering if it'd be worth it to get othose or perhaps a slightly faster single processor. I do intend to also encode some video with this system. Any thoughts? Methinks the opterons are the best solution.
Also, does it seem like 1 GB of ram will be sufficient?
All the server will be used for is users connecting and transferring files onto their comps from it.

Agreed- Opteron is your best choice. They're cheap, mobos are cheap, and memory is cheap. Go dual core- buying two seperate opterons is both cost ineffective and there are performance hits. I suggest getting 2GB of RAM.

I wouldn't recommend using a wireless router for 20 users. You can certainly do it, but the problems becomes one of switching. Current wireless routers do prioritize bandwidth and they are slow to switch. And don't even think about connecting VoIP to it. For example, say you have some asshat downloading a 100MB movie trailer. On a normal wired router the bandwidth will be divided by the number of users connected. Not so on wireless. Wireless will grab every megabit it can and not divide it or prioritize it. Thus, all the bandwidth will be pumped to the asshat downloading movie trailers and the rest of the network will suffer.

Take hotels for example. Go to a hotel in Vegas and try to use their free wireless. It's extremely slow. Not because there's limited bandwidth, but because wireless routers simply don't switch as fast as wired ones and suck and bandwidth sharing. Wireless is fine for say <5 ppl/devices at a time. (FYI, network companies like linksys, juniper, etc are working on wireless routers that prioritize bandwidth streams based on what they are. however, they're not in full production yet)

Look for an enterprise level wireless router and use multiple WAPs. And consider using twisted pair (if it's cost effective). Also remember that those on laptops are going to limited to 10mbps or 54mbps. Not many laptops support the 108mbps protocol.

EDIT: if these users are working with files located on this fileserver, wireless is definitely NOT the way to go. As I stated above, wireless sucks at sharing and prioritizing bandwidth. It will be a fantastic mess.

Just some things to think about. :-)

-mpjesse

Hmm, as it turns out, I may be able to get a mobo + athlon 2600 real cheap. Given that this file server will just be streaming the files, would that really be all that cpu intensive?

Also, looking at what you said about the wireless routers, wouldnt it be possible to trick the router somehow into dividing bandwith evenly? Also, every user will be downloading something, so wouldnt the competing connections force equal bandwith distribution?

The last thing that I would ever do is use RAID0 for a file server. 8O Not unless you want really pissed off users when a drive fails. You'd at least need to have a seperate backup device if you did that, IMHO. But even then, you'll need a regular backup procedure and you'll have to be prepared for hostile calls if a drive dies.

Instead I'd be looking at a RAID5 array. That way you get redundancy and performance. If a drive fails the storace access will slow down a lot, but it'll still run, and you can just plop a new drive in, let it rebuild the array, and all is fixed.

Which is why I'd also suggest SCSI over SATA or PATA, for reliability reasons. If you do go SATA, at least get a drive with a good warranty that's designed to run 24/7.

And hot swappable drives? Even better. No downtime while replacing a bad drive.

But in your case, I'd also just consider a network storage device. I mean if the PC was actually going to do something PCish, then certainly build one. But if you're just looking for a file server? A pre-built network storage device can save a lot of headaches.

Yep. It's important to point out that nearly every enterprise NAS uses RAID5. All of our storage servers are RAID5 here...

-mpjesse

This isn't really an enterprise file server hehe, if the drives fail, no biggie. I do plan to add backup drives but want to wait for sales on cheap, slow, large drives for backups. Note that the budget for all of this is < $700....