I would appreciate comments and suggestions regarding these components as I get ready to homebuild a new computer.
The basic objectives are:[*:d8423a83b9]Want to run Linux as primary OS, but will probably end up caving in and dual booting Windows in the end. Damn you, Bill.
[*:d8423a83b9]Variety of applications. Not much gaming, but some video rendering and other CPU-intensive tasks. A bit of programming.
[*:d8423a83b9]Tons of storage. This machine will double as NAS for a media center.
[*:d8423a83b9]Semi-futureproof upgradable system.[*:d8423a83b9]Dual processor motherboard, start with a single dual core CPU, then drop in another dual core CPU + memory ~1 year down the road.
[*:d8423a83b9]Case has eight 1" hotswap trays. I plan to buy 4 drives for the array to start, then add more later using RAID card's expansion features until it's an 8-drive RAID 5 (or RAID 6) array.
Components & highlights:
[*:d8423a83b9]SUPERMICRO CSE-743T-650B Black 4U Rackmount Case - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811152061
$405[*:d8423a83b9]includes 650W redundant power supply
[*:d8423a83b9]known to play nice with the Supermicro motherboard below
[*:d8423a83b9]8 1" hotswap SATA drive bays
[*:d8423a83b9]4U rackmountable ... someday, it will probably end up in my garage rack, so this is convenient
[*:d8423a83b9]SUPERMICRO H8DCE-O Extended ATX Server Motherboard - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813182081
$369[*:d8423a83b9]Dual Socket 940 NVIDIA nForce4 Professional 2200 Extended ATX Server Motherboard
[*:d8423a83b9]two PCIe 16x, two PCIe 4x (in 8x slots), three 32-bit PCI
[*:d8423a83b9]dual gigabit LAN
[*:d8423a83b9]onboard SATA II controller + RAID (I think the nVidia onboard SATA RAID will do RAID 0 & 1 in hardware?)
[*:d8423a83b9]two CORSAIR 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) ECC Registered System Memory Model CM72SD1024RLP-3200 - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145310
$108 x 2 = $216
[*:d8423a83b9]AMD Dual-Core Opteron 275 Italy 1GHz HT Socket 940 Processor Model OSA275CBBOX - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103551
$689
[*:d8423a83b9]6 Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ST3250824AS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148111
$90 x 6 = $540[*:d8423a83b9]4 in RAID5 configuration = 750 GB storage space ... able to add up to 4 more drives = 1750 GB as RAID5, or 1500 GB as RAID6
[*:d8423a83b9]2 to be the system disks for OS/programs. Set up in RAID 1 using the motherboard's onboard controller (I don't think this is softRAID with the nVidia chipset).
[*:d8423a83b9]By the time I actually buy all this stuff (May/June) I might just go ahead and get some of the 500 GB drives ... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148108 which are now $295 each, or $.59/GB compared to $.36/GB for the 250s. Maybe they'll be cheaper then.
[*:d8423a83b9]Areca ARC-1220 PCI-Express x8 SATA II Controller Card - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816131004
$560[*:d8423a83b9]4 Multi-lane connectors Support up to 8 Serial ATA II drives
[*:d8423a83b9]RAID 6 support built in
[*:d8423a83b9]Some PCIe x16 video card
[*:d8423a83b9]Some sound card
[*:d8423a83b9]Some monitor ... my 6-ton monstrosity of an IBM P201 (had it 12 years now!) is starting to wig out and fail
[*:d8423a83b9]Some keyboard/mouse/etc
[*:d8423a83b9]Some quieter fans to replace the included jet engines.
Approaching $3000 for an Opteron 275 (dual core) system with 2 GB RAM, 250 GB system partition, 750 GB RAID array. Upgradable to a dual processor (quad core), 1500-1750 GB array pretty easily.
Specific questions ... been a few years since I've homebuilt anything, so pardon me if some of these sound clueless.
The drives and RAID card are SATA II. I can't tell if the hotswap trays are
SATA II or old SATA, and I don't know if that even makes a difference. Will
these three components (drive, RAID card, hotswap trays) play nice together?
The RAID card ...[*:d8423a83b9]... has "4 Multi-lane connectors Support up to 8 Serial ATA II drives." WTF does that mean? All I want to do is be able to plug up to 8 drives (via the hotswap bays) into this card. What's the advantage/disadvantage to multilane? Is this just a cable management thing, or is there more to it?
[*:d8423a83b9]... has a PCIe x8 interface. The motherboard above has two PCIe x16 slots (I guess I could use one of those) but from the Newegg pic/description it also has two "PCI-e x4 (using x8) slots" ... So can this card go in one of the x4/x8 slots? I don't know much about PCIe, though I think you can put smaller cards in bigger slots and expect them to work.
Can anyone confirm whether or not the onboard SATA II RAID 0/1/0+1 with this motherboard is hardware or software?
Is it possible to expand a 4-disk RAID5 array to an 8-disk RAID6 array on the fly with this controller? It'd be a pain to back up 1.5 TB of data someplace, then rebuild the array from scratch when upgrading. I guess I could just go with an 8-disk RAID5 but I like the extra redundancy of RAID6.
Other comments & suggestions welcome. Thanks.
The basic objectives are:[*:d8423a83b9]Want to run Linux as primary OS, but will probably end up caving in and dual booting Windows in the end. Damn you, Bill.
[*:d8423a83b9]Variety of applications. Not much gaming, but some video rendering and other CPU-intensive tasks. A bit of programming.
[*:d8423a83b9]Tons of storage. This machine will double as NAS for a media center.
[*:d8423a83b9]Semi-futureproof upgradable system.[*:d8423a83b9]Dual processor motherboard, start with a single dual core CPU, then drop in another dual core CPU + memory ~1 year down the road.
[*:d8423a83b9]Case has eight 1" hotswap trays. I plan to buy 4 drives for the array to start, then add more later using RAID card's expansion features until it's an 8-drive RAID 5 (or RAID 6) array.
Components & highlights:
[*:d8423a83b9]SUPERMICRO CSE-743T-650B Black 4U Rackmount Case - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16811152061
$405[*:d8423a83b9]includes 650W redundant power supply
[*:d8423a83b9]known to play nice with the Supermicro motherboard below
[*:d8423a83b9]8 1" hotswap SATA drive bays
[*:d8423a83b9]4U rackmountable ... someday, it will probably end up in my garage rack, so this is convenient
[*:d8423a83b9]SUPERMICRO H8DCE-O Extended ATX Server Motherboard - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813182081
$369[*:d8423a83b9]Dual Socket 940 NVIDIA nForce4 Professional 2200 Extended ATX Server Motherboard
[*:d8423a83b9]two PCIe 16x, two PCIe 4x (in 8x slots), three 32-bit PCI
[*:d8423a83b9]dual gigabit LAN
[*:d8423a83b9]onboard SATA II controller + RAID (I think the nVidia onboard SATA RAID will do RAID 0 & 1 in hardware?)
[*:d8423a83b9]two CORSAIR 1GB 184-Pin DDR SDRAM DDR 400 (PC 3200) ECC Registered System Memory Model CM72SD1024RLP-3200 - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16820145310
$108 x 2 = $216
[*:d8423a83b9]AMD Dual-Core Opteron 275 Italy 1GHz HT Socket 940 Processor Model OSA275CBBOX - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16819103551
$689
[*:d8423a83b9]6 Seagate Barracuda 7200.9 ST3250824AS 250GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148111
$90 x 6 = $540[*:d8423a83b9]4 in RAID5 configuration = 750 GB storage space ... able to add up to 4 more drives = 1750 GB as RAID5, or 1500 GB as RAID6
[*:d8423a83b9]2 to be the system disks for OS/programs. Set up in RAID 1 using the motherboard's onboard controller (I don't think this is softRAID with the nVidia chipset).
[*:d8423a83b9]By the time I actually buy all this stuff (May/June) I might just go ahead and get some of the 500 GB drives ... http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16822148108 which are now $295 each, or $.59/GB compared to $.36/GB for the 250s. Maybe they'll be cheaper then.
[*:d8423a83b9]Areca ARC-1220 PCI-Express x8 SATA II Controller Card - Retail
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16816131004
$560[*:d8423a83b9]4 Multi-lane connectors Support up to 8 Serial ATA II drives
[*:d8423a83b9]RAID 6 support built in
[*:d8423a83b9]Some PCIe x16 video card
[*:d8423a83b9]Some sound card
[*:d8423a83b9]Some monitor ... my 6-ton monstrosity of an IBM P201 (had it 12 years now!) is starting to wig out and fail
[*:d8423a83b9]Some keyboard/mouse/etc
[*:d8423a83b9]Some quieter fans to replace the included jet engines.
Approaching $3000 for an Opteron 275 (dual core) system with 2 GB RAM, 250 GB system partition, 750 GB RAID array. Upgradable to a dual processor (quad core), 1500-1750 GB array pretty easily.
Specific questions ... been a few years since I've homebuilt anything, so pardon me if some of these sound clueless.
The drives and RAID card are SATA II. I can't tell if the hotswap trays are
SATA II or old SATA, and I don't know if that even makes a difference. Will
these three components (drive, RAID card, hotswap trays) play nice together?
The RAID card ...[*:d8423a83b9]... has "4 Multi-lane connectors Support up to 8 Serial ATA II drives." WTF does that mean? All I want to do is be able to plug up to 8 drives (via the hotswap bays) into this card. What's the advantage/disadvantage to multilane? Is this just a cable management thing, or is there more to it?
[*:d8423a83b9]... has a PCIe x8 interface. The motherboard above has two PCIe x16 slots (I guess I could use one of those) but from the Newegg pic/description it also has two "PCI-e x4 (using x8) slots" ... So can this card go in one of the x4/x8 slots? I don't know much about PCIe, though I think you can put smaller cards in bigger slots and expect them to work.
Can anyone confirm whether or not the onboard SATA II RAID 0/1/0+1 with this motherboard is hardware or software?
Is it possible to expand a 4-disk RAID5 array to an 8-disk RAID6 array on the fly with this controller? It'd be a pain to back up 1.5 TB of data someplace, then rebuild the array from scratch when upgrading. I guess I could just go with an 8-disk RAID5 but I like the extra redundancy of RAID6.
Other comments & suggestions welcome. Thanks.
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