File server, multiple hdds and cooling advice requested.

Mesh · Post by **Mesh** » 14 Oct 2008, 03:17

I'm in the process of building a file server (no, not that kind, you naughty boy you ;) ).

Since I've sworn off SATA drives from lack of solid connectors. I'm stuck using 500gb WD WD5000AAKB drives. I'm aiming for 4TB, 4 times my current capacity. That means I need 8 storage drives, plus the existing boot drive.

The existing server is in a Lian-Li PC-S80 case, that has 2 120mm intake, 1 120mm and 1 80mm exhausts. Right now with 3 drives it's fine, but not really that cool.

I'm considering adding the drives to this case, it would mean using the upper 5 1/4 bay with converters for 3 bays at 2 drives per.

Total I'd have 11 drives, 10 500gb and 1 100gb boot. I'm wondering if they'd be too hot overall. It won't be doing 100% 24/7 duty. I'm mainly building it for video files. And I'm mostly gonna be the only user too.

I've considered fetching a new case, but I've already got 2 empty cases lying around that wouldn't have much better cooling options (thermaltake tsunami and antec performance 1080B or such, old beige box). I even compared my S80 to antec's titan server case and cooling wise the S80 has more fans if less bays without converters.

So, what do you think, would it be too hot for use or would it work?

-edit- The rest of the server is based on an nforce2 mobo with an xp 3200+ cpu and 2x512mb ram, I can downclock it from 2.2ghz to 500mhz to save a bit of heat but doesn't seem to change much overall.

Cynagen · Post by **Cynagen** » 14 Oct 2008, 09:15

LOTS OF 120mm FANS. That's all I can say, and don't bother with a huge HDD for an "OS" get a 512mb CF card and USB adapter, and download FreeNAS, and install it to that CF, make it bootable, and use that as your OS. FreeNAS has all the features you need, and the latest stable build cleans up some of the CIFS issues.

Mesh · Post by **Mesh** » 14 Oct 2008, 12:52

Can't do that, all my tests so far indicate that if anything is something other then vista performance drops severely. I've tested with linux, xp and vista. Whenever a client or server is something other than vista, transfers cap at about 100mbit speeds.

Right now I'm thinking of replacing the stock lian-li 120mm intakes with 2 silverstone I have that push quite a bit more cfm.

I'll see first if my thermaltake is any better for hdd placement but I don't think so.

If the antec titan 650 wasn't so expensive I might fetch it just to avoid having to convert the deadspot 5 1/4 inch bays but even in the titan I'd have to do so.

I might get freenas to retest since my linux part was a synology nas that's just underperforming but I won't bring my hopes too high, I don't think the results will be much different, the same vista server I built to a vista client goes full drive speed (50-100mbytes/s) while with the same client dual-booted to xp drops to 10-20mbytes/s.

[email protected] · Post by **[email protected]** » 14 Oct 2008, 13:05

You should also look up asceraspireoneuser.com they have lots of info on making linux and XP run faster on Flash.

Post by **maherie** » 14 Oct 2008, 13:34

I run 8 * 750gig drives (Seagate 7200RPM) in an Antec P190 with only the custom three fans that came with the case running on low speed. I have very little problems with heat. No to mention I have an 8800GTX in there too... all running off 600W Tagan paower supply.

Only way is to test it out for your self. I say stick with the box, build your server and before you put anything on it, let it run for a week with little or no fans... see what temps you get... if it all looks good, add some fans and stick with your case, otherwise, but a new case. simple really! ;)

Cynagen · Post by **Cynagen** » 14 Oct 2008, 18:54

Can't do that, all my tests so far indicate that if anything is something other then vista performance drops severely. I've tested with linux, xp and vista. Whenever a client or server is something other than vista, transfers cap at about 100mbit speeds.

Right now I'm thinking of replacing the stock lian-li 120mm intakes with 2 silverstone I have that push quite a bit more cfm.

I'll see first if my thermaltake is any better for hdd placement but I don't think so.

If the antec titan 650 wasn't so expensive I might fetch it just to avoid having to convert the deadspot 5 1/4 inch bays but even in the titan I'd have to do so.

I might get freenas to retest since my linux part was a synology nas that's just underperforming but I won't bring my hopes too high, I don't think the results will be much different, the same vista server I built to a vista client goes full drive speed (50-100mbytes/s) while with the same client dual-booted to xp drops to 10-20mbytes/s.

How were you planning to get more than 100mbit on ethernet unless you're using gigabit ethernet? Firewire for that many drives will not work unless you just make the thing run windows with all the drives shared, and that's a lot of work for nothing really, and a lot of hardware for a simple job. XP would work too, still overkill. Start downscaling the idea of an OS and start thinking of other solutions. I use FTP to my NAS here in my house to pull files off the drives, otherwise the thing craps out midway. The CIFS isn't really designed for large file moves in a timely fashion, it's only designed as a stop-gap to please consumers. FTP is way more reliable and quicker.

[email protected] · Post by **[email protected]** » 15 Oct 2008, 07:00

Proper NIC drivers on XP?

Dem Pyros · Post by **Dem Pyros** » 15 Oct 2008, 07:22

Quick, moderately unrelated question.

Can FreeNAS work actively as a NAS using two separate networking cards talking to two different systems?

Mesh · Post by **Mesh** » 15 Oct 2008, 13:07

Performance was identical by smb, ftp and even a local web server. And all pcs are gigabit not 100mbit nics.

I've tried all driver revisions I found under xp, all identical in performance.

The only thing I found is that some had fewer transmit and/or receive buffer with had a very small impact on transfers. Not on the scale of 20mbytes/s to 70mbytes/s as xp vs vista were though.

Mesh · Post by **Mesh** » 20 Oct 2008, 16:06

Well, after evaluating 3 of my current cases, 2 of which are empty atm. I've come to the conclusion that 8-10 IDE drives is simply not feasible. Not without 150CFM ear bleeding delta fans and major case conversion to add spots.

I've found a possible option to use those weak sata 1-1.5tb drives but protecting from harm.

Unfortunately the lian-li EX-H34B seems to be nowhere to be found. It's a bay with connectors for the drives so if the part you plug/unplug from breaks, the drives remain without harm.

I've also considered individual trays like kingwin's KF-813-BK but those have 3x40mm fans each, so for 4 trays I'd have 12 40mm screamers.

Any advice welcome.

[email protected] · Post by **[email protected]** » 21 Oct 2008, 04:12

Custom built?. It isn't horribly expensive. Could have any physical arrangement. Use bigger fans for higher CFM with lower DB perhaps 140mm or more if you can get em.

Mesh · Post by **Mesh** » 21 Oct 2008, 05:48

I'm trying to avoid buying gear to replace some I've already got lying around with no use.

I've got an antec P180, Thermaltake Tsunami Dream, Antec Performance 1080 or something, an old p2 box in the corner and a lian li PC-S80. I've got at least 5 motherboards not in use, 4 with cpus/ram, 1 without.

Main problem is with 8-10 drives, the cases I have, even if they have the space for em, I'm doubtful if they can keep em cool enough.

I've calculated 500, 750, 1tb and 1.5tb options. For the hdds best bang for buck are the 500 and I get to use strong pata connectors that don't need me to use caddys or bays to protect em.

Even if I went with tb sata drives cooling would still pose a problem, before I bought a NAS, I already had the 4 drives for it. I put those in the Tsunami and the single intake fan didn't bring enough air, it was too obstructed.

Options I've taken note of so far:
- P180 or PC-S80 or Tsunami
- coolermaster 4in3 module for 4 hdd in 3 5 1/4 bays.
- P180 4 hdd in it's lower section with case 120mm 35mm deep fan.
PC-S80 4 hdd next to boot drive, 2x 120 intake in front of em, low flow most likely not enough.
Tsunami 4 hdd next to boot, single 120mm intake, proven not enough with previous 4 sata in same spot.

- boot drive
P180 laptop 160gb in a silverstone 3.5in to 2.5in dock.
PC-S80 old 100gb WD in first of 5 lower spots.
Tsunami either of the above in 1 of 5 hdd spots or floppy bay.

- opteron165,4gb ddr a8nsli (in P180)
or
- xp3200+,1gb ddr,a7n8x (in PC-S80)

- 2x promise TX2 ide pci controllers with 2 ports/4 channels each
or
- 1 highpoint rocketraid 4 ports/8 channels.

The controller choice is because I'd use windows based raid so I can make a 4tb server. The highpoint has max of 2tb per array and I don't know if it can act as a simple controller without raid and let me use 8 drives from it in a windows array.

If I keep using my existing motherboard/cpu/ram options, I can use the 2 TX2 with 2 pci slots.

However, I wanted to reduce the power/heat by fetching an atom 330 board with a stick of 1-2gb ddr2, it only has 1 pci slot so the highpoint is required to work for it to be useful.

Of course if I do that and the highpoint works, my 2 existing cpu/ram/mobo combos go to the clutter pile.

I'd also like to avoid buying new fans because I already have a pile of 120mm, from 110cfm silverstone to 30cfm silenx.

If I am to buy more new parts I've looked at:
- coolermaster centurion 590
- 2x 4in3 modules to convert all 9 5 1/4 bays as 12 3 1/2 hdd bays.
- atom 330 intel mobo
- 1x 2gb ddr-667
- 80gb PATA WD boot drive
- 8x 500gb PATA WD or 4x WD caviar black 1tb with kingwin aluminum tray/caddies.

I've spent just about all of today searching parts and cart is at 3000$ total atm. I won't be checking out until I've trimmed down options.

Sorry for ranting but I'd like to get this done :).

I've gone over the 3 cases again and seems the tsunami is still the best option, it even beats a new centurion 590 in spots available.
P180:
4 hdd in 3 5 1/4 bays
1 optical or 2 hhd in 4th bay
4 hdd native lower section
2 hdd native mid section
1 floppy/hdd with dock
13 hdd total.

PC-S80:
4 hdd in 3 5 1/4 bays, if it fits.
1 optical or 2 hhd in 4th bay if my 2 hdd per bay adapters fit.
5 hdd native lower section
11 hdd total, advantage here is the native spots have heatsinks for 5 drives. and sound dampening if I use tb+40mm fan/trays.

Tsunami:
4 hdd in 3 5 1/4 bays
1 optical or 2 hhd in 4th bay if my 2 hdd per bay adapters fit.
5 hdd native lower section
2 hdd in floppy/builtin section, less cooling, 1 boot drive should be fine here though.
13 total, advantage is aluminum case, disadvantage is single intake/exhaust.

The P180 is a (censored) to run cables in, even with the low count of a regular system, I'd have a hard time wiring all these drives in it, even if only need to do it once.

The PC-S80 is a real nice case and I originally got it for a gaming pc with sound dampening, turned out undoable unless I mod the native hdd bays out of the way for video cards.

The Tsunami was a gaming rig, replaced by P180 then CM690 first for cooling then tired of hard cable routing. Still a nice case, and would be a waste of vinyl decals I placed on it's side and sound dampening I installed.

Well, right now at least seems I've removed the get new case aspect, provided a bit more work to use an existing one.

Cynagen · Post by **Cynagen** » 22 Oct 2008, 23:44

Quick, moderately unrelated question.

Can FreeNAS work actively as a NAS using two separate networking cards talking to two different systems?

Yes, you can install as many network cards as you want and assign them all to different network addresses.

Dem Pyros · Post by **Dem Pyros** » 23 Oct 2008, 04:48

[quote]Quick, moderately unrelated question.

Can FreeNAS work actively as a NAS using two separate networking cards talking to two different systems?

Yes, you can install as many network cards as you want and assign them all to different network addresses.Thank you very much :)

Post by **CrackerJackMack** » 24 Oct 2008, 01:31

Linux doesn't perform well with single connection, gigabit speeds. You have to tune up the kernel

Suggestions:
http://bornl33t.net/node/4

As far as storage go: I've got plenty of storage experience and my problem is that the PSU is a drive killer. http://bornl33t.net/node/8 http://bornl33t.net/node/9

Using the infiniband cables is really nice, but you could do it with Mini-SAS too

another gotcha is don't get a Marvell-chipset based card if you do end up using linux and the drivers aren't stable.

Post by **CrackerJackMack** » 24 Oct 2008, 01:38

[quote][quote]Quick, moderately unrelated question.

Can FreeNAS work actively as a NAS using two separate networking cards talking to two different systems?

Yes, you can install as many network cards as you want and assign them all to different network addresses.Thank you very much :)

this won't work as expected though as the routing table will prefer,arp, and transmit on only one nic. you would be better off using the "bonding' driver to make an aggrate NIC. This won't give you 2Gb/s on a single connection, but it will allow you to do 2 full speed 1Gb/s to seperate hosts

Which is what I am assuming you were worried about anyway.

Dem Pyros · Post by **Dem Pyros** » 24 Oct 2008, 05:20

this won't work as expected though as the routing table will prefer,arp, and transmit on only one nic. you would be better off using the "bonding' driver to make an aggrate NIC. This won't give you 2Gb/s on a single connection, but it will allow you to do 2 full speed 1Gb/s to seperate hosts

Which is what I am assuming you were worried about anyway.

Basically.

Cynagen · Post by **Cynagen** » 28 Oct 2008, 19:53

[quote][quote][quote]Quick, moderately unrelated question.

Can FreeNAS work actively as a NAS using two separate networking cards talking to two different systems?

Yes, you can install as many network cards as you want and assign them all to different network addresses.Thank you very much :)

this won't work as expected though as the routing table will prefer,arp, and transmit on only one nic. you would be better off using the "bonding' driver to make an aggrate NIC. This won't give you 2Gb/s on a single connection, but it will allow you to do 2 full speed 1Gb/s to seperate hosts

Which is what I am assuming you were worried about anyway.

You can get "bonding" drivers for FreeNAS (based on FreeBSD) quite easily I assume, I mean it's a ripoff of BSD, but it's OpenSource like linux so there's got to be support for this tactic somewhere. Also, you can use iptables to masquerade your second nic's output to appear as if it's coming from the first nic, and have i would assume an internal connection proxy to multiplex the connection out. This'll give you the desired 2GB/s out, but only 1GB/s in. (Both cards will be out, 1 masquerading as the other so everything reaching the destination is accepted as if it's from 1 host nic, but only 1 card will be in.) It's complicated, yes, but the end result is worth it I assume.

Post by **CrackerJackMack** » 28 Oct 2008, 20:44

http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Net:Bonding

For a great explination for bonding and the different modes, if the switch supports it, LACP is the way to go, otherwise, RR or Transmit Balancing are the way to go. Using IPtables would be an "expensive move", and I think you'll like the bonding driver for the simplicity of it.

I'm a linux guy and don't dabble in the BSD world much, but I'd assume they have a driver similar to this one.

Manually bringing up the link

Code: Select all

 modprobe bonding mode=5 miimon=100

    modprobe e100

    ifconfig bond0 192.168.1.1 netmask 255.255.255.0 up

    ifenslave bond0 eth0

    ifenslave bond0 eth1

But most start-up scripts support automatically configuration so you don't have to do this.

The biggest difference if that bonding is layer2 and Iptables is layer2/3 with a heavy processing engine.[/code]

Mesh · Post by **Mesh** » 29 Oct 2008, 05:43

Hey, I think I lost something, anyone seen the thread topic around? can't seem to find it in this page.

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