Quiet fileserver planned

trudodyr · Post by **trudodyr** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 8:28 am

Hi everyone,

I'm currently thinking up a plan to store my DVD collection on a central fileserver instead of those four external 500GB HDDs it's distributed on now. This server will also function as a Mail- and MySQL-server and possibly more in the future. It will have to be reasonably quiet, as I have no means of putting it in the basement or some other far away place.

This is what I have come up with so far:

4 x Western Digital Caviar RE2 500GB SATA II

1 x AMD Athlon 64 X2 3600+ EE

1 x Kingston ValueRAM DIMM 512MB PC2-5300U CL5

1 x HighPoint RocketRAID 2320, PCIe x4, 8x SATA II â€¢ RAID 0/1/5/10/JBOD

1 x ASUS M2NPV-VM, GeForce 6150/MCP 430

1 x LG Electronics GSA-H22N

1 x Scythe Ninja Plus Rev. B

1 x Antec P180B

1 x Cooler Master Stacker 4-in-3 Device Module

1 x Seasonic M12-500 500W ATX 2.2

I was originally going to use the Stacker, but I think it is quite a bit noisier than the P180B - I also hate that big circular opening it has on the side! With the Antec, I hope to be able to run the Ninja semi-passively, with just the case fan for airflow.
I mean to form a RAID5 with those 4 new HDDs, copy over the video files from my existing harddrives and then enlarge the capacity of the RAID online, making it a total of 3.5 TB. This server would cost me about 1500 â‚¬, which I think is still acceptable.

Am I missing anything fundamental or does anyone have ideas on how to improve this build?

DrJ · Post by **DrJ** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 10:02 am

If the SQL databases have any size at all, add memory. It makes a huge difference.

trudodyr · Post by **trudodyr** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 10:09 am

DrJ wrote:If the SQL databases have any size at all, add memory. It makes a huge difference.

Yeah, I thought about that. But considering the current prices for RAM, I will probably run single channel for a while and add another stick later. But you're right, maybe I should go for 1024MB each.

DrJ · Post by **DrJ** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 10:39 am

You are getting good components, it seems, but to choke such an expensive system with so little memory is a crime. I usually run 2-3GB memory on my MySQL servers (older dual Xeons). Then again, I have some big databases.

Also, if you are running RAID 5, you should buy an extra drive for a spare. The array does little good if you cannot rebuild it when a drive fails. So get the spare now.

You should also consider how you wish to back up all this information. I personally like tape, but that's just me.

trudodyr · Post by **trudodyr** » Tue Nov 14, 2006 11:07 am

DrJ wrote:You are getting good components, it seems, but to choke such an expensive system with so little memory is a crime. I usually run 2-3GB memory on my MySQL servers (older dual Xeons). Then again, I have some big databases.

Also, if you are running RAID 5, you should buy an extra drive for a spare. The array does little good if you cannot rebuild it when a drive fails. So get the spare now.

You should also consider how you wish to back up all this information. I personally like tape, but that's just me.

Thanks for your continued input.

My databases are not that big, but I'll probably go for 1GB now and another GB in a couple of months. A spare drive for the RAID5 will have to be acquired, noted that. For backup purposes, I will be able to get my hands on a used Freecom tape drive this spring.