Warpdrv - SuperSize file server build

[BoredSysAdmin]

This is 100% false.

If the card dies you RMA it and pop the new one into place. This is one of the many benefits of a hardware RAID solution.

Software RAID however is dependent in most cases on the OS, leaving you in many cases tied to both the hardware and software that you initially built the server on, leaving virtually no upgrade path.

I'm a Bored Sysadmin and I approve this message.

We will be using strictly SMB shares (cifs) to host the media. Using a Windows based OS may cost more, but it will work the best with the software and database that is to be implemented.

I guess for cifs (especially cifs2) windows servers could be good choice plus I wasn't aware database would be involved...

We considered Linux as I have a mountain of experience there, but Warp does not as he is much more versed in Windows based OS's and he needs something he can maintain and work with on his own without assistance.

Both OpenFiler and FreeNas come with good builtin web manage interfaces, so it's all gui, command line mad skillz would only be required in disaster event/advanced usage...

 

[krzywica]

It's a little early in the day for that.

We live in WI man....its like the beer/cheese state.

 

[Warpdrv]

I think he saw your sig and thought it was a quote for your post......I would probably do the same after having a few.

Yes, that is exactly what I thought happened.... and also the fact that I didn't understand why he was asking about 250gb drives, when I thought I bought 80gb, but we switched mid stream before ordering the drives, and that was the deal of the moment....

It was a very late night for me, and that was an early morning brainless post. ...

I think he will use 2x250 for a system/boot only, all data will be on 1.5tb drives, which I think he hasnt get yet.

All the drives in my array will be 2TB each.... They recently were on sale for $130 each, so I was just holding out to see if that deal came up again, they have been running the deals on the the Hitachi HD32000 occasionally - about every 15-20 days...

I'll be starting with 8-10 drives right from the get go, so any day here... then just hold out until they get even cheaper..
Thank god I got a sugar mama that likes to buy me stuff...

 

[krzywica]

Both OpenFiler and FreeNas come with good builtin web manage interfaces, so it's all gui, command line mad skillz would only be required in disaster event/advanced usage...

Gotcha so its basically LAMP with a preconfigured PHP front end then?

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Gotcha so its basically LAMP with a preconfigured PHP front end then?

basically - yes
Can't help myself to inquire about which db are you planning and for what purpose?

 

[Matt34]

LOL @ this thread. I have a better chance of understanding it if it was in Chinese.

Congrats Warp....for whatever it is your doing.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

LOL @ this thread. I have a better chance of understanding it if it was in Chinese.

Congrats Warp....for whatever it is your doing.

I'll try to explain above in plain English...
Warp is trying to build home server for storing movies , but calling it home server is like calling Empire State building a shack...

The purpose is to store images of Blue-Ray disks originals [about 50Gb each) with total final capacity of about 30Tb, that's about 600 original blue-rays.. or about 6000 original DVDs....

 

[krzywica]

basically - yes
Can't help myself to inquire about which db are you planning and for what purpose?

Its the same setup that I am using. YAMJ+NMTServer initially but we can always branch off to other things as NMT projects develop down the road as they always do.

YAMJ is an open source multiplatform XML driven databse for media centers. Its not fully featured as essentially its only a java based scraper that builds a database predicated on the file name and/or metadata of a multimedia file (breath) yeah its pretty freaking cool if you have mass amounts of digital media that you need to organize and use in a non chaotic manner.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Thanks! Never heard of YAMJ, but then again - i'm not huge fan of nmt/pch.
I always thought they need too much of tweaking just to get to level there XBMC comes ready right off the box... my its my personal opinion...
Granted pch/mnt need less hardware to run..

 

[Warpdrv]

Thanks! Never heard of YAMJ, but then again - i'm not huge fan of nmt/pch.
I always thought they need too much of tweaking just to get to level there XBMC comes ready right off the box... my its my personal opinion...
Granted pch/mnt need less hardware to run..

I have been running XBMC from the start, and I have always loved my setup with them, but the hardware is old and dated..... I have seen the pc based XBMC and it looks fantastic and everyone raves about it... Now I have a simple question and I asked this in another forum, but haven't really gotten a really good answer on how to implement it...

How do you have a simple On/Off for something like that - all performed with an IR remote. I am genuinely interested here, not trying to look for an argument... a XBMC set top box looked to be somewhat difficult to get working in that regard at this point and time...

I truly just wish for a nice set top box to perform the things like streaming everything.... the Popcorn Hour performed flawlessly in this regard when krzywica brought it over to try in my system... I can honestly say, many people have had their share of issues with this setup, but I saw nothing wrong with it... I can only see things just getting better in the future for this product with more updates....

When a better more simple scenario comes to light with the XBMC on some simple platform with limited setup hassle - I'll start looking into that direction - I truly love xbmc. When will they have a set top box -- I'm totally in... I think over the next couple years there will be a Cr@p load of products that will be comin to market and I have no problem entertaining updated products in the future...

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

My solution isn't perfect but this is what I done: I'm running Boxee beta on windows 7 box (ION Atom 330/2gb ram/500gb drive -mini-itx case) + mce ir receiver.
I programmed my harmony 880 for boxee as MCE Keyboard and mapped keys accordingly to boxee keyboard shortcuts.

One of MCE remote function is Power Toggle, which will trigger windows stand-by event - which I changed behavior to hibernate instead of standby- uses less power..
So - Off button on harmony brings it to hibernate,but more importantly does wake it up...

Now, Why its not perfect - I don't know where the problem is but after wakeup from hibernate boxee can't access file shares on my main pc....

Now - I'm running very early build of Boxee Beta and current Boxee beta versions or XBMC for linux/windows might not have this issue altogether.. Haven't looking into this yet..

Edit:
Boxee Box [hardware] Should change all that, Boxee says the BOX is coming 2010 Q2... so its soon... The remote is just awesome!!!

 

[Warpdrv]

I'll try to explain above in plain English...
Warp is trying to build home server for storing movies , but calling it home server is like calling Empire State building a shack...

The purpose is to store images of Blue-Ray disks originals [about 50Gb each) with total final capacity of about 30Tb, that's about 600 original blue-rays.. or about 6000 original DVDs....

Again, I know this build seems extreme possibly overkill, but if one looks at it from a long term down the road scenario - its a medium size investment at the start, and then further expansion becomes extremely inexpensive later on when prices of HD's plunge and newer larger drives become available.

I have a boat load of DVD's, Music and now my BR collection is growing so it just makes sense to prepare a full streaming solution that will last years on end. Need more space, add a couple more drives... whats not to like I'm sure over time there will be many boxes that come out that will allow me to stream media even better then the PH's but one thing will remain ----- My server will always be there and I can expand for years and years to come without having to upgrade this box...

Right now I have a 2Tb NAS - D-Link 323, and its almost full, do I continue to add more of these small array type solutions to the mix - that'll just get as costly down the road for a meager 10TB multiple network links array... or just a single link unlimited scenario to cover all my needs.

 

[Warpdrv]

Well some updates after all my parts came in....

Built the computer on Monday night with krzywica over dinner and lots of coctails... Its been a long time since I actually built a computer and was not familiar with the new SATA connections and the new power connectors for the hard drives, made an @$$ of myself talkin with krzywica on the phone... hhhahahah sorry about that bro... it was pretty funny.

Anyways... the case is pretty nice, hardly no sharp edges at all, nice build quality - though the only issue with it are the backplanes and hooking up the power connectors for the rails, the molex connectors are extremely tight fitting (female side) and when you try to push them in, the power connector almost came off the board... we ended up using a sharp knife and shaving off some plastic on the male end so it would slide in there easier - this is a known issue and we were very careful before plowing head on and breakin stuff...

Another mention is that the SATA cables are just not long enough to go around the fan housing, so we ended up removing the bracket with the fans on it and made a nice large hole with a 1" hole saw dead center for cables to go through nicely, finished off with a dremel to smooth out the edges. HD mounting slides are pretty nice for the price of this case and all drives slid in and connected without any alignment hitches whatsoever...

The rest of the stuff went together pretty easy, and krzywica did a really nice job with cable management seeing as he's such an ANAL ***** - It turned out nicely... I got my HD's yesterday - 10 x Hitachi HD32000's, slid them all in and started to build the array.

The Adaptec card gave us some trouble at first, we downloaded the latest drivers, but it should be noted that anyone using this card needs the latest SOFTWARE as well, running that - the RAID 6 array was no problem to start building the array... within 24hours it will be finished for this size array.

Oh and BoredSysAdmin, you are correct - this thing is a jet engine for sure... very loud... Maybe krzywica will post his little video of that and the pretty KnightRider lights on the RAID card... we were memorized by that for a bit. I'll be addressing the noise issue with some new quiet fans in the future, but for right now I'm not all that concerned about it... Oh there is a guy that has a bracket for some 120mm fans to replace that one that is in there now... I might go that route too...

Anyways - here are some pics...

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Nice job on the assembly, but you might wanna talk to doctors. In your last pic in looks like you might have jaundice issue

 

[Warpdrv]

Nice job on the assembly, but you might wanna talk to doctors. In your last pic in looks like you might have jaundice issue

That not me.... I thought I'd save all you guys some stomach aches by not having to look at that guy...

SCARY !!!!!

 

[krzywica]

Here is the ridiculously loud server, or "Kit" as it will now be affectionately referred to as.

 

[Warpdrv]

I think I'm going to need some acoustic panels inside that thing just to quiet it down in there... hhahahahh

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Here is the ridiculously loud server, or "Kit" as it will now be affectionately referred to as.

I'm really impressed - this monster will probably be loud as 747 taking
off.

http://forums.audioholics.com/forums/showpost.php?p=675011&postcount=8

Lol, I had the feeling it would be...

 

[Nuance AH]

I think I'm going to need some acoustic panels inside that thing just to quiet it down in there... hhahahahh

Whaaaaaaaaaat? Could you repeat that? I didn't hear you.

 

[krzywica]

Benchmarks

Here are some initial benchmarks with no data on the array. I would have to say I am quite impressed with this controller thus far.