Warpdrv - SuperSize file server build

[BoredSysAdmin]

650Mbp/s - Very, Very impressive !!! Any chance to bench for IOps?

 

[Warpdrv]

Yeah that card aside from the HD's was certainly the most expensive part of this build, and we both decided I didn't want to cheap out on it...

 

[MidnightSensi]

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

Try some Dynamat, like they put in the cars. It handles high temperatures well and does a pretty good job of attenuation.

Is it going to be in the same room you listen in or on a network?

 

[krzywica]

650Mbp/s - Very, Very impressive !!! Any chance to bench for IOps?

Sure...I will have some results posted later.

 

[Warpdrv]

Try some Dynamat, like they put in the cars. It handles high temperatures well and does a pretty good job of attenuation.

Is it going to be in the same room you listen in or on a network?

No my server will be in the rack with all my amps in the basement so I don't have to listen to any of that at all, but the 80mm fans are so loud if the door is open to that room I can hear them in the kitchen.

Actually there is a guy that is selling a custom fan bracket for these cases, it will hold 3 x 120mm fans, which can be seen here... http://www.mediasmartserver.net/forums/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=6120 I'll likely go this route, as well as replacing the 2 80mm fans at the rear with lower db units...

 

[Warpdrv]

Here is a final pic I forgot to add of the completed build...
Nice cable management, gotta give krzywica props for doing such a nice job..

 

[GlocksRock]

wow, that's the hotness. Nice job guys, keep up the good work.

 

[bandphan]

Very nice build youz guyz.

 

[Warpdrv]

Yeah we ran into a hitch yesterday where it looked like one of the drives failed already, but ahhh it turns out that APPARENTLY when you put the drives into the how swap bays you are - ahhhhh supposed to screw them to the trays

Well I didn't know this and the drive vibrated out of the socket... DOH !!!... so we removed all the drives and screwed them to the trays, problem solved..... hhehehhe and lesson learned - DOH !!!!

krzywica will continue to poke me with a stick on this, so I figured I'd just come in here and hang my head low...

photo courtesy of krzywica

 

[bandphan]

Yeah we ran into a hitch yesterday where it looked like one of the drives failed already, but ahhh it turns out that APPARENTLY when you put the drives into the how swap bays you are - ahhhhh supposed to screw them to the trays

Well I didn't know this and the drive vibrated out of the socket... DOH !!!... so we removed all the drives and screwed them to the trays, problem solved..... hhehehhe and lesson learned - DOH !!!!

krzywica will continue to poke me with a stick on this, so I figured I'd just come in here and hang my head low...

photo courtesy of krzywica

He thats my photo

 

[Warpdrv]

Update..... Its been a bit, Got my slide rails and mounted the server in the RACK , I've been moving files around from my NAS, ripping DVD's and BR's to fill it up. Krzywica did all the software setup for streaming with the Popcornhour C200s'.... It works flawlessly for playback of every format so far, BR's look and sound awesome... very very happy.

After I backed up my DLink NAS I had 2 extra 7200rpm 1TB HD's, so under advisement I plopped them into the server and we configured them as RAID0 for super fast writing, ripping and transfers....

Once I get all this stuff mounted in the rack, I'll post up some final pics...

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Could you post some screenshots of your C200 GUI, this is if Krzywica skinned it/modified it in any way.... I think he would...

 

[Warpdrv]

I can when I get home.... Its pretty much the same as whats listed on the NMT site info which I can't seem to find, but here is a site you can see some pics. Page Down.
http://www.mediasmartserver.net/2010/01/14/guide-setting-up-yamj-yet-another-movie-jukebox-aeon-in-whs/

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

Can you confirm it can bitstream Hd audio formats from BlueRay TS/MKV rips?

About YAMJ - Result is pretty much the same as you get stock from boxee, except YAMJ is much more technical - Not that I'm not technical , but have you heard about bare feet shoemaker?

 

[Warpdrv]

OK just got home and started taking pics... and then the battery died and woman doesn't know where the charger chord is... but I got some

Of coarse you can access your files through a straight line list as well... but the wall is pretty nice... I have no complaints...
I'm getting BR HD audio through this unit....

Bare feet shoemaker...? ya lost me....

 

[krzywica]

About YAMJ - Result is pretty much the same as you get stock from boxee, except YAMJ is much more technical - Not that I'm not technical , but have you heard about bare feet shoemaker?

YAMJ is much more powerful that any gui out of the box. At first glance it seems simple but eveything is linked together very nicely. For instance if you go to the description of a movie you will notice the names of the Cast, Director, Studio....ect. Each of these is clickable, when clicked it will filter all movies that have the same name in the DB. For instance if you click "Brad Pit" in the list of cast it will display all movies with Brad Pit in them that you have in your library.

Can you confirm it can bitstream Hd audio formats from BlueRay TS/MKV rips?

Kind of. The A110 and other NMT's based on the Sigma SMP8635 chip are able to bitstream HD audio from TS and m2ts. Never tried mkv as HD audio in mkv has not been around very long (only a few weeks/month). Currently the NMT's based on the Sigma SMP8643 chip are incapable of bitstreaming HD audio from single ts or m2ts files as well as mkv. This is because the SDK from Sigma has not been released to enable this mad:).

However you are able to bitstream HD Audio from a Retail Bluray Disk, Iso of either a full BD or single m2ts file that has been remuxed with just the feature film (the way I prefer to run my setup), or the BDMV folder structure of just the retail BD disk or a remux of just the feature.

I would say play around with my NMTServer config if you want but I am moving tonight and have not moved my server from one house to the other yet. It will be up later tonight.

Oh BTW I have no idea what barebutt shoesucker is...

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I'd say the gui is surely look better then default NMT, but still not nearly as polished as boxee's.

Does YAMJ pulls movie trailers from your local stored movies ?
my AVR is fully HD codecs capable, but honestly maybe I'm half deaf, but I barely hear the difference between good 448Kb/s AC3 and DTS soundtracks.
I'm too cheap to give a single movie anything over 7-8Gb - One of reasons my current TV is native res is 720p ... No reason to kill storage for higher res stuff....

Oh BTW I have no idea what barebutt shoesucker is...:

I'll give example by comparing my work and home pcs:
Home: original AMD Athlon X2 3800 2.0 running at whooping 2.4ghz,
nForce4 mobo, 2gb DDR (not 2 or 3) ram and using PCI-X 64bit controller in regular pci/32 slot scsi disk controller - limiting my main disk to 30mbs data xfer.....- I call it handicap - and it needs a lot of help.
Good points about my home pc: Radeon HD 4870 GPU, Windows 7 x64 and 1gb Speedboost (usb stick )

My work pc: Core 2 Duo E8500 8Gb DDR2-800,Win7 x64,GeForce 9800GT 4Gb speedboost - trust me - runs much better

 

[Warpdrv]

I guess I look at this two different ways... of which there are drawbacks on both different sides of the coin....

Build a PC that is capable of streaming HD video and as well as the headaches involved with incorporating at this time HD audio to work with HDMI, it is certainly getting easier... but at what expense... top of the line MB, Video Card, Audiocard - ram and then the difficulties of getting the software to play with the hardware all in all. Which in time the labor and $$$ expense you have invested slowly but steadily becomes more and more obsolete. Then add into that respect investment in storage to house all your wares.....

Or do you buy somewhat inexpensive replaceable plug and play devices that are plenty capable in the hardware respects for years to come and sofware/firmware upgradable to continually meet the needs and dedicate a touch more funds towards build a a large efficient moderately priced storage facility that is continually upgradable for a declining future fund outlay.

The C200's could be conceived as somewhat pricy at $300., the new A200 is out at $179.00, exactly the same processing power/smaller footprint as the C200. I'm not sure what PC anyone could build that could match the performance and plug and play operation of either of the PCH's for the price... are there small limitations to the PCH's - yes, I have great feelings they will be addressed. I chose to invest more in a server to last me years to come and it won't hurt my wallet too much to take a 50% hit on these cheap network devices.. which are pretty darn cool and work very well.....



What side of the fence are you on...

 

[krzywica]

I'd say the gui is surely look better then default NMT, but still not nearly as polished as boxee's.

I agree.....not as flashy but IMO more functional and easy to use to boot. Keep in mind all the UI is is a web interface driven by an xml library database, none of which runs locally on the PCH's. They don't have any HDD's in them at all. All they are running is the embedded NMT OS and nothing more. I would say thats not bad for just connecting to an SMB share.

This UI will improve immensely when flash is added down the road, you will be able to get all the sexy transitions between pages and all that jazz.....

Does YAMJ pulls movie trailers from your local stored movies ?
my AVR is fully HD codecs capable, but honestly maybe I'm half deaf, but I barely hear the difference between good 448Kb/s AC3 and DTS soundtracks.
I'm too cheap to give a single movie anything over 7-8Gb - One of reasons my current TV is native res is 720p ... No reason to kill storage for higher res stuff....

Until you hear it, its difficult to understand.....I'll put it in terms you can understand better.

DD is between 400 and 640 Kbps right? And DTS maxes out the SPDIF interface at 1500Kbps.

Some of the DTS-HDMA and TrueHD tracks are over 6000Kbps. Thats a full 4 times the bitrate of DTS. Certainly worth the price of admission if you have the gear to hear the difference, which you do. The biggest area that I notice is much more detail and control in the bass region below 50Hz.

I'll give example by comparing my work and home pcs:
Home: original AMD Athlon X2 3800 2.0 running at whooping 2.4ghz,
nForce4 mobo, 2gb DDR (not 2 or 3) ram and using PCI-X 64bit controller in regular pci/32 slot scsi disk controller - limiting my main disk to 30mbs data xfer.....- I call it handicap - and it needs a lot of help.
Good points about my home pc: Radeon HD 4870 GPU, Windows 7 x64 and 1gb Speedboost (usb stick )

My work pc: Core 2 Duo E8500 8Gb DDR2-800,Win7 x64,GeForce 9800GT 4Gb speedboost - trust me - runs much better

I'm still not quite sure whats going on with this statement/question....are you asking me what I am running for hardware?

Well my file server is running almost the exact same thing your desktop at home is. 4400 X2, 2GB mem, Asus A8NSLI DLX (NF4 still running like a champ), and a Highpoint PCI Express 8 port SATA RAID card with 8 1.5TB Seagate's in RAID5.

Workstation at home is pretty beefy with a Q6600 @3.2GHz, 8gb mem, 2 36GB SSD's RAID0, and 2 250GB working drives in RAID0, with the same GPU you have 4870 (with custom cooling).....cold boot to usable desktop in about 25 seconds.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I'm still not quite sure whats going on with this statement/question....are you asking me what I am running for hardware?

krzywica, This is exactly my point :
While you have your old 4400 x2 based system for file server - I have it as my home main desktop - Due to slow-***-scsi controller and possibly some issue with win7 drivers for this old-fart-controller -there is always 2mins time-out on each boot, some it takes about 5mins to boot from full off

Workstation at home is pretty beefy with a Q6600 @3.2GHz, 8gb mem, 2 36GB SSD's RAID0, and 2 250GB working drives in RAID0, with the same GPU you have 4870 (with custom cooling).....cold boot to usable desktop in about 25 seconds.

My pc at Workplace (office) is very similar to your desktop, except it's I don't really own it, it's company property - all I get is to customize it a bit (extra ram + gpu) and thats it...

The point of this is - while I'm an IT professional - my home pc mainly sucks and needs a LOT of TLC - I'm too lazy/cheap to update it properly - basically throu-away-everything except case/power supply and video card.


P.s: Also I need to demo some HD audio codecs....