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[DarkPenguin]

We have a virtual server with eight network ports.  Each "bottle" can run a different OS and each has a dedicated network port.

That, too.

[benn600]

So consider my case.  I do not need virtualization and have only one network.  It is a mix of gigabit and 100mbit switches and devices.  Can I benefit at all?  Clearly certain motherboards will have certain advantages but network port count should not be an overwhelming reason for a specific device.  They don't impact the price much at all, obviously, maybe $5 - $10 per port but it's difficult to realize the actual difference when one with 4-Ethernet ports might also have another advantage.

I am staying far away from a dual processor system, too.  This needs to be fairly powerful but keeping power usage lower is also very important.

Does anyone have any idea when the Norco 24-bay case will be released?  At this point, that's the biggest reason why the Norco is not a good choice.  It means 3TB less total space and the two OS drives cannot be in hot swappable carriages.  (it has 20 bays, $290).

[Daydream]

For link aggregation you need network adapters (and/or switch) that support the 802.3ad standard (that's the difference between other things, from a $9 network adapter to a $25 Intel one; talking about "the other end", not the server; depends what you have there). The network ports should be the same speed, no mixing. Generally the teaming is taken care by the drivers provided by the manufacturer and less by the Windows OS (who supports... does it support anything?).
What you would be getting (besides load balancing and fail-over mentioned previously) is a 2 gigabit bandwidth not a 2 gigabit speed. Which would mean i.e. 2 peers can connect both at 1 gigabit speed to the server, but one peer alone won't jump to 2 gigabit speed. If it ads anything for you good, if not... movies will play in more simple configurations .

I've looked up the 24-bay Norco but there's none in sight. On Avsforum there are a lot of insiders from various manufacturers or at the very least people connected within various branches of AV industry and the likes. The comment about the 24-bay was made yesterday so it may take awhile. Otherwise I believe Norco has a phone number on their site, for sales and the likes.

Regarding PSU, you can see a 20-bay Norco build around one PSU here. The long looks you've gotten when mentioning one PSU only for 20-something drives, might've been from people expecting you to run 10K SAS drives in a business critical environment.

Not that I'm against 2 PSU. In case you do go for Supermicro I guess one thing to look at would be to change the fans to something quieter, which is doable.

[newsposter]

consider getting yourself a 1/2 height rack mount cabinet and hanging it from the ceiling.

Once you move to rack mounts your drive density 'problem' will be lessened.

[benn600]

How many decibels does the Supermicro generate?  If someone can provide me with a figure, I will measure my current Chenbro server.  I suppose you should stand one meter away, right?

[Daydream]

If 65db is a vacuum... close to a vacuum! This is from the top of my head.
And remember db is a logarithmic scale.

[benn600]

Has anyone tried unRAID?  It appears to give basically RAID5 protection but if two drives do fail, only the additional drive that failed is actually lost.  So you would lose one drive of data rather than the entire array.

It doesn't appear to offer RAID6.  In any array beyond, say, 10 drives, I wouldn't even consider less than RAID6 anymore.  My current system is running RAID6 and I did have dual drive failure one time.  There is no worse time while you wait for it to rebuild.  Thankfully, rebuilding the first parity is much faster than the second so I was able to restore "degraded" status in short order--just a few hours on a 500GB drive.  That was with 16 drives.  With 21 I am hoping to get RAID6+ / RAID-TP (triple parity) in addition to a hot spare.  I now realize how helpful a hot spare would be.  It can save anywhere from 1 - 48 hours of running degraded.  It's even worse if you're out of the state when the failure happens.

[Daydream]

Did you go with Supermicro? By a recent post yesterday on AVSForum, the Norco 24 bay is still on the drawing board. So I guess that settles it.

[benn600]

I am ready to order and am now just awaiting a good deal.  1.5TB drives are $130 now but they were discounted to $120 several days back--if only I could get this again.  That equates to at least $240 savings.

The current server has 7TB.  There are basically three potential new configurations:
18TB - 1TB drives in 24-bay
21TB - 1.5TB drives in 20-bay
27TB - 1.5TB drives in 24-bay

With whatever setup I go with, 2 will be for RAID1 for the OS, one for a hot-spare, and 2 (or 3 if available) drives for parity (RAID6 or RAID6+ / Triple Parity).

If the RAID card I select doesn't support triple parity then I could end up with 28.5TB but I am hoping for the added reliability.  A hot spare should help a bit too.  Another nice opportunity is that I will keep the current server available for probably several months.  Once the new server has truly proven reliability, I will likely reinstall the existing server software and reconfigure it for a backup server or something.  It's probably worth a little more than a thousand bucks, unfortunately.  I realized that selling an old server with a ton of drives is really playing on the old/used up realization because clearly the drives are more likely to fail now then years ago...of course that's the same with cars too.

[benn600]

27TB Planned Configuration (feedback please)

Case, Supermicro 24-bay, $950
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811152124

CPU, Intel Xeon Quad-Core Kentsfield 2.4GHz, $205
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819117127

Motherboard, Supermicro Dual LAN, $205
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182145

Memory, Crucial 4 x 2GB (8GB) Fully Buffered server memory, $192
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148189

RAID Card, Areca 24-port, $1,200
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816151037

27 x Drives, Seagate 1.5TB SATA, $130 each
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148337

I have to think that a drive or might be DOA and it's good to have a brand new drive available at all times (two once settled in).  The total is right around $6K.  My plan is to wait for a sale, ideally on the hard drives.  Each drop of $10 saves $250.  Newegg also offers combo discounts at times.

Addition: I sent a volume discount request to Newegg.  I tried doing so a while back for a little less elaborate server and they didn't give me any additional discounts.

[Daydream]

Seagate 1.5TB is $120 now.

[benn600]

I saw that, too.  I'm awaiting a response from Newegg for my volume discount request.

[benn600]

After calling Newegg, I was told to place my order and then submit my information for a refund of a discount--very strange.  Either way, I was glad to hear that because I wanted to at least lock in the $120/ea price.  So I did place the order and then sent another email to the volume discount request people at Newegg updating them on the situation.  I put target prices in for the items that are probably beyond their abilities but who knows.

Addition: My plan is to build it and copy all the good, highly organized data over.  This mainly includes copying the static data over and then somehow switching everything over.  For easiness, I could use the same server name and share name: //Chenbro/Titanium

However, I think I'm ready for a new name.  Does anyone have a procedure or ritual for naming servers?  I've really only named the existing one...previously it was what the drive contained: Music, Video, etc...now I focus on a single large drive to reduce overhead.  But for naming, beryllium is very appealing at the moment.  However, shorter is incredibly more desirable...so tin?

//Tin/Beryllium

Is there any way to skip the folder-- //Tin/...?  That would mean I couldn't share anything else on this system (which would probably be bad) but it would be convenient.

[benn600]

Newegg wrote back.  They only offer volume discounts on these drives at quantities of 50 or more.  I figured they would look at the order as a whole and offer a discount overall.  Now I am working with another reseller to order some accessories for the Supermicro case (which Newegg doesn't sell).  I plan to order 2 extra hot-swap carriages, 2 internal fixed drive backets, locking front bezel, spare redundant PSU.  The prices for these components is so much more reasonable than for my previous Chenbro case.  I think the hot-swap carriages were $30 or $40 each with that.  Here they are $12!  I plan to wait until it arrives so I make sure I order exactly what I need--no more, no less.  All too often I assume that the documentation is correct.  Things get changed and not updated.

[Daydream]

Hmm, that's kind of wrong, not giving you any discount. After all they offer combo deals on I don't know how many things, that usually price-wise are between 5 and 10% of your order. Too bad.

Anyways, it goes without saying that we'd expect some pictures of the ... demon and all its parts once it arrives

[benn600]

I agree that it's ridiculous.  Clearly they could give a discount, especially when I made special effort to bundle everything I ordered into a single order.  It should all arrive by Friday, giving me the weekend to start assembling.

My latest mental thought process has led me to a slightly modified system configuration.  I am going to not install the slim drive, but rather, add two internal fixed drives.  These will be for the OS in RAID1.  This frees up two more hot-swap bays.  Ultimately, this will allow 30TB total storage space.  This is nice because it's more space with only giving up the permanent optical (not necessary once OS is installed) plus the entire RAID card's 24-ports will be for this single array.  I'll plug the two OS drives into the motherboard and mirror them.  I'm sure I'll add 2 or 3 partitions to the OS drives because I need the OS + Shadow Copy for 30TB Array + Backups.  I'd like to keep these somewhat separated out.  Perhaps 750GB for system, 500GB for Shadow Copy, and 250GB for backups (email server, web server, whatever)...

I think the next logical progression in this post is to give a real reason for this upgrade.  It will allow me to actually function again.  I can't wait to see the final AFTER shot of this.  I plan to install Vista on my workstation so it will look a bit different if I do before taking the pic.  Sadly, it will take 2-3 weeks minimum to get this setup due to Array preparation time and copying 7TB of data over gigabit networking...all AFTER I get the OS setup and going.


And the graph predictions:

[benn600]

Having a single home LAN, would there be any reason for me to use both ethernet ports on this server motherboard?  The RAID card also has an ethernet jack, should I plug this into the main LAN?

[benn600]

I would like to continue the build log in a new thread.  See here:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=52549