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[connersw]

I'm putting together a new Home Server.  It will be running WHS 2011 and JRiver Media Center.  Primary purpose is serving media files, backing up home network PCs, and shared access to documents.  On the network are 2 - i5 laptops (work), an i7 desktop (video processing, picture editing, etc; our main PC), an Atom based HTPC, and an i5 HTPC.  We also access MC off of a Motorola Droid 4, Samsung Galaxy S4, Motorola Xoom tablet, and 2 Hisense Pro tablets.  The i7 desktop currently acts as the MC server, and also serves an LG TV and WDTV Live via DLNA. 

The goal of the build is to reduce power (I'd like to power down the desktop when not in use instead of leaving it on 24/7) and create a central storage location.

LIAN LI PC-Q08B Black Aluminum Mini-ITX Tower Computer Case
Rosewill CAPSTONE-450-M 450W Continuous @ 50°C, Intel Haswell Ready, 80 PLUS GOLD, ATX12V v2.31 & EPS12V v2.92, SLI/CrossFire Ready, Modular Active PFC Power Supply
ASRock E3C226D2I Mini ITX Server Motherboard LGA 1150 Intel C226 DDR3 1600/1333
Intel Core i3-4130T Haswell 2.9GHz LGA 1150 35W Dual-Core Desktop Processor Intel HD Graphics 4400 BX80646I34130T
Crucial 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1600 (PC3 12800) ECC Unbuffered Server Memory Model CT2KIT51272BD160B
Sedna PCI Express (PCIe) SATA III (6G) SSD Adapter with 1 SATA III Port and Hybri Disk Software for HDD Acceleration
Crucial M500 240GB SATA 2.5" 7mm (with 9.5mm adapter) Internal Solid State Drive CT240M500SSD1
Seagate NAS HDD ST4000VN000 4TB 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s Internal Hard Drive (x6)

The plan is to run WHS 2011 on the SSD and then configure the 6 HDD to run RAID 5. 

Some considerations:
I'm assuming the i3 will be sufficient if I need to play back a file locally on the server to test it out or if I need to encode video on the fly to play on the DLNA devices?
Is 8GB RAM overkill or not enough?  Hard for me to figure in an instance where MC will actually be running on the server. 
Will I actually be able to boot off the PCIe SSD adapter?  I couldn't find anything specific on whether the board will allow it.
Other options I should be looking at? 

[jmone]

Couple of things to consider:

Case: I like my Lian Li cases but you can never never have to many Drive Bays - http://www.lian-li.com/en/dt_portfolio/pc-z70/

CPU: If you are going to be transcoding video for delivery to you devices then I hate to say it but you want something with a lot more punch.  I've got the i7-3770K and it is overclock (just using the ASUS OC App) and it can serve 3 transcoded video streams simultaneously.

HDD: I prefer the Hitachi 4TB@7200rpm  hdd as they are rated to 24/7.  I've slowly replaced all my WD (had problems with one model).  I do have some 3TB Seagates and they are fine.

Raid:  Lots of opinions and debate on this.  I'd avoid it like the plague as all you get is complexity for better up time (it is not a "backup soln", so you still need one of these). 

Mem: 8GB is fine but memory is cheap.

SSD:  I have a WHS box (which backs up all my devices + keeps a copy of all media).  WHS only uses a small partition for the OS, and then you need another one to hold the Backup Database and Unique Clusters (if you plan to use that feature).  You are better off with say a 2TB 24x7 drive for this as the backups take a bit of space.

[connersw]

Thanks for the comments.  Trying to keep a small foot print on this one.

I like the Deskstar 7K4000 too, but I can get the Seagate ones cheaper.  I'm not a fan of WD Red drives either.

I'm running an i7 right now, and I never have a problem serving videos.  But like I said, I'm trying to reduce power.  The worst case scenario would be someone watching a video on the TV upstairs via DLNA and someone else watching a movie on their tablet.  Is that really going to be too much stress on the CPU?  Most instances, it would really just be serving the file to the client HTPC without any transcoding.  I had debated using an i5 for the quad core just in case.  Now you have me rethinking again. 

Thanks for the tip on WHS.  My thought with the SSD is it would allow me to mount it separately so that I can use all 6 SATA ports/bays for storage.  Is the Backup Database really that large?  2TB just for that seems huge.  I had read posts about hacking WHS onto a 32GB and 64GB drives.  Are they just not taking full advantage of the backups when they do that?

[jmone]

On my WHS I have the following on my 2TB HDD
C: Drive 14.9GB Free of 59.9GB (System/OS Partition)
D: Drive 922GB Free of 1.75 TB (Partition that holds the Client Computer Backups and you can also put media on this etc which I don't)

I then have 33TB in a E: "Drive Pool" for my media (using Drive Bender to glue them all into one big logical drive... but this is a different discussion if such Drive Pool software is of use to you!).

If you are sure you have enough drive bays and ports then it is all good.  I found I ran out of them much more quickly than anticipated as I started ripping all my BD's.

If you are just serving files then the i3 (or any modern CPU) is fine.  You do have a bunch of Tablets etc however that need to be served transcoded video and this is where you may hit a bottleneck (though I'd guess one transcoding will be OK....but you run out of overhead really quickly!).  The other option (and I don't know which CPU to recommend) is one with a low power draw when idle (which it will be most of the time).

[jmone]

FYI - The reason I keep my OS/Client Backup one drive is that WHS then backs up this whole drive to a second 2TB drive so you can do a Bare Metal Restore and not lose a thing.  So there goes 2 sata ports and bays (but you can use a USB drive for the WHS Backup drive but I found these USB Drives pretty unreliable).  I also recommend Hard Disk Sentiently to keep an eye on the Health of the drives.

I do all of this as I've had plenty of drives fails over the years (mostly WD 2TB WDEADS).

[InflatableMouse]

Personally I think that PCI card is overkill. A RAID of 4 or more disks will be more than capable of saturating a network. It would be nice for some serverside applications that bombard your disks with millions of IOPS and random reads but for a home server that sits in the corner serving a bunch of media files to a handful of clients? I don't think so.

There are motherboards out there with 8 (and maybe even 10) internal SATA connectors. I'm not sure what benefits an SSD could bring to WHS, but maybe you want to consider to place it on some partitioned space on the RAID. It would free up a SATA connector for mass storage. I don't see a CD/DVD drive in there but if you planned on getting one, forget it (and save another port) and install from USB stick.

Hitachi's are not very power efficient. I believe 7 or 8 watt continuous power draw. I think the Seagates are better in that respect. My take is that lower power consumptions are better because I don't let the disks turn off when they are idle. I believe the turning on and off is bad for harddisks and their lifetime is reduced.

Next to what Jmone said about the LianLi case and drive bays, I found with the few LianLi cases I had that they are not very silent. They resonate even with 1 or 2 disks in them, let alone with 6 or more. This may have changed but I would personally go for something that has earned its stripes in terms of silent cases like Antec or Fractal Design. Look on silentpcreview. Case insulation and anti vibration are very important for a case holding 6 or more spinning disks. It can be silent with 3 or 4, but you'd be surprised how much the sound levels increase by adding one or two more disks. it all depends though, you can be lucky and get a bunch of very silent disks that don't vibrate at all, or you can get unlucky and have 2 or 3 that vibrate.

Last but not least. I'm not familiar with your PSU but if your server is going to be on 24/7, efficiency at low power consumptions become important. Most PSU's are designed with efficiency at higher loads and are not very efficient at low power consumptions. A desktop PC that is being used for a few hours a day benefits more from efficiency at higher loads. A server that is always on but idle 99% of the time is the reverse. Use a calculator to see how much watt you really need (I suspect 450watts is too much) and pick the lowest capacity, as they are often more efficient with low power draws.JonnyGuru knows all about that, I suggest you look around at his reviews and tests.

[connersw]

Thanks jmone.  Having some real world numbers is helpful.  I guess I was thinking that the client computer back ups would just go into the large drive pool.  You definitely have me rethinking the OS drive/partition and the CPU now.

InflatableMouse:  I definitely agree that 450w PSU is overkill.  Looking at efficiency numbers though, Gold seems to be the sweet spot (the premium for Platinum doesn't give the ROI on the estimated life span of the server).  I also would like it modular due to the form factor of the case.  450w is the lowest I can find for a Gold Modular PSU.  If you have a recommendation, I would love to hear.  Likewise with the board.  I haven't found any in either mini-ITX or micro-ATX that have 8 SATA ports.  If you know of one, please let me know.

Thanks for the input on the case too.  This will not be located in a listening location, so it does not need to be completely silent.  However, the quieter the better.  I did have a Fractal case in mind if I went with a micro-ATX board, but this worked out with a smaller footprint since I was using a smaller board. 

[InflatableMouse]

If you get normal tower with 8 or more drive bays, you can fit a normal ATX board. What benefit would a mini-ITX or m-ATX have?

[connersw]

Size

[felix2]

The most important thing in video server is performance along the HD->OS->network protocol->LAN path. An OS processing video data from the HD and feeding it to the LAN must deal with the high overhead and complexity of the network protocols in question. Microsoft network and TCP/IP protocols are not designed for transport video of any type including compressed video (uncompressed video will crash the protocols). They transport as if they are just regular files, but video files are not regular files! Now add other layers of network services like DLNA, JRiver and things can get pretty stressful, especially when more than one video streams are being processed, or high bitrate (>15 Mbps) HD video are involved. Moreover, if you want to serve BD quality video (25-35 Mbps) and to more than one destinations, you need to build powerful hardware. Commercial video servers have the most powerful CPUs and multiple gigabit LAN ports precisely for this reason.

A HD being read for HD video during serving will have trouble being written to, and likely will cause video problem. Try not to do both at the same time. I.e. separate serving HD from those used for editing or receiving video content. Try to avoid using video HDs as RAID. RAID imposes significant overhead and frequently most go through a RAID 'housekeeping' cycle to ensure data reliability. When you stress a RAID for video, which require constant high-speed reads for long period of time, the 'housekeeping' cycles of RAID can cause the video stream to be disrupted. RAID 5 is for reliability, not speed. RAID stripping can be used for speed but require careful design.

Make sure you LAN is 100% gigabit qualified including the Ethernet hub. Try not to cross a router with video - consumer routers can't handle it. Wireless video? OK if the bitrate is very low, but wireless is notoriously bad for video due to extra protocol overhead which imposes severe timing restrictions to video. You must know the type of video (especially maximum bitrate) you intend to build the video server for. Then add max number of concurrent streams, additional app layer overhead (DLNA, etc). Add up total required path bandwidth, multiple by two. Then find a set of hardware (motherboard, CPU, HD, etc) that can deliver that bandwidth inbound and outbound.

Bear in mind, the most demanding, the most complex, the most prone to failure of all commercial server designs is, yes, the video server. You are not building a commercial server, but do keep this in mind. Very few in the world is able to do a YouTube video server infrastructure.