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Devices => PC's and Other Hardware => Topic started by: Hendrik on April 21, 2014, 04:53:54 am

Title: Building a new Home Server
Post by: Hendrik on April 21, 2014, 04:53:54 am

Hey,

I've been spending a bit of free time over the long weekend to finish my plans for a new home server/media server, which I've been planning for a while now, and I figured I might share my setup and the reasons for my choices, maybe it helps someone in the future.

First, what should the server do for me?
Primarily, it runs MC of course, managing a whole load of storage, and offering transcoding for Gizmo clients. In addition, I run a number of virtual machines on it for various development tasks, so it needs plenty RAM for those.

Lets simply start with a component list. As a fair warning, I did not cheap out on the setup, and it is quite the high-end system, which should hopefully last me for a good couple of years.
The big difference to my previous setup is that this system is actually designed for the task from the ground up, and not put together from spare parts from other systems.

I'll explain the reasons for my choices below.

All Components

Mainboard:	ASUS Z87-WS
CPU:	Intel Xeon E3-1245v3
CPU Cooler:	Noctua NH-D14
RAM:	32GB G.Skill RipJawsZ DDR3-2133 DIMM CL9
SSD:	Samsung SSD 840 EVO 500GB mSATA
Storage Controller:	LSI SAS 9207-8i
PSU:	Corsair AX860
Case:	Lian Li PC-D8000B
Case Fans:	Noctua NF-S12A PWM / Noctua NF-A14 PWM

Ok, lets elaborate on the components a bit.

Mainboard

I was looking for a decent Z87 based Mainboard with a couple criteria. Dual-Intel NIC, at least 2 full PCIe 3.0 slots (better 3), plenty on-board SATA connectivity.
While I found quite a few boards that qualified for these criteria, I am somewhat partial to ASUS for motherboards (have had a good run with them), so I looked here first. The Z87-WS is certainly not a low-cost solution, but it is also not the absolute top of the price range.

In addition to my mandatory criteria above, it features 4 PCIe 3.0 slots (8x electrically), which should allow a lot of future expansion, 10 on-board SATA ports, has an additional mSATA slot for a SSD, and has 6 PWM fan connectors (2x CPU + 4x Case).

CPU

I was looking for a Intel CPU with all the fancy features (so no "K" CPU), since I might want to use VT-d to send one of the NICs to a VM. I also wanted the iGPU (which my old server didn't have), so I can possibly utilize it for hardware transcoding in the future.
This basically limited the choice to the i7 -4770, i7-4771, and the Xeon E3-1245v3 and Xeon E3-1275v3. The Xeons basically correspond to the i7s 1:1, the 1245 runs at 3.4ghz just like the 4770, and the 1275 runs at 3.5ghz like the 4771.

The Xeons were actually cheaper, and for some reason I didn't feel 100mhz were worth 50€ on top, so the E3-1245v3 it was.

CPU Cooler

Since I'm going with a massively huge case, might as well get a huge CPU cooler to avoid any and all thermal troubles in the future.
I actually run the same Noctua NH-D14 in my development box, and it never let me down. It comes with 2 PWM controlled fans, which is ideal since the Mainboard can control 2 CPU fans over PWM as well.

RAM

I knew I wanted 32GB RAM for the VMs that run on the box, and since the price difference between "standard" and "OC" RAM is rather small, the choice wasn't all that hard. G.Skill RipJaws is my go-to RAM brand these days, and the 2133 CL9 modules are just a nice set.

SSD

I did always plan to put a SSD in the box for the OS and for MC to have a really fast place to load the database from, however after I picked the Z87-WS Motherboard, I had another option suddenly - a mSATA SSD. I did remember that previously mSATA discs were either slow or small, but luckily Samsung changed that. Their 840 EVO is a really good SSD, granted it doesn't beat the 840 PRO, but it costs much less in return - and the mSATA version of the EVO is supposed to perform very similar to the 2.5" version of the disc, so with the option to save a bit of cable clutter and case space, I jumped on the opportunity to get the mSATA disc.

Storage Controller

There are plenty storage controllers around that perform decently, but I actually had this one in my old system, so I'm just reusing it. Its a 8 channel PCIe 3.0 SAS controller with two breakout cables to connect 8 SATA devices.
If I need to expand for more drives, I will probably get just another one of these again. Its not the cheapest solution, but I know that its reliable.

Storage Discs

Storage discs will be migrated from the old server at first, its a mixture of 2TB and 3TB discs, all Western Digital, a few older discs are WD Greens, all newer ones WD Reds.
Expanding the storage pool is not part of the rebuild right now, but as a consequence of the rebuild, I will be able to bump the number of storage discs to a grand total of 24 in the future (from 13 now).

In addition to the SSD, I might throw in a fast HDD as a scrub disc for temporary files and the VM images, unless I decide to simply do that on the storage pool (but those discs aren't the fastest in the world).
I have a WD Black for the OS in the old server, which I might recycle for this purpose.

PSU

Its always hard to judge how much power you're going to need for a server system. It doesn't have a power hungry high-end GPU, but it does have a whole lot of harddiscs.
I have a decent experience with the Corsair AX series, so that's what I went with again - the Corsair AX860. Its 860 Watts, which might be a bit over the top, but these high-end PSUs at least provide clean and stable power, and most PSUs run most efficient at 50% load anyway.

In earlier years I usually cheaped out on PSUs, because you figure what can possibly be so hard in building a proper PSU, but I learned now that its a terrible place to cheap out, and I've been buying high-end models ever since. Have a bunch of Seasonic PSUs in some systems, and the Corsair AX in others (which are actually built by Seasonic)

Case

The Lian Li PC-D8000B is a monster of a case. My old server ran in a default tower (a big one, but still), so this cube HPTX case is going to be something different.
Previously, I always ruled out these huge cube cases, but I'm not exactly sure anymore why. I considered a 19" case temporarily, but those take up even more space, and you usually have cooling troubles which lead to loud setups.

Anyway, this case offers 20x 3.5" slots, and 5x 5.25" slots, and plenty space to internally to hide loads of stuff.
In addition to the 20x 3.5", I have a 4x 3.5" in 3x 5.25" HDD cage, which I'll install as well, which gives me a grand total of 24x 3.5", which rivals those 19" cases popular with some crowds.

Case Fans

Such a huge cases and a huge number of discs need proper cooling, preferably silent cooling at that.
I have a great experience with Noctua Fans, specifically the NF-S12A PWM for 120mm and the NF-A14 PWM for 140mm. With their LNA (Low Noise Adapter) installed, they are whisper quiet even at full blow, but with PWM control they shouldn't even run at full blow most of the time (while harddiscs do heat up quite a bit if not cooled, it doesn't actually need much cooling to keep them around 30-35C)

Noctua also gives you a PWM Y-Adapter with their Fans, which allows you to run 2 PWM fans on one motherboard PWM header, currently the plan is to have 2 140mm in the back, and 4 120mm in the front. I'll have to play with this setup a bit once everything is installed, and see how the HDD temps behave, but I do think I can setup a decent, quiet and cool case.

Last, but not least, Software

I'll be running Windows Server 2012 R2 on the box, and use FlexRAID for managing the storage. This is basically the same setup as my old server (which only had 2012 Server, no R2), and its been proven to work reliably.
The VMs run with Hyper-V.

Nothing really major on the software side here.

----

I have ordered all the components, and they should hopefully be arriving here soon. I'll update with notes from the actual build and some pictures once its all done.

Title: Re: Building a new Home Server
Post by: jmone on April 25, 2014, 03:28:31 am

The build looks great and mine is not too different, but I've been pondering what to do as I max out my SATA ports.  Currently, I've a M1015 cross flashed to a LSI 9211 with IT firmware (plain SATA ports) in addition to my MB Sata Ports.  I've got a few TB spare but for future growth I see
- gradually move to 6TB HDD
- Add another LSI style card or go for a Expander (but I'm not sure of what .. if any.. downsides there are to the expanders, and they don't seem to be any cheaper)
- External e-sata / USB3 box

I'm also still struggling with the driver issue post Update 1 (note: others are now posting similar issues with both Win 8.1 and Windows Server 2012)

Title: Re: Building a new Home Server
Post by: Hendrik on April 25, 2014, 03:32:56 am

I planned for enough room to simply get a second controller sometime in the future and add more discs for now. Maybe an expander instead of a controller, but it would have to be seriously cheaper, otherwise, whats the point.
By the time I have to replace old discs, we'll hopefully have large enough discs that it'll be worthwhile (affordable 6TBs, or maybe even larger) - and then my old discs served out their 3 years of duty anyway, where their risk of failure rises rapidly.

I'm going to run 2012 R2, which is pretty much 8.1 and also gets Update 1 (in fact the install disc I have has update 1 included), but I have a different/newer LSI controller, so hopefully it'll run without a hitch.
The 9207 is a HBA and not a Raid Controller, so no need to reflash it IT, it comes that way. :)

PS:
I assume you're already on the P18 firmware?