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[rudyrednose]

How about a 22.5 TB file and media server combining 24/7 operation, very high performance AND low power (<40 Watts most of the time)?

How about also using this machine as a very capable i7-class, 3-monitors desktop for JR Media Center tagging and database maintenance, video and photo manipulations and general purpose computing?

I wanted to share my experience and reasoning building such a beast.

We have been using a dedicated HTPC for each TV in the house for a long time.  While the HTPCs were running JR Media Center, they were directly connecting to a Synology NAS for centralized media file sharing, not to a JR Media Server…

Since last year we cut the cord and moved to OTA television, I needed a 24/7 machine consolidating JR Media Server, NAS (files services) and JRiver OTA TV PVR duties.  I also wanted to retire my Synology NAS, powering it up only for backups of our personal photos, personal videos and data files.

As this is a hobby, I wanted a solution that was at the same time low power (<$35/yr) and high performance.  I also wanted it to run several virtual machines.

I wanted that computer to be usable for general desktop duties as well, as it is located in a central room on the main floor in the house (a small study).

While our OTA channel list is fairly good, I also download TV series from Usenet (SickBeard) through a VPN.  As VPN operation and a server on the local network do not go well together, and I did not want 2 computers drawing power 24/7, I chose to run the VPN and SickBeard from a virtual machine (a VM), using Microsoft Hyper-V, coming free with Windows 8.

The first version of the build was running Windows 8.1 pro, but as I also wanted to increase my knowledge of Active Directory, the bare metal OS is now Windows Server 2012 R2 running the Domain Controller.  I always run one Windows 8.1 VM (VPN and Usenet) and sometimes 2 or 3 VMs for experimentation.  Due to my experimentation with multiple VMs, I chose to populate a big 32GB of RAM.

The key considerations for low power operation are:

• Embedded Intel video card.  No ATI or nVidia “gas guzzlers” on a 24/7 machine.  This basically eliminates gaming from the equation.
• As much as possible, most of the time no spinning hard drives (generally operating from a single SSD).  However, file sharing, TV recording and media streaming to JRiver clients HTPCs is from hard drives.  Hard drive spindown time is set at 20 minutes (not too quick!), and I disabled the infamous 8s spindown from WD drives (a hard drive killer!).
• Latest Haswell refresh processor technology.
• Low power (1.35v) DDR3 RAM.
• An efficient (80+ Gold), right-sized power supply.  Most people buy uselessly powerful power supplies, driving them in a less efficient part of their operating range.  Mine is a 360 Watts Seasonic and I have 6 drives, with room for another 4.
• Get rid of useless loads.  I have NO optical drive and use an external USB BD-Rom drive when needed.  Alternately I can mount the shared BD-Rom from another PC.
• Get rid of useless loads.  I disabled in the BIOS unused motherboard ports and features.
• No additional Sata controllers beyond the ones on the motherboard as 8-port+ controllers are fairly power hungry.  This should not be your 30+ TB movie server!  In our case, as we watch at most 3-4 movies a week, they live on a separate Linux based Norco box file server with WOL.  We fire up the “Big Bertha” only when actually watching a movie.
• No real-time RAID!  RAID entails regularly spinning drives…  We have full backups of personal data, photos and videos.  We also have full backups of the ripped CD collection.  TV series are NOT mission critical!  And the very big movie collection lives elsewhere and is protected by SnapRaid's 2 parity disks "Raid6", an off-line solution more appropriate for cold storage.

Now, what characterize a server hardware? Reliable long term operation without reboots.  This drove me to use a server class processor, capable of using Error-correcting code memory (ECC memory).  I chose the Intel Xeon E3-1246v3, which is a close sibling of the i7-4790 with added ECC capabilities and is one of few Xeon chips with embedded graphic core (Intel HD Graphics P4600).

This is what I achieved with this build:

• 36 Watts idling, with one VM idling, measured at the plug on a Kill-a-watt.  The machine never hibernates.
• 39 Watts measured while a Virtual Machine downloads from Usenet (onto a SSD).
• 41.5 Watts with JR Media Server streaming an HD TV show to a client (from hard drive).
• Full load with multiple spinning drives rarely going beyond 60-70 Watts.
• Over 358 hours of continuous operation, the Kill-a-watt measured a consumption of 15.19KW/h, so we average an energy cost of $30.53 for the whole year!
• 110MB/s file transfer speed as a NAS.  This is basically wire-speed on GigE...

And this is the build as measured:

• Intel Xeon E3-1246v3 processor, a Q2'14 server version of the i7-4790 (Haswell refresh, 3.5/3.9GHz, 8MB 4 cores / 8 threads, ECC support, and all the latest VT-x and VT-d technologies).  Curiously the server part is $26 cheaper at Newegg!
• 32GB ECC DDR3-1600L 1.35V DRAM (lots of RAM for multiple virtual machines)
• ASRock C226WS Workstation/Server motherboard (the C226 chipset is server space’s  Z87 Intel motherboard chipset, mainly with the added ECC support) as seen there: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/ssd-dc-s3500-raid-performance,3613-2.html
• One 480GB SSD (120GB for main OS, balance 360GB used as 40GB for main VM and 320GB for main VM data).  Eventual additional VMs run off hard drives.
• 5 hard drives, 2x 5TB and 3x 4TB
• 10 Sata ports (4 free)
• 2 Intel NICs.  I only use one at the moment, but the option of pairing is there.
• 6 USB 3.0 ports
• NO optical disk
• 360W 80+Gold Seasonic PSU
• JR Media Server always running 24/7
• JR Media Center v20
• Windows Server 2012R2 main OS (previously Win8.1pro)
• Multiple Hyper-V v2 Virtual Machines, one with VPN to Usenet running 24/7.
• Active Directory Domain Controller.

Originally I was running Windows 8.1 Pro as the main OS, my switch to Server 2012 R2 is only to experiment with Active Directory.  By the way, JRiver Media Center works very nicely on Server 2012, although I understand JRiver’s position of not officially supporting that platform.

Also, I populated a full 32 GB of RAM mainly because I wanted to experiment with multiple virtual machines (multiple sandboxes).

Now server and experimentation in the same sentence might sound strange, but with the VMs it works very well!  I also want to mention that I never work on our computers logged in with an administrator account, but use a regular user account.  This sure helps minimize issues as a standard user account cannot make configuration changes affecting all users !

As I mentioned, on top of 24/7 file server, JR Media Server, PVR and VM based Usenet downloader, this machine is also used as a very nice high performance desktop, driving 3 24” monitors.  One nice benefit of Hyper-V version 2 machines is that the VMs can easily use the 3 monitors and sound.

As I am writing this on the said server, my power consumption is only 39 Watts while the virtual machine is busy downloading a TV show at 20Mbps.

So I guess, with some planning you can have your cake and eat it too!

Cheers, and my best wishes of a wonderful holiday season to everyone!

‘nose

[fitbrit]

Thanks for sharing!

I want to achieve something similar, in some respects, except I am not so concerned about saving power or using the machine as a general PC; I can therefore run it semi-headless and in a remote part of the house.
I have a 24-bay ~60TB unraid server, but want to upgrade my hardware so that I can do the following:

Run VMs with Win7/8 and Unraid at the same time.
Be able to run Airvideo server as well as MC server (Win), with access to all my media (unraid) for transcoding and streaming as necessary.
Be able to run my home automation servers (Win)
Run Logmein so that I can manage my library from a general use PC in another room.

I'm fed up of these projects that I often don't start, let alone finish. I'm beginning to accept that being a dad makes it hard to do this. I hope to pay someone to set all this up for me in the next year or two.

[rudyrednose]

Fitbrit, if half the processing power is sufficient for you, the Avoton or Rangeley 8-core and 4-core processors from Intel may be just what you need.
Although they still carry the stigmata of the Atom brand, they have nothing to do with their whimpy cousins.

Built from the ground up as Systems-On-Chip, they are server-class, supports ECC and a full paraphernalia of virtualization features.
Being server class, they are also designed for IPMI: you can play in the BIOS and control everything via the LAN!

Perfect for a mid performance low power high density headless solution.  Did I mention mini-ITX ?


Have an initial look at this http://www.anandtech.com/show/7970/asrock-rack-c2750d4i-review-a-storage-motherboard-with-management   than search for Avoton C2750 or C2550.  Rangeley C2758 and C2558 are Avotons with additional encryption engines.

Better description of the Avoton family:
http://techreport.com/review/25311/inside-intel-atom-c2000-series-avoton-processors

The HP Moonshot packs 45 octal processor blades in a single 4U chassis !


In all cases, if you want a good headless solution, look for server motherboards supporting IPMI and/or Intel vPro technology.

[fitbrit]

Very cool, but I do need hefty processing power to transcode HD video, possibly more than one stream at a time.
That Moonshot is pretty crazy!

[rudyrednose]

https://forums.plex.tv/index.php/topic/88316-intel-avoton-octa-processor-powerful-enough-to-do-1080p-many-streams/?p=522871
"I just streamed/transcoded from 3 high bitrate 1080p DTS 15+GB files at the same time flawlessly. When I added the fourth I ran into a bit of stuttering. (see update below) I did this with Plex Server running OS X Mavericks via esxi & utilizing all 8 cores and 8gb of ram. Streamed to 1x iPad 1x iPhone 2x Web Clients."  In a later post he got it to work correctly at 4 transcodings...

That Avoton octal processor, although low power and mid-performance, is no slouch.  But I agree, you may need a similar processor to the one I used, but with a motherboard with better support for IPMI allowing for great headless operation.

Now, back to the thread...  High performance AND low power 

[newsposter]

When it comes time to replace my IBM BladeCenter, it's going to be an OpenCompute/rack local platform.  With whatever passes for the next generation Roku or JR-ID box as local terminals/media players.

I.m not to sure about abandoning a dedicated NAS box for raw storage. The current generation, expec from QNAP, can do an awful lot in the background including in-line transcoding.  Putting that CPU intensive stuff in a seperate box might let the actual user/media terminals be smaller in every way.