Home Server

[hobbes]

I need to replace an aging home server and like the new Shuttle KPC (http://us.shuttle.com/kpc/index.htm), with lower power consumption. I would probably spec it with 2GB, 2x500GB, and an Intel E4500 2.2GHz. Having done plenty of hardware (non-CPU) upgrades, but never built my own system, I am tempted to buy the KPC and parts separately to assemble myself (and save 20%).

Anyone with a better suggestion for a home server?

It looks like the E4500 comes with a heatsink/fan. Would this likely be sufficient, or should I look into something along these lines (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186134&Tpk=Arctic%2bCooling%2bFreezer%2b7%2bPro)?

[Kevin]

I always get the biggest case I can find for my home server because I am always adding more and more hard drives to it. In fact I am considering upgrading mine to this case: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112141

The older AOpen H45 case is pretty much full.

[johnfl68]

Hehehe - I have a SuperMicro 760A case that has so much room I'll probably never fill it completely full. :yeah:

John

[Kevin]

lol. Here are the current specs of my server:
http://www.sanitarium.net/about/#asylum
The pics are out of date though. They are from before the new motherboard and the new Areca RAID.

The server is currently sitting on its side on the floor with the 2 160GB SATA drives laying on top of it. There are still 3 drive bays left however they are too far away from the other bays for the SATA power cables to reach. Also, Since I have drives that are installed back to back it is very difficult to do maintenance on them.

[hobbes]

I thought about going with the larger case, but believe the Shuttle will suffice for several years.

If you'd like to spec me another system though, feel free:)

[Kevin]

We were actually looking at the Shuttle KPC system the other day for other reasons. The only thing we didn't really like about it was that we didn't think a 3Ware RAID controller would fit into its since PCI slot. The 3Ware controllers are actually PCI-X cards but will "hang over" a regular PCI slot and work. That means that we need room for a full length card and there can't be anything on the motherboard at the end of the PCI slot because the card will almost touch the mobo for another ~3 inches.

[hobbes]

For historical reasons, the current home server does not have RAID (although regular desktops do), and instead does a daily rsync of backup data from one disk to the other. I'm probably planning to keep this type of config, although will look into using Unison instead of rsync.

What was your take on the KPC other than the PIC issue? Care to share what use you're looking at?

[Kevin]

We were looking at it as possible future MQS servers. It looks like a pretty neat little box.

[Randall]

The changeable faceplates are a cool idea. I'd use something more abstract or stylized than a photo -- otherwise it reminds me too much of a portable TV (pre-LCD era).

Some of the specs are a bit dated (serial port?!) but probably OK for a server. And it's priced the way the Mac Mini should have been -- a bigger case allows for less expensive internals, and it's still small compared to your typical "mini" tower.

Having been exposed to the Small Side of the Force thanks to the Mini and my laptop, I wouldn't be caught dead with that monstrosity Kevin's eying. :rasberry:

Randall

[Kevin]

We will not buy any computers that don't have serial ports. We use the serial ports for emergency remote access to take over servers that have become overloaded and reboot them if needed. Most of the add on serial ports don't work for that function because they are designed to be additional ports and aren't supported early enough in the boot process (the ones that do work cost more than the computer).

[Kevin]

If you want to talk about obsolete look at the parallel port. Who uses those things anymore?

[Kevin]

Having been exposed to the Small Side of the Force thanks to the Mini and my laptop, I wouldn't be caught dead with that monstrosity Kevin's eying. :rasberry:

Find me a case that can hold 14 hard drives with room for the cables that isn't monstrous and I will consider it :crazy:

[Jeff]

You could stack 14 mini cases on top of each other and run the cables external :)

[Kevin]

You could stack 14 mini cases on top of each other and run the cables external :)
That would probably consume more power. It would also look more monstrous to me. At least the big case is a single case.

Also btw, 4 of the disks are SCSI, 2 are SATA on the mobo, and the other 4 are SATA on the Areca with 4 more ports on the Areca for expansion. That would make it difficult to go external as the only controller with external ports is the SCSI and SCSI cases are expensive.

[Randall]

We will not buy any computers that don't have serial ports. We use the serial ports for emergency remote access to take over servers that have become overloaded and reboot them if needed. Ah, yes. I forgot about the "debug port."

Microsoft was suggesting a number of alternatives (http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/archive/dbgPortspec.mspx) many moons ago. Linux never moved away from DB9? Find me a case that can hold 14 hard drives with room for the cables that isn't monstrous and I will consider it Is there a Hard Drive Addicts Anonymous? :rasberry:

I imagine that we'll eventually have high-density SSDs that look more like RAM modules, with the motherboard slots to match. Or perhaps by then the distinction between permanent and shorterm storage will have disappeared...

Honestly, if I needed that kind of expandability, I'd forget about the case and just rack mount everything. :dunno:

Randall

[Kevin]

It isn't really a debug port. At least not the way MS would use it.

In the Linux world you can remap your console to the serial port. You can see the BIOS post (that requires BIOS support too), then you see the grub menu, then you see the kernel boot, then you get a login prompt. There is also something called "magic syskey" which allows us to do debugging, kill processes, flush the disk cache, or reboot from the serial console even if the server is too overloaded to refresh the login prompt.

When multi-terabyte hard drives come out I might not need so many anymore :P

I find that rack mount equipment is usually more power hungry and way louder than desktop hardware. My server has always been my old desktop machine however my recent purchase of the Areca RAID controller forced me to also purchase a server motherboard to get PCI-X slots. Now that I have too many hard drives I am also being forced to consider a server grade case even if it isn't racked.

BTW, one of the advantages of my newest addition is that several of my computers now boot from my server across the network using PXE and NFS. That means I now have 3 computers that have no hard drives in them at all. The benefit there is less power usage, less noise, and the possibility of future cases that are even smaller than that shuttle system. By moving to my network boot setup I took down 6 hard drives that were running 24x7. I put 2 of them into the server to hold the OS images I am using but that still means I have 4 less hard drives spinning all the time and at ~25W each that may be a big deal on my power bill. Also now when I want to boot up Knoppix (or some other CD based Linux distro) I can boot it over the network instead of having to hunt down a CD.

[Jeff]

Honestly, if I needed that kind of expandability, I'd forget about the case and just rack mount everything.
I have 22 drives in the two computers on my desk right now, with 3 externals and 19 internals... until I get around twice that many the rack would be cost prohibitive (seems like a normal rack costs between $500 and $1000 just for the structure) not to mention the space that takes up floor to ceiling. (plus the rack mount cases cost more and the rails, etc. all add up quickly.)

I find that rack mount equipment is usually more power hungry and way louder than desktop hardware.
When my 4u/desktop supermicro box was called "whisper quiet" by supermicro I couldn't believe it, until I got the used dell 2u server. Now I can't even tell if the 4u supermicro is on or not in comparison. And if I remove one of the 2u fans, the rest crank up to compensate and are 3x as loud! I actually thought someone was using a vacuum in the other room the first day I got it :P I can only imagine how loud the datacenter is with all those boxes...

--but I'd like it ;)

[Kevin]

I always look for 120mm fans when I buy a case or a power supply. They are huge and can push a ton of air while spinning slow and silent. The rack mount cases on the other hand usually have a ROW of extra thick 40 or 60mm fans that spin up to insane speeds and make a ton of noise.

[Randall]

I have 22 drives in the two computers on my desk right now, with 3 externals and 19 internals... Great. Now I'll be kept up nights wondering how I get by with a single 160GB laptop drive and one Firewire drive for backups. It's almost enough to make me run out and get one of those new 500GB Samsung drives, except nobody seems to be selling them yet. :clown:

Randall

[Kevin]

Great. Now I'll be kept up nights wondering how I get by with a single 160GB laptop drive and one Firewire drive for backups. It's almost enough to make me run out and get one of those new 500GB Samsung drives, except nobody seems to be selling them yet. :clown:

Randall

lol, every time I start to consider getting a new laptop I start thinking about what kind of data I might need to have handy and might cram onto a 160GB disk. I am always so overwhelmed by having to choose what to have and what not to have that I give up and use "pathetically small hard drive" as an excuse to not spend the money on a laptop. Yes, I know I can get a laptop with a 250GB disk now. I could almost fit my music on there.

[Randall]

I could almost fit my music on there. I do hope you're using lossless formats ... 250GB of MP3s would be scary. :eek:

My laptop is carrying my entire MP3 collection to date, every photo I've taken since 2004 (plus multi-megabyte Photoshop files for the good ones), a 20GB Windows machine and a bunch of downloaded files I haven't bothered to clean out yet. And 1.5GB of junk in the Trash folder.

The only files "offsite" are some uncompressed music files that I'll get around to editing one of these days. Once those are done I'll make MP3 or m4a files and archive the masters on CDs.

Randall

[Kevin]

When I rip a music CD I make an mp3 copy for my iPod and a flac copy for my home system. Both copies are stored in the same place with the same file names but different extensions. My iPod syncing software only sees the mp3 files and my Linux desktop playing software only sees the best available format (I have some ac3 and some ogg music as well which must also be converted to mp3 for the iPod).

The total for just my mp3 files is 80GB which doesn't fit on my 40GB iPod either but I am ok with only having a subset of my music there because while the interface is great it just isn't good enough to handle that many songs. So my iPod only has the songs that I have put into a play list.

[hobbes]

Some of the specs are a bit dated (serial port?!) I realize this is now a couple of pages back, but the serial port is actually a requirement. I have a few rs-232 devices, including a 1-wire network that gets connected to the server. Yes, I could get a USB connector, but why?

So, no comments on whether the fan/heatsink with the E4500 will be sufficient?

[Bruce]

It looks like the E4500 comes with a heatsink/fan. Would this likely be sufficient, or should I look into something along these lines (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835186134&Tpk=Arctic%2bCooling%2bFreezer%2b7%2bPro)?I don't know what heat sink / fan combination the E4500 comes with, but if it is similar to what came with my E2180, it is a very adequate heat sink. In fact, many modders report that they can overclock the E2180 from 2.0GHz to over 3.0GHz with the stock heat sink and fan. I'd say that's worth keeping.

[hobbes]

Thanks Bruce.

[Jeff]

The only other reason I've seen for replacing a stock Intel Heatsink / fan is to fit a quieter heatsink, e.g. I really like my supermicro passive heatsink + plastic shroud that uses the bigger, slower rpm case fan to cool my e5472.

[Bruce]

The only other reason I've seen for replacing a stock Intel Heatsink / fan is to fit a quieter heatsink, e.g. I really like my supermicro passive heatsink + plastic shroud that uses the bigger, slower rpm case fan to cool my e5472.The fan on the stock cooler (http://www.memoryexpousa.com/d95263001.html) on at least my Intel CPU is a variable speed unit, controlled by the CPU temperature by the BIOS. Under normal load, it is quieter than a whisper, about as quiet as the Zalman flower system I used on my previous system. Having said that, it isn't completely silent, and I'm sure there are other systems that are quieter, and other CPUs may generate more heat. I'm just encouraging you to try it before deciding the extra expense is necessary.

[Randall]

I realize this is now a couple of pages back, My, my, however did that happen? :clown: but the serial port is actually a requirement. I have a few rs-232 devices, including a 1-wire network that gets connected to the server. OK, we'll let you keep it then. :rasberry:

"We now return you to the original topic, already in progress."

Randall

[Jeff]

Maybe I can admit to still using a parallel port... occasionally. I still have two desktop laser printers that are old LPT1 only. I suppose I could buy ethernet cards for them at $100+ each, but hey, the parallel port only takes 1 1/2" and on a desktop I have the room to spare on the back and like the extra money in my wallet. For new printers I'd only go with ethernet from here forward, but for these old black and white printers I don't think I'd see a difference.

[Kevin]

I actually used to have an eternal HP print server that I found in a scrap pile. It was a little box with a parallel port and an ethernet port that did the same job as the internal print servers HP makes for their laser printers. I had a deskjet at the time but I was out of hub ports (yes it was long enough ago that I had a hub) so I continued using the parallel port. Of course like the other ink jet printers I owned it wore out long before I got around to upgrading my hub.

I am not even sure what happened to that print server. I might still have it somewhere but I probably gave it away once I got a printer that could last longer than a pack of paper.

[PaulKroll]

Any experience with the newer HPs and their use of the tiny, SAS, 2.5 inch drives? We've got a few of those at work, and seeing a RAID5 of 2.5 inch, 135 gig, 10K drives (we needed the space, but not the 15K speeds), is just, so, so cool.

Sounds like a VTOL aircraft taking off when power is first applied. On the faceplate, if a fan goes, a little LED lights to show you which. (There are a LOT of them...)

[Kevin]

If anyone is still interested I did end up buying that big huge case.
After looking at the box for about 2 weeks I just finally installed it.

Here are the technical details and pictures:
http://www.sanitarium.net/about/#asylum

I really enjoyed putting this box together. The rubber mounted hard drives were very nice and slide right into place. All 10 of them :yeah:

I was a little worried that putting the PSU on the bottom would make things hard with the cables passing the mobo but it worked well. I was also concerned about the cables going to the 7 sideways mounted hard drives. The cables looked like they would get in the way of the side panels but they didn't.

Now to add more hard drives :P

[Randall]

I look at the pictures, look at my laptop, look at the pictures, look at my laptop ... and say to myself I will never allow anything bigger than a mini tower under my desk ever again.

I finally stripped my trusty old Dell XPS 600 yesterday. I haven't turned it on in almost a year, and there's no monitor there if I did...

The Mac Mini proved I could live without a tower. If I ever buy generic PC hardware again, it'll be something more like a Shuttle KPC (http://us.shuttle.com/KPC/index.htm).

OMG :eek: -- that's what started this thread (http://www.aota.net/forums/showthread.php?postid=166982#post166982). How the @#$% did I do that?

Randall

Be afraid. Very afraid.

[Kevin]

Luckily that thing isn't under my desk. It is in another room with my other server, my firewall, my networking equipment, and my laser printer. That room is currently 10 degrees hotter than the rest of the house.

[Randall]

Luckily that thing isn't under my desk. It is in another room with my other server, my firewall, my networking equipment, and my laser printer. That room is currently 10 degrees hotter than the rest of the house. I do have to admit that I miss the extra heating from the tower and the old CRT. But a space heater would work just as well. :wink:

Randall

[Jeff]

I still don't really get the shuttle pc or mac mini -- if I were going to build/get a box that wasn't infinitely more expandable than a notebook, I'd opt for the flexibility/portability of a notebook. In this case, it would take a stack of notebooks, or a notebook and an octopus of external drive cables and power bricks, so it makes sense to me to put it in one neat secure non-portable enclosure.

[PaulKroll]

I still don't really get the shuttle pc or mac mini
Notebooks have their own keyboard, which generally isn't as good as full size keyboards, and their screens aren't as good as the screens you can buyt separately. (Heck, my 24" cost more than my MacBook, there's no way the MacBook's screen could come close.) So there's that. Otherwise, the mini at least really IS like a cubic laptop with no keyboard or monitor. :)

The mini is... well... it's not quite enough, for me, so I've sold (both of) mine, but if it was a LITTLE more powered, it'd be perfect. The video chip is an issue, of course, but basically it's just SO COOL having a little tiny box that is the whole computer. After years of giant cases it's just, you know, neat.

[Jeff]

I think something designed to be portable like the mac air is very cool in its lightweight and ultra-slim design. But for something not designed to move about, I find power and flexibility to be cool and small size to be more a gimmick that doesn't get me anything and does cost me the flexibility, expandability, and power. Then again, I have lots of space around me here -- if I were in a tiny apartment or office I'd probably prize space much more and place value smallness for smallness sake.

I suppose a perfect low-resource affordable fit for the job at hand has elegance, but the mini and shuttle are like a small 4-door sedan... not a sleek and sexy fast sports car, and not a powerful hummer or SUV either. I'm more excited to have something that is (or even was) the very best at one thing rather than something that is "average to good" at everything.

[Randall]

Speaking of Macs, I just ordered a refurbed 20" white iMac for Boss #1 (she didn't want the glossy screen you get with the aluminum iMacs). My first Mac convert. :yeah: Well, her daughter has been pushing her in that direction for a while, so she was already open to the idea.

She'll have VNC to connect to her office PC for work stuff, and VMware Fusion to run Windows locally if she needs it. I think she'll handle the transition well -- but this is my first real "switcher" test. :safegrin:

Anyway, Apple would appear to disagree with you, Jeff. The only internally expandable machine they sell is the Mac Pro ... but then, that's the model that caters to the "Hummer" market. :rasberry: It's not a cheap generic PC, but Hummers aren't cheap either.

They see the rest of their market falling into two categories: mobile and inconspicuous (ie, no honking big towers). But a laptop would fit into the inconspicuous category too, so there's some overlap.

And there's also a big gray area between the Mac Pro and the rest of the line: Weird people like me who turn a fully loaded laptop into a desktop system, with a full-size keyboard, a mouse and one or two extra screens. I've got 320GB of internal storage now, but I could have gone for 500GB if I really had to have it. Networked PCs and external drives provide all the redundancy I need, and I've never been hung up on CPU speeds -- 2.2GHz dual core feels fast enough for the work I do. It's certainly faster than any PC I've ever used.

But the fact that the same computer I use at my desk is also the computer sitting in my lap right now -- no mouse, no extra monitors, not even an ethernet cable -- that is what I really love about it. The best of both worlds. :winky:

Randall

[Jeff]

The little plastic boxes to me are like architectural designed modular homes -- they're perfect in their design as a product or appliance, but don't have the same interest to me as a custom built home designed by an architect for the specific client's needs and desires.

Or like a custom coded html website vs. a sitebuilder click and publish website. The sitebuilder is probably more perfect css, but the custom-coded website holds more interest for me.

The writing is probably on the wall as custom will go out once the one-size-fits-all is so capable that it really does fit the needs of everyone 100% -- then what's the point on focusing on the machine itself when it should become transparent to achieving our daily goals. But still, I'll be sad to see custom go, custom build, custom coded, etc.

(I agree the market is headed in that direction though; even for me, I used to really enjoy building dual cpu workstations which had huge 12" x 13" EATX motherboards and complexity; now with quadcore cpus, I have more cpu power than my software is coded to really make use of with a single quadcore. Once we get tiny ssd drives that hold 10 TB and deliver 500 mbps and also wireless everywhere networks, even here, to access files on remote servers... then the beauty will be at a much smaller scale as circuit boards and individual drives become chips, which you simply can't custom build.)

P.S. speaking of VNC, what are you running on the pc as a vnc server? I've been using tight vnc, but it doesn't feel responsive enough for me to use as I'd really like going over an inexpensive netgear gigabit switch here.

[Randall]

P.S. speaking of VNC, what are you running on the pc as a vnc server? I've been using tight vnc, but it doesn't feel responsive enough for me to use as I'd really like going over an inexpensive netgear gigabit switch here. I like UltraVNC (http://ultravnc.com/), a Windows-optimized version that supports tight encoding and has a lot more features than most (free) implementations.

Microsoft's Remote Desktop is slicker, but that only works with an XP Pro system as the server (or an actual Windows Server).

The key ingredient is a video hook driver on the server end, which speeds things up considerably. But the driver can also destabilize the system, so for a really important machine I'd turn it off.

Unfortunately, there's no Mac client that can take full advantage of UltraVNC. But if I restrict Chicken of the VNC (http://sourceforge.net/projects/cotvnc/) to tight encoding it seems to be as fast as an UltraVNC client. Which is to say, enough to be usable over an internet connection, especially when the server has a fat upstream pipe.

But that video hook driver makes all the difference, even over a LAN. Just make sure your video card supports 32-bit mode, or else you'll have to drop the machine down to 16-bit.

Randall

[Randall]

There's another angle on the Apple vs commodity hardware debate that we've overlooked: Psystar (http://www.psystar.com) hasn't been bulldozed by Apple's legal department yet. Now they've added rackmount machines to their product line.

It's not exactly the hardware free-for-all we're used to in the Windows world, but you can get an expandable* OS X system for as little as $514.99 ... for now. :safegrin:

Then there's the "Hackintosh" community, running OS X on generic hardware with varying degrees of success. I suppose that would be fun if you have a lot of free time, a reasonably current PC and really want to get your hands dirty. But I don't think I'd go to that kind of trouble.

Randall

* Driver support willing, of course. But the Mac Pro market should open up some possibilities.