RE: Media Server options

["Paul Gordon" <paul@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I went with 5 disks rather than 4 for two reasons...
=20
- the 500GB aren't as economic as the 400GB in terms of price per GB (my
5x=
400 cost about =A3800, whereas 4x500 looks to be nearer to =A3900)
- I lose slightly less due to RAID overhead, so my array will be 1.6TB
inst=
ead of 1.5TB; -  may not sound like much but its another months growth!
- more spindles (generally) =3D better performance.... (now putting my
flam=
esuit on!)
=20
I am concerned a bit about the density of these disks, but thats partly
the=
reason I went for the "RAID Edition" which are supposedly rated
for a more=
demanding duty cycle, and have a longer warranty period to match (5 years)=
. Also, the drive cage will have a ruddy great fan on the back of it, and
m=
y rack is in the cellar which is generally quite cool, even in the summer.
=
Plus it's in a big 4U rackmount case with plenty of room in it for
airflow.=
- I'll see if I can get some temp. monitoring in there - I'm sure I have a=
stick-on probe somewhere...
=20
I've also gone for a Highpoint rocketraid controller, in my case the
RR1820=
A - only SATA-150, since I figure there's not much point in paying more
for=
SATA-II since I can't find a motherboard with a PCI-X slot to run it in fo=
r sensible money, and those that I can find don't have all the other
featur=
es I need, so I'm going to be running mine in a normal PCI slot. Even
then,=
I don't think I will ever be pumping enough data through the storage subsy=
stem to saturate the PCI bus... the most I envisage would be perhaps 2
audi=
o streams and maybe a single DVD video stream at the same time (and since
t=
here's only 2 of us in our house, even that much seems unlikely!)
=20
I did think of waiting it out for a PCI-Express version of the card to
beco=
me available, but I'm running out of space *now*, and there's no guarantee
=
when a PCI-e version will be available. My card also supports online
capaci=
ty expansion, and I'm loading it up with 5 disks initially, which I have
pr=
ojected will give me a full years worth of growth at my current rates, and
=
I can then add up to 3 more drives to the array which should be good for
at=
least another year after that. - Two years from now, I'm rather hoping tha=
t 1TB disks will be available! (at which point I'll rebuild the array with
=
half the number of drives)
=20
Paul G.

________________________________

From: ukha_d@xxxxxxx on behalf of Neil Spellings
Sent: Mon 05/12/2005 13:58
To: UKHA_D Group
Subject: Re: [ukha_d] Media Server options



Paul Gordon wrote:
> OK, so my new media server is nearly ready to be assembled... - I've
just=
ordered 2TB of disks (oh yeah baby!)

Funnily enough I've just finished my new media server - sounds pretty
similar.

I bought one of the cheap Dell PowerEdge 830 servers for =A3370, a PCI-X
SATA300 RAID controller and 4 500Gb SATA II discs giving 1.5Tb in a
RAID5 array.

Went with a Highpoint RocketRAID 2320 in the end as it supports online
capacity extension (for when I invariably run out of storage in x years
time!) and the new SATA 300 standard.

I went with 4 discs instead of 5 so I could avoid the enclosure issue. I
also think packing 5 discs into the space designed for 4 could cause
overheating unless your enclosure is well cooled.

Now setting up Apache so it can proxy all my other various internal
webservers and network devices to make them accessible from the net
(Homeseer, media server, SIP phone, web mail, TV etc etc)

No photos as, well, its just a grey box!

Cheers,


/Neil/





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