File Server Upgrade Advice

ninjacore · May 25, 2012

I'm wanting to upgrade my file server on the cheap (~$250).

What are my best options going to be for new mobo, cpu, ram, and ssd?

I definitely want to stay in that price range and I don't think that's unrealistic.

My initial thought was to grab a microcenter mobo/cpu bundle. Then find a ddr3 deal (~$40 for 8gigs) and finally a 60gb SSD.

The ram and ssd should be fairly straight-forward, but which direction should I go with the cpu/mobo. Sandy/Ivy or AMD?

The board does need to have AT LEAST 6 sata ports. I would prefer 8.

I'm good on PSU and GPU, by the way. No need to look into those.

Thanks for the advice!

Automata · May 25, 2012

What hardware do you have already?
What are you going to be using this server for, specifically?
How do you expect this server to perform at the tasks above?
How reliable does this server need to be?

Unless you have a special situation, I see no reason to go with a SSD or bleeding edge hardware.

ninjacore · May 25, 2012

Currently x2 4200 939 chip in a dfi rdx200.

I definitely see your point, but I've been having problems with my latest OS reinstall on it (missing cdrom driver?) and boot time is around a minute or more.

I don't keep it on unless I need access to the files. I stream video content from it to other PCs on my LAN @ 1080p. I'll also be looking into setting up FTP server on it as soon as I get an OS successfully installed.

In the past, I've used it to rip DVDs, but I may experiment with ripping them on another PC and saving output to the server over net.

Basically, I probably don't need to upgrade, but I'm sick of dealing with issues which seem to be caused by old hardware.

bmwbaxter · May 25, 2012

a 4P system would fit the bill

a bit overkill but future proof :chair:

Automata · May 25, 2012

If this is just local network traffic, I would get a used low power Core2Duo (45nm). You need very little processing and memory to just share files.

You may or may not be interesting in switching up the operating system to a Linux flavor. If you don't want to build your own OS, you could get prebuilt ones, such as FreeNAS or OpenIndiana. This should give you much more flexibility and get the system running a lot better.

EDIT: Heck, you could probably just keep the hardware that you have and just switch the OS. Linux usually does good with old hardware.

ninjacore · May 25, 2012

Alright fine, I'll stick with current hardware for now

What are the benefits of freenas or openindiana over ubuntu? Are they just more specific to file server setups?

Automata · May 25, 2012

The benefit is they are ready to go out of the box and they have a web interface to easily setup the disks and shares. The downside is that you will lose some flexibility, but unless you are doing really advanced stuff, you probably won't notice. Ubuntu out of the box is setup for a desktop operating system, not a server. Even their "server" version will require quite a bit of configuration before it is ready to go.

Of course, the option is up to you. Personally, I use CentOS 6.x, which is a server-centric operating system where you have to configure services. There is no built in fancy web interface, like what you get with FreeNAS/OpenIndiana/etc, but I can do a lot more since it is a full blown operating system. If you don't want to learn a lot about Linux, I would strongly suggest a pre-built one. Otherwise, feel free to get your hands dirty with the OS -- it is very rewarding.

ninjacore · May 25, 2012

I will look into centos. Will probably go with either that one or ubuntu server and see how much trouble I can get myself into.

I won't have to reformat any of the storage drives will I? Will centos os ubuntu server be able to detect them and go?

Thanks

Automata · May 25, 2012

You could technically leave them as NTFS and use the ntfs-3g module to have read/write access to the hard drives, but I would absolutely switch them over to EXT4 if you want to stick with Linux.

If you want to play with it a bit, download Virtualbox on your desktop and play with CentOS in there. That way, your system won't be down while you are working on it. I know how frustrating that can be.

ninjacore · May 25, 2012

Would ext4 require them to be wiped? I might have enough empty space to shift stuff around and do one at a time, but it would be a pain.

Edit: EXT4 does sound appealing from what I'm reading...

Automata · May 25, 2012

Yes, they would have to be wiped.

What disks do you have?

ninjacore · May 25, 2012

(3) 2Tb & (1) 1.5Tb

I know two are Seagate, another Samsung. Don't have the model numbers here at work.

I'm starting to lean toward keeping them NTFS. I don't know that the theoretical performance increase for EXT4 over NTFS would justify the risk of transferring all that data. Not to mention the time.

I'll accept counter-arguments, though.

Automata · May 25, 2012

It isn't performance that is the issue, it is stability. Even though ntfs-3g is marked as stable, I wouldn't trust it to be 100% perfect with writing files to a NTFS partition. Yes, it makes it easier for you to switch, but it could cause some massive headaches down the road. It really isn't worth the risk of data loss.

If you are keeping the disks separate (meaning, you aren't going to run them in software RAID), then moving the data around would make it easy to switch the disks.

ninjacore · May 25, 2012

I will think about it more and decide after I get everything installed. I can still install linux over NTFS, right? Or does it need some sort of file system conversion layer?

Automata · May 25, 2012

You don't want to install Linux to a NTFS partition. I'm sure it is possible, but that is a Bad Idea.

ninjacore · May 25, 2012

Point taken. So partition the OS drive, then format to EXT4 during setup. Will the NTFS drives/partitions still be accessible once linux is installed?

Automata · May 25, 2012

As I mentioned, you can use ntfs-3g to access (read/write) NTFS partitions, but I would suggest against relying on this for all your data. If you want to switch over for sure, there is no reason to keep NTFS. EXT4 is widely used and the tools for maintenance and recovery of the file system are very well designed.

The only way I see this being difficult is if all the disks were completely full or were in a RAID array.

\dev\goat · May 25, 2012

Thideras to the rescue.

You will be sorely disappointed if you buy a SSD for a file server. I bought a 60gb chronos for mine. My squid cache is super fast and running virtual machines from it is kinda neat, but other than that it just sits there 24/7 not doing anything unless the power goes off and back on.

Also check out some of the module-based server distributions sometime. It will take you a while to learn everything you need to know to build a decent server on CentOS. You could be up and running in the meantime.

take a look at this one: http://www.amahi.org/

ninjacore · May 27, 2012

I feel like the ssd would still be a benefit for me as the server doesn't constantly run. I only turn it on when I want to stream a movie from it.

Would boot time still be the same with an ssd because of all of the standard hdds being checked during startup?

Automata · May 27, 2012

If you are running Linux or a prebuilt NAS operating system, it is going to boot in seconds, even on a hard drive. A solid state drive is going to see a very minimal speed up. You'd be much better off putting that SSD as a cache to a ZFS array unless you do almost no writes or only one system will be lightly accessing the array. If I could easily switch to ZFS (I'm using full blown hardware RAID now), I'd put a SSD on a ZFS array as I do quite a bit of I/O to the disks.

File Server Upgrade Advice

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