Building a server for storage

[mak-uk 0]

Hi there,

 

A friend of mine has asked me to build a server for a local business. When I asked him what he wants it for he basically said a massive storage space to store files from users (about five users). At first I thought about a SAN but then considered these as being too expensive. I, therefore, think the best option is to build a system with massive storage capability. This is where I need your help.. can you give me some ideas of what components I should include?

 

The foremost components I were thinking of were 4 x 250GB SATA hard drives in RAID mode... anything else??

 

Thanks.

 

Mak

[harrytoole 0]

I would stick to scsi and not sata. more reliable and proven to work.

[Tomay 0]

I think 1TB scsi setup would comst much more than sata. The only bad thing with sata is that you can only use raid 0, 1 or 0+1 modes AFAIK. The way to go is raid 0+1 that is speed and safety.

[AndyFair 0]

1Tb seems an awfully high amount of storage space just for 5 users - that's 200Gb per user - what are they storing that requires so much space?

 

Rgds

AndyF

[mak-uk 0]

Hi

 

The firm is a printers and they produce a lot of Photoshop work which is then archived on to CD. It is, often, hundreds of MB (perhaps not a full CD) but nevertheless, there are hundreds of CDs they want on this archive machine to be readily available as clients often come back months later requesting re-prints.

 

The reason I have chosen SATA is firstly the cheaper cost. Secondly, it will not really be used as a 'server' as such.. just a large mass of storage. Hence, I don't really need the solid SCSI set-up (considering the inflated cost).

 

If I do go with 4 x SATA in RAID.. what modes and what motherboards etc would everyone suggest?

 

Thanks.

 

Mak

[jmmijo 1]

I would go with an Asus P4P800-VM and a P4-2.4C, just use the onboard graphics as you don't need much for display since it's just storage.

 

As for the SATA RAID, go for the Promise Fastrak S150 SX4. It's a four channel SATA RAID card that will do RAID 5. This would be the best option for your users if you wanted the Parity option along with Mirroring/Striping. However you have to remember that one drive's worth of capacity gets lopped off the top of the entire array so in a four drive RAID 5 config you would have only 750GB of capacity

 

However if you wanted to add another raid card you could do this too.

[mak-uk 0]

Hi

 

So with RAID 5 what would that 250GB be used for?

 

Thanks.

 

Mak

[jmmijo 1]

Parity data so if a drive fails then all you have to do is replace the faulty drive and rebuild on the fly

 

Also note this is a RAID 5 spec so it wouldn't matter what type of interface that is used, PATA, SATA, SCSI, FC, etc...

[mak-uk 0]

Hi

 

That sounds interesting.. any site you can point me to for a review or more info?

 

Secondly, in the UK P4P800 deluxe.. is this a good board? It has RAID on board but only ARA-133

 

Thanks.

 

Mak

[jmmijo 1]

Here's a snip from Asus's website about the RAID(PATA) feature onboard:

 

"The VIA IDE-RAID controller supports two-channel ATA 133, enabling users to build Maximum 4 ATA-133 hard disk as an RAID0, 1 , 0+1 , JBOD array. And the graphical user interface provides an easy way to configure and manage disk drives or disk arrays connected."

 

Basically it's only for the current Parallel ATA drives up to 133 and only supports up to RAID 0+1 or 10 as some people like to say. This will require 4 drives to operate however you then end up with only 500GB of storage as one pair of drives get's used for the stiping set for performance and then the other pair gets used for the mirrored set, for data backup

 

My preference is a RAID 5 as this provides both the striping and mirroring but also adds parity for data backup and integrity

 

My opinion is that unless the client is satisfied with this kind of storage capacity then that's ok, otherwise it's a waste of money for that onboard raid controller.

 

One other option could be to look at PATA RAID controllers instead. I personally have used many of the Adaptec and Promise ATA RAID controllers. I prefer the Adaptec controllers for everything SCSI and the Promise controllers for everything PATA.

 

Here's the card I use in my personal Workstation/Server. It's a 6 channel PATA controller, an actual I2O RISC based controller

[mak-uk 0]

Hi

 

The thing is that it doesn't support SATA?

 

Thanks.

 

Mak

[jmmijo 1]

Yes I know that but I'm just saying that PATA could be an alternative as the speed difference is not really huge between the UDMA6 and SATA1. Also note that you can get HD's with the same capacity and spindle speed as SATA in a PATA interface

 

But of course if the client absolutely has to have SATA then you have to look at a different controller card...

[duhmez 0]

I suggest do NOT use the cards onboard raid. Make one small OS drive, and spftware raid Raid-5 the rest. (best bang for your buck there, best $$ per gig ratio, and fault tolerance!

 

And before anyone tries to say "Software raid 5 hurts cpu performance"

don't worry about it. If for 5 users and new machine it will be MORE than able to handle it.

 

It'll be fast, it'll be CHEAP, it'll be fault tolerant. (if onedisk dies the machine keeps on chugging away until you feel like replacing the dead disk.)

[mak-uk 0]

Hi

 

Software RAID? I have never heard of that before.. could you elaborate a bit about it please?

 

Thanks.

 

Mak

[jmmijo 1]

Software RAID inside 2K/XP uses the Dynamic disk function. You use the Computer Managment Admin tool.

 

However I've never seen the option to use RAID 5, just RAID 0 for striping or RAID 1 for mirroring.

 

@duhmez, can you enlighten me on how to do this under XP Pro ?!?

 

I supppse it's a reg hack or something

[AndyFair 0]

Quote:

Hi

The firm is a printers and they produce a lot of Photoshop work which is then archived on to CD. It is, often, hundreds of MB (perhaps not a full CD) but nevertheless, there are hundreds of CDs they want on this archive machine to be readily available as clients often come back months later requesting re-prints.

Even if you're using RAID, I would still suggest a backup solution. RAID will cope with one disk failure, but any more than that and you're FUBAR'ed.

Also, bear in mind that 4x250Gb disks in any kind of mirrored RAID solution will not give you 1Tb of space (more like half that), so you'll need to buy more than 4 disks to get the capacity you need.

The downside is that you'll need a fairly hefty backup solution to cope with that much data. You're looking at some kind of tape loader, with multiple tapes for each backup, and of course off-site storage for the tapes (you have thought about backup, haven't you?)

Since much of the data is stored on CD, have you considered lowering your disk capacity (just enough for day-to-day work) and installing a CD jukebox instead? Even then, I would consider doing multiple copies of your CDs as backups - because CD-Rs are not guaranteed to last forever (from a recent article in UK's PCPro mag, it appears that using labels for CD-Rs may actually degrade them faster).

Just a couple of points to consider - it's not as simple as just plugging a few disks and walking away!

Rgds
AndyF

[mak-uk 0]

Hi

 

I'm not very au fait with RAID so could you please explain how 4 x 250GB would not give 1TB (in RAID 0 for example)?

 

Backups will be kept on CD anyway but this is for immediate access.. hence I am considering RAID 5.. this would leave 750GB?

 

Do you know any motherboards that support 4 x SATA drives in RAID 5 mode or would I need a seperate controller? Either way.. can you recommend a motherboard/controller?

 

Thanks.

 

Mak

[jmmijo 1]

Quote:

Hi

I'm not very au fait with RAID so could you please explain how 4 x 250GB would not give 1TB (in RAID 0 for example)?

Backups will be kept on CD anyway but this is for immediate access.. hence I am considering RAID 5.. this would leave 750GB?

Do you know any motherboards that support 4 x SATA drives in RAID 5 mode or would I need a seperate controller? Either way.. can you recommend a motherboard/controller?

Thanks.

Mak

This motherboard is about as close as you're gonna get for RAID 0,1 or 10. I'm pretty sure you're going to have to get a seperate controller card to support RAID 5.

Also note that yes RAID 5 is good for both speed and data integrety, you should consider some other form of permanent archiving, perhaps Super DLT tape drives for huge amounts of storage.

If this client is serious about this kind of thing they shouldn't balk at the pricing. You get what you pay for in this business.

As for how you get less then 1TB with RAID 0 you wouldn't, it's called striping and one of the benefits is that you increase the capacity of the array byt the amount each drive in the array can hold, thus 4 x 250GB is 1TB. The downside is that you have to data integrity as if one drive fails in this kind of array, you lose the entire array, hence you could lose most if not all of the data stored on that array.

So the ideal solution if you looking for both speed and data integrity is to get one or more separate controllers so you can get a total of near or at 1TB of total storage. This would mean more then 4 drives however.

Here's another option you could mention. This is some rack mounted external solution. You could use an existing computer along with an U160/U320 SCSI controller and connect to this bad boy. It can hold up to 15 ATA drives, I know it's not SATA but hey it should operate a bit faster going over the SCSI interface instead.

[AndyFair 0]

Quote:

Hi

I'm not very au fait with RAID so could you please explain how 4 x 250GB would not give 1TB (in RAID 0 for example)?

Backups will be kept on CD anyway but this is for immediate access.. hence I am considering RAID 5.. this would leave 750GB?

Do you know any motherboards that support 4 x SATA drives in RAID 5 mode or would I need a seperate controller? Either way.. can you recommend a motherboard/controller?

Thanks.

Mak

Look here for a good description of RAID levels.

With RAID-2 and above, there is some usage of disk space for error checking information (parity information). With a RAID-1 mirror, the same information is stored twice on 2 separate hard drives, so if you have 2x200Gb drives, in a RAID-1 setup, you'll only have 200Gb storage, but it can survive catastrophic failure of one of the hard drives.

RAID-0 is just striping - i.e. writing the same file in portions on each separate disk - but in effect, your seeing your 4 disks as one big "virtual" disk. The problem with RAID-0 is that if one of your disks fails, you lose absolutely everything. There is no (easy) way to recover from a RAID-0 failure if you don't have backups.

I cannot stress enough the need to have some kind of backup solution - if your client is really serious about this, then they will be willing to spend the money. After all, there is no business if they lose all their data!

As far as a CD jukebox goes, this will give you (almost) instant access, and get rid of all that horrible RAID stuff.

I think you need to go away and find out exactly how much your client is willing to spend, and do some research on storage solutions in general (and look at all the possibilities, so look at SAN, NAS, DAS as well as jukeboxes and tape backup).

This kind of storage is not something that comes cheap (at least it is not something that should be done on the cheap) - if nothing else, consider what would happen if the client were to lose all of their data, and how long they could survive without that data - and how long it would take someone to source some new drives and recreate the data store from the CDs they already have? Also, if they had that much storage, how likely would they be to carry on copying the files to CD?

Just some food for thought.

Rgds
AndyF

[duhmez 0]

Use windows server to make raid 5 with sopftware. No extra hardware needed.

 

I suggest 6 hard drives. (or 5 if 750 gig storage is enough)

 

 

1 OS drive, 20 gig, 40 gig, whatever, keep it trim and image it.

The rest is raid 5. If you use 4 250 drives you get 7500 gig space. If you use 5 250 drives, you get 1 TB space. Don't thik fitting 6 drives is an issue either, my current, main rig, that I am now typing on, is a regular 18" midtower and it has 6 hard drivesd and one CDRW drive in it. make sure the case has the full row of 3 + 1/2 bays to the bottom is all you need. there are also really nice Sata card with 8 ports on it.

The reason I recommend software raid 5 in this case instead of hardware raid 5:

 

If the raid controler dies, you need to replace it with eact duplicate or lose al your data. With software windows raid, you can stick those disks in ANY pc, any hardware, any combination of controllers, and it will still work.

 

If you go hardware raid 5, make sure to get 2 controller cards at least, for sure.

 

As for which windows server supports raid 5: in the olden days all windows servers do. Now I don't know, m$ is splitting up into even more server versions with more limitations. So check whch version supports software raid 5.

[mak-uk 0]

Hi

 

So if I have 4 x 250GB SATA drives, I will be left with 750GB as the other will be used as a parity disk? Am I right there?

 

Secondly, which controller would recommend for this, as to my knowledge, no on-board controller support RAID 5?

 

Thanks.

 

Mak

[jmmijo 1]

Solutions are available from Promise, 3ware and Adaptec.

[mak-uk 0]

Hi

 

Any *particular* ones you could recommend?

 

Thanks.

 

Mak

[jmmijo 1]

Well I prefer the Promise controllers for ATA RAID however in this case you may want to do some more research on the other two brands as they may offer something that you like/need for this config

[Ali 0]

I have been using Intel Motherboard and i find the new ones VERY reliable, especially i865 and i875 Chipsets. I use D865GBF myself and it seems to be a solid, reliable board so far (i also build them and service these systems and never found any problems related to Intel boards).

 

Intel 865 and 875 Chipsets come with ICH5 and Two SATA connector on board (Raid 0 and 1 Capable), but if you want to connect more HDD's and have a more complex raid sequence you are better off getting a PCI SATA controller with enough connectors or your drives.(there are non that i have personally used so i have no personal preference)

 

If the users are accessing the files through LAN it is not really as important to have raid0 on all of your drives as it will not improve your performence by much over a 100Mbs LAN. However it will give you the Huge storage as one drive.

 

You also have to keep in mind that HDD's DIE!!!! They are not very reliable for long term storage as they can die on you anytime!!! so you need to think about some way of getting around that issue by using Raid1 (then you'll need more drives) or some other type of storage like a network Tape Storage system (Expensive).