Dream/Reality RAID Fileserver/HD Sage Server

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by ToxMox

salsbst:
If you don't mind could you tell me how much you bought your 1260 for and when you bought it? I'm trying to get an idea of how the price is decreasing over time on these controllers.

In March 2005, I paid $1140 for the 1260 (which came with 16 SATA cables and 128MB SDRAM), and $95 for the battery backup module. I purchased directly from Areca USA (via PayPal). I haven't looked at the market since (might be painful?). It definitely wasn't a cheap card at the time.

[ToxMox]

It is around $999 direct (from Tekram) nowadays and around $920 from other places so it hasn't really gone down much since you bought it.

[ToxMox]

Things I'm considering:
Making this new fileserver be the new Sage Server instead of making it a slave server. Also thinking of getting the ARC-1260 instead of the ARC-1220.
Man this is getting expensive.

[sniper's_scope]

if i was setting up a tv system with transcoding into other formats, sas-sata i would use a min of a 4 cpu system with a min of what ever the max ram module per ram slot can hold, as you're more likely to be transcoding more than 1 tv station at time, you will need that power...

at the rate of everything now day with everything on tv slowly coming on to dvd, wouldn't it be better to go down buy or hire a disc then rip that to your server, that way you only have to do is buy an hdmi card so's you can connect it to a hdmi available tv or sound system...

to be honest if you really want to trans code hd then all the power to ya, though i think its a waste of money and time... i've watched hd/sd content to tell you the truth it doesn't look much different to watching the latest blockbuster on dvd...

[ToxMox]

I don't plan on converting the HD files to divx live. I will schedule a job to run during inactive periods during the night. I like to watch shows during their actual season. Not big on waiting till they come out on DVD. A lot of shows I watch don't get released to DVD.
I have over 100 favorites in Sage. If I was to buy DVD sets of all the seasons of those 100 shows at say $45 a pop per season just one year of shows would run me $4500 which is a lot more than I'm going to spend on this server. Renting DVDs would obviously be cheaper but my other points still stand.

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by ToxMox

Things I'm considering:
Making this new fileserver be the new Sage Server instead of making it a slave server. Also thinking of getting the ARC-1260 instead of the ARC-1220.
Man this is getting expensive.

I thought about doing this, but I really don't want to put a whole bunch of tuner/encoder cards in my file server.

I may begin to use it as an encoder client for a MyHD and a firewire source in the future (resulting in just one extra PCI card), but haven't made that move yet.

My Sage server BSOD'ed on me twice in the last month (something it has never done before). I haven't bothered to figure out whether it was related to Sage or not, but I'm still not comfortable running multimedia apps (I would also be moving my J River server if I moved sage) on my file server.

I'm hoping that once I double the number of drives in my data array and begin using a dedicated GigE path between the Sage server and the file server, that I won't need to combine the two into one.

BTW, it is pretty darned expensive to start with an Areca 1260, which is why my array is only made of 4 250GB drives at present and isn't presently used for Sage storage.

When I decide it's time, I'm going to build a new 8-drive array (in the same box, made of whatever size drive is the sweet spot at that time), copy all the data from the 4-drive array, and then repurpose the 250GB drives into other machines and/or give them to friends/family (with suitable warning that they came from an always-on RAID file server).

[ToxMox]

Originally Posted by salsbst

I thought about doing this, but I really don't want to put a whole bunch of tuner/encoder cards in my file server.

I figured since I was already going to have to install SageTV and install two HD cards in there that I might as well migrate the other tuners from the current Sage server to this box since it will have the slots and cooling it would need and free up a nice machine to make into my regular office workstation or another Sage client box for the bedroom or something. Not to mention it would save me from buying another SageTV license.

[ToxMox]

Originally Posted by salsbst

BTW, it is pretty darned expensive to start with an Areca 1260, which is why my array is only made of 4 250GB drives at present and isn't presently used for Sage storage.
.

I'm thinking I should probably go with the 1260 instead of getting one 1220 then another 1220 down the line. It is cheaper to buy one 1260 than two 1220s. Plus the 1260 has the expandable cache memory as well as the ethernet port so it might be worth the initial investment and it frees up a PCIe slot for something else if I need it.

I have enough drives from other systems to make one big RAID 5 or 6 and several RAID 1s if I get the 16 port.

[ToxMox]

Hmmm...Maybe I'll get the new and improved ARC-1260ML (EDIT: Now called ARC-1261ML) instead of the ARC-1260. Has a faster processor and has better performance.

[ToxMox]

Ordered power supply.
Coolmax CTG-1000
1000 watt power supply
http://www.coolmaxusa.com/productDet...category=green

[ToxMox]

The case arrived today. It is HUGE! It is very well built. I'll try to get some pics up of it tomorrow.

[sniper's_scope]

can't wait to see it...

[ToxMox]

Here are the pics:
http://public.fotki.com/ToxMox/misc/case/

There are some goods pics of the same case taken by someone else here:
http://noirsrealm.free.fr/forums/index.php?showtopic=25

[davephan]

Originally Posted by ToxMox

Here are the pics:
http://public.fotki.com/ToxMox/misc/case/

There are some goods pics of the same case taken by someone else here:
http://noirsrealm.free.fr/forums/index.php?showtopic=25

There are a lot of fans in those photos? Have you thought about water cooling? I occasionally work in large server rooms and the noise really gets on my nerves... Maybe you have an sound isolation chamber to house the server!

Perhaps you could get enough ram to create a ramdisk for the OS and application program. I tried using a ramdisk years ago with an XT computer, and got extreme increases in performance.

What OS do you plan to use? Linux or Windows?

Your new server makes my Althon 2100+ system with over 1 TB 7200 rpm diskspace look small!

Dave

[ToxMox]

I've been thinking about looking into water cooling but only if noise is a problem once the system is built. It will be in my office in my house and housed in a Hubbell Premise Networking cabinet so I don't know how much that will keep the noise down. Three sides of the cabinet are enclosed but the back is wide open so it may not help much...dunno I don't anticipate rebooting the server that often so I don't think I'll mess around with a ramdisk. I will run the boot drive however on a RAID 1 mirror at least so that'll help load/boot times.

[trini0]

Nice....

I was planning something similar with the Chenbro 8 drive model.
But after already spending $2k on server upgrades, I don't know if
I can bring myself to spend another grand or so for the raid box (and thats without drives ).
Good luck...

[sniper's_scope]

expect to pay $2000-$4,500 for server based hardware barebones, pending on size hdd's and the quantity you put in the negates its price, i'd be expecting $5,000-$15,000 on hard drives as a min price range..

[salsbst]

I have the same 16-drive case. I run it with only two of the case fans. I'm able to do this because I didn't load up the drives (I only have 6 drives in the case).

It's nice that with the Areca, you can monitor each drive's temp and figure out a placement that works for your situation.

What troubles me about the Chenbro case is that it stacks the drives so tightly. If you fill the case, you need some serious pull from the fans in order to get air flowing over the drives. The moment you stack one drive on top of the other in that case, you have serious heat issues. Even with the full complement of five case fans, I would expect that you'd have semi-regular drive failures if you load it up. ToxMox, if you have drives that end up next to, but especially on top of each other, you might want to make sure you have a drive or two on hand to replace when needed.

[salsbst]

Originally Posted by sniper's_scope

expect to pay $2000-$4,500 for server based hardware barebones, pending on size hdd's and the quantity you put in the negates its price, i'd be expecting $5,000-$15,000 on hard drives as a min price range..

That sounds a little high for the drives. I would just repeat that even though you have a 16-drive case, you may not want to fill it, unless you can blast the s*it out of the fans in a mostly-sound-proofed environment.

[davephan]

Originally Posted by ToxMox

I've been thinking about looking into water cooling but only if noise is a problem once the system is built. It will be in my office in my house and housed in a Hubbell Premise Networking cabinet so I don't know how much that will keep the noise down. Three sides of the cabinet are enclosed but the back is wide open so it may not help much...dunno I don't anticipate rebooting the server that often so I don't think I'll mess around with a ramdisk. I will run the boot drive however on a RAID 1 mirror at least so that'll help load/boot times.

What OS were you planning to use Linux or Windows? If you will use Windows, what version of Windows? If you are going to use Windows 2003 server, you will need to get the Enterprise version if you want to exceed 4 GB of RAM.

Sometimes (rarely, but it does happen) RAID arrays do fail. How do you plan to backup your videos? It is tough to backup those large drive arrays, unless you have an expensive tape library or another RAID array!


Dave