Building a Server (Qs and Advice)

[marcus]

Looking for some general advice here. Id like to build myself a server to store all my data for sharing across my network of 2 PCs. I already have 3 x 120GB 7200 IDE drives, a 20GB IDE and a smaller spare.

Mainly Im wanting to go with a RAID setup, using 2K3 Server OS. Ill be building it from scratch, and will need a decent RAID enabled mobo which has the ability to support multiple IDE drives. Id also like to set up Exchange Server Webmail.

Few Qs -

*I understand there are various levels of RAID, and that the data is mirrored across the drives. Can anyone with experience or knowledge of RAID systems give me a little more info as to how it performs, level of data protection and useability.

*Because Id like to make use of all my HDDs, Ill need a mobo which supports numerous IDE drives, I thought 4 was normally the limit, can I get RAID mobos which support more than 4 IDEs or buy a expansion device at all?

*For Exchange server webmail to work, I guess Ill need a static IP. Using something like Dynip, would this still be possible or would I have to manully take note of the IP address each day as my ADSL line is dynamic.

*Ill need a good server case, any recommendations here would be appreciated.

Thanks for any info/advice in advance

[Tom Salter]

Depends on how much you want to spend really.

How many clients? Any less than 5 and you'll only really need 2 HDD's in Mirrored mode (in fact, Windows 2000+ can do this in Software). You won't need dual CPU's. You should get a nice quiet case (i learnt that to my expense). No point in going overboard if you don't need to (except for the g33k factor.)

Regarding an Exchange server, is this one you want on the Internet? Or just on your home network? If it's the latter, just stick it as a static private IP. You can then set up funky stuff like DHCP/DNS and **** on it.

If it's a web one...then it's a little different. You'd probably have to use a router to forward the exchange ports straight to your server. And try to make your clients access it by DNS name, rather than IP. Then if the IP changes...it'll still work.

IMO, it ain't worth it at home. I have a linux server which provides 5 clients with DNS and acts as my firewall, and it runs on an AMD k6-2 cpu, and it's fine. No point in making a huge file server, spend the money on a new house :P

[kona]

Just answering your RAID question. As you say there are quite a few different types, some offer reliability, others performance and others both. You didn't say why you want RAID so here is a quick list:

RAID 1: In this configuration you mirror the disks. You therefore need a minimum of 2 disks of the same size and the effective capacity you have is that of a single disk since the other is just a copy. Read performance can be slighty better than if you have a single disk, since the RAID controller can read data from both disks simultaneously, but write performance is the same or worse as having a single disk since you need to write to both each time. So RAID 1 is mainly used to increase reliability.

RAID 0: This configuration is used to increase performance. Your disks are split by the controller into lots of tiny segments. Then when you write a file, the RAID controller puts the file into segments of all the disks. And when you read a file, the controller again needs to access all the disks. This ensures that you are always using all the disks you have in your array so it maximises the performance. If for instance you have a RAID 0 with 4 disks this can be almost 4x faster than a single disk, since each time you read or write every disk in the array will need to read/write 1/4 of the data. It is unreliable though since a single disk failure will cause you to loose all your data. Again this needs 2 disks minimum.

RAID 0+1, 1+0: These two are a combination of the above two configurations and require a minimum of 4 disks. They are both similar in that your data is mirrored (so the usable capacity is half the total capacity of the disks) and striped (i.e. split into many disks as in RAID 0). So you get the best of both worlds, performance and reliability, but it's expensive since you need 4 disks min and you only have half the capacity.

RAID 5: This is a cheap way to get reliability, but again you need something like 4-5 disks to make it meaningful. All your disks apart from 1 contain data, and the last disk contains checksums of your data. The benefit is that by loosing only 20% of capacity you have a reliable array of disks where if any one disk fails you won't loose any data. Read speed is as good as a single disk, but write speed suffers. This is because for every write operation apart from the write itself, you also need to read data, calculate the new checksum and write it to the checksum disk. So this is the only configuration where the performance is actually worse than having no RAID.

As far as usability goes there shouldn't be any difference. The RAID controller will normally come with a utility to configure your array in any way you want, and windows will then see a single large disk. To be honest though I've only used RAID on Unix systems...

You didn't say what you want this for though. If it is for a home PC where most of the data doesn't change that frequently (e.g. movies, mp3s etc) then you might as well go for RAID 0 for performance. For reliability you should always do backups anyway. A RAID 1 will protect you against a disk failure but not against accidentally deleting a file or a virus trashing your system and these are far more common causes of data loss. RAID 1 / 5 are good for servers that should keep running even if a disk fails. And RAID 1+0 is the best if you have money to burn

[Valken]

IMO, it ain't worth it at home. I have a linux server which provides 5 clients with DNS and acts as my firewall, and it runs on an AMD k6-2 cpu, and it's fine. No point in making a huge file server, spend the money on a new house :P

I took a similar route... a lean install of Gentoo Linux, console only on a p2 400 with 512MB RAM and it acts as a fileserver, test webserver and also manages webmail etc.

It's current uptime is over 7 months...

From the sounds of it Marcus needs his setup for something other than home use though...

[marcus]

To be honest I dont, I want to learn more about Servers, Active Directory, DNS and IP Addressing amongst other things for self development purposes and also id like a RAID-based fileserver anyways, the best way for me to do this is to do it practically rather than plough through books. I always like to try to emulate my working environment in order to get a better understanding of it, when I have the room Id like to build myself a proper network. Konas information is very helpful in particular, from what you say Id like a Raid 5 setup. Ive seen several Raid 5 controller host cards on Scan, is this the way to go or would I need a specific mobo for it?

[yashiro]

A fully featured Raid Card would be preferable to a built in effort. This will cost of course.

Best thing is probably to get a raid card and whack it into an old machine.
Saves you some money (over a new sys) and is allows you more flexibility in the future. (raid becomes a non issue).

[marcus]

Can someone cast their eyes over these, and let me know what you think - http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/servers.html

Would this be suitable for Raid 5 - Ill be installing 5 x 120GB drives. Also, the software which is bundled would appear to be suitable for my needs on the face of it.

[marcus]

Trying to buy the components for my server - I like the look of this - http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/S...html?SR-SPROS1 - but think I could get it a lot cheaper were I to buy and build it myself.

Im struggling trying to find somewhere that I could buy the lot in one hit, I like that Chieftec case but cant find it elsewhere, and need a Raid enabled Intel P4 2.6+ Mobo which supports Dual Processors.

I want to use 5 x 120GB on Raid 5, so whatever I buy needs to be compatible with this, and I take it Ill need a RAID card also.

If anyone has any advice and/or places to buy Id be grateful.

:/

[Ginger Tosser]

I had a quick look at the novatech server, it does look good value considering your getting Small business 2003 server thrown in as well.

Have you tried looking at Dell's site ? Their entry level servers (although not quite what you want) seem to be good value.

One point i'd make is as your network consists of a couple of PC's do you really need the power of a P4 ? I've been running a file/web server for 2 years on a celeron 900mhz without any problems (Only speed issue is with my Adsl line). It seems a waste of a processor when all you need is fast disk access.

[NeilMcRae]

You don't need a raid card.

Avoid RAID 5 its a performance ****box but its very reliable. RAID01 is the way to go. This stripes the data across several disks and mirrors the discs. The NTSC-UK forum server has this setup today with dual controller cards [although running on NetBSD/i386 [similiar to the Unix under MacOSX]]. The issue with RAID01 is that if you lose both the stripe and its mirror backup then you are screwed. In 11 years of building servers I've had this happen once with fricking IBM Deathstars.

You can do raid in hardware and software, some motherboards have RAID hardware and this lets you do RAID01 with 4 discs. You can also use Windows2K3 to do software raid and its probably the place to start then look at hardware solutions. Hardware solutions mostly have their own way of doing it. If you want to learn about the server side use software raid first. And windows software raid isn't bad, yes you take a slight performance hit but for just a home server its more than adequate.

The key thing for servers is I/O bandwidth and memory. So in most cases its work splitting the discs onto two controller cards. And if you want to run Exchange on 2K3 you need atleast half a gig of memory. Running RAID on one controller will not really help performance wise as you will bottleneck the PCI bus before you bottleneck the drives. You should also look at setting up Windows Terminal Services as this is becoming very popular.

DYNDNS might work with exchange never tried it, I'd recommend getting a static address from BT - they will do this for some cash.

[marcus]

Thanks Neil. Seeing as how the discs are mirrored, are you saying that for every HDD I have, I will need one the same size/spec to be mirrored to - so lets say I have 6 Hard drives, in effect Ill only have 3 useable at any one time as the remaining 3 are mirrored? I always thought that I could use say 5, and have one as the mirror although Im not sure exactly how that would work out...I thought it took say 20% snapshot of each drive? (probably totally wrong)

Ill be getting lots of RAM, probably 1024 of DDR. Although you suggest software RAID which I will try out on my existing box at home (presumably this is set up in Disk Manager) I would like to go the hardware route, and if anyone can recommend a decent mobo that supports this it would be great.

Im going to contact BT, from what I gather they need me to justify a fixed IP, has anyone gone into this with BT before?

[Ginger Tosser]

I asked BT for a static IP and they said no, cos i'm a home 500 user. If your line is a business 500 or better you should be able to.

[sam1981]

Could always get rid of BT and go with Pipex or Nildram who offer a fixed IP for just a little extra.

Windows RAID is setup in Disk Manager BTW Marcus as you thought, you'll have to upgrade to dynamic discs first.

[marcus]

I take it Ill need one of these jobbies for Hardware Raid - http://www.chillblast.com/customer/home.php?cat=94 - must admit, I didnt realise the controllers would be so expensive, although there is a 60-od quid options there.