Using PC as simple server for network storage?

[Tony]

Hi,

It seems that a cheap PC could act like a 4 drive network storage units for the price of a
dedicated 2-drive unit, with lots more flexibility (light SOHO application, but need lots
of capacity)? I assume it would be like a regular server, but used for files only, with
both the main board and drives able to go to standby mode while not being asked to do
anything (most of the time). I'm thinking of a remote user interface when needed (ie, no
keyboard, mouse or monitor), and hopefully just a single 120mm inlet fan and filter, with
semi-sealed case joints and damped panels. I would need GbE and at least 4 SATA2 ports,
but the other typical PC ports could be useful as well in the future.

How can I find a main board, drives and CPU with low standby power usage?

What LINUX flavour would suit best? Or could I use Win 98SE or 2K (too many bad
experiences with XP and Vista)?

Any other helpful hints?

Tony

 

[Tom2000]

Hi,

It seems that a cheap PC could act like a 4 drive network storage units for the price of a
dedicated 2-drive unit, with lots more flexibility (light SOHO application, but need lots
of capacity)? I assume it would be like a regular server, but used for files only, with
both the main board and drives able to go to standby mode while not being asked to do
anything (most of the time). I'm thinking of a remote user interface when needed (ie, no
keyboard, mouse or monitor), and hopefully just a single 120mm inlet fan and filter, with
semi-sealed case joints and damped panels. I would need GbE and at least 4 SATA2 ports,
but the other typical PC ports could be useful as well in the future.

How can I find a main board, drives and CPU with low standby power usage?

What LINUX flavour would suit best? Or could I use Win 98SE or 2K (too many bad
experiences with XP and Vista)?

Any other helpful hints?

Tony

Tony, this would be a good solution if you already have a retired PC
to use as the storage server. Since you're talking new hardware, a
better solution would be one of the pre-made network access storage
drives, or NAS.

I use a Buffalo 250 GB NAS drive on my little home network. It
connects to my router via an Ethernet port, and has USB ports for an
external drive and a printer. (Yes, it even has a built-in print
server that sorta works. You might be able to access your printer
from all machines on your network.)

The drive contains built-in utilities for backup, configuration,
maintenance, and even an FTP server. Using a free dyndns.org account,
I can go live with an FTP server any time I need or desire.

The NAS maps into my Windows machines as another plain vanilla disk
drive. There are no special considerations, software, or procedures
required. I copy files to and from the NAS just as I would from a
second hard drive installed locally in my machine.

I use a cheap 250 GB USB external drive to back up the NAS, giving me
the full storage solution for not a lot of money, no hassles, and no
hidden costs.

Search your favorite equipment vendor sites for NAS. (I see that the
500 GB NAS boxes are priced pretty well right now.)

Good luck!

Tom

 

[Frithiof Andreas Jensen]

Any other helpful hints?

Buffalo Linkstation - It's Linux already and there are utilities for it so
you can tweak it. The best part is that it's cheap and power consumption is
low. The "old PC solution" will blow the cost of one Linkstation in power
within the first year.

 

[Brendan Gillatt]

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How can I find a main board, drives and CPU with low standby power usage?

Look at the Mini-ITX series of motherboards from VIA - they're low cost,
have everything built in (SATA, LAN, etc.) and are very low power.

What LINUX flavour would suit best? Or could I use Win 98SE or 2K (too many bad
experiences with XP and Vista)?

Yeah, 2K would work fine if you're setting it up to map file shares.

I guess something mainstream like Debian would work great as a server.
It's easy to set up and has SAMBA packages for file sharing. The nice
thing with Debian is that you can install a 'minimal system' with all the
GUI and bloat left out.

Any other helpful hints?

Buy yourself a nice SATA hardware raid card to go with it. They're not
cheap (£100+) but are definitely worth it if you value your data.
Moreover, Mini-ITX boards usually only have one or two SATA ports on
board so the raid card is good for adding lots of drives.


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Brendan Gillatt | GPG Key: 0xBF6A0D94
brendan {a} brendangillatt (dot) co (dot) uk
http://www.brendangillatt.co.uk
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[Brendan Gillatt]

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I guess something mainstream like Debian would work great as a server.
It's easy to set up and has SAMBA packages for file sharing. The nice
thing with Debian is that you can install a 'minimal system' with all the
GUI and bloat left out.

I just found a wealth of links on a forum post:
http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies-archive.cfm/458996.html

- --
Brendan Gillatt | GPG Key: 0xBF6A0D94
brendan {a} brendangillatt (dot) co (dot) uk
http://www.brendangillatt.co.uk
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[AZ Nomad]

Look at the Mini-ITX series of motherboards from VIA - they're low cost,
have everything built in (SATA, LAN, etc.) and are very low power.

For a server, the problem with via is that they're underpowered (600mhz for
fanless), or howl like a jet engine for anything faster as via uses the
crappiest fans imaginable. I eventually moved an m10000 I had for a media
frontend to a fanless case, but the case cost $300.

For a serious file server I recently constructed, I used a server case with a
rack for seven drives and put seven 500G drives in an array. The system runs
solaris as its ZFS file system's raid pools can tolerate power failures.
Normally any time you lose power on a raid system, you can have partialy
written data to the pool and run into serious problems. Higher-end raid
controllers use non-voltile memory to avoid this situation, but such
controllers cost more than my entire server sans the drives.

 

[Arny Krueger]

For a server, the problem with via is that they're
underpowered (600mhz for
fanless), or howl like a jet engine for anything faster
as via uses the
crappiest fans imaginable. I eventually moved an m10000
I had for a media
frontend to a fanless case, but the case cost $300.

For a serious file server I recently constructed, I used
a server case with a
rack for seven drives and put seven 500G drives in an
array. The system runs
solaris as its ZFS file system's raid pools can tolerate
power failures.
Normally any time you lose power on a raid system, you
can have partialy
written data to the pool and run into serious problems.
Higher-end raid
controllers use non-voltile memory to avoid this
situation, but such
controllers cost more than my entire server sans the
drives.

I fooled around with the VIA ITX stuff for a few years, both the smaller one
and the M1000. In fact I just helped a friend rebuild the larger system for
his us yesterday.

I find that the current Mini-ATX stuff is only a bit larger, far more
servicable, about as quiet, far more powerful and based on much more readily
available parts.

 

[[email protected]]

Hi,

It seems that a cheap PC could act like a 4 drive network storage units for the price of a
dedicated 2-drive unit, with lots more flexibility (light SOHO application, but need lots
of capacity)? I assume it would be like a regular server, but used for files only, with
both the main board and drives able to go to standby mode while not being asked to do
anything (most of the time). I'm thinking of a remote user interface when needed (ie, no
keyboard, mouse or monitor), and hopefully just a single 120mm inlet fan and filter, with
semi-sealed case joints and damped panels. I would need GbE and at least 4 SATA2 ports,
but the other typical PC ports could be useful as well in the future.

How can I find a main board, drives and CPU with low standby power usage?

What LINUX flavour would suit best? Or could I use Win 98SE or 2K (too many bad
experiences with XP and Vista)?

Any other helpful hints?

Tony

You can do this with a linux server, but be aware you will need to set
up samba and swat Personally, I'd suggest designing the linux server
as a real PC, that is, one you will use as well. Some software only
exists under linux, and other programs only exist under windows.I'm
partial to suse/ati/amd/gigebyte. If this is a network server, you can
get away with the Nvidia software raid. If not gigabyte, then asus.
Suse works well with nvidia raid. Technically OpenSuse, the free
version, but you can buy suse if you need support.

http://distrowatch.com/
is a website that compares all the linux variants.

 

[Nico Coesel]

Hi,

It seems that a cheap PC could act like a 4 drive network storage units for the price of a
dedicated 2-drive unit, with lots more flexibility (light SOHO application, but need lots
of capacity)? I assume it would be like a regular server, but used for files only, with
both the main board and drives able to go to standby mode while not being asked to do
anything (most of the time). I'm thinking of a remote user interface when needed (ie, no
keyboard, mouse or monitor), and hopefully just a single 120mm inlet fan and filter, with
semi-sealed case joints and damped panels. I would need GbE and at least 4 SATA2 ports,
but the other typical PC ports could be useful as well in the future.

How can I find a main board, drives and CPU with low standby power usage?

Linksys NSL2U

 

[Phil Endecott]

For a server, the problem with via is that they're underpowered (600mhz for
fanless), or howl like a jet engine for anything faster as via uses the
crappiest fans imaginable. I eventually moved an m10000 I had for a media
frontend to a fanless case, but the case cost $300.

I have fanless VIA C7-M boards that are 1.2 GHz. They're excellent and
incredibly low power.

Phil.

 

[SoothSayer]

I have fanless VIA C7-M boards that are 1.2 GHz. They're excellent and
incredibly low power.

Phil.

Just get one of the LinkSys Wireless Routers with the USB port, and
load the hot new open source firmware onto it, and you have an NAS device
right there, for no more than the hard drive and router take to run.
What? 30 Watts?

 

[Thomas Tornblom]

Just get one of the LinkSys Wireless Routers with the USB port, and
load the hot new open source firmware onto it, and you have an NAS device
right there, for no more than the hard drive and router take to run.
What? 30 Watts?

I have a 1.5GHz Via C7 based server, running Solaris, with 2 3.5"
250GB PATA disks, a full size DVD-burner, an extra Realtek gigabit
interface and a serial board, and with the Antec 300W power supply it
normally draws about 60W. The MB is a PC-chips v21G, which is dirt
cheap.

I did a test with an 80W PicoPSU, and the consumption dropped to around
30W at idle and occasional 40W peaks. Had I selected low power 2.5"
disks and removed the DVD-burner I'm quite certain it would be quite a
bit lower.

Thomas

 

[Ken]

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Look at the Mini-ITX series of motherboards from VIA - they're low cost,
have everything built in (SATA, LAN, etc.) and are very low power.


Yeah, 2K would work fine if you're setting it up to map file shares.

I guess something mainstream like Debian would work great as a server.
It's easy to set up and has SAMBA packages for file sharing. The nice
thing with Debian is that you can install a 'minimal system' with all the
GUI and bloat left out.


Buy yourself a nice SATA hardware raid card to go with it. They're not
cheap (£100+) but are definitely worth it if you value your data.
Moreover, Mini-ITX boards usually only have one or two SATA ports on
board so the raid card is good for adding lots of drives.

4 SATA, 2 Ethernet (one Gigabit), 4 GB RAM.
http://www.via.com.tw/en/products/mainboards/motherboards.jsp?motherboard_id=550

 

[Tony]

Thanks to all who replied. I looked through all the data, but in the end I bought a cheap
i945 mATX mobo, Celeron dual core CPU, DVD writer, 2GB of cheap RAM, a "green" HDD and a
decent TV tuner. When I get it up with Linux, I'll change the fan to a larger, slower,
quieter one, buy a new HDMI HD TV and maybe a picoPSU 12V power supply + battery + float
charger.
Cheers, Tony