New Server

[Al]

I have absolutely no need for this but I'm gonna have my sone build one for me. I have two computers, with Ubuntu. Son will be building it: (he just put one together for himself)



Intel BOXD510MO Intel Atom D510 Intel ...D510 processor

LIAN LI PC-Q07 Black Aluminum Mini-ITX Tower Computer Case

Rendition by Crucial 1GB 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Desktop Memory Model RM12864AA800

hec HEC350TEWX 350W ATX12V Ver2.2 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply - OEM

Two of these guys (mirrors): SAMSUNG S...ve -Bare Drive

This is what its running: http://freenas.org/

For a mere 360 bucks I'll be one-up on the Brother in law who is the ultimate gadget man.

 

[Familyguy]

That Atom D510 is an absolute DOG. For about what it'll cost you to build one of these, you can buy a dual-core $300 latop off the shelf with more memory, faster video, and have a built-in UPS.

If you're just after an el-cheapo NAS, Seagate has a little box about the size of a mobile phone that can convert any USB drive into a NAS for dirt cheap. I believe it's running linux and you can actually ssh into it and season to taste. Saw one of those on slickdealz.net not long ago for about $40.

Best,

 

[Al]

Originally Posted By: Familyguy
That Atom D510 is an absolute DOG.

Don't know whatever he does is usually good. I'll check with him before he builds me one though..thanks. The power draw a is 30 watts. I know that was one of his goals. Speed/memory/ is irrelevant as its just a server that operates 16 hours per day. I saw some pretty good writeups on it.

I don't know where you could buy anything with a large drive storage, case, PS, motherboard, Memory, and CPU. for 360 total. And it needs to be very low power. And don't forget the Two 2 TB Drives.

I'd love to see a source if you can provide..thanks.

 

[Al]

Looks like PCMagazine liked the D510

D510

 

[Familyguy]

About 30 seconds of googling turned up this guy:

http://www.staples.com/Dell-Inspiron-501R-15.6-Laptop-(black)/product_867071?cmArea=SC3:CG71P4118:CL161747

That will run rings around the Atom 510, has very fast ATI Radeon video (if you wanted to ever use it as a media center box...it's got HDMI out), has 4GB RAM, and has a very low power footprint when you're not using the LCD. And you'd also have a portable computer if you need one on occasion.

If you want a wad of storage on top of the 320GB that comes with it, here's a cheap 2TB USB drive:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148503

Slightly more expensive than your solution above, but far more versatile, substantially better performing, and you can actually use it on the road if you need to.

Food for thought.

Best,

 

[simple_gifts]

it is a NAS,

no video.
LOW power consumption = low heat.

His solution, I believe, is sufficient for file serving.

I would not buy a laptop for 16 hour/day operation.

 

[Familyguy]

Originally Posted By: simple_gifts
it is a NAS,

no video.
LOW power consumption = low heat.

His solution, I believe, is sufficient for file serving.

I would not buy a laptop for 16 hour/day operation.


Then heck, why bother with a computer at all? You can achieve a 2TB NAS with this $80 seagate product plus another $100 for 2TB of storage.

http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/network_storage/freeagent_dockstar/#tTabContentOverview

Power consumption is probably in the single digit watts.

OR....simply get a wireless router that has a USB port to share USB storage devices. Like this one:

http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=670

These are $60 at Walmart and you can use the same $100 2TB USB hard drive with it.

Best,

 

[Colt45ws]

I find that type of stuff, routers, NAS, to be, barely usable at best, and absolute garbage at worst. At least when you are talking about consumer level stuff...
Plus, he wanted a 2x 2TB RAID 1 (Mirror). You dont get that with those solutions.

 

[Familyguy]

Originally Posted By: Colt45ws
I find that type of stuff, routers, NAS, to be, barely usable at best, and absolute garbage at worst. At least when you are talking about consumer level stuff...
Plus, he wanted a 2x 2TB RAID 1 (Mirror). You dont get that with those solutions.


There's a lot of ways of skinning this cat. The price can go all over the place based on things like speed, versatility, power consumption, etc.

I have an old core2duo laptop on a closet shelf doing my NAS duty. It's running Ubuntu Linux, boots and runs off a 32GB flash drive, and serves up files from the aforementioned 2TB USB disk. Been toying with the idea of upgrading to USB 3.0 and then mirror a pair of 2TB or 3TB drives for redundancy.

http://www.amazon.com/2PORT-USB-Expresscard-Superspeed-Card/dp/B002XW1YY4

That system has been running 24/7 for about 2.5 years (though I've recently upgraded the USB drive and it's gotten occasional Ubuntu version bumps).

Vive la difference!

Best,

 

[Al]

Originally Posted By: simple_gifts
it is a NAS,

no video.
LOW power consumption = low heat.

His solution, I believe, is sufficient for file serving.

I would not buy a laptop for 16 hour/day operation.

That was my thought..also his solution..a $400 Laptop pus $200 for 2 2TB drives 600 bucks for a bunch of un-neaded/unwanted stuff...not really a solution...in my untrained opinion. This thing needs to function as a true server.

So you think this thing is OK? Can you suggest any improvements that won't add to the cost much and yet might give better performance?? Power requirement is big for me. Thanks simple_gifts. My son will build me whatever I want..even if he doesn't like it.

 

[XS650]

Al, this reminds me of the threads where someone says they want to buy a small sports car like a Miata and someone says they should get a Crown Vic because it has more power and weighs more.

 

[Al]

Originally Posted By: XS650
Al, this reminds me of....

Yea..I knew when I posted someone would pee in my beer....its expected on the internets XS.

 

[simple_gifts]

My bits of advice are "ask Colton" on specific hardware recommendations. I like your set up since the case and PS can be reused down the line for your next NAS. I like industry standard form factors (mini ITX etc) since buying replacements doesn't tie you to a particular mfg. My friend bought a white box computer from JNCS near Rochester and when the PS died, a local computer store just popped another in. One off models from Seagate are pretty much throw away devices as are laptops. I have an Intel Board here in an ATX (or some such) case and it is the third MB I've had in the same case. It still says "MSI" on the front back when it housed a dual processor 866MHz PIII.

My one bit of technical advice is that you have your son look @ ZFS for the file system and that you up the memory to 2Gb or 4Gb if you choose to use it. ZFS has been posted about here before, but it is, in many circles, considered to be the a quantum leap in Volume/Storage management. Data can be store multiple times transparently and compressed using gzip transparently and it is also checksummed transparently; I know of no other file system that checksums data. Bad files are automagically fixed. Mirroring is a snap. Snapshots taken ever "x" minutes with no limit on the number of snapshots available (it is 2^64); backups to a remote device a cinch.

Quote:

I have an old core2duo laptop on a closet shelf doing my NAS duty.


In the interest of fairness, Al's son is setting this up for Al. I set up stuff for people too; usually configurations that require as little of my attention as possible.

Copper pennies can be used as fuses, but I would not recommend it.

 

[JustinH]

Anyone else notice that the Atom does not have a fan on it?

Neat setup, I didn't know these came with dual cores.

This would be a nice server.

I only recommend that you do what you can to keep the hard drives under 100F at all times, or they will die (in my experience)..

Get some temperature sensitive fans blowing across the drives..

If you want to go a little cheaper, and maybe a little faster.. Would a cheap 45w Sempron 2.7Ghz be cheaper than 79 dollars paired with a cheap board? I think it would be very close.

I just built a sempron box for my mother with 2gb of ram and onboard everything, I was surprised how well it runs windows 7.

 

[simple_gifts]

I will suggest Al look @ the FitPC2i for his next desktop; 8W @ maximum load and it supports HDMI output.

http://www.fit-pc.com/web/fit-pc2/fit-pc2i-specifications/

4" x 4.5" x 1"

 

[Colt45ws]

My only recommendation would be a 2GB of ram and a different power supply brand.
The 2GB of ram isnt going to run you that much more and will give you breathing room, in case you decide to assign more tasks to this machine. Though I thought this machine only had one slot, but I see it has two, now. So, you could always add more later if you found it needed it.
Id go with a Seasonic like this one.

This machine is capable of a lot more.
I run a old Athlon XP machine as my server/router.
It does:
NAT (routing)

Filtering

Intrusion detection

QoS (quality of service; outbound internet traffic is classed and treated with different limits on speed, and delay)

DHCP (assigns computers IP addresses. Basic router function)

DNS (converts web addresses to IP address. Basic service.)

LAN DDNS (convenience for me. The DHCP daemon talks to the DNS daemon and updates a file so that I can connect to a machine on my network just by knowing its name. No messing about trying to figure out which 192.168.x.xxx address it hopped to.)

RADIUS (Allows me to use my paranoid level WPA2/Enterprise wireless authentication. Wireless clients are given a SSL certificate which is checked by the server before being given access to the wireless access point.)

Caching proxy (caches web requests so repeat requests can be served from cache instead of coming down the pipe. Not really needed, but can also be used to filter traffic.)

HTTP (web server)

IRC (chat server)

Plus probably a half a dozen other services that Ive forgotten about but would go missed if it broke.

 

[Al]

Thanks simple gifts and colt. I didn't understand a lot of what you guys sid, but I got the drift. When I am ready to pull the plug on something I don't need (this server). I will have my son look at this thread.

Thanks again.

One thing: "@ ZFS for the file system and that you up the memory to 2Gb or 4Gb if you choose to use it."

Will that work with Ubuntu?? Pardon my ignorance.

And just for now I am taking my computer to him. He is going to make it so that I can access a portion of his server from my computer. I asked him how he is going to do it. He hasn't decided yet.

 

[Al]

Originally Posted By: simple_gifts
I will suggest Al look @ the FitPC2i for his next desktop; 8W @ maximum load and it supports HDMI output.

http://www.fit-pc.com/web/fit-pc2/fit-pc2i-specifications/

4" x 4.5" x 1"


It might be a while..he just built me a computer with a Intel Celeron E3300 Wolfdale 2.5GHz 1MB L2 Cache LGA 775 65W Dual-Core Processor BX80571E3300

(I'm ready for some to call it junk

)

The wife might eventually need a new one as its an AMD Athelon XP 2200+ (I don't care who calls it junk

)

Thanks again.

 

[simple_gifts]

If it is a NAS file server, the underlying filesystem (e.g. ZFS or ext4) is independent of the clients using the NAS. The file sharing is done with protocols (SMB or NFS) that the NAS uses to deliver info to the clients. So, yes, it will work with Ubuntu.

Quote:

He is going to make it so that I can access a portion of his server from my computer. I asked him how he is going to do it. He hasn't decided yet.


This is built into Ubuntu also. From the Places menu, pick "Connect to server" pick ssh as service type; he supplies you the IP address and login and ubuntu creates a nice GUI tool to drag and drop files from his machine; this is done thru an encrypted tunnel so your info is safe.

If he does not have a static IP from his ISP, things get a little complicated.

BTW; I speak for the whole BITOG crowd when I say no one is interested in touching your junk 8)

 

[Al]

Originally Posted By: simple_gifts

If he does not have a static IP from his ISP, things get a little complicated.

BTW; I speak for the whole BITOG crowd when I say no one is interested in touching your junk 8)

I'll try to follow how he does it.

Yea on the "junk"

That word has morphed lately