Does the box have a dedicated hardware RAID card or does it use Intel's onboard ICHxR RAID? The latter is unsupported by VMware so you'll either have to fork out for a proper RAID card or do sone funky stuff like I did at first and map your drives as raw to a VM, then do softRAID and share back as iSCSI - or you can do away with RAID and just run separate spindles. Re: NICs, AFAIR my Realtek NIC wasn't supported OOTB with vSphere 4 - not sure what the HCL is like for 5 though. If in doubt, fork out £20 or so and buy an Intel PRO/1000 Other than that, what saspro said
maybe this would be better to post in hardware section but since the topic is NAS' I ask here anyways. I want a Server/NAS to store backup of my home pc's a few laptops and a few desktops (complete images), and file backup (pics, docs, music, etc...) I also want to be able to stream media (up to 1080p buray mkv's) to any computer in the house. I was thinking of building my own server/nas instead of buying a prebuilt one. This is the hardware I was thinking of. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813153212 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148191 http://www.ebay.com/itm/150W-PicoPS...=Laptop_Adapters_Chargers&hash=item2566b81b3b I was thinking of going with Windows Home Server. For hard drives I would like to be able to at first just use my hard drive I have now (1tb, 2x250gb) and then later on get some 2tb to add to it and eventually only have 2tb drives. I am not sure I really need RAID. But im not sure what exactly woudl be the best way to do this. I want my DVD/Bluray collection ripped onto the server, but if for some reason a hdd dies and that data gets lost I can always re-rip it. For important stuff like pictures though I can just do a backup onto DVD/BluRay. What you think about that? And should I run a cheap 30GB SSD for a OS drive for the server/nas?
It's not even using RAID at the moment, it's just a bunch of discs that are shared on the network as individual hidden shares and I occasionally back up important folders of the NAS to them. I might have an Intel NIC lying around here somewhere - it'd be 10/100 though, not gigabit which would be teh suck on an "approaching all-gigabit" network. Like you said though, I could just get a cheapie Intel gigabit one if it's a problem.
So, here's my NAS (and gigabit switch and N access point.. ReadyNAS NV with a 2TB Samsung F4 in it. Does the job.
G4 Mac Mini 1.5 80Gb HDD, 1Gb Ram 1 WD MyBook 1Tb 1 WD Elements 1Tb/ 1 Belkin USB Mac Mini hub No pictures, but its sat atop my 2.1 sub, with the hard drives next to it - not perfect but it works...
The Atom Server Of Doom... Hard to see, but the case is of such quality the front USB ports are upside down! Needs a dusting too. Atom D510 2GB RAM 60GB 2.5in system drive 1TB 3.5in data drive waiting for 3TB drive to drop a bit more in price then it'll get more space. Runs Arch serving the usual suspects as well as minidlna for my new TV serving movies etc., motion with a webcam pointing at the drive detecting motion, lcd4linux with system stats connected to an arduino which is emulating a matrix orbital display. It also runs a minecraft server every so often, can be a bit slow for that at times, but everything else is fine. Just for fun I ran a left 4 dead 2 public server, with 8 people pings started off at 100ms with the CPU pegged at 100% and went up to 2500ms after about 2 minutes, much complaining about the lag in the console, good times...
Ah cool You can probably get away with creating one datastore per disk if you're not too concerned about I/O and redundancy. I'd personally recommend a decent RAID card though, you get faster and redundant storage, so win-win You may be OK with a 100Mb NIC, not sure if the throughput on a single disk will be enough to saturate a 100Mb link.
We haven't seen your home server yet saspro and you promised me few months when i started this thread you would put some up haha
Remind me later when I get home from work. It's not the tidiest at the moment as I really need longer sata cables but it's functional
Here is my rack: Built the rack itself out of 2"x4", some chipboards and a door. All leftovers after a small remodeling inside my house. From top to bottom; 1U 24-port Gigabit switch 1U blank (will mount some sort of cable management-thing on this) 1U 16 port patch panel 1U Firewall running untangle 3U watercooling unit for the mainrig, 4U case containing the mainrig 1U miniITX server, currently not in use 1U BOXX render computer 1U BOXX render computer 4U Fileserver (stats below) 1U 16port KVM-console 15" MythTV Backend 2U Dell PowerEdge 2650 - torrent and CCTV server Here it is with the KVM-console open. Filserver: Cabinet: Supermicro SuperChassis 846TQ-R900B Motherboard: older supermicro, 2x Xeon 2,4ghz 3GB ram RAID cards: 2x 3ware 9550SX-12 Disks: (for now) 2x 2TB 5x 1,5TB 2x 1TB 2x 750GB 2x 600GB OS: Win 7 Enterprise Comments: Noisy as f....
Never thought of that.. You are to blame if i have problems sleeping tonight! I'm planning to put even more water inside, a chiller unit built from an "old" heat pump, and I plan on using the hot water output to heat my living room. but that is a future project...
Nice NAS's people, just bought myself 2 of the HP Proliant Microservers with the £100 cashback, what a bloody bargain! You have 2 days left if you want one, just go to eBuyers HERE right now... I have already had one for 2 weeks now, stuck in 4GB ram, 1 x 500GB (2008 R2 server) and 3 x 2TB's for storage (no raid) and it runs like a dream and is surprisingly fast for a dual core 1.3ghz CPU! I have VMware server II installed (Windows based VM's not EXSi) which runs 2 VM's (A domain controller and download VM in a DMZ) and it does all this while pulling only 45w from the wall!! WIN When the second one arrives on Monday im going to pimp up with a decent SAS raid card and turn the bays into hot-swaps and also install a 4 x 2.5" removable caddy in the CD-ROM bay like someone else did on here. I plan to use 4 x 2TB's in Raid 5 or maybe 1+0 and 2 x 1TB's in Raid-1 on MB controller for OS and VM's, wanna see how it handles all that! (BUT might have to wait until HDD prices go back to normal because of the damm flooding in Thailand ) Still cant believe what a bargain they are for £130 after the cashback!
Is anyone using SSD's in Raid-1 or Raid-5 on a home server? Am thinking about using 2 x OCZ Agility 60GB's in Raid-1 on my server for speed and redundancy but also though about getting a 3rd 60GB and going Raid-5 but as I know TRIM wont be used im a bit worried about how they will be 6-12 months down the line after being on constantly 24/7...
out of curiosity, why? most home servers are on 24/7, so you will rarely be able to take advantage of lower boot times. and because most servers arent constantly opening/closing programs, theres no advantage for load times there either.
Mainly because I keep 2 VM's on my Raid-1 set currently and when the main OS and 2 vm's are working away my I/O drops right down especially when backing up, I know SSD's would be overkill for it and to be honest 60GB would be ever so tight to get the OS and VMs on so would prob have to move the VM's elseware anyway unless I went R5 ssd, im just thinking out loud at the mo anyway, im not making any hasty decisions until I know what I want to do for sure...
