Hi, A buddy of mine gave me an old HP Celeron 667MHz PC with only 64MB of memory and a noisy 5400RPM 20GB hard drive. What I want to do with this machine is swap out the motherboard with one that has onboard LAN and more USB ports since it's a royal pain in the ass to find all the drivers for the OEM motherboard already in it, as well as swap out the main IDE hard drive for a more quieter one as an OS/programs drive, and add some SATA hard drives to it in a RAID-5 configuration. The thing is, I'm worried about the PCI bus being to slow for the PCI controller card that's going to operate the RAID-5 array. From what I understand, RAID-5 is good for mostly reads and not writes, and this is acceptable because after I transfer all my **** to the array, it'll only be read from. Another thing I'm worried about is the CPU slowing down the array, I'm not worried about the RAM because I'll be upgrading that to 256MB or maybe 512MB, as this rig may be used as a guest PC as well and I assume that having more RAM will aid in the user having a reasonable speed experience and not bogging down the server. I won't be using standard 10/100Mbps network products, I'll be going gigabit. Basically, what I want to know is, will this machine be able to handle the tasks that I'm wanting from it?
I run a 266 @ 350 rig for mp3 serving and it works good for me. I don't think it should slow you up too much.
What OS are you thinking of using? Also are you using hardware RAID or Software RAID - it isnt too clear in the above? AFAIK MS OSes - only the server editions support software RAID. If you're going to be putting a lot of through put through your server IMHO I would say your bottle neck will be your CPU. Even with gigabit LAN - each packet of data needs first to be encapsulated (IIRC the OSI refernce model) and this involves your CPU. At the end of the day it really all depends on your expectations of what is acceptable speed wise. A friend of mine experiemented burning DVDs straight from his file server over the network - he upgraded his network to GB but didn't bother updrading his file server - AMD 900Mhz. His client PC was of decent spec - but was getting buffer underun everytime he tried burning DVDs. I put it down to a combination of the type of media he was trying to burn and the slow CPU. HTH.
The RAID-5 array would be controlled by an add-in PCI card, as seen here . Along with upgrading the motherboard, I'll possibly use the celeron 667 for a short period of time before upgrading to possibly a PIII 1.0 and overclocking a bit. As for OS, I'm really undecided. I'd want to run a Linux distro, but I have zero knowledge of it. I'm more than likely going to run something like Windows Server 2003 or something, or attempt to learn basic Linux crap in the mean time. May I ask, what hard drive interface was used?
So you might as well start from scratch since you dont want a) the cpu b) the harddisk c) the motherboard d) the crappy ram What are you left with: a shitty OEM beige case and underpowered PSU: wonderful. And you're gonna buy a $200 RAID 5 card and multiple $$$ harddisks to put in it?? You sure youve got your priorities worked out? I realise this sounds awful and a tad flamey but im just trying to point out what seems to be the lack of logic in what you're trying to do. If you want a gigabit network then dont buy a PCI card - make sure it's PCIe otherwise youll only get slightly faster than 100Mbit (133Mbit) since that's the limitation of the PCI bus. Pop in a RAID5 card and whatever else into the PCI bus and you're now sharing that ever-so-speedy 133Mbit between all your devises. PCIe gigabit cards are $50, or you can buy a mobo with it in - but make sure you research beforehand because even though mobos have onboard gigabit many are piped through the crappy PCI bus not PCIe cause the chips are cheaper and 90% of people will be using 10/100 or wont know the difference anyway. Or you could buy an Nforce3/4 board that has PHY gigabit lan - it's all hardware driven and takes ~70% (according to NV and iirc) of the network load off the CPU. Ideally you want to put that RAID5 card in it's own 66Mhz PCI-X slot that you find on server motherboards. Id say it's not the processor (900Mhz AMD) that was the problem - it was the slow harddisk and combination of network sending the data. Even with a SATA150 drive i cant burn 2 DVDs from data off the same drive at the same time, from the SAME pc that it's all on regardless of CPU speed.
Have to agree with Bindi here...it's like you're taking a PC to use as a server, taking out everything but the PSU, and continuing. If you really want the benifits of RAID5 and Gb LAN in a server, you might as well go with a multiple CPU option. Hell, might as well go quad-Opteron with a SCSI RAID5 and 16GB of RAM... Catch my drift? For a standard file server, a 7200rpm 8mb 200GB IDE drive will suffice. 512MB to 1GB of RAM, and a decent cpu. Just to give you an idea, I'm running a completely competent file server off a 350MHz PII, a 300GB 7200RPM 8mb IDE drive, 512MB PC133, and an old, old Intel mobo. Does anything I need it to, with no limitations
But if this is a home MP3 and file server thats only going to be shelling out data to a few users at a time, theres no points whatsoever in changing it from how it currently is, other than perhaps adding a bigger hard drive or perhaps two and putting it in RAID 1 for security benefits. Im using a Pentium 2 400 mhz as a file server with 64 megs of RAM running windows 2000 professional with a six gig hard drive for holding MP3s and programs that I always install after formatting a computer. Your machine is completely adequate for your tasks as it is; just stick it in an out of the way place where it can breathe and hook it up to a 100 megabit network card; things should be fine.
I guess I was considering a major overkill setup. LoL Thanks for all the replies guys, I really appreciate it and it helps a ton. I'm assuming that all I'd need is a faster hard drive, eh? A little more info I'd like to know, since I'm such a n00b... (LoL) Seeing that the only thing installed in any of the PCI slots is the network card, I'm assuming that it would take full advantage of PCI speeds the motherboard has to offer, which would roughly be only 12.5MB/sec, assuming that it is fully saturating 100Mbps network speeds which I doubt would ever happen. I'm kind of speculating that the max speed would be around 70~80ish Mbps, which would mean that it's going to be reading/writing to the hard drive at 10MB/sec, and that's not even close to the max speed of the hard drive, or so I understand. I also understand that I'd need more RAM, but I don't know how much I'd need. edit:// I just did a 100MB transfer to it, and it took like a minute or two. I took a screen shot of the task manager's network utilization tab, which can be seen below. From what I've noticed, that's only roughly 15Mbit/sec... poor speeds IMO. I've also settled all the driver problems on the server, but then again, I think the slow speed has something to do with the computer only having 64MB of RAM as well as the hard drive only being 5400RPM... typical of HP, heh.. I'll let you guys decide, since I don't really know much about all this. (sorry for the quality, I just quickly saved it as a gif in paint as im too lazy to open photoshop to save it as a good .jpg file) (this post has been typed up whilst being awake for a very long time, and I can't really think straight right now, so bear with me...)
Check out our harddisk benchmark thread - there are some comparitive benchmarks for real user experiences with different desktop drives in there. Just get a PCI SATA card (£15) and a couple of 300gig Maxtor DM10+ or 250gig Seagates etc. I understand your "speed and security" of RAID 5 but youve got to weigh up a) how much space you need b) how many drives youll be using c) cost of $200 RAID card and drives vs $25 SATA PCI RAID 0/1 card + drives. And exactly what youll be doing with it - just serving files? mp3s? video? HD video?? how much data rate is the streams gonna take?
FFS! Seriously - for **** sake I learnt, i was TAUGHT it was 133Mbit, yet, i look it up now and it's as if everyone else decided to change and not inform me. I feel stupid that ive been saying, insisting "bit" for years when its MB/s, byte. So: 1000Gbps = 125MB/s which will fit down a PCI bus. Great. You cant believe how completely youve rewritten everything in my mind.
Dont worry Bindi-while a gigabit network card will work on a PCI Bus, it still saturates it, but it will work at full gigabit capability if you have nothing else on it Ok, a more adequate amount of RAM would be 256 megabytes, although that can get expensive as SD-RAM is not manufactured very often at all. However, with 128 you should be fine enough for shelling out files like MP3s. So 64 megs more RAM and a bigger HDD and you'll be set
Alright guys.. from all the responses you kind people have given me, I've come to a decision, and I want to know if it's a good one. I've decided on: 2 of these Seagate 80GB 7200RPM 7200.7 ST380013AS drives (I know it's not in stock right now, but I'm still going to use it) Adaptec Serial ATA RAID 1210SA 256MB of RAM off of eBay... not sure if I should use 1 stick of 256 or 2 sticks of 128... I'm starting to lean towards the 2 sticks of 128 option because it's cheaper and there's a lot more of it on ebay... The RAM upgrade comes first, since it's the cheapest... then the controller card and then I'll get the hard drives OH! I just remembered.. The PSU in this damn thing is only 100w, and I'll be running the 2 sata drives in a RAID-0 array, as well as the 20GB boot drive. I'd like to have the storage section of the server different than the OS drive.. I kinda doubt that the PSU can handle all that, but to be sure, the only thing that the PSU will be powering will be the 3 hard drives and the mobo... I removed the CD-ROM drive because it's dead, and I removed the floppy because I don't need it anymore. I can just share one of the CD drives on this rig and map it as a network drive on the server and use the CD-ROM drive like that, because I'll be using VNC to look control it
If its only 100 watts I would definitely take the step of adding a new PSU to this box; that much stuff could be a bit risky for that feeble a PSU.
There's a PSU on ebay that's compatible with the little POS case that this thing is, SFX kind of PSU... and it's 230w Should that suffice?
Thanks for your fast response, I really appreciate it. I think that'll Git-R-Done.. Also, I'd like to thank everyone who helped me throughout this whole thing... I think I proved myself to be a n00b, LoL In addition to that, I'd like to thank everyone for not flaming me for asking such n00bish questions. Where I come from, (twistedforums, I'm never going back there), it was always a constant flame war. Every single thread turned out with some sort of flaming... and since being here, the maturity level is like, off the wall compared to that place. More of my style of place. I'll be sticking here more now, and offering my help to anyone and everyone that I can. You guys ROCK! Mod on edit:// Upon looking at the PSU on ebay again, I've noticed that it only gives 10A on the 12v line... and 2 of those 80GB SATA drives will consume about 5.6A... I sure hope that the rest of the system doesn't take more than 4A on the 12v line...
You sure 2 harddisks take 5.6A! that's loads. Mebbe on spin up perhaps, but it sounds extremely excessive.
Just had a looky at an old 1gb 5400rpm drive and it takes 0.27A on the +12 and 0.45A on the +5. Also remember old computer systems use the +5 alot more than the +12.
This is where I got that data from: http://www.seagate.com/cda/products/discsales/personal/family/0,1085,587,00.html +12 VDC +/-10% (amps typ operating) 2.8A
