Server Help?

[DashAki]

Hello, I am very new in Server concept, and wondering how to set up one. Currently I am working with one PC sitting as Server with Windows 7 and three hard drives that hold datas shared across the network, is this actually a server? and i am wondering, what if the data is too big for the hard drives? also the server has a xampp working on it. if my description is not understandable, i will expand my explanation.................... Thank you for reading 

[Elliott Game]

I would kinda personally call it a server, so was that what you needed help with? Or was it something else?

[blu4]

A server is a device that provides a SERVice. A mobile phone and a Raspberry Pi can both be servers. It doesn't have to be a pimped out machine for it to be called a server.

[tt2468]

Hardware wise, It is not a server. OS wise, it is not a server. But software wise, it is a server. My definition of a server has high expectations. (I work in a datacenter)

[DashAki]

 i want my server to still be operable even after i add more drives, like all the drives as one and folders for specific needs such as pictures and when the drives' capacities runs out i just have to add more drives to it, and it still work, and i don't have to create another pictures folder and share it. And also, what is the difference between Windows Server and normal windows OS??? will i get my specific needs?

[leadeater]

My advice would be to keep it as simple as possible. If what you are already doing is serving you fine and there are no issues beyond the capacity expansion of storage then leave the setup as is, with some minor changes.

 

The ability and ease to expand the underlying storage without any changes in the configuration of the server/software at a higher level would be RAID. You could either use the onboard RAID capabilities of your existing motherboard or purchase an LSI 9341-8i/LSI 9240-8i as an example. RAID allows you to combine disks in to a single logical disk and would appear as a single physical disk to your OS, if you add more disks all you need to do in the OS is expand the partition.

 

You will need to backup your data on the existing disks before configuring them in RAID, it will erase the data, or you could purchase new disks. You will need to create the network shares again and make sure all the data is back in place.

 

This is by no means the only way to do what you want but understanding RAID is a great place to start and will give you the knowledge to understand and assess the alternatives to RAID.  

[DashAki]

I am thinking of RAID 0 but don't know if my motherboard supports it. it is very old and very very simple PC form DELL, by your explanation i understand that first i would empty my disks and make them ONE using RAID and then copy all the data and share them again like i did before, then if capacity runs out i just have to add more drives to my PC and expand the partition and the files will be safe and folder sizes expand??? can u give a tutorial on how to achieve this? on RAID and also what if one of the drive has 2 partition? one is OS and another one is data? how to add it to the RAID??? 

[leadeater]

I am thinking of RAID 0 but don't know if my motherboard supports it. it is very old and very very simple PC form DELL, by your explanation i understand that first i would empty my disks and make them ONE using RAID and then copy all the data and share them again like i did before, then if capacity runs out i just have to add more drives to my PC and expand the partition and the files will be safe and folder sizes expand??? can u give a tutorial on how to achieve this? on RAID and also what if one of the drive has 2 partition? one is OS and another one is data? how to add it to the RAID??? 

 

Isn't really safe to use RAID 0. If a single disks fails all data is lost, more disks equals more risk. Safer to use RAID 1 or 5. RAID 1 is a mirror between 2 disk but if you need more disks or easier expansion then use RAID 5. RAID 5 requires a minimum of 3 disks and can survive 1 disk failure, just replace the disk in this event.

 

Also you won't be able to use the disk that has the OS partition on it, not easily anyway and the methods to do it require a temporary disk to clone it to and clone it back. Not the safe etc. Best to keep OS and data on separate disks/RAID arrays when using RAID.

 

Sounds like you will be needing to buy a RAID card to do this, the ones I am comfortable with recommending are rather expensive though. The cheapest I can find see link, but I don't trust that brand of RAID card much.

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115118&cm_re=RocketRAID-_-16-115-118-_-Product

 

If you were running Windows 8 or higher I would recommend using Storage Spaces.

[leadeater]

To be honest your stuck between a rock and a hard place. Your going to either need to upgrade to Windows 10 which goes against my original advice of keep it simple and make small changes, or spend money on buying hardware.

 

If you had a spare computer I would say install FreeNAS on to that and put your network shares on it.

[DashAki]

Ok so i checked my motherboard, it does not support RAID and from u, i have to get a PCI device? and RAID is very unstable from your reply? and FreeNAS is just a software to share datas on network right? All i want to is to share Files/Folders across network /fast access/ and the as the data increases the folders won't change, i mean there is a picture's folder and when the HDDs runs out of capacity i just have to add more disks and will be able to add more pictures to that folder and nothing else changes, can't i have something like this??

[DashAki]

Ok so i checked my motherboard, it does not support RAID and from u, i have to get a PCI device? and RAID is very unstable from your reply? and FreeNAS is just a software to share datas on network right? All i want to is to share Files/Folders across network /fast access/ and the as the data increases the folders won't change, i mean there is a picture's folder and when the HDDs runs out of capacity i just have to add more disks and will be able to add more pictures to that folder and nothing else changes, can't i have something like this??

[DKM1129]

Ok so i checked my motherboard, it does not support RAID and from u, i have to get a PCI device? and RAID is very unstable from your reply? and FreeNAS is just a software to share datas on network right? All i want to is to share Files/Folders across network /fast access/ and the as the data increases the folders won't change, i mean there is a picture's folder and when the HDDs runs out of capacity i just have to add more disks and will be able to add more pictures to that folder and nothing else changes, can't i have something like this??

Have something simple. A good rule with something like freenas is 1gb of ram to every tb of HDD space so it's a bit heavy on hardware specs. I'd say keep windows 7 have simple shares or you could use an OS called open media vault its not as hardcore as Freenas and its actually a Debian distribution. I've been using it and I like it. Also both hardware raid and software raid isn't really recommended the maximum throughput from even a gigabit network would be around 100MB/s so raid 0 has no benefit and if you're willing to take the risk Raid 5 is a good option but only for 3 HDDs or more

[leadeater]

Have something simple. A good rule with something like freenas is 1gb of ram to every tb of HDD space

 

If you don't use the data de-duplication feature in FreeNAS then the ram requirements are extremely low.

[leadeater]

Ok so i checked my motherboard, it does not support RAID and from u, i have to get a PCI device? and RAID is very unstable from your reply? and FreeNAS is just a software to share datas on network right? All i want to is to share Files/Folders across network /fast access/ and the as the data increases the folders won't change, i mean there is a picture's folder and when the HDDs runs out of capacity i just have to add more disks and will be able to add more pictures to that folder and nothing else changes, can't i have something like this??

 

If your data growth is low your better off replacing the single disks every few years with a larger one. I'd revisit this when it comes time that you need to replace your current computer with a new one. Then you could use the old one for something like FreeNAS or configure the new computer in a way that meets your requirements/desires.

 

RAID is very reliable, that is the design principle behind the technology. It's only that particular brand I don't trust. 

[DKM1129]

If you don't use the data de-duplication feature in FreeNAS then the ram requirements are extremely low.

Always assumed it was because the .zfs filesystem needs that much ram

[leadeater]

if you're willing to take the risk Raid 5 is a good option but only for 3 HDDs or more

 

Not sure why you are implying RAID 5 is risky, or any other RAID type other than 0. This seems to be an extremely common theme I see among members of this forum.

 

RAID has been around since the early 90's and is still widely used in data centers. It has served disk arrays in the hundreds of disks with massive data sizes just fine. The majority of enterprise disk arrays still use RAID 6 or equivalent to pool the disks together.

 

Better technologies have come about since then specifically addressing long term storage for file sharing where you don't do side by side replacements every 3-5 years but maintain the original system basically indefinitely. This is why self correcting file systems are so important, their is nothing inherently wrong with RAID, it was just designed with a different purpose in mind.

 

I would sooner trust an LSI RAID card over a FreeNAS box built with consumer parts any day, not that you can't put FreeNAS on proper server components

[leadeater]

Always assumed it was because the .zfs filesystem needs that much ram

 

The high RAM requirements are more of the FreeNAS thing than ZFS. More RAM will give better performance but the gains are very small when there are only a few, or 1, users. Unless you access the same files very often.

 

ZFS uses ARC to move frequently accessed data to faster storage, this could be RAM or SSD.

 

There are claims that ZFS servers must have huge amounts of RAM, but that is not true. It is a misinterpretation of the desire to have large ARC disk caches. The ARC is very clever and efficient, which means disks will often not be touched at all, provided the ARC size is sufficiently large. In the worst case, if the RAM size is very small (say, 1 GB), there will hardly be any ARC at all; in this case, ZFS always needs to reach for the disks. This means read performance degrades to disk speed.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS#ZFS_cache:_ARC_.28L1.29.2C_L2ARC.2C_ZIL

 

Deduplication:

 

Effective use of deduplication may require large RAM capacity; recommendations range between 1 and 5 GB of RAM for every TB of storage. Insufficient physical memory or lack of ZFS cache can result in virtual memory thrashing when using deduplication, which can either lower performance or result in complete memory starvation.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS#Deduplication

[DashAki]

Ok, so, i won't be having any new hardware, cuz the organization i am working for is government type and won't spend money on me cuz i am doing this as a experiment for me so they don't even consider, i just want the datas to be growing, everyday new documents come and go, it will all be saved in my server and pictures of events from festivals of gov events, videos, movies etc, that's why i need stable folder that increase capacity, can't i have this with a software or something?