TJStamp

Hardware
CASE: Sharkoon T9 Value
PSU: Corsair AX750
MB: AsRock 970 Extreme4 AM3+
CPU: AMD FX-8320 8 Core 3.5 GHz
HS: Cooler Master Seidon 120 M
RAM:  32 GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3 1600 MHz
Flash Disk: SanDisk Cruzr 16GB
PCI-E Slot 1: TBS 6280 Dual Tuner DVB-T2 Tuner Card
PCI-E Slot 2: Dell SAS 6 I/R PCI-E 8 port
PCI-E Slot 3: TP-Link Gigabit NIC
PCI-E Slot 4: Dell SAS 6 I/R PCI-E 8 port
PCI-E Slot 5: Intel Quad Port Gigabit NIC
PCI Slot 1: ATI Radeon 7000 32 MB GPU
PCI Slot 2: TP-Link Gigabit NIC
SSD Storage: 2x SanDisk Pulse SSD
HDD Storage: 12x Seagate Barracuda / Samsung EcoGreen F3 2 TB HDD
Nominal Capacity: 24.2 TB
Drive Cage 1: Cooler Master 4-in-3
Drive Cage 2: Cooler Master 4-in-3
Drive Cage 3: Cooler Master 4-in-3
 
Software and Configuration:
This system is running VMWare ESXi 5.1 U1. Storage is provided by a Virtualized SAN/NAS appliance called OpenIndiana with Napp-It for web based ZFS storage management running on top. VMWare Passthrough provides the virtual appliance direct control of the PCI-E SAS cards, in turn connected to the various disks in JBOD mode.
 
The appliance has an iSCSI SAN array made up of 4x 2TB Seagate Barracudas (two mirrored pools of 2 drives) with an SSD providing a high speed write cache. This provides high speed storage to all of the virtual machiens running on the host system. Usable capacity of 3.8 TB
 
 
 
The NAS array is a simple RAIDZ1-0 pool of 8x 2TB Drives. This system currently has a hardware limitation of 2TB drives due to the old SAS cards being used. This provides some redundency without too much overhead and still provides enough throughput to saturate a gigabit NIC. FileSharing via Appletalk, SMB/CIFS/NFS with DLNA streaming enabled (no transcode ability on the appliance itself)
 
 
Usage:
This build was designed to centralize 4 old servers and a couple of different NAS devices which were clogging up my hallway into one single easy to manage and expandable machine which could be hidden away out of sight. It was also something of a home-lab project for testing out technologies I wasn't familiar with like VMWare and ZFS. The Host has a primary role as a home storage server but with the additional CPU power and memory installed along with features like AMD IOMMU it also has the power to run all of the other servers as well. This has given a substantial saving on the monthly power bills, and is expandable enough that it should not need replacing for many years. Currently the VMWare host is running a virtualized firewall appliance (PfSense), an ubuntu based CCTV recording server (zoneminder), a windows based download machine restricted to only use international VPN access, a windows based server for whole-home automation and power monitoring and a Mythbuntu based TV tuner appliance for recording and streaming HD television feeds to various networked devices.
 

 
Backup:
Currently all data can survive the failure of a single drive. I am looking at increasing redundency to provide 2 drive reslience on both storage arrays. I'll have to replace both SAS cards before I can do that though.

Photo's:
 
This was the first build of the server, with some Silicon Image raid cards and stock cooling, needless to say it has had a couple of upgrades since that point:
 
I first built some active cabinet ventilation as the new server would go into a cupboard:
 

by Docklandsboy, on Flickr

Server Cupboard cooling - vents built by Docklandsboy, on Flickr

Vents installed by Docklandsboy, on Flickr

Finished ! by Docklandsboy, on Flickr
 
Then on with the server build:
 

Laying it all out by Docklandsboy, on Flickr

24 TB anyone? by Docklandsboy, on Flickr

cable management... by Docklandsboy, on Flickr

About to power up by Docklandsboy, on Flickr

More tidy cabling... by Docklandsboy, on Flickr

Drive cages by Docklandsboy, on Flickr

All Done by Docklandsboy, on Flickr

NO. NO THEY DO NOT. Don't recommend it.

The only way to get my 8320 into reasonable temps with a coolermaster Seidon 120 aio cooler was to undervolt it... I tried lots of different things like turning off cores and reducing the clock speeds but the most significant improvement was definitely dropping the voltage. There was no perceivable power or temperature difference when disabling cores, reducing clocks helped a little but not enough. After a lot of experimentation I got the system to run perfectly at stock speeds on all 8 cores at 1.21v and it was almost 20c cooler while reducing the power draw at the wall by almost 60watts. Most boards bios/uefi allow you to undervolt the northbridge too which can help.
 
obviously not all chips will undervolt to the same degree, just takes a bit of trial and error to find a clock/voltage combination which works for you

my 4 year old windows 7 install is still smooth as a babys butt. maybe you should take care of that baby's butt a bit better to make it not turn into oprah's hindquarters.

i have a g3258. no stuttering for me.
 
Even playing squad. That game runs unreal engine 4 and is not optimised at all.

The pentium 3258 anniversary edition is still a haswell core CPU... same architecture as the i3 i5 and i7 chips of that generation... your assertion is completely incorrect.
 

No only UK SSD's will work with UK computers
smh wot the hell kinda question is this

if possible each 2950 should be directly connected to the router, if you chain them like that there will be a huge bottleneck on the link between switch2 and the router

why not change the router NIC for a better one? QuadPort PCI-E gigabit NICs are really very cheap these days on ebay

boot from a linux liveCD, then you have no risk at all while you recover the files you need

easy way to settle it though, strawpoll ... LTT reviews -  trust / do not trust / turnip

easy way to settle it though, strawpoll ... LTT reviews -  trust / do not trust / turnip

This PC is my all in one Workstation. I run multiple VMware machines, Stream films to house, Storage Server, and mainly while doing all that has the power for me to work for my day to day as well without slowdown issues. Best system i have owned.
 
So this system runs 24/7 and never gets turned off unless windows updates or upgrades so on.
 
Only upgrade i want is a Nvidia Titan, want the 12gb ram it has !
 
Hardware
CPU2x Hex-Core Xeon X5650 12 Core 24 Threads
MotherboardHP Z800 Motherboard RAM48GB DDR3 ECC @ 1333mhz GPUASUS OC Nvidia 960 GTX Mini CaseHP Z800 Workstation Storage 1x Samsung 850 EVO 500gb
3x256GB Crucial M4 SSD Windows Storage Spaces Raid 0  
9x2TB Westren Digital Green 7200RPM Running In Two Way Mirror Windows Storage Spaces (Icy Dock MB975SP- B) PSU1110 Watt HP Z800 PSU Display(s)3x 24inch Dell U2410 1x 24inch HP LP2475w CoolingStock KeyboardLogitech G15 MouseLogitech G502 Proteus Core SoundCreative Sound Blaster Z PCIe (OEM Version) Operating SystemWindows 10 With Start Is Back !!!! Software and Configuration:
My Workstation is running Windows 10 Pro and i am using onboard SAS and Sata Ports with Windows Storage Spaces.
 
All Bitlockered at 256bit, and performance on the 9x2tb is around 100-120mb write. which is not to bad.
My main array consists of 9x 2TB in two way mirror, so I end up with 8.17TB actual storage space on that array.
 
Second array Also Bitlockered is 3x256GB SSD's which are in raid 0 and i use these for running my VMware machines as they need the performance.
 
Windows OS is just a 500GB Samsung 850, which i have a Full OS backup which runs automatically weekly to the large array.
 

 

 



Backup:
I have a APC Smart-UPS 1000 (Incase power failure)

Photo's:
 

 

 

 

 

 
My SSD Stack and love how it looks !
 

Go away please.

easy way to settle it though, strawpoll ... LTT reviews -  trust / do not trust / turnip

People sometimes cycle besides each other not to be an assholes but to protect themselves by not giving the driver a chance of overtaking in narrow roads. Basically mimicking the size of a car and if it is too narrow to overtake a car you should not overtake a cyclist as the law say you have to give cyclist as much space as a car. Learn the law please before putting your opinions on what is right and wrong on your actions

We have a really cool piece of content coming (not something that was part of the arrangement with NVIDIA, but we found an unexpected use for the Titan X cards) about video encoding and content creation workflows. Stay tuned.
 
And yes.. Dennis built his editing workstation.. It was terrifying.. Stay tuned. That video is going to rock - whether it was "sponsored" or not.. It's not an editorial piece, so I don't think it matters.
 
The truth of the matter is that whether people like it and think we deserve it or not, we have a large audience and lots of influence (something I don't take for granted, and work very hard to maintain) and if I ask for handful of video cards from pretty much anyone to feature them in a video they will provide them.
 
I chose NVIDIA cards and sent them a proposal because that was what I wanted in our editing workstations. I didn't receive an offer from NVIDIA, then, having no other options HAVE to go with them. They were my first choice.
 
So many assumptions get made about how desperate we are for a video card or a phone or whatever. We don't care.. Unless it's really cool.. in which case, we do care, and we talk about how cool it is BECAUSE WE THINK IT'S COOL!

Given my job involves playing with mahoosive storage arrays I really should put some effort in and get my personal rig higher up the list
 

 
 
 
I've got 4x Seagate 8TB Archive drives on the way for ZFS cold storage, will hopefully be able to provide some feedback on them next week

Hey there maximuscesar, welcome to the community   RAID0 would give you a pretty good speed boost, shorter loading times and good transfer speed improvements. It does not, however, provide any redundancy and I would strongly suggest keeping backups of the data on the array. Moreover, I wouldn't advise you to use non-NAS/RAID class drives in a RAID array because of the higher risk of data corruption.    Keeping your old HDD is actually a great idea, but I would first run a diagnostic utility to make sure the drive is still healthy and safe to store data on. I would recommend using a tool that's provided by the manufacturer.    Hybrid drives are great if you use mainly only a few applications so it can store their load files on the SSD portion. Other than that it works just as a regular HDD.   Captain_WD.

The short answer is that the 8TB archive drives aren't suitable for the type of workloads you describe in your original question so even though they are a great price these days they aren't going to provide you with a very good experience. In the 4TB - 6TB desktop market there are plenty of great products out there. I don't know what pricing is like elsewhere so all my calcs are UK based but I update a spreadsheet of £ per Gigabyte for every consumer and enterprise drive category every month as part of my job. Here are some highlights
 
For 4TB disks the cost per GB (5 retailer average - august 2015):
Toshiba Intenso - £0.025
Seagate Desktop (Barracuda) -  £0.026
WD Green - £0.027
WD Red - £0.033
Hitachi Deskstar - £0.032
 
For 6TB disks the cost per GB (5 retailer average - august 2015):
WD Green - £0.030
Seagate Archive - £0.031
WD Red - £0.033
Hitachi Deskstar - £0.035
Seagate Enterprise £0.040
 
The conclusion I draw myself from this is that when going for a 4TB drive, the seagate desktop (used to be called barracuda but has been renamed) offers the best mix of value and performance. If going for a 6TB drive then the Western Digital Red series wins out.  Obviously have to say that prices in the US will vary from the UK but I'd be surprised if the same drives didn't come out on top there too.

I use a Gigabyte GA-970A-UD3 and have a stable overclock of 4,5gHz with 1,360V voltage. Remember to look for a motherboard with a 8+2 CPU phase power supply.

vessel

http://linustechtips.com/main/topic/11724-read-before-posting-in-this-section/

here's how a single seagate 8TB archive drive performed in a couple of very basic tests... it's pretty clear this drive will be terrible for IO heavy usage and will not work as a boot drive or virtualization storage target but for NAS usage (WORM workloads) it's almost perfect
 

Thanks! I will leave my client running and when my bedroom gets warmer I will know what is going on...