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Advice needed: iTunes server and raid back up

Monty007
By Monty007
in Storage Devices
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Posted

Hi all,

I suffered a completely loss of my media array over the weekend! I'm now committed to building a proper server type machine dedicated to house at least 10-20TB of backups for my whole house (3 hacks; 2 iMacs and a MBP) but also to serve as an iTunes media centre. I have an old PPC G5 that I have been using to watch movies from (through iTunes). I'm planning to gut the internals and build a new machine with that case.

I have no experience with servers at all! Everything in my house is OSX based. I'm in need of some advice on components and how to set it up - preferably with some sort of RAID config so I don't go through this nightmare again. I have seen and used the recommended builds from Tony. Do I need something different for this new config? Do I need to run a server version of OSX? Would I be able to have a centralized iTunes media collection to stream throughout the house? I don't need this to be a powerhouse - I have my Leviathan build for that.

Your advice is greatly appreciated.

I was thinking of something like:

-i3 Ivy processor

-H77/Z77N board (I don't know about this because of the RAID situation I'm considering)

-on-board video

-8GB of ram

-SSD for boot

- WD Red or Seagate NAS drives for storage in RAID either 3 x 4TB or 4 x 4TB

-Not sure about a dedicated RAID card or should I get a different mobo with more SATA ports ?

-I know that OSX does a software raid and only does RAID 0

-Corsair hx 750 PSU - i know its probably too much but I'm planning to upgrade my Leviathan build so this -will be donated to this project.

Thanks in advance.

My build:  Leviathan  Case: 900D  CPU: i7 3770K (watercooled)  Mobo: Z77X-UD5H GPU: EVGA GTX 780 Hydro Copper GPU: MSI GTX 780 watercooled PSU: EVGA 1300W G2  RAM: 32 GB Corsair Vengance  HDDs: 1 x 120 GB Intel 330 SSD (OS X); 1 x 256 GB Samsung 840 pro (Windows 8); 2 x 2TB Seagate Barracuda (RAID 0 Data OS X); 1 x 3TB Seagate Barracuda (OS X backups)  Monitors: 1 x 24" Apple LED Cinema (center); 2 x 23" Apple LED Cinema (surround)  Watercooling: 3 rads, CPU, GPU, GPU, MCP655 pump, Lots of fittings, EK reservoir, EK UV Blue coolant.  Updated build: Leviathan 2.0

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Posted

Get a Haswell Celeron for your processor, along with an appropriate motherboard. 4GB of ram should be enough. A boot SSD is fine.

 

If you're interested in trying ZFS, it is very useful for backup systems.

 

As far as RAID goes, I'd recommend reading this.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use, and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them. - Galileo Galilei
Build Logs: Tophat (in progress), DNAF | Useful Links: How To: Choosing Your Storage Devices and Configuration, Case Study: RAID Tolerance to Failure, Reducing Single Points of Failure in Redundant Storage , Why Choose an SSD?, ZFS From A to Z (Eric1024), Advanced RAID: Survival Rates, Flashing LSI RAID Cards (alpenwasser), SAN and Storage Networking

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