Server Help

[dyabolyk]

so i have a relative old pc: NVIDIA nForce 680i SLI LT Motherboard, intel Q6600 procesor, 4G ddr2 and 2 8800gtx in SLI

 

and i wanna to make a server out of it, with 1 SSD (for OS) and 6 HDD of 3TB; 2 HDD for space usage and the other 4 HDD as 2 mirrors (2 HDD as a mirror and 2 HDD as the 2nd mirror) and if its not to mutch, the option to add more drives in the future :)

so my question, is the motherboard even capable of doing this just by adding a raid controler? or im bether of just to buy a server motherboard (with a new processor, etc.)?

 

btw this server i will use it for music and videos only (so speed its no that important, but would be nice to have at least sata 3gb/s speeds) and access it by wire and wireless with other devices like a laptop or a phone/tablet

 

p.s. im a total noob when it comes to servers, i don`t realy know what raid i even need for that and im sorry for my realy bad english :)

[looney]

I'll have to side with bengali, its a very inefficient system when it comes to power consumption. 

And im also a great fan of FlexRAID (using it in my own 30TB server)

[dyabolyk]

ok ... but can u pls give me some info ... like how many drives i can use ... how mutch pool of storage i can use out of lets say 12TB ... what raid to use ... and old motherboard even supports 12TB ?

 

like i seyed im a total noob when it comes to servers, the moust HDDs i used whas 3 HDDs in raid 1 (less then 1.5TB in total), so pls give me some deteails no just use that software and use a nother cofing that consumes less power

 

pls recomed me some items that supports at least like 6-8 HDDs ... ty

[looney]

like how many drives i can use

you wont encounter any limitation regarding the amount of drives or storage space when you use FlexRAID. it allows you to add as many data drives as you want. and you can also use as many parity drives as you want (1 parity would make it equal to raid 5, 2 parity would make it equal to raid 6)

 

how mutch pool of storage i can use out of lets say 12TB

i take it you mean 6*2TB drive? if so then i would use 1 parity drive, so that way you will still have 10TB left (but keep in mind that 10TB would be 9.3TiB use this converter if you need to check http://www.unitjuggler.com/convert-memory-from-TB-to-TiB.html)

 

what raid to use

depends on the amount of drives you wish to use, i would pick 1 parity drive per 7 data drives. so 7 drives and 1 parity, and more then 7 i would use 2 parity drives (personally have 14 data drives and 2 parity drives)

 

and old motherboard even supports 12TB

yes, the motherboard has nothing to do with the storage in this case, all the board needs to do is make the drives show up as usual in the OS

 

pls recommend me some items that supports at least like 6-8 HDDs

well, if i would build a system now then i would pick a Intel i3 or i5 and 8 or 16GB of ram, and a motherboard that offers expandability when i comes to PCI-e slots (that's what the raid cards use) and i would use a cheap raid-card or host bus adapter. like the IBM m1015, that would allow you to add 8 more drives to your server.

but the sata ports on your motherboard might suffice for your current needs.

hope this answered your current questions, im sure you will have more so keep them coming and we will see about answering them.

looney

[dyabolyk]

ty so mutch its what i needed to know ... i only have 2 more question if u can help me pls :)

 

1.how safe will be the system in 1 parity vs 2 parity? lets say 2 HDDs fails out of  6 HDDs

2. why i3/i5 with 8/16G of ram its not to much for a server ? if not, why ? (i mean u just need to read data ... not to play games on it) :)

[dyabolyk]

i take it you mean 6*2TB drive? if so then i would use 1 parity drive, so that way you will still have 10TB left (but keep in mind that 10TB would be 9.3TiB use this converter if you need to check http://www.unitjuggler.com/convert-memory-from-TB-to-TiB.html)

 

no i mean if i have a 12TB HDD server pool, with FlexRAID i can use all my server pool or just half of it ?

[looney]

ty so mutch its what i needed to know ... i only have 2 more question if u can help me pls :)

 

1.how safe will be the system in 1 parity vs 2 parity? lets say 2 HDDs fails out of  6 HDDs

 

2. why i3/i5 with 8/16G of ram its not to much for a server ? if not, why ? (i mean u just need to read data ... not to play games on it) :)

lowes i would personlay go is a i3 with 8GB of ram, you could probably get away with a Celeron G series, but so for everyone who has told me "its just for storage" ended up running other stuff on it anyway (torrents, usenet, plex, gameserver/teamspeak server etc, etc) so its nice to have some leeway.

 

no i mean if i have a 12TB HDD server pool, with FlexRAID i can use all my server pool or just half of it ?

when you only pool the data and don't assign parity drives you will have the full capacity of the pool.

for example when using 6 2TB drives you will en up with 12TB (or 10.91TiB like your OS will list)

if you want to run the raid 5 equivalent (1 parity) you will lose one of the six 2TB drives for parity, leaving you with a pool of 10TB (or 9,09TiB like your OS will list)

if you want to run the raid 6 equivalent (2 parity) you will lose two of the six 2TB drives for parity, leaving you with a pool of 8TB (or 7.27TiB like your OS will list)

looney