Server Help!

[Ucliker]

After years of using my main workstation as my server and main PC, I have decided to build a separate server to unload some of the 24hr services and tasks. My goal is for this to be my plex, backup, file and virtualization server.

 

I need your help with a few things mainly what OS to load onto my new server that will meet all of my needs and be as hassle free as possible. I have a new copy of Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard Edition already. I have also been looking into FreeNas. Please help before my brain explodes! 

 

The components I currently have for this build are:

HP Proliant ML10 W/ HP Enablement Kit 742971-B21

Intel Xeon E3-1220v2

Kingston unbuffered ECC 32 GB (4x8GB) PC3-12800E

4 x WD Red 3TB WD30EFRX

SanDisk X110 256GB SSD

SanDisk Cruzer 16 GB USB Flash Drive.

 

Components I need: (Recommendations Welcomed)

Power Supply?

New Case? (If Needed)

Raid Controller Card?

 

Currently, the motherboard has a built in raid controller with mini-SAS connector but doesn't support Raid 5, if I go the FreeNas route I will not need a raid controller since the motherboard can support 6 hard drives. If I go the Windows Server route I will want a Raid controller card since Windows Software Raid isn't great.

 

Please feel free to give your input.

 

 

 

[Danielh90]

After years of using my main workstation as my server and main PC, I have decided to build a separate server to unload some of the 24hr services and tasks. My goal is for this to be my plex, backup, file and virtualization server.

 

I need your help with a few things mainly what OS to load onto my new server that will meet all of my needs and be as hassle free as possible. I have a new copy of Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard Edition already. I have also been looking into FreeNas. Please help before my brain explodes! 

 

The components I currently have for this build are:

HP Proliant ML10 W/ HP Enablement Kit 742971-B21

Intel Xeon E3-1220v2

Kingston unbuffered ECC 32 GB (4x8GB) PC3-12800E

4 x WD Red 3TB WD30EFRX

SanDisk X110 256GB SSD

SanDisk Cruzer 16 GB USB Flash Drive.

 

Components I need: (Recommendations Welcomed)

Power Supply?

New Case? (If Needed)

Raid Controller Card?

 

Currently, the motherboard has a built in raid controller with mini-SAS connector but doesn't support Raid 5, if I go the FreeNas route I will not need a raid controller since the motherboard can support 6 hard drives. If I go the Windows Server route I will want a Raid controller card since Windows Software Raid isn't great.

 

Please feel free to give your input.

I would go with the windows server 2012 os. Because it is built for running on servers. 

[Litargirio]

I would go with the windows server 2012 os. Because it is built for running on servers. 

 

But it is not as good as other Linux based server OSs. Unless you need to run a specific software that only supports Windows, you'd be better off going with a Linux OS instead.

[Danielh90]

But it is not as good as other Linux based server OSs. Unless you need to run a specific software that only supports Windows, you'd be better off going with a Linux OS instead.

ok. The reason I say Windows server 2012 because he may not know how to use a linux os or command prompt on linux very well. I would use windows server 2012 to start of on and then maybe switch to linux os. 

[Ucliker]

Wow, you guys are fast. Fortunately, I do know Linux In the sense I can run it etc and know most of the basic commands etc. Which Linux distribution would you recommend? I can't see running a Linux desktop distro on a dedicated server, but I know there are various versions of Linux server out there. I brought this up on other forums and everyone said FreeNas but to me it is kinda limited. I need to access this server from various devices both Windows and Mac computers as well from Android and iOS devices. 

[rockking1379]

Personally my server ran xenserver and then services were inside of VMs. Freenas probably won't play well with not having direct access to the drives but can't help there. Just my two cents on it

[Ucliker]

Personally my server ran xenserver and then services were inside of VMs. Freenas probably won't play well with not having direct access to the drives but can't help there. Just my two cents on it

FreeNas would have free access to the drives. The motherboard supports 6 drives directly, but the onboard Raid controller only supports Raid 0/1 for hardware raid. FreeNas uses software Raid so it would have direct access to the drives.

[rockking1379]

Not if you put freenas inside a VM

[Ucliker]

I misunderstood what you were saying. Yeah, I'd rather not run everything inside a bunch of VM's if I don't have to. When It boils down to it I guess it really doesn't matter what I use since they all work for my situation. My biggest concern would have to be backups realistically. I take it ZFS would probably be the best/safest file system for a raid setup? Also, I have 4 X 3TB Drives if I want to add more in the future what would be my easiest option? I appreciate everyone's input, I can fix Windows and Mac systems no problem and even set up and run Linux but when it comes to servers I am completely new.

[rockking1379]

I misunderstood what you were saying. Yeah, I'd rather not run everything inside a bunch of VM's if I don't have to. When It boils down to it I guess it really doesn't matter what I use since they all work for my situation. My biggest concern would have to be backups realistically. I take it ZFS would probably be the best/safest file system for a raid setup? Also, I have 4 X 3TB Drives if I want to add more in the future what would be my easiest option? I appreciate everyone's input, I can fix Windows and Mac systems no problem and even set up and run Linux but when it comes to servers I am completely new.

you may be able to run xenserver but instead of assigning say virtual drives to a VM give raw drives to your freenas one while having say one or two set aside for other VMs. i havent really used freenas, and when i had my xenserver running only had two hard drives that were in RAID 1. havent had the funds to build a new one to replace it

[Ucliker]

you may be able to run xenserver but instead of assigning say virtual drives to a VM give raw drives to your freenas one while having say one or two set aside for other VMs. i havent really used freenas, and when i had my xenserver running only had two hard drives that were in RAID 1. havent had the funds to build a new one to replace it

I need to look into xenserver, It sounds intriguing. RAW would be a good option for a nas setup. I may just need to test each one (FreeNas, Linux & Windows) and see which one I prefer. Thanks for your input.

[Ucliker]

Other than xenserver is there other Linux distro's I should try?

[Jarsky]

XenServer isnt Linux, its a Citrix developed Hypervisor. You also have vSphere/ESXi, Hyper-V Server, etc....which all have different levels of support - that allow you to run different virtual environments. Some of them like vSphere and I believe XenServer support both VT-d and VT-x which allows you to pass hardware directly to the Guest OS. Hardware such as graphics cards, IO Controllers (raid cards) and/or Hard drives.

 

Virtualizing a server can give it a lot of flexibility - like i've done to my home server (in my sig).

If you just want something simple with a single environment though, then I would also back Linux - unless you want to run some Windows specific applications - a lot of which can be run in Linux anyway under wine.

 

My personal favorites for server are RHEL distros, in particular CentOS - due to the increased security features and the yum package management.

For simplicity you may prefer Debian or Ubuntu Server - theres much wider support material out there for many issues or help you may need to Google.

 

If you really want ZFS though, then you're best to go for FreeNAS (which gives you a huge amount of support for transcoding, streaming, etc...) or FreeBSD which supports ZFS natively. If you want ZFS on Linux, then Fedora would be the way to go.

 

Personally I have a Windows Software RAID-5 running which has been rebuilt numerous times in its 5 years of Uptime, including through disk failure - and has been migrated from 2008R2 through 2012 to a 2012R2 VM. Fantastic flexibility and its just plug-and-go. I really like Windows Storage Spaces as well and the new ReFS file system with 2-way Parity is very power and flexible. It supports a lot of features you would find in something like MDADM such as scrubbing & error correction and if you thin-provision it, then it is expandable by adding additional disks as well.

[Ucliker]

XenServer isnt Linux, its a Citrix developed Hypervisor. You also have vSphere/ESXi, Hyper-V Server, etc....which all have different levels of support - that allow you to run different virtual environments. Some of them like vSphere and I believe XenServer support both VT-d and VT-x which allows you to pass hardware directly to the Guest OS. Hardware such as graphics cards, IO Controllers (raid cards) and/or Hard drives.

 

Virtualizing a server can give it a lot of flexibility - like i've done to my home server (in my sig).

If you just want something simple with a single environment though, then I would also back Linux - unless you want to run some Windows specific applications - a lot of which can be run in Linux anyway under wine.

 

My personal favorites for server are RHEL distros, in particular CentOS - due to the increased security features and the yum package management.

For simplicity you may prefer Debian or Ubuntu Server - theres much wider support material out there for many issues or help you may need to Google.

 

If you really want ZFS though, then you're best to go for FreeNAS (which gives you a huge amount of support for transcoding, streaming, etc...) or FreeBSD which supports ZFS natively. If you want ZFS on Linux, then Fedora would be the way to go.

 

Personally I have a Windows Software RAID-5 running which has been rebuilt numerous times in its 5 years of Uptime, including through disk failure - and has been migrated from 2008R2 through 2012 to a 2012R2 VM. Fantastic flexibility and its just plug-and-go. I really like Windows Storage Spaces as well and the new ReFS file system with 2-way Parity is very power and flexible. It supports a lot of features you would find in something like MDADM such as scrubbing & error correction and if you thin-provision it, then it is expandable by adding additional disks as well.

But which OS are you running on that server? I am not really stuck on anything including ZFS, so I am open to try whatever. Easy expandability would be great! I plan on double the drive soon. Your currently running 16 mechanical and 3 SSD's. WHat do you use your server for?

[Casperian]

But which OS are you running on that server? I am not really stuck on anything including ZFS, so I am open to try whatever. Easy expandability would be great! I plan on double the drive soon.

For a server doing what you want, I'd lean toward FreeNAS because of its ZFS support (I mean the community support) but CentOS, RHEL or Debian make good servers.

 

Also, for a ZFS setup, you might be best going for pool consisting of 2 (double to four) mirrored vdevs. That would give a setup akin to RAID 10. This is good because it Mirrored vdevs resilver faster than a raidz vdev

[ohJey]

After years of using my main workstation as my server and main PC, I have decided to build a separate server to unload some of the 24hr services and tasks. My goal is for this to be my plex, backup, file and virtualization server.

 

I need your help with a few things mainly what OS to load onto my new server that will meet all of my needs and be as hassle free as possible. I have a new copy of Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard Edition already. I have also been looking into FreeNas. Please help before my brain explodes! 

 

The components I currently have for this build are:

HP Proliant ML10 W/ HP Enablement Kit 742971-B21

Intel Xeon E3-1220v2

Kingston unbuffered ECC 32 GB (4x8GB) PC3-12800E

4 x WD Red 3TB WD30EFRX

SanDisk X110 256GB SSD

SanDisk Cruzer 16 GB USB Flash Drive.

 

Components I need: (Recommendations Welcomed)

Power Supply?

New Case? (If Needed)

Raid Controller Card?

 

Currently, the motherboard has a built in raid controller with mini-SAS connector but doesn't support Raid 5, if I go the FreeNas route I will not need a raid controller since the motherboard can support 6 hard drives. If I go the Windows Server route I will want a Raid controller card since Windows Software Raid isn't great.

 

Please feel free to give your input.

It's best to use FreeNAS with ECC memory.  It verifies data before it is written to the disk (the reason why ZFS is basically the best software raid)

[rockking1379]

XenServer isnt Linux, its a Citrix developed Hypervisor. You also have vSphere/ESXi, Hyper-V Server, etc....which all have different levels of support - that allow you to run different virtual environments. Some of them like vSphere and I believe XenServer support both VT-d and VT-x which allows you to pass hardware directly to the Guest OS. Hardware such as graphics cards, IO Controllers (raid cards) and/or Hard drives.

Virtualizing a server can give it a lot of flexibility - like i've done to my home server (in my sig).

If you just want something simple with a single environment though, then I would also back Linux - unless you want to run some Windows specific applications - a lot of which can be run in Linux anyway under wine.

My personal favorites for server are RHEL distros, in particular CentOS - due to the increased security features and the yum package management.

For simplicity you may prefer Debian or Ubuntu Server - theres much wider support material out there for many issues or help you may need to Google.

If you really want ZFS though, then you're best to go for FreeNAS (which gives you a huge amount of support for transcoding, streaming, etc...) or FreeBSD which supports ZFS natively. If you want ZFS on Linux, then Fedora would be the way to go.

Personally I have a Windows Software RAID-5 running which has been rebuilt numerous times in its 5 years of Uptime, including through disk failure - and has been migrated from 2008R2 through 2012 to a 2012R2 VM. Fantastic flexibility and its just plug-and-go. I really like Windows Storage Spaces as well and the new ReFS file system with 2-way Parity is very power and flexible. It supports a lot of features you would find in something like MDADM such as scrubbing & error correction and if you thin-provision it, then it is expandable by adding additional disks as well.

Xenserver is based on CentOS

[Jarsky]

But which OS are you running on that server? I am not really stuck on anything including ZFS, so I am open to try whatever. Easy expandability would be great! I plan on double the drive soon. Your currently running 16 mechanical and 3 SSD's. WHat do you use your server for?

 

I have ESXi, with multiple virtual machines for different purposes. The 2 x 500GB SSD's are for VM datastores. The mechanical drives make up my arrays. I use my server for a general purpose home NAS with a gigabit network (2x1gbE in link aggregation to the server), a Plex server, My home domain/sccm servers and general test builds of stuff.