The Ultimate Home server?
23 January 2008
Background
So I have been using a home server running Gentoo Linux which I made from parts that I managed to scrounge for free from various people. I expected it to last for a few months but it has been on continuously for many years.
However, today it seems that it is giving up the ghost, acting up and making funny noises. Panic!
I need to start again. Therefore I spent a half-an-hour or so working out a quick specification.
The Spec
Prices are provisional, I might be able to shop around and find these parts cheaper at different shops. For American readers, we have lots of taxes so that is why the prices may be different than you expect!
- Motherboard: Asus P5B-VM Socket 775 - Intel Graphics - £52.14
- Processor: Intel Pentium Dual Core E2200 Socket 775 2.2GHz - £57.79
- RAM: Kingston 2GB DDR2 667MHz/PC2-5400 - £26.99
- Hard Disk: Seagate ST3250410AS 250GB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 16MB Cache - £43.84
- Case and PSU: Antec Sonata III Case with 500W EarthWatts PSU - £69.99
- Total cost: £250.75
The reasoning
I have not built a machine from all new parts for a few years so I am a little out of the loop. I am also not used to Intel gear being previously an AMD junkie because that was cool back in the day when AMD64 was the only 64 bit x86 processor and dinosaurs ruled the earth.
However, I tried to make it cheap yet expansible, I can add extra RAM up to 8GB and extra hard disks as the need arises and as I get more cash (and the price falls).
I have all the peripherals, which won't actually be connected for most of the time.
So I would be very happy for advice. Any reason not to put these parts work together? Is there any improvements/efficiencies I can make? Don't forget that this thing will be on 24/7/365.
The Mysteries of Memory Compatibility
In the motherboard's manual (PDF), it says (page 19):
> Due to chipset limitation, this motherboard can only support up to 8 GB on the operating systems listed below. You may install a maximum of 2 GB DIMMs on each slot, but only DDR2-533 and DDR2-667 2 GB density modules are available for this configuration.
So I have chosen a Kingston DDR2-667 2GB memory module. However, in the Qualified Vendors Lists (Page 20), there is not a single 2GB memory listed anywhere. So I am a little confused by that. Anyone know the answer?
Probably when the book was typeset, no low-end 2GB modules were available and so there is a bit of a contradiction there.
1 peter says...
Think about using a RAID1 pair rather than a single disk. When your server is running all your core services it can take weeks to get back to where you were if the disk dies, even with backups. I found this out many years ago - since then I have never built a single disk server, and have survived a number of disk failures painlessly. Plenty of info on installing Gentoo on RAID here: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Install_on_Software_RAID
Posted at 10:08 a.m. on January 23, 2008
2 Andrew West says...
Out of curiosity what are you going to be using the box for? The CPU and memory seem a little overkill unless you're doing some serious stuff with the machine.
Posted at 1:08 p.m. on January 23, 2008
3 Zeth says...
I use my current dying server for my email, backup and file storage, LAN router, low-traffic personal homepages, testing various websites on before sending them elsewhere, and running my IRC client.
I also login via SSH when I am away from home on a random computer.
The new one I want to try using as a MythTV media server-backend as well, but I haven't really looked into it.
I am wondering whether it is better to get rid of the dual core and just get a good single core, as the operating systems don't even use the second core that well yet.
Posted at 1:18 p.m. on January 23, 2008
4 Zeth says...
@peter
Good point about the RAID1, I originally thought of that but I have to look into that more, having never done it before. I know there is the whole firmware vs software RAID debate but I have not really followed that yet.
Posted at 1:21 p.m. on January 23, 2008
5 Andrew West says...
Well it's down the particular software if it uses dual core stuff, but at the OS level it can help as the OS I believe can run software in either core. So if Apache is using 80% cpu things will still feel responsive as the OS can open other programs on the second core. Very few programs themselves have the ablitiy to use both cores at the same time (big programming head ache to implement). If you're buying new stuff go with dual core, you may as well as the price difference is minimal really. Have you considered getting yourself a PCI ADSL modem as well and doing everything via the server?
Posted at 1:23 p.m. on January 23, 2008
6 Patrick says...
P5B reminds me of http://patrick-nagel.net/blog/archives/61 - so check carefully if you need a SATA or USB DVD drive, or if you can use a common ATA drive...
And about the rather heavy duty hardware: I'm not sure about energy prices in Britain, but if I were you, I'd probably choose something less power- consuming - like a VIA mainboard + CPU or something like that. But even if you stick with the equipment you mention, the power supply is really oversized and will thus not run at peak efficiency. 300 watts should do it easily, even if you're planning to put in another three harddisks.
Posted at 3:28 p.m. on January 23, 2008
7 Brian says...
Your post says it was written in February. :) Your posts are becoming stuck at the top of Planet Larry for this reason.
Posted at 7:07 p.m. on January 23, 2008
8 dbr says...
With the price of dual-core CPU's, you really as well using them. Like Andrew said, most OS's will spread applications over the two cores, so if one uses 100% CPU, it doesn't completely kill the server.
As for RAID, I'm still doubtful how useful it is for anything but the most critical servers (Where down-time costs lots of money, so being able to how- swap a dying drive would save money). Having a main system drive, and rsync'ing it once a day (or even once an hour) seems like such a better idea.
If the main drive explodes, you use your backup drive to boot from. Since it's not been written to the same amount as the exploded drive, it's going to last much longer. Then you buy a new backup drive and continue as normal. if you accidently delete a file, you can mount your backup drive and restore the file.
The only thing RAID1 has over the rsync thing is you don't lose <1 day of files if a drive suddenly dies. But again, for anything but extremely critical servers, that's not a huge issue. Besides, drives more commonly start clicking and showing other problems, before they die completely..
You'd still have to backup the RAID1 disc anyway, and the small, possible benefit of RAID1 seems kind of unnecessary to me.
One thing I've been looking at when planning a similar server is ZFS.. You could throw a bunch of drives into a pool, tell it to replicate /home/ twice (or any other important locations, so they are one two physical drives) It can compress specific folders, do snapshots (so you can restore a file or folder from a specific point in time), and is ridiculously easy to setup ("zpool create mypoolname raidz ad1 ad2 ad3 ad4" or such)
The biggest problem(?) with ZFS is it only currently really runs on Solaris (as it's made by Sun), and FreeBSD (it has the most mature port) You can use it on Linux via FUSE, but it's by no means reliable. I am considering learning/running FreeBSD on this server I plan to make, basically because of it's ZFS support.. Well, there are other reasons, but ZFS is the main one..
Another possible issue is is you can't boot of a ZFS pool yet, so you'd have to use a separate drive or partition to boot from.. I imagine this problem will be fixed soon, how ever..
In its current state, I'd probably have a main drive for the OS and applications (a cheap 40GB drive or something), rsync'd to an external drive, along with other important stuff (photos mainly), then let ZFS hold videos, music and other system backups.
ZFS may be worth looking at if you don't mind using Open Solaris or FreeBSD... All the things your current server does (email, backup and file storage, LAN router, web-server, running an IRC client) should be simple to setup ("port install [..]" required applications, copy across configs)
Finally, as if this comment isn't long enough. I'd be slightly paranoid about having the main file-server on the same box as the firewall between the internet and the LAN. I'd be tempted to use a regular ADSL router and connect the machine to that. It'd probably be fine, but I'd still be prefer such a task to be done by a separate box (even a crappy little router)
Posted at 7:10 a.m. on January 24, 2008
9 Aniruddha says...
Overall an an excellent choice. However I'll advice you to buy a professional (server) hard disk, Seagate sells these. They are more expensive but also more durable then consumer hard disks.
One more think, RAID isn't an viable alternative for a good backup setup.For backups use amanda or something alike.
Posted at 12:11 p.m. on January 24, 2008
10 Darran says...
Have you seeen this : <a href="http://www.saverstore.com/productinfo/product.aspx?catalog_name=Sava store&product_id=20017788&pid=10&tid=73">http://www.saverstore.com/productinf o/product.aspx?catalog_name=Savastore&product_id=20017788&pid=10&tid=73</a>
Description Specifications
This product consists of the following:
AMD X2 4000+ 2.1GHz 2x512KB L2 cache 65Watt AM2 Socket 1GB 667MHz PC5300 DDR2 Memory 80GB PATA 7200rpm 2MB Cache Hard Drive Geforce 6100SM-M MATX AM2 DDR2 VGA LAN Motherboard MA Red/Black Midi Tower Case with 300W PSU 5170A 18x DVDRW Double Layer Black OEM Drive Monitor, mouse and keyboard optional
All for £150 .. might be of help to you
Posted at 9:59 a.m. on January 25, 2008
11 Nick Kotarski says...
Personally I would go with your hardware spec. It's really a very reasonable price and the Intel E2200 is prety energy efficient.
It's an iteresting question whether to have RAID 1 or not. Certainly having RAID is not an alternative to backing up but for a home user a decent backup device is probably too expensive. Large capacity tape drives cost hundreds of pounds. If you have lots of photographs (I currently have 127GB) the only affordable backup that I have found is disk. To be reasonably sure of not losing anything one needs to have at least three copies. So I have new system/data + a pair if slightly older disks in RAID 1. Ideally I would have an external USB or NAS device which isn't connected most of the time.
As I understand it for real servers usually the system drive is a single fast disk (Seagate Cheetah which is small but insanely fast. The data disks are larger capacity and in some form of RAID configuration. This is probably inappropriate for home use.
Have you tried Aria http://www.aria.co.uk to source your bits?
Nick
Posted at 11:49 p.m. on January 27, 2008
12 Cor Cornelisse says...
Those specs look indeed like real overkill for your purpose, I have a VIA EPIA TC6000 as Server, running Gentoo.
Ok Gentoo Stage 1 installation on a 600MHz Eden/Ezra processor takes like a whole day, but aside from it, it's real fast. It hosts two phpBB forums, runs Samba and OpenLDAP for 6~10 Clients (including some Windows XP clients), so I have my own domain. It does software RAID 1 and routes internet.
This machine including disks doesn't consume more than 25Watts which was rather important, since it's turned on 24x7.
Why would you build such a huge server when VIA Mini ITX might also satisfy your needs, consuming a lot less power!
A friend of mine also recently purchased a VIA Mini-ITX with a 1GHZ processor, equipped it with a 3ware HW Raid 5 controller and 3 2.5" harddisks. Together with a Intel GBit NIC he can copy 25mb/sec using SAMBA. He runs OpenSuSe 10.3 on his server. Besides the file-server it also has the whole ldap/apache configuration...
Posted at 12:24 p.m. on January 28, 2008
13 Albert Lash says...
If you are still evaluating hardware, check out the PC2500g by iDOT (Via). Its good for a server, and has tons of encryption goodies - hardware RNG plus encryption acceleration for AES. And for MythTV or general video watching, the Via Openchrome drivers support MPEG acceleration.
As far as energy efficiency, you can't do much better, although the Geode LX beats it.
Posted at 2:52 a.m. on February 12, 2008