Re: Shuttle for a BSD file server?
On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 10:33 PM, Maxim Khitrov mkhit...@gmail.com wrote: Greetings, I'm planning to build a new home file server for myself, starting with about 2TB of RAID6 space, but with room to grow in the future. Most of that will be on SATA drives, but I may throw in two SAS drives in RAID1 for the base OS, hence the SAS raid controller and enclosure. The highest priority for this build is data security, followed by performance and uptime. Rather than go for server-grade components, I thought that I should instead try to separate storage from the server itself. It's cheaper (sort of), easier to upgrade in the future, and if the server goes down for some reason, I can just put the raid card into another machine and once again have access to my data. The other advantage with this build is that I already have a Q6600 and some DDR2 memory around, so that will save me money on having to get Xeons and ECC memory. With that in mind, I currently have the following components picked out (listed below). I would like to know whether anyone has used any of these with FreeBSD 7.x, or if you have some other suggestions for what I should look into (am I asking for trouble by using these parts for a 24/7 file server in terms of stability)? I know that the 3ware controller should be supported, but I'm not sure about the Shuttle. How does FreeBSD play with X48 chipset? The drive enclosure obviously doesn't interact with the OS, but I'd still like your opinion on it or maybe some alternatives. Please let me know what you think. - Max Barebone: Shuttle SX48P2 E http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856101070 Raid Card: 3ware 9690SA-8E-KIT http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816116062 SAS Enclosure: RAIDAGE iAge840ML2 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816702014 Ok, other components aside for now, I've been thinking about what video card to get. Since the raid controller will occupy one slot, and BBU another, I thought about using a usb video adapter. Can anyone please let me know if something like this is supported by FreeBSD: eVGA UV Plus USB VGA Adapter 100-U2-UV16-A1 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815101001 - Max ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Shuttle for a BSD file server?
Maxim Khitrov wrote: Greetings, I'm planning to build a new home file server for myself, starting with about 2TB of RAID6 space, but with room to grow in the future. Most of that will be on SATA drives, but I may throw in two SAS drives in RAID1 for the base OS, hence the SAS raid controller and enclosure. The highest priority for this build is data security, followed by performance and uptime. Rather than go for server-grade components, I thought that I should instead try to separate storage from the server itself. It's cheaper (sort of), easier to upgrade in the future, and if the server goes down for some reason, I can just put the raid card into another machine and once again have access to my data. The other advantage with this build is that I already have a Q6600 and some DDR2 memory around, so that will save me money on having to get Xeons and ECC memory. With that in mind, I currently have the following components picked out (listed below). I would like to know whether anyone has used any of these with FreeBSD 7.x, or if you have some other suggestions for what I should look into (am I asking for trouble by using these parts for a 24/7 file server in terms of stability)? I know that the 3ware controller should be supported, but I'm not sure about the Shuttle. How does FreeBSD play with X48 chipset? The drive enclosure obviously doesn't interact with the OS, but I'd still like your opinion on it or maybe some alternatives. Please let me know what you think. [snip] I'm not really answering the direct question, per se, but there is a data point you may wish to know a little more about. There exists a difference in hard drives, ala Enterprise vs Desktop. The difference is in the length of the timeout experienced when an error condition such as a platter sector read/write error and resultant remap. Desktop drives have a fairly long period (something like 8, or more, seconds) while trying to handle the situation. With the Enterprise grade of drive this period is much shorter, something like 1 to 1.5 seconds max. Different hardware combinations ultimately behave differently, but the place where this matters most is with a RAID controller. A RAID controller is expecting this timeout to be very short. When paired with desktop drives sometimes a RAID controller will detach, or lose connection, to a drive and you may see lots of read_dma and/or write_dma errors. This is very problematic as it may not actually show itself for quite a while after drive(s) have been placed into service, e.g., everything will run just fine until a drive encounters the first time a sector fails and the drive remaps the sector to another location. A Desktop series of drive can take so long to handle this error condition that the controller assumes the entire drive is no longer present. In a datacenter environment the Enterprise grade of drives are commonly used. It is when the home user plugs up desktop drives to a RAID controller is where this problem is most likely to surface. It doesn't in all situations, as many people have done just this and experienced no trouble at all. Just one small data point to consider. -Mike ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Shuttle for a BSD file server?
On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 3:11 AM, Michael Powell nightre...@verizon.net wrote: I'm not really answering the direct question, per se, but there is a data point you may wish to know a little more about. There exists a difference in hard drives, ala Enterprise vs Desktop. The difference is in the length of the timeout experienced when an error condition such as a platter sector read/write error and resultant remap. I'm aware of that fact. In my workstation I'm using four Seagate Barracuda ES drives in RAID5. For this build I will likely go with with ES.2 (ST31000340NS). - Max ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Re: Shuttle for a BSD file server?
On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 7:33 AM, Maxim Khitrov mkhit...@gmail.com wrote: On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 3:11 AM, Michael Powell nightre...@verizon.net wrote: I'm not really answering the direct question, per se, but there is a data point you may wish to know a little more about. There exists a difference in hard drives, ala Enterprise vs Desktop. The difference is in the length of the timeout experienced when an error condition such as a platter sector read/write error and resultant remap. I'm aware of that fact. In my workstation I'm using four Seagate Barracuda ES drives in RAID5. For this build I will likely go with with ES.2 (ST31000340NS). - Max On second thought, given all the problems Seagate has been having lately, including with that particular model, I may go for WD RE3 drives instead. - Max ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
Shuttle for a BSD file server?
Greetings, I'm planning to build a new home file server for myself, starting with about 2TB of RAID6 space, but with room to grow in the future. Most of that will be on SATA drives, but I may throw in two SAS drives in RAID1 for the base OS, hence the SAS raid controller and enclosure. The highest priority for this build is data security, followed by performance and uptime. Rather than go for server-grade components, I thought that I should instead try to separate storage from the server itself. It's cheaper (sort of), easier to upgrade in the future, and if the server goes down for some reason, I can just put the raid card into another machine and once again have access to my data. The other advantage with this build is that I already have a Q6600 and some DDR2 memory around, so that will save me money on having to get Xeons and ECC memory. With that in mind, I currently have the following components picked out (listed below). I would like to know whether anyone has used any of these with FreeBSD 7.x, or if you have some other suggestions for what I should look into (am I asking for trouble by using these parts for a 24/7 file server in terms of stability)? I know that the 3ware controller should be supported, but I'm not sure about the Shuttle. How does FreeBSD play with X48 chipset? The drive enclosure obviously doesn't interact with the OS, but I'd still like your opinion on it or maybe some alternatives. Please let me know what you think. - Max Barebone: Shuttle SX48P2 E http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856101070 Raid Card: 3ware 9690SA-8E-KIT http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816116062 SAS Enclosure: RAIDAGE iAge840ML2 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816702014 ___ freebsd-questions@freebsd.org mailing list http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-questions To unsubscribe, send any mail to freebsd-questions-unsubscr...@freebsd.org
