Is this necessary for a file server?

[ownaginatious]

So my dad's business is photography/multimedia stuff for advertising and his company has about 10 people.

I was in the other day looking at his file server an IT guy told him to buy a year or so ago, and it's a dual Intel Xeon 2.4 GHz mac pro tower. My dad was complaining that it doesn't have enough storage (it has 3 TB, all hard-drive slots maxed out), and it does NOTHING except share files locally (smb I guess).

So I was thinking "man, is this ever over kill for what this thing needs to do", but then my dad said sometimes multiple people in the studio work directly from it's hard-drive on their computers.

Anyway, so he was mentioning that his computer that captures video/pictures directly from the cameras he uses is too slow (it's probably a first generation G5). I was thinking, why not just get rid of that, replace it with the server and then build a cheap PC running debian or something in console mode to replace the server?

Now the only thing that's making me hesitant about doing this is the fact that multiple people work over the network on it's hard-drives directly. Does anyone know if doing that typically require that the host computer to the hard drives be at all powerful? The processor I'd use would probably be some low-end dual (maybe quad depending on prices) core Core 2 Duo with a cheap motherboard with built in gigabit ethernet.

Thanks!

[slaveofconvention]

You really don't need anything even that powerful. If all the server is going to do is provide files then the absolute cheapest cpu you can get your hands on is going to be about 10x as powerful as you need. I'd suggest spending a little money on a decent hardware RAID card, then use at least 3 drives in RAID 5 - that'll give you total redundancy in case a drive fails, more than enough speed to saturate a gigabit network connection, as much as 4TB storage from day one and probably save you a good few quid. You can always add additional drives at the start - or add more later depending on your needs.

If you hadn't mentioned macs I'd have pushed for Windows home server but for what you're planning on using, a decent NAS would probably be more than enough although it isn't particularly expandable (well not easily).

[x88x]

Let me put it this way. Enterprise-class NASs and SANs frequently use ARM chips to manage between the storage controllers and the network controllers. So, long story short, no way in hell is that dual Xeon necessary. Find out for sure how it's doing the shares, but if it is SMB, then even more so because of the overhead of the samba protocol.

My advice to you is do one of these:
1) Get a NAS (http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=124&name=Network-Storage-NAS). This is a piece of low-power dedicated hardware that its only purpose in life is to provide network access to HDD storage. Some really good brands to look for here are Synology and Promise.
2) Build a low-powered system (think dual-core Celeron or so), get a good RAID controller, a good network card (or two; this is where your bottleneck will be, and if you manage your network correctly you can get really fast access speeds to everyone who uses it), and some good, high-performance HDDs (15k RPM SAS if you can afford it, high-performance SATA if not).

If you give me a better idea of the requirements (number of users that need to access to storage at once, desired capacity, capacity upgrade path, type of work that is done on it). Also, for context, is the speed of access of the current solution acceptable or not?

[ownaginatious]

Well, I'm not sure exactly how many people are working directly off it at once, but my guess is maybe 1 or 2 ;). They seem satisfied with the speed, just not with the amount of storage.

I don't really like the NAS idea because they typically aren't very expandable unless you start spending a lot of money. Also, they've been talking about setting up a web server too just for sending larger files every once and a while to clients (their off-site FTP service is too damn slow).

I like the idea of building a low powered system instead and just throwing some linux distro onto it. I *think* there current server already has a RAID card installed, so I might be able to be able to take that.

I just remembered I have an almost unused 2.9 GHz celeron with motherboard somewhere in storage, so maybe I'll use that.

EDIT: Found the motherboard here (http://www.abit.com.tw/page/en/motherboard/motherboard_detail.php?fMTYPE=LGA775&pMODEL_NAME=SG-80DC). Pretty crappy, but good enough? (would have to find a gigabit card)

[Oneslowz28]

WOW he has 5 people? Whats his main concentration? Weddings? Port work? I have been doing it for 3 years now and still only have enough work for 1. I do have about 4tb of photos spread out around several IDE and External drives plus my the TB in my photo editing rig.

[x88x]

While the 2.9Ghz (I assume P4-era single core) Celeron would be plenty powerful enough, you're gonna run into trouble with that MBB. If you want to get good read/write speeds to the drives, you'll want a PCIe RAID card, which that MBB will not have. If the Mac Pro is not using the onboard HDD controller, I can just about guarantee you that the card will be either PCIe or PCI-X (which that MBB also does not have). Either way, that probably won't work.

If you give me a working budget I can configure you a system that will do what you want.

[ownaginatious]

WOW he has 5 people? Whats his main concentration? Weddings? Port work? I have been doing it for 3 years now and still only have enough work for 1.

Haha, well, it's not really that kind of photography stuff. He does advertisements (billboards, TV commercials, web stuff). I think what's taking up most of the space is 3D work (he has a guy that does mostly 3D modeling and things) and huge video files.

[ownaginatious]

While the 2.9Ghz (I assume P4-era single core) Celeron would be plenty powerful enough, you're gonna run into trouble with that MBB. If you want to get good read/write speeds to the drives, you'll want a PCIe RAID card, which that MBB will not have. If the Mac Pro is not using the onboard HDD controller, I can just about guarantee you that the card will be either PCIe or PCI-X (which that MBB also does not have). Either way, that probably won't work.

If you give me a working budget I can configure you a system that will do what you want.

Maybe about $500? Hard-drives can be excluded for now, because I don't know how he wants that to work.

Just out of curiosity, are software RAIDs too slow? I have a file server at home running debian with four 1.5 TB drives in RAIDs (two drives in RAID 0 for each), and one RAID backs itself up on to the other every other week. I just RAIDed (if that's a word :p) using mdadm.

It seems fast, but then again, I don't do much besides leave files there :p.

Also, as a side note, am I right into thinking RAID 5 (or which-ever is the one with a parity drive) can have unlimited disks with one parity drive? My idea is parity works something like this for each drive:

(bit on disk 1) + (bit on disk 2) + ... (bit on disk n) = (bit on parity drive)

[x88x]

Just out of curiosity, are software RAIDs too slow? I have a file server at home running debian with four 1.5 TB drives in RAIDs (two drives in RAID 0 for each), and one RAID backs itself up on to the other every other week.
It sounds like you should set up a RAID 0+1 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nested_RAID_levels#RAID_0.2B1). I'm pretty sure mdadm can do that. It's basically what you're doing now, but dynamic.


Also, as a side note, am I right into thinking RAID 5 (or which-ever is the one with a parity drive) can have unlimited disks with one parity drive? My idea is parity works something like this for each drive:

(bit on disk 1) + (bit on disk 2) + ... (bit on disk n) = (bit on parity drive)
Sorta, yeah. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID_5#RAID_5) In general, at least, yeah, you can use as many HDDs as you want, you get n-1 capacity and if any one drive fails, you're fine.


Maybe about $500? Hard-drives can be excluded for now, because I don't know how he wants that to work.

If you ignore the case and HDDs, and a target of 8 SATA drive capacity, I got this for just about $500.

MBB: Foxconn A76ML-K : $49.99 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813186166)
CPU: AMD Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition : $50.99 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103677)
RAM: Crucial Ballistix 2x2GB DDR2800 BL2KIT25664AA80A : $92.99 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148212)
PSU: OCZ StealthXStream OCZ700SXS : $74.99 (before $20 MIR) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341019)
HDD controller: HighPoint RocketRAID 2320 : $259.99 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115026)
Total : $528.95 + shipping

For any more than 8 drives, the controller will get a lot more expensive.

For just storing files, yeah, software RAID is fine (I actually run a mdadm RAID5 on my fileserver at home), but if you're actually doing any heavy work on it (like that video editing and 3D work), you really want hardware RAID.

[ownaginatious]

It sounds like you should set up a RAID 0+1 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nested_RAID_levels#RAID_0.2B1). I'm pretty sure mdadm can do that. It's basically what you're doing now, but dynamic.

Ya, I know that's a possibility, but I kind of like it this way. If I accidentally delete something, than there is a good chance it's still on the backup from a week ago.


If you ignore the case and HDDs, and a target of 8 SATA drive capacity, I got this for just about $500.

MBB: Foxconn A76ML-K : $49.99 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813186166)
CPU: AMD Athlon X2 7850 Black Edition : $50.99 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103677)
RAM: Crucial Ballistix 2x2GB DDR2800 BL2KIT25664AA80A : $92.99 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148212)
PSU: OCZ StealthXStream OCZ700SXS : $74.99 (before $20 MIR) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817341019)
HDD controller: HighPoint RocketRAID 2320 : $259.99 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115026)
Total : $528.95 + shipping

For any more than 8 drives, the controller will get a lot more expensive.

For just storing files, yeah, software RAID is fine (I actually run a mdadm RAID5 on my fileserver at home), but if you're actually doing any heavy work on it (like that video editing and 3D work), you really want hardware RAID.

Oh wow, that's awesome; thanks! I never realized how cheap AMDs stuff was getting, lol.

I'll have to check out the RAID card that's already in the existing server. Hopefully it's comparable to the one you have suggested :p.

[OvRiDe]

Considering the office is a small as it is.. I would say that yes that file server is probably overkill for what they need. Not all file servers are built equally. One thing to keep in mind is.. if you were a jeweler, you probably wouldn't store your inventory in the cheapest lock box that Walmart has in stock. When your business is the files stored on that server, you probably shouldn't trust it to pc grade hardware. Now on the flip side there is also a point where you can go way overboard as well. Most business solutions use SCSI or SAS drives, they cost more, but there is a reason. The reliability factor is way higher. They are designed to run 24/7 at high RPM for VERY long periods of time.

When it comes to software raids, they can work well, but the problem I have seen, is IF you ever loose the actual OS, sometimes they array can become unrecoverable. For instance when ever you reinstall the OS and try to bring the RAID array back, it can't positively identify the array and only gives you the option to initialize it, thus loosing the data.

Just some things to consider.

[x88x]

Ah, that's right..if you're gonna be using the same drives, and they're SAS, you'll need a different controller card than the one I listed. Also, if the existing controller card is PCI-X (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PCI-X), you'll need a different MBB.

Also, I just remembered I didn't include a good NIC in the config. Add this. It's a good, solid PCIe x1 gigabit NIC.
NIC: Intel EXPI9301CTBLK : $30.99 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833106033)


When it comes to software raids, they can work well, but the problem I have seen, is IF you ever loose the actual OS, sometimes they array can become unrecoverable. For instance when ever you reinstall the OS and try to bring the RAID array back, it can't positively identify the array and only gives you the option to initialize it, thus loosing the data.
That's the great thing about mdadm. I've had to pull my array into a completely different machine before, and all I had to do was hook up the drives (order didn't matter), tell mdadm "Hey, there's an array here somewhere. Find it!", and a few seconds later it did! :D Still though, yeah, software RAID should not be used in mission critical stuff, not if speed is needed at least.

[crenn]

Another controller that could be useful:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115079

Or if you want a serious controller:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115056

[x88x]

Definitely. Actually, I would say definitely go with the 2720 (the first one crenn linked) instead of the one I linked. Just keep in mind that you will need to get two mini-SAS-to-4xSAS/SATA adapter cables for that.

[ownaginatious]

Well, the thing they have currently installed is a Rocket RAID 2310. I'm pretty sure it's one of those 'fake-RAID' controllers. Only 4 SATA ports unfortunately :(.

What makes the RocketRAID 2720 better than the 2320?

I would rather not go with very expensive server grade disks because a) there already appear to be a bunch of hard-drives here ready to go, and b) It makes the acronym RAID ironic (Redundant Array of Inexpensive disks) ;).

I don't think the odds of two simultaneous hard drive failures occurring in a RAID 5 configuration are very high.

[x88x]

Well, the thing they have currently installed is a Rocket RAID 2310. I'm pretty sure it's one of those 'fake-RAID' controllers.
Not really, it looks to be about on the same level as the 2320, just with half the ports.


What makes the RocketRAID 2720 better than the 2320?
SAS capable, SATAIII capable, twice the PCIe bandwidth (x8 instead of x4). That's the biggest difference, and definitely worth the $40, imo.


I would rather not go with very expensive server grade disks because a) there already appear to be a bunch of hard-drives here ready to go, and b) It makes the acronym RAID ironic (Redundant Array of Inexpensive disks) ;).
For the performance they provide, they are inexpensive.

What are the HDDs that are already in use? Do you have anywhere to back up that data before transferring the drives to a new controller? I wouldn't could on being able to migrate the array from one controller to another. I might work since they're both RocketRAID cards, but...don't count on it.


I don't think the odds of two simultaneous hard drive failures occurring in a RAID 5 configuration are very high.
I've seen it happen. Granted it's rare, but it's not impossible. What I would be more worried about is a second drive failing in the time it took to replace and rebuild the failed disk. In that vein, I would recommend having a hot-spare drive in the array. A hot-spare sits normally unused, but as soon as a drive fails, the controller starts it up and starts rebuilding the array onto that drive. This minimizes the time that the RAID array is running in 'degraded' mode, where it is most vulnerable.

[slaveofconvention]

Actually, I just did a little more reading and I'm going to toss Windows Home Server back into the ring. You can buy the software for around $100 or so, and it'll do everything you need it to do. Mac users can utilise all of the functions that Windows users can, with the single exception of automatic backup. You can still use a standalone mac program to back up the Mac computers to the server storage though.

Hard drives can be added and removed with abandon. IDE, SATA, USB, e-SATA, Firewire - WHS doesn't care. It also doesn't care about disk sizes. With a RAID 5 setup, you really need all of the drives to be the same size. With WHS, you can put in any combination you want...

You get automatic data redundancy too as long as you turn it on - WHS will automatically make sure that any data you have set to be duplicated is stored on two different drives so in the event of a drive failure, you don't lose a thing if you've told the server to duplicate it. The best thing is that the hardware requirements are very low so any system you buy today will be more than capable of running it. I think it's something like 1Ghz CPU, 512MB ram, 64GB hard disk space. You can use all of the existing disks immediately, and WHS will turn them into one big storage "pool", so if you have 2 120's, a 500, 3 750s and a 1TB drive already, it'll just appear as a single drive of just under 4TB. You will lose 40GB to the system drive, but that's about it. Duplication DOES carry a 100% overhead - no clever RAID tricks but if you find yourself running short of space, just stick in another drive, tell WHS to add it to the pool and it's available within minutes, not the hours or even days it can take to rebuild RAID arrays.

If something goes horribly wrong and the OS gets corrupt and unusable, you can take any of the hard disks, plug them into another computer, and get full access to the contents - there's no RAID system to fight with. If you need more storage space and have run out of ways to connect extra drives, you can tell WHS to remove a drive (eg a smaller one) and replace it with a larger one so the capacity goes up again. The only caveat here is that you must do this before the pool gets so full that it can't stand the loss of its smallest drive. For example, if your smallest drive is 200GB, you will need to have at least 200GB free in the pool to remove the drive.

If one of the drives fails, it'll notify you of the fact and ask for a new one. If two fail at the same time, then there IS a risk you could lose data but there's actually still a chance you wont - the more drives you have, the less likely data loss as WHS dynamically duplicates data. It won't put all of drive 2's data onto drive 4 - it'll put some on 3, some on 5 some on 7 and so on. The odds are you'll lose SOMETHING but if you lose 2 drives in a RAID 5 configuration, theres a very good chance you'll lose EVERYTHING.

WHS also support 10 user account on the system and provides a "public" area, so not only will the staff have access to private and password protected personal areas, they'll all have access to the general public area. It allows 10 user accounts, but multiple people can access the same account at once, so it isn't really limited to 10 people. You could set up a "General" account and have several people use that - they'd just lose the "private" area.

My home server currently sits just under 5TB, with 10 hard disks, ranging from 300GB to 1TB and it never skips a beat. Sempron 2800, 1.5GB ram and with as many as 4 of us using it at once, mainly for video streaming (which is about as hard as a fileserver will ever work) and it's fine. It can run headless (no keyboard monitor or mouse required although you CAN have them) and can be remote controlled and configured from any Windows computer. About once a month I restart the machine but it's rarely a requirement - just me wanting to give it a fresh start.

Seriously consider it before rejecting it - it really does sound like it'd utterly fill every one of your requirements and then some, and best of all, it really isn't difficult to use at all...

[ownaginatious]

Not really, it looks to be about on the same level as the 2320, just with half the ports.

Oh, someone mentioned something in a review on the site that there is no real hardware RAID or something. I guess he was just BSing :p.


SAS capable, SATAIII capable, twice the PCIe bandwidth (x8 instead of x4). That's the biggest difference, and definitely worth the $40, imo.

I didn't notice the SATAIII compatibility and x8 PCI bus speed. That does seem worth it for only 40 more dollars.


For the performance they provide, they are inexpensive.

What are the HDDs that are already in use?

The HDs already in use are 7200 RPM 1 TB Seagate drives. Those might end up being used in different computers though, so I was thinking these (http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=15_210_212&item_id=019453&sid=n2eroddn3cfu05ogc96t5gpmt3) would be good replacements. I *think* I remember hearing that seagate has the best warranties (or was it actually the worst?). 2 TB drives don't really seem to be priced low enough yet.


Do you have anywhere to back up that data before transferring the drives to a new controller? I wouldn't could on being able to migrate the array from one controller to another. I might work since they're both RocketRAID cards, but...don't count on it.

There should be enough spare externals around to just *barely* hold the existing data. I wouldn't want to simply transfer over the drives to the different RAID card anyway, since they are all apple hfs+ formatted. I was going to use ext3 (or ext4, I dunno) instead.


I've seen it happen. Granted it's rare, but it's not impossible. What I would be more worried about is a second drive failing in the time it took to replace and rebuild the failed disk. In that vein, I would recommend having a hot-spare drive in the array. A hot-spare sits normally unused, but as soon as a drive fails, the controller starts it up and starts rebuilding the array onto that drive. This minimizes the time that the RAID array is running in 'degraded' mode, where it is most vulnerable.

Hmm, that does seem like a very good idea. Chances are that I'm going to be the only one around who really knows how to fix the system, and I typically only come home from university once every few weeks for a weekend.

[x88x]

There's a very good reason it's called Windows Home Server. With the drive pooling you run into the same problem that you do with software RAID, but even more so because it won't be consistent across all the drives. It's fine for storing stuff, but if you need to do any serious read/write work on the volume..no. There is no way I would ever run mission-critical stuff on a software JBOD, no matter who made it or what the balancing algorithms are. Reliability aside, what it comes down to is that a CPU and non-RAID HDD controller will never be able to match the performance of a dedicated RAID controller, because all of the RAID or balancing operations will have to go back and forth over the bus, instead of the OS just writing to a single location, where all of the data-maneuvering is handled off the bus at much higher speeds.

[x88x]

The HDs already in use are 7200 RPM 1 TB Seagate drives. Those might end up being used in different computers though, so I was thinking these (http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=15_210_212&item_id=019453&sid=n2eroddn3cfu05ogc96t5gpmt3) would be good replacements. I *think* I remember hearing that seagate has the best warranties (or was it actually the worst?). 2 TB drives don't really seem to be priced low enough yet.
Seagate has actually lowered their warranty period from 5 to 3 years, so they're not really that competitive on that front anymore. Also, a lot of the 7200.11 generation seem to have firmware problems. With that in mind, for the 1.5TB spot, I would recommend the 1.5TB WD Black ($110) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136592). 5 year warranty, plus it's basically the 2TB Black with one fewer platters, and the 2TB Black has pretty consistently outperformed all of the 7200.11 Seagate drives I've seen put against it.



There should be enough spare externals around to just *barely* hold the existing data. I wouldn't want to simply transfer over the drives to the different RAID card anyway, since they are all apple hfs+ formatted. I was going to use ext3 (or ext4, I dunno) instead.
Since you're not going to be using any of the hardware from the old server in the new one, what I would recommend doing is building the new one completely, then transferring the data straight from the old to the new. Much less downtime then, and the process is much simpler and faster as well. Also, I would recommend ext4. It provides some nice improvements over ext3, particularly when dealing with very large files and filesystems.

[crenn]

I don't think the odds of two simultaneous hard drive failures occurring in a RAID 5 configuration are very high.

Ever heard of RAID 6? ;P It's unlikely but it can happen.


Oh, someone mentioned something in a review on the site that there is no real hardware RAID or something. I guess he was just BSing :p.

He wasn't BSing. The lower end grade RAID cards only have a basic XOR engine, so your CPU handles the more complex RAID calculations (like RAID 5 parity calculations). I don't believe that card has any cache either.


I didn't notice the SATAIII compatibility and x8 PCI bus speed. That does seem worth it for only 40 more dollars.

That's why I suggested it over the 26xx I was going to recommend originally.


The HDs already in use are 7200 RPM 1 TB Seagate drives. Those might end up being used in different computers though, so I was thinking these (http://www.canadacomputers.com/product_info.php?cPath=15_210_212&item_id=019453&sid=n2eroddn3cfu05ogc96t5gpmt3) would be good replacements. I *think* I remember hearing that seagate has the best warranties (or was it actually the worst?). 2 TB drives don't really seem to be priced low enough yet.

I recommend using 2TB green drives, I've got 3 2TB Seagate LP drives working happily.


Hmm, that does seem like a very good idea. Chances are that I'm going to be the only one around who really knows how to fix the system, and I typically only come home from university once every few weeks for a weekend.

Another good thing to set up is remote management of a system, for windows, RDC, for linux, VNC.


I've 3 pieces of information for you.
The professional controller I listed has the option for BBU (Backup Battery unit) so in the event of power failure you don't lose your data. If you do get the more expensive card, get the BBU.
Also the professional controller is a serious piece of RAID hardware, it's what I'd get for a small business since it's mainly just a file storage server, SATAIII doesn't matter. But the more important features is the 1.2GHz processer and the 256MB of DDR2 ECC cache on the card.
Lastly the most important thing to have with any fileserver.... BACKUPS. RAIDS ARE NOT BACKUPS.

[x88x]

Another good thing to set up is remote management of a system, for windows, RDC, for linux, VNC.

Or SSH. ;)

[slaveofconvention]

There's a very good reason it's called Windows Home Server.

Damned right there's a good reason. Microsoft wanted to sell it to HOME users.... WHS is a pretty front end on Windows Server 2003 - it isn't a different or seperate operating system.

The original post said the system would be used for little or nothing more than sharing files, and by a maximum of 10 people. In the real world, the chances of them actually ALL accessing files at once is miniscule. More realistically, there will be no-one using it most of the time, one person occasionally, two or three once in a blue moon, and four or more about as often as Halleys Comet passes over. It's going to be a case of open a file (maybe 2 or 3 seconds there) then a load of work on the local machine, then save it, (again 2 or 3 seconds). If every user on the system opens a file, works on it for 60 seconds, then saves it, over and over again, it's still never going to have more than 2 or 3 actually accessing the server at once. There's nothing wrong with the setups you are mentioning, other than that they are total overkill for the specified use.

Another advantage of WHS is that it is easily maintained by someone with little technical knowledge, something else which would be of value in this situation. They basically seem to be in search of a basic set it and forget it way to store files and little else.

[crenn]

Or SSH. ;)
If it's linux, then it's not easy to manage the server purely with SSH unless you're fairly good with linux.

NOTE: I updated my post above.

[ownaginatious]

Hmm, now I'm conflicted. I do like the JBOD idea (what windows home server does) simply because it's the path that easiest allows for upgrading. I probably wouldn't install WHS though because I'd prefer to have linux so that I can SSH into the machine. There are programs that allow for disk concatenation available in linux too. Slaveofconvention does have a good point when he says that the chances of multiple people accessing the server simultaneous are very low.

[crenn]

Note that the majority of RAID controllers support JBOD, so it means that if you change your mind on using JBOD, you can do a switch.

[OvRiDe]

Have you looked at a Drobo?

http://www.drobo.com/products/drobo-fs.php

Extremely simple setup. Next to no administration. Just plug your drives in and go. If it gets full just change the smallest drive to a larger one.

They seem a bit pricey but after you put all the hardware together, and if you go with something like WHS.. its not much more or about the same.

Probably worth checking out.

Also...


I would rather not go with very expensive server grade disks because a) there already appear to be a bunch of hard-drives here ready to go, and b) It makes the acronym RAID ironic (Redundant Array of Inexpensive disks) ;).

When RAID was first introduced in 1987 the "I" stood for "inexpensive", later when they figured out that RAID was anything BUT inexpensive they changed it to "independent".


"One of the surprises about RAID was it was so expensive. The I in the name when we coined the term was for inexpensive disks. But the system was so expensive, that was kind of awkward for marketing people. So Randy blessed the change to independent for I. Since the RAID boxes weren't cheap, that was probably a better name.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/87093/The_Story_So_Far

There was some more discussion previously on the matter here..

http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/forum/showpost.php?p=93038&postcount=26

;)

[x88x]

Huh. Good to know.
http://i428.photobucket.com/albums/qq3/x13931x/the_more_you_know2.jpg

[slaveofconvention]

I probably wouldn't install WHS though because I'd prefer to have linux so that I can SSH into the machine.

I'm not blindly advocating WHS here but thought I should point out that it does allow very easy remote desktop access from any (windows I think) computer with a web browser. MS actually gives you a http://whateveryouwant.homeserver.com subdomain as part of the package. The server will automatically update the MS systems with the current IP address of the server should it change, so there's also no need for a static IP or any kind of Dynamic DNS service either.