ServeTheHome.com

First off, this is not a typical WHS build, and it was not meant to be. For the majority of users, a HP MediaSmart (by far the WHS to get if you do not DIY the build) is the way to go. For my purposes, I have seen a consistent, but increasing 500-600GB/mo of extra disk usage. Just for the record, unlike the opinion of certain Seagate executives, it is not for material of questionable moral value. Alas, I needed a solution that would allow me to have one box that could be upgraded and used for up to 24 months. As mentioned in Part 1, this project is an upgrade project and therefore I had some parts, and had a good idea of what I was doing before embarking on the project.

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About 10 months ago I decided to enter the world of the Windows Home Server. My storage arrays had outstripped my Cosmos S’s capacity, and running multiple controllers for all of the SAS drives as well as SATA storage became too much. My decision to build a WHS v. buy one was made due to sub-$100 Seagate 1.5TB 7200.11 drives (at the time very inexpensive) so I bought another eight drives just to fill up an 8 port raid controller.

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Introduction

For Small Business Servers and home servers, one thing becomes apparent, the need to use raid with large data sets. Raid 1 and software mirroring technologies like Windows Drive Extender are too cost ineffective for large storage arrays. For example, if one has 1 TB of storage need and uses one of these mirroring redundancy option, they need 1TB extra storage for a complete backup. Likewise, if an administrator uses four 1TB drives for data storage, then another four 1TB drives would be needed for redundancy. Raid 5 offers a user with both more performance than Raid 1 and lower “lost” capacity due to redundancy storage. Instead of effective storage capacity of n/2 for Raid 1, Raid 5 allows for n-1 of storage capacity.

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A 32GB SSD drive for $60 after MiR sounded like a good idea, especially since that would be great for a Windows Home Server C:\ drive, so I purchased a Patriot PS-100 32GB. (It should be noted that I have not seen the price for $60 again in the following 3 months) 64MB of cache sounded better than a JMicron JMF602 based drive, and surely Patriot would not release in the fall of 2009 a JMicron branded drive. I assumed that the drive would be Samsung, Indilinx (akin to an OCZ Core V2) since 32GB was not an Intel controller sounding size (40GB, 80GB, 160GB MLC to date). My conjecture proved to be inaccurate.

Also, just for comparison here are Raid 0 Benchmarks with the PS-100 32GB and for a comparison (to a much higher-end setup) see: Two OCZ Vertex v1.5 Firmware Raid 0 Benchmarks and see two Intel X25-V 40GB’s in Raid 0 benchmarks for comparison of the Patriot PS-100 32GB to the popular Intel X25-V 40GB.

UPDATE 05 April 2010: See performance with new Patriot firmware #2.008 here

UPDATE 06 June 2010: New Patriot PS-100 32GB Firmware v3.000 benchmarks are up (single drive). This release had significant performance improvements.

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SSD’s are becoming more commonplace and are available from a multitude of vendors. Despite a high level of vendor diversity for the drives themselves, there are only a few SSD controller options available, and the vendors do not necessarily list which controller a given drive has. In an effort to simplify the research process, the following list will be updated with which drives contain which controllers to make comparisons easier.
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As one’s storage needs increase, eventually even large 4U server cases need to pack higher hard drive densities in order to fit all of the devices needed. In the test server’s Norco 4U case I quickly realized that the standard drive bays would not be sufficient. I purchased three iStartUSA 5-in-3 SAS/SATA backplanes, one for the main system and two for the Windows Home Server all in the hope that I could increase drive densities. Not all would go smoothly… Read the full story

As high-performance hard drives move to the 2.5” form factor, a form factor that has been common in the SSD and notebook space, mounting these drives in traditional cases can be somewhat difficult. Purchasing 2.5” to 3.5” adapters allow system builders to mount a single drive to a space meant for a 3.5” drive, but that can be a serious waste of space.

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Needing a few more drives in the Windows Home Server, I opted for an “ICY DOCK MB453IPF-B 3 in 2 SATA/SAS Backplane Module – Retail” This unit allows for three 3.5″ drives to be installed into a case with two open 5.25″ bays. What should be noted, as with most drive cages, is that consumer level cases often have metal tabs in the drive bays to guide and hold large optical drives in-line. These tabs sometimes require that they are bent back to be flush with the plane of the vertical drive walls when installing multi-bay multi-drive enclosures. On the Norco 4U case, which is designed for these types of multi-bay enclosures, the unit slid in easily. Depending on the case, one may need to screw or use other attachment methods to secure the enclosure to the case.

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Although more will follow, here’s a quick glimpse of what a cheap, but quality hardware raid solution can do with cheap, and large SATA drives in Raid 5. Keep in mind that the Perc 5/i uses the old IOP333 CPU clocked at 500MHz. Many current 3 series Adaptec products, for example, utilize the IOP333 at 800MHz. Also, one should note that there are reports that the IOP348 has some issues with SATA drives making the below representative of very inexpensive ($1000) raid arrays with huge capacities.

Raid 0 with 8 Seagate 7200.11 1.5TB drives with a Dell Perc 5/i 1MB stripe

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Two 1.5TB Seagate 7200.11 drives on the ICH10R in raid 1 make a nice setup. The ICH10R is an on-board semi-hardware raid controller making it a very cheap option to use in any home server. The Seagate 1.5TB drives are one of the highest capacity drives readily available in Q1 2009 and have the best price/GB available. Raid 1 is probably the best way to gain redundancy when there are two disks in the system.

Intel ICH10R Raid 1 w/ 2x Seagate 7200.11 1.5TB 7200rpm drives

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