I'm looking at the Geforce 210 due to its superior driver support in Ubuntu and XBMC. Also, the different 210's have different power consumptions, the different three being DDR2 512MB, DDR2 1024MB and DDR3 512MB. I'm looking at the latter of the three.
Regarding the powersupply; it's a 1U server type unit, so most probably pretty good quality.
Will keep you guys updated.
Well, I am going to be running mine headless, everytime - I start a new NAS build - the big question is always for me - what NAS OS will I be utilising.
Whilst I am waiting on the local release of "Windows Home Server" 2011 - to really complete the comparison.
I have in the meantime just started playing around - I am using 2x250gb's + 1 x80gb to test and see. (will be placing 4 x 2tb's in the chassis).
Here is a list of Diy NAS OS that I have encountered :
Free:
Freenas : http://freenas.org/ , http://sourceforge.net/projects/freenas/
Amahi (based on Fedora Core ) http://www.amahi.org/
NexentaStor : Community Edition - FREE version for up to 18TB of storage : http://www.nexentastor.org/
Ubuntu : http://www.ubuntu.com/
ClearOS (formerly ClarkConnect) : http://www.clearfoundation.com/
Openfiler : http://www.openfiler.com/
Opensolaris : http://hub.opensolaris.org/bin/view/Main/
Commercial:
Windows Home Server v1 (Includes Drive Extender)
Windows Home Server v2 "Vail" (Excludes native drive extender)
Windows Server 2008 R2
Unraid
Naslite
Please let me know about any others that you have used or read about, I would like to compile a list of them.
Also - let me know primarily what uses you have for the device :
NAS/Media Server/Home Server/XBMC Box
Last edited by iDOL; 12-05-2011 at 10:26 AM.
Also include Unraid. I haven't personally used it, but apparently its excellent and although it isn't free, its features make it very tempting indeed. If/when I build a serious NAS with 10+ drives, I'll almost certainly make use of it.Originally Posted by iDOL
I am also hoping to get one of these enclsoures : http://www.raidon.com.tw/content.php...00462&p_id=123 - To use with my Microserver.
As I am still considering buying another 1 or 2 - for personal use and recommending them to friends and relatives - I am worried as to when the special on this is going to end.
I heard that the nVidia 210 have problems with 1080 might be better to look for something else, the size of the pc worries me with overheating issues when you install 4 drives and a gpu
ROG Crosshair Formula IV - AMD Phenom x6 1055T 3.5ghz - 8gb Corsair Dominator ddr3 1600 - Asus GTX 570 - CM Enforcer
It seems the 210's had issues due to poor driver support, which has since been remedied. In any case, I'll see how well it runs when I get it. I have a couple of 1080P movies that should push it about as far as it should ever be required to go.
The 'peak' value of the system would never be the 'peak' value of all the combined parts. Hard-drives peak at spinup when all the other parts wouldn't be at peak and then pretty much at least less than have half the power consumption during write/read then at spin-up. That's also a SAS drive, I was under the impression the majority of modern drives use about 12 to 14 watts at spin-up where'd you find the spin-up wattages from btw? I also doubt someone buying a R1200 system is going to put 4 x 2TB drives that cost upward of R2000 a drive in there anyways I could very well be wrong on all of this...We're interested in peak, not load values. Here's a hard-disk with spin up wattage of just over 28W. 4 of those, 112W. Add CPU (15) & GFX (25) and we're at 152W. Thats already over the limit & we actually still need some watts for the mobo and perhaps a safety margins. Then we're also assuming the PSU can actually deliver 150W.
Clearly it can work (e.g. not using enterprise hdds like I did above) else they wouldn't sell it...it just needs careful consideration. Looks like Messugga has it covered though.
My point was putting that graphics card into the system wasn't going to be the problem, if you then load it with a gazillion drives then yes you might miss those 25watts
Calculated them from the max current figures.
Windows Homeserver 2011 production has been released (old Vail).
I am aware it has been released, it's just not available in any retail channels that I have access to at the moment.
Right. The 210 from Inno3D fits fine. It doesn't come with the low-profile backplate but I'll order one off of eBay. In the mean time, I'll just have to be careful to not bump it too much, which shouldn't be an issue considering where the system stands. Busy setting up the OS and software RAID, etc.
Edit - And an update. Finally got everything set up correctly (The RAID5 gave me a bit of trouble). The RAID is still doing its thing, so disk performance can't really be measured yet. Copying to it is pretty slow at the moment at 6MB/s, but hdparm chucks out 87MB/s. Again, that's while the indexing and things is going on, so I'm probably looking at an excess of 100MB/s with default settings.
As for the graphics card. The little guy idles at around 50 degrees, so I'm very happy that I went with the actively cooled solution. I'm using default everything that came with the XBMC Live installation, with hardware acceleration for video playback enabled. 1080P plays flawlessly with very little CPU usage. It's difficult to say how much it is exactly, since the RAID is using an average of 60% processing power. It's probably around the 10-15% mark, however.
All in all, I'm fairly happy so far. Once the RAID array is done sorting its stuff out, performance in general should be superb.
Edit - After having done some research, the lack of speed is due to stupid sFTP, which by the very nature of the standard, makes use of encryption. This encryption actually maxed out the processor on my one laptop, which is a 2.2ghz C2D. I moved the copying duties over to my desktop which is a quad core, and total bandwidth usage is closer to 400mbit now, with a good 30% of that being overheads. The little server's CPU is also taking a beating in an attempt to decode the stream, which isn't helping either. Unfortunately, this is the only option available with a standard XBMC Live installation. I'll sort it with SAMBA and a normal FTP client sometime during the week, which should make things a lot simpler and would allow for a more natural NAS experience.
Last edited by Messugga; 14-05-2011 at 07:29 PM.
Cool, thanks for the update - I have ordered 2x4gb adata's , I found a nice write up where the okes setup a vmware exsi server.
Methinks, I will opt for this.
In that way, I can try all the Os's listed above.
http://www.techhead.co.uk/running-vm...hHead+-+All%29
http://deludi.nl/blog/vbscript/vario...id-controller/
Paid 3k for mineand using it as a NAS!!
Ah, weak man... You should have checked mybb first, they're R1300 at Digital Planet and HPShop. I made a thread about it a while ago before I bought mine, we should link it here. I'll do it when I'm back at my PC.Paid 3k for mine
Edit: Here is the link to my original thread, where I was still unsure about buying the server. Best descision in a long time, by the way.
Last edited by TJ99; 15-05-2011 at 09:38 PM. Reason: Link to old thread added for great justice
So y'all need to hide yo uzis, hide yo assault rifles and hide yo bazookas 'cos they disarmin' everybody out here!
-Darkmatter2525
The server's now all hooked up to the TV and ready to go. We're controlling it with the official XBMC Android remote, which is pretty damn nice. System noise is low, with the drives not being audible at all. The big fan isn't completely silent on this hot day, but from the other side of the room you can't hear it, so with something actually playing on the TV, it should get drowned out. If it starts acting up, I'll simply upgrade it for a higher spec'd unit, but honestly, it's absolutely fine for the time being.
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