Building a Home Server with "teeth". Any Advice...

Twista

Twista

Senior Member
Joined
May 14, 2007
Messages
562
Reaction score
0
Location
Randburg
Hey Guys,

I'm on a mission to build a Home Server with some power. Have a budget of R 30 -35K MAX.

So this is the story, Have a small business running at home with 3 staff that must work on pastel. They create lots of small invoices.

Also, must be able to stream videos at night.

Gigabyte SUMO 5115 Black Aluminum REGZ-FA1CAR-AJB
Sparkle 1000W 80Plus-Gold ATX Power Supply
Gigabyte Socket LGA1366 6x DDR3 2100+ 10x SATA2 Dual SmartLAN Gigabit ATX Motherboard REGA-X58A-UD7
Intel i7 960(3.2GHz) Hyperthreaded Quad Core Processor
Processor Cooling
Corsair Dominator GT DHX Technology and Airflow Fan 12GB(3x4GB) DDR3-2000 Desktop Memory Kit FRME-C4G3G20F9x3
GIGABYTE nVidia GeForce 9800GT 1GB GDDR3 256-Bit PCIE 2.0 DirectX 10.0 Graphics Card REGV-N98TSL-1GI
seagate cheetah 15K.7 - ST3450857SS 450gb, SAS 2.0 , 6Gb/sec , 15000 rpm, 16mb cache, 3.4/3.9ms - 5 year warranty
Seagate Constellation ES 7200RPM ST31000524NS 3.5" SATA 1TB Desktop Hard Drive IMST31000524NS 32MB


I will run server 2008 and exchange 2008 / 2010.

Not sure if my config is correct. I have lost so much data in the last five years its painful, so I found that this motherboard support RAID 10. Will need someone to actually configure that part.

Anyways, the techies might share some light.

I'm having problems finding the hardware as well.

Tthanks Guys
 
For all your needs you can run a an 2008SBS server togetther with the hardware should set you back 18K at least but if you are willing to look at the Linux alternative the cost could come down considerably
 
It's completely overboard to get such fast memory and a massive PSU for a server.

By the end of this month the new release Sandy Bridge motherboards should be available in SA. I would strongly recommend that you rather get a Sandy Bridge setup, instead of the old Socket 1366.
I'm not sure how much memory you would need, so it's either 2x 4GB or 4x 4GB DDR3 1333MHz RAM that you'll get.
For the server, you'd want to go for the Core i7 2600(K).

Any reason why you'd want such a big graphics card in the server?

I'd say that you should rather get a standalone NAS device with RAID 6 or 10 (minimum of 4 hard drives), which will be used for backups.
SAS drives are extremely expensive, and I doubt that it's worth it to get them when you have so few employees.

I would also recommend that you place both the server + NAS + network equipment on an UPS.

I'd reckon that you should be able to get all the hardware for under R20k.
 
Thanks Pada.

Where would I be able to get the new Sandy Bridge. I would definitely wait.

Why do u prefer the i7 2600. Sorry don't understand this stuff on technical level.

I've seen the standalone NAS RAID device server at Eurobyte 4 bay for R6499.00 - looks like I should look into it as well.
 
Twista, Pada makes some really nice points. Also Pastel is not the beast everyone makes it out to be. Heck, I got it running in a Virtual XP instance under Linux for my wife and she is running a Socket 754 Sempron 3800+ with 1GB ram and no problems.

For your backup solution, look at Pastel Iron Tree - I think its worth the monthly cost - and use DropBox for other data. Not saying you should not have the on-site backup, but go off-site for more piece of mind. Not so sure how big your daily backups will be and if a R6K solution is worth the expense but Pada seems to have some experience in this field.

Also be careful of RAID configurations, if they screw it up and you loose two drives, there goes all your data - your better off paying a 2nd independent person to come in a verify that the RAID configuration is what you wanted and you can easily rebuild a failed drive.

Also do not, I repeat DO NOT, buy matching drives. Each drive you purchase for both your server and NAS must either be different brands or at least different batch numbers. Our company has lost enough drives on our 12 servers to confirm that the risk of two separate brands/batches failing at the same time is minimal. But most important make sure you, not a techie, can recover your backups. You also need to test your backups on a regular basis, at least once a month.

Trust me, when your server dies and you need to recover your data, the last thing you want is having to spend days recovering your data.
 
When you want to get a server, buy a server. Call a Dell / HP reseller and get a entry level tower. With a descent warranty you should be ok.

You should get a good server for your budget.

Sent from my Nexus One using MyBroadband Android App
 
Thanks Guys. Nice to know you can get decent advice on this forum

Maybe I have a little gaming secret tucked away... :-).

Thanks Pada...again.
 
Quad core CPU
6-8Gb Ram
1 HDD for os
4-8 Hdd's - Software RaidZ (1Tb's or 2Tb's, depending on how much space you need.)
Ubuntu Server
2KVA or bigger UPS

Sounds like the server will mostly be used for storage and a network share.
Buying a Server grade Motherboard or physical is worth the extra cash. They are designed to do this stuff. a Normal PC is'nt.
 
bender-pc-case-mod.jpg
 
Twista said:
Hey Guys,

I'm on a mission to build a Home Server with some power. Have a budget of R 30 -35K MAX.

So this is the story, Have a small business running at home with 3 staff that must work on pastel. They create lots of small invoices.

Also, must be able to stream videos at night.

Gigabyte SUMO 5115 Black Aluminum REGZ-FA1CAR-AJB
Sparkle 1000W 80Plus-Gold ATX Power Supply
Gigabyte Socket LGA1366 6x DDR3 2100+ 10x SATA2 Dual SmartLAN Gigabit ATX Motherboard REGA-X58A-UD7
Intel i7 960(3.2GHz) Hyperthreaded Quad Core Processor
Processor Cooling
Corsair Dominator GT DHX Technology and Airflow Fan 12GB(3x4GB) DDR3-2000 Desktop Memory Kit FRME-C4G3G20F9x3
GIGABYTE nVidia GeForce 9800GT 1GB GDDR3 256-Bit PCIE 2.0 DirectX 10.0 Graphics Card REGV-N98TSL-1GI
seagate cheetah 15K.7 - ST3450857SS 450gb, SAS 2.0 , 6Gb/sec , 15000 rpm, 16mb cache, 3.4/3.9ms - 5 year warranty
Seagate Constellation ES 7200RPM ST31000524NS 3.5" SATA 1TB Desktop Hard Drive IMST31000524NS 32MB


I will run server 2008 and exchange 2008 / 2010.

Not sure if my config is correct. I have lost so much data in the last five years its painful, so I found that this motherboard support RAID 10. Will need someone to actually configure that part.

Anyways, the techies might share some light.

I'm having problems finding the hardware as well.

Tthanks Guys
Click to expand...

Rather get a SLC based SSD for your OS drive.
 
SpiderZ: A 1kVA PSU should suffice for a single server + NAS.
If you want to keep the server running for longer, you can rather just extend the battery pack, which is much more cost effective.

PostmanPot: I can't say much more, because I have very limited experience with proper (rack-mounted) server hardware.

+1 to what cbrunsdonza said, especially about off-site backups and different hard drive brands.
 
Have you considered going for a separate server and gaming/streaming pc?
I doubt you want to walk in on your employees watching movies off the server when they should be working.

I'd spend:
R10-12k on server
R5k on NAS for backups
R3k on UPS
R10-12k on gaming/streaming PC.
 
Last edited:
Twista said:
Gigabyte SUMO 5115 Black Aluminum REGZ-FA1CAR-AJB
Sparkle 1000W 80Plus-Gold ATX Power Supply
Corsair Dominator GT DHX Technology and Airflow Fan 12GB(3x4GB) DDR3-2000 Desktop Memory Kit FRME-C4G3G20F9x3
GIGABYTE nVidia GeForce 9800GT 1GB GDDR3 256-Bit PCIE 2.0 DirectX 10.0 Graphics Card REGV-N98TSL-1GI
Click to expand...

server. riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight. Also, when you spec stream video at night, do you mean the transcoding to me done on this machine or a HTPC?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top
Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter
X