Plan A Computer Build: Addendum

When the Computer Club met this week, we had a little deviation. So, I thought I'd take the opportunity to talk about it. This week, at our regular meeting time, during which we've been planning a Mini-ITX gaming build, most of the students were tied up with other activities. However, the one student who did show up is currently, my most advanced having built his own machine among other experiences. Therefore, what he wanted to learn about was the "next stage".... dabbling in servers to work with Plex, transcoding, etc. Conveniently, I have such a beast just sitting around in our computer room, a cast-off from a commercial client; a Dell PowerEdge SC440. 

Granted, it's really not much of a server. Machines such as these occupied the low-end of the market back in 2006, which is why it was surplus and had been sitting in a corner of our workroom for the last year and a half! However, it turned out to be perfect for a 16 year-old looking for something to learn on. What is it? Well.... it's from the Core/Core 2 Duo generation built around an LGA-775 and Intel's 3000 chipset. That give's it the ability to run relatively modern operating systems, yet is old enough to have a wealth of cheap hardware available.

If you'll look at the SC440 motherboard, what do we see? For one, it's a full-on server board.... but cut down on features to some degree. No SCSI or SAS controller. One CPU socket. But critically, it does have the ability to take Xeon processors, and ECC RAM. There are also 3 PCIe (x8, x4, x1) and 2 32-bit PCI expansion slots. This gives the machine great latitude to accessing a WIDE variety of cards to do just about anything the owner might want for cheap. It's main weakness?

If you look closely at this image, you'll see that there are just 2 dedicated bays for 3.5" hard disk drives. However, there are 2, 5.25" optical drive bays which can be made use of, plus a 3.5" "floppy" bay, which could be used as well. Although, there are only 4 SATA headers on the MB, it seems unlikely that someone would need more with this box!

I must say though, that for a baby sys-admin looking to learn; I couldn't think of a more ideal machine. Although, it's hard to tell from pictures, this thing is solid steel! He's not going to break it! It can take serious hardware. Software for the most part is free, ranging from the ubiquitous Ubuntu, to FreeNAS to more obscure distros. Upgrade parts are cheap! And best of all..... it's free!

To FreeNAS or to WHS 2011.... That Is The Question

There's lots of choices out there for server operating systems..... much of it free! Some of you might remember that last year I did an experiment using one of my old ThinkPads (an A31) to build a "proof of concept" for a Portable Server. I used an older distro of CentOS, installed several random drives into it's UltraBay and the one in the 2631 Dock as well. It all went fine, and the thing works. However; at the end of the day, it's still an old P4 computer that interfaces with drives via IDE, and there-in lies the issue. Well.... that and the fact that it's P4 is a single core processor and most OS's these days require a dual core. Oh yeah; there's also 2Gb limitation on RAM which pretty much eliminates anything like FreeNAS using ZFS. 

So, if I want to go FreeNAS, which by the way is what I use at home, I'm going to have to do something about using hardware up to snuff. Duel Core, processor and at least 4Gb of RAM, maybe more. 

The other direction I could go is to pull out my copy of MS Windows Home Server 2011 of which I own a license. Doesn't need as much RAM, but has other demands. So, let's look at the candidates to replace the A31.

In one corner, stands my old ThinkPad Z61m. It has a T7200 Core 2 Duo processor and the ability to have 2 drives onboard. It's really a nice machine complete with titanium LCD lid that's beautiful and unique. However, a quirk of that generation's chipset is a memory limitation to 3Gb regardless of what the RAM sockets have in them! 

And in the other is the new-comer, an R500 that I was given this last summer. For some of you who don't deal with ThinkPads on a regular basis, they may seem very similar, but conceptually here's the difference that we're dealing with. If the Z61m is a BMW SUV, the R500 is a Chevy Suburban...... with bench seats! You might be able to see that it's so chunky, that the USB ports are standing on their sides! This machine can also take 2 drives internally, but you can get 8Gb of RAM in it. 

I guess what it'll come down to is this. If I want to go with FreeNAS, then it's a no-brainer. I go with the R500. Max out it's RAM, put two drives in the SATA bays and the OS onto a USB stick. Attach one or more external drives and call it a day. However, if I do Windows Home Server; I'll use the Z61m. The 3Gb of RAM isn't really an issue, put a system drive of 160Gb in one bay and a bigger drive in the other one for storage as well as USB or Firewire external drives. 

Which then brings on the deciding factor.....networking. Which OS is going to be friendlier as a stand-alone system and be able to server files creating it's own network.

 

"Globemaster" Server

Much like the gestation period of an elephant, or the development of the actual C17 "Globemaster", the new server build is underway!

In case you're wondering why the home server got a new name...... the size differences makes that pretty obvious. On the floor (on it's side) is the "Spectre" progression of the original C-130 "Hercules" server. It was literally maxed out! All 6 drives spaces had some sort of drive in it. All 6 SATA port on the MB was occupied. I even had to use the IDE (!!!) port for the optical drive! The rather compact Silverstone case was literally stuffed to the brim. It was time.

As I've discuss in earlier posts, I was able to acquire an incomplete Fractal Design Define XL R2 off of Craigs List for $30 a few months ago. In reality it wasn't all that incomplete, just missing the 3 fans, and some screws: items that I have ready replacements, so a non-issue. You can clearly see that sitting next to a regular ATX-sized case like the Define R4, the XL is a beast. 

So much so that it's EATX (Extended ATX) size gave me the option of using full-blown server parts designed to go into "rack-mount" cases. .....which by the way are very cheap to buy on the used market since the demand for them is so limited. I picked up a SuperMicro X7DBE dual processor board for $50 (after shipping). 

It cost me another $30 or so to get the I/O shield and giant heatsinks AND another $10 for the 2 Xeon 5148 processors. Yes, I did say $10! Yup; old server parts are cheap. 

 $30 more for 16Gb (4 x 4Gb) sticks of DDR2 Kingston ECC/FB RAM. 

Why all this trouble? You guys already know that I've convinced myself to go with FreeNAS (especially now that Windows Home Server is dead), but I've also decided to go "whole-hog" and move to ZFS or Zetabyte File System. And after studying up on the subject, I've decided that although I don't need ZFS2 (2 disk failure protection), I'd like to have the highest level of efficiency with ZFS1 (obviously, 1 disk failure protection) which is .8333% space utilization by using 6 drives. That'll give me roughly 10Tb of storage space using 6, 2Tb drives. That's a lot of drives, right?

Oh No, there's more! Since I'd like to use Plex on this machine to serve up the media, I'm going to want to have a caching SSD for that since Plex runs best when transcoding with one of those. Lucky I've already got one, but that's 7 drives!?! I've only got 6 SATA headers onboard!

 

SuperMicro to the rescue.... once again, with a SAT2-MV8, 8-Port SATA controller for another $17.50! Woe is me! It'll give me the ability to add more drives or move to ZFS2 someday if I feel the need.

Hey, at least I don't need to buy another NIC for this thing since it has 2 of those already ..... plus a serial and a parallel port, because everyone needs some of those. 

Unfortunately, I've run into some road-blocks to finishing this monster! The case is so big, I need extensions for my power supply cables! I also need an adapter to run to an extra 12v header on the MB. Since it has dual Xeons, it not only requires an 8-pin aux plug, but another 4-pin as well! On top of that, there's a little problem of screws! Don't get me wrong; I've got lots of those, but the case comes with drive trays with rubber mounting rings, I need extra-long screws. And since I have 6 of those things......

But these are relatively minor issues to the "Globemaster" taking off! Not a bad upgrade for less than $200.

 

It Can All Be Stored..... But Then What?

In today's round of email ads, came something called the Seagate Backup Plus 4Tb.... that's, as opposed to the "Slim" which is 2Tb. It's being sold for $150 from Newegg, which of course means that, that's the de facto online price now. I'm always looking at storage because we all know, no one has enough storage and it's something which is always nibbling at the edges of my consciousness. Especially right now while I'm in the process of rebuilding my own file server. Anyway: so here's this huge (capacity-wise), "portable" (form-factor-wise) drive for a pretty amazing price. So I started digging around a little. 

 

This whole shindig started about a year ago with the Backup Plus Fast 4Tb drive. It sold for about $210 and was even thicker. It turns out that the "Fast" was fast  because it had not 1, but 2 Momentus M9t 2Tb drives in it set up in a RAID "0" (striped) setup, making it's read/writes the fastest out there among bus-powered drives. Of course, stacking 2, 9.5mm drives on top of each other makes for a FAT drive.... plus the extra hardware made for an expensive one as well.

So, this year, Seagate brings out the Momentus M018 drive that's 15mm thick, but is 4Tb all in one case! Yes, they crammed 5, 800Gb platters into one case! I'm not a Seagate fan, but all I can say is..... WOW!!! Am I going to run out and buy one of these things? Uhhh, no..... but it is very interesting. I'm still in the middle of acquiring more 2Tb Hitachi Deskstar so I can get to a 5-drive ZFS array on the FreeNAS file server. I know it's kind of quaint in these days of huge 4 and 6Tb desktop drives, but I'm conservative and paranoid! Now, if I can get my hands on one of the Backup Plus Fast drives at a good price, I might strongly consider doing that, so I can pull the drives to go in my Drobo Mini, bumping it's 5Tb (2, 1.5Tb, and 2, 1Tb) capacity to 7Tb.... then putting a couple of SSDs into that case to make for one very fast external drive! But what does one do with all that storage?

 

Media of course! I've found that backing up just doesn't use up much space. However; media file storage and serving does! While I was getting out the 200 DVD "Mega-Changer" and putting that beast back into the A/V cabinet, I came to the conclusion that I really wanted something easier. That thing was fine "back in the day" and has more than served it's purpose keeping the kids from handling the physical media, but we all know the day of physical media is over. As it sits, I have over 300 movies ripped already AND routinely carry them ALL around on a portable drive/access point from which they can be consumed via pretty much any digital device. Of course, I don't just have the crunched down MP4 files for iPad use, but also the original decripted files as well. Yeah, that takes up a LOT of storage space.

I don't think anyone would argue that the up-to-date delivery method of the computer file is way more efficient and convenient. The issue is the time it takes to rip all the movies and then to store all those file! This is going to take a whole change in mentality for me.

Up until this point, my servers have always been Friday to Sunday machines..... that is a file server that I turn on over the weekend, so that our laptops can do their backup and play the occasional playlist on a quiet Saturday morning. But our needs for data are different now. We want them to server our media files 24/7. We want to get that picture to go on the Facebook page on Monday night. We want to play our iTunes playlist throughout the house on Tuesday evening. We want to pull up that the old Star Wars Ep. 1 (God help us!) on Thursday night. Well.... you get the idea. What's the purpose of ripping all our CDs and DVDs if we only carry them with us on vacation?

So, the concept is that the rebuilt "Spectre" server will be a high up-time machine. Maybe not 24/7, but at least maybe 6pm to 1am/most days of the week computer that's there to feed all those tablets and TVs scattered all over the house. 

Home Server Rebuild: Part 1 The Grunt Work

I've been avoiding this for a while now..... the grunt-work associated with a major change. But it had to happen sooner or later. As I've discussed before, there are a number of things about my WHS (Windows Home Server 2011) running file server that I've become unhappy with; although, much of it doesn't have anything to do with WHS itself, but rather the HighPoint Caching controller. 

After a lot of hours of watching YouTube I came to the following conclusions:

• I have to decide how I want to manage my storage.
• I have to decide what operating system I want to use.
• How safe do I want to be in terms of the files residing on the file server?
• How much money do I want to put into the server in terms of drives?
• How much time do I want to allocate to learning the OS?

Don't get me wrong: I love this stuff! But I have another full-time profession, a family that expects me to spend time with them. AND I do not have an unlimited amount of cash to expend on this solution.

So, here are my options. They start with reloading Windows Home Server 2011 which has the distinct advantage that I own it and have used it for close to a year now so there's a level of familiarity. My hardware is also set up for it, with a 160Gb SSD for the OS to live on, and a Highpoint caching controller that I know works with it. The downside is that I'm not very happy with how it's working and will have to expend an unknown amount of time figuring out how to make it work better..... if that's possible. Furthermore, it's a product that's been "orphaned" by Microsoft, so this is the "end of the trail" for it.

An obvious alternative is FreeNAS. It's well-known and quite popular today. It has that always favorable attribute of being a free product. As such is supported by the "open-source" community. It and it's off-shoot, NAS4Free (more on this later), have the advantage of having a robust software RAID file system that doesn't require the use of an expensive (and often annoyingly difficult to use) hardware controller. Plus underlying technology that allows it to play nicely with various other systems ranging from Windows (CIFS), Linux (SMB) to AFP (Mac Networking). They can also handle standalone authentication or work with Active Directory, although that's not particularly relevant in my case.

 

And of course, you can't talk about FreeNAS without getting into NAS4Free which is ixSystems' attempt to do FreeNAS with a better web interface and plugin system. As it turns out, based on lots of research, it seems to be somewhat less "bleeding edge" than FreeNAS and thus easier for laymen like me to grasp. I'm not going to get into the nitty-gritty of what exactly pushed me in this direction. Suffice to say that the cleaner and easier interface was a better fit for me. 

....But what about the various Linux distros? Although, I'm certain that these are great for full production environments with a professional well versed in running command-line, these aren't for me. I will say that I was suitably impressed with CentOS during my time with it, but I just don't see myself investing the time necessary to become fully comfortable with it's use. Plus; I don't need a full server. I just need something to serve files, so really a "roll-your-own" NAS with greater flexibility.

What got done today? I loaded the OTP (Old ThinkPad) mobile file server up with NAS4Free 32-bit v. 9.3.0.2.1190 with it. Got it up and running. Copied a ripped movie file to it and played it back off. It's a good start! So stay tuned as this project proceeds and I decide whether this is in fact the server OS for me.

Old Tech!

By any measure, an April 2003 manufacture date for a computer, any computer, pretty much defines it as ancient!!! It's a good thing I teach World History in my day job! 

Yet, sitting on my workbench/desk at this very moment is an IBM ThinkPad A31 with that manufacture date. It's not just sitting there; it's booted up and workings it's little P4 heart out doing a few things that I've asked the obsolete Windows XPP to do. Am I going to continue using this machine running Windows XP? Yes and No actually. Yes; I'm going to continue to use this machine (explanations in a minute). No; I'm not going to use Windows XP unless I'm just trying to test out something. And to that end, I'll be keeping the hard drive from it with the OS load intact.... in the hard drive box kinda like those people who have themselves cryogenically frozen. Then, what am I going to do with this computing Centenarian?

This of course! Except in my world, it's a quarter the size, an eighth the weight, and I don't have to buy anything! I'm going to turn it into a portable file server.

"Now, await-a-minute", you say: "so you are trying to do what a little box the size of an external drive can do"!?! I can hear the laughter now..... through the Internet. Actually, the answer is.... kind of..... Yes, I get that these drives like the Corsair Voyager Air can serve files wirelessly in an amazingly small package and do so without even being plugged in. That's cool.... but it's still not a server with a server OS loaded allowing me to have the kind of control that can only happen with an actual operating system. And now that we've established that, that operating system isn't going to be Windows XPP, what am I proposing to do here?

You might have already come to this conclusion already given the hardware. Here are some pluses and minuses associated with using them. FreeNAS can be loaded up on a USB flashdrive, thus freeing up a drive bay for storage. I don't know much about it, so there's that, and I'm going to bet the driver support is going to by a little sketchy when dealing with random devices (more on this later). That should be less of an issue with many of the various distros of Linux, some of which (such as Ubuntu/Zorin) are pretty "mainstream" these days. However, most of these are full-on OS loads requiring an actual disk drive, but more importantly taking one of my precious drive bays. On top of which I don't know a bunch about Linux, although I've loaded up and used both Ubuntu and Mint in the past. 

 

And that takes us to the orphaned Windows Home Server: no I don't even mean the newer "Vail" version which I have running on my Spectre file server right now. I mean the original v.1! Why the heck would I want to do that!?! Well.... I have it, and I have experience with it since I used it with my original Hercules file server. It's driver support will be better since it's based off of the old MS 2003 Server OS. But one of my favorite features of that version was that it had the drive extender function that allowed it to take any random drive you connect to it and aggregate it into it's management scheme. Kinda like Drobo, but in a full OS.

So.... what am I going to do? All of it of course! I'm go to load up FreeNAS on a stick, put WHS on a drive, and probably some version of Linux on another drive. Then I'm going to play with it ALL and see which one I like!

Back to the hardware. What exactly is my point with this exercise other than that I have some A31s sitting around with nothing to do? There is that, of course. The attraction of $0 acquisition cost is pretty nice. But that's not all. Not all old laptops can apply for this "Portable File Server" (PFS) job. It's a bit like that one job at Walmart. There are many senior citizens with time on their hands, but only a few make good Greeters! 

 

The A31 is a special computer.... even by ThinkPad standards. This model is often considered to be the last of the ThinkPad "mobile workstations" until the arrival of the short-lived W70x series. Let's start with what makes it a mobile workstation:

• Availability of very high end (at the time) GPUs along with the then new in mobile computing high res (1600 x 1200) IPS screens, which are still considered to be some of the best ever produced.
• Multiple (2) configurable drive bays dubbed "UltraBay" which could take; optical drives, floppy drives, removable storage such as Zip and LS-120 Superdisk, hard disk drives, battery (in 1), as well as PDA (Palm Pilot) dock and/or "10-Key" number pad.
• Pentium 4m (Mobile) processors in excess of 2ghz.
• Full expansion capabilities including 2 PCMCIA slots and a docking port. This translates to either a port replicator, or the 2631 Dock that had another UltraBay slot, 2 more Cardbus PCMCIA slots, internal power supply AND full length PCI card slot.

  

"Wow", you say.... what in the heck does all that mean? OK, I'll put you outta your misery. All this expansion give the A31 (and A30, but they are PIII) machines the ability to have up to 3 spinning drives of virtually any combination on board. When you add in the dock, it's a 4th drive. The PCMCIA cardbus slot gives it the ability to overcome one of it's deficiencies, which is that it's chipset is so old, it doesn't even have USB 2.0. Yup, that's right.... USB 1.1! So, one Adaptec USB2.0/Firewire card later, it now has the ability to interact with more external drives at a higher speed. And I just so happen to have a 500Gb drive in a Lacie Firewire external enclosure. The full PCI slot in the dock also give me the ability to put in pretty much anything else I might need as well. 

It's no wonder that NASA chose these machine to go on the Space Shuttle and later the International Space Station.

When you combine this machine, it's various modular capabilities, the ThinkPad 2631 dock, and my wife's old Samsonite rolling case; it quickly become a fully portable, file server ready for use in virtually any location at any time. Not bad for a $0 cost build.