Need suggestions for storage server

Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.

mjkonopka

New Member
Aug 16, 2012
4
0
0
I am building a storage server right now for my house. I have the server already built but I dont know what I should use to expand my storage. It is going to be used for storing full copies of blu rays. I also have an Infinitv 4 cablecard tuner in it for recording tv. I have the whole house wired with cat6 and a netgear gs724t. I know my network is fast enough for streaming but I need to make sure that if I use a HBA card and a SAS expander that it will be fast enough for streaming bit for bit copies of blu rays. I am putting a Norco RPC-4020 in my rack so there is alot of room for expansion. I hope thats enough information. If you need to know anything more let me know and I'll post it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 

sotech

Member
Jul 13, 2011
305
1
18
Australia
More info would help regarding what you have already bought - what's inside the server at the moment? You said you were putting the Norco in - it's not already in that chassis?

Will you be streaming to more than one location at once?
 

mjkonopka

New Member
Aug 16, 2012
4
0
0
I have a Gigabyte GA-Z68AP-D3 motherboard with a i5 2400 and 16gigs of DDR3-1600 Corsair XMS3 ram. The 4020 I have not bought yet. I have the server inside another 4u rackmount case. Its a off brand case that I bought from microcenter for dirt cheap. I will be streaming to at least 3 different locations via the ceton media extenders when they become available. I was approved for the beta testing so I will have at least one very soon. Is there anything else you need to know?
 

sotech

Member
Jul 13, 2011
305
1
18
Australia
Why the 4020 over the 4224? 4 more drive bays might come in handy.

Are you intending on using software RAID, hardware RAID or is that part of what you're looking for advice on?

That motherboard has:

PCI-E x16
PCI-E x4 (in x16 slot)
PCI-E x1

PCI
PCI

If you use more than one of the PCI-E x1 slots you'll drop the x4 slot back to x1, which is likely not ideal, and is why I only mention one of them.

You'll probably need a network card - otherwise you'll be limited to <120MB/s total output from the server - and a HBA/RAID card... you can get a 4-port gigabit network adapter that'll fit your x4 slot, leaving the x16 free for your HBA/RAID card.

I assume/hope that that tuner is a x1?
 

Patrick

Administrator
Staff member
Dec 21, 2010
12,511
5,792
113
Why the 4020 over the 4224? 4 more drive bays might come in handy.
I still have an RPC-4020. One of the biggest bonuses of the RPC-42xx series is that they use SFF-8087 connectors on the backplanes and the drive trays a a bit sturdier.
 

mjkonopka

New Member
Aug 16, 2012
4
0
0
I was hoping to use flexraid to make a storage pool so I can just add harddrives as I need them. Or is there a better way?

So then with a NIC card then do link aggregation? I was actually already planning on doing that. Can I use the onboard nic along with a card?

Yes the tuner is a x1. Thank god.

How is the 42xx series with the sas on the backplane? I have heard really bad things about them. I heard they go out a lot.
 

Mike

Member
May 29, 2012
482
16
18
EU
I think the problem with the Norco and their bad-rep on that matter is that they went through a bunch of revisions as I gather it. Over the years this was supposidly improved, but maybe an owner of one might chime in on that one :).

I like the 4020 for the sata ports, although you could mix the backplanes. I just bought a bunch of breakout cables with in mind that supermicro chassis use a lot of sata ports instead of mini-sas :(. The ugly drive trays wouldnt match with the rest of the gear so the geek in me tells me not to buy one though haha.

On link aggregation; You might want to look at windows 8 with its SMB improvements taking advantage of link aggregation. Is it being ported to *nix that anyone knows of?
 

cactus

Moderator
Jan 25, 2011
830
75
28
CA
Searching quickly, the mail archive from May says SMB3 support worked into Samba over the next year. Looking at the git for the Samba4 beta, the focus of the release seems to be better AD integration including AD DC functionality. I wouldn't expect multi-channel or SMB Direct any time soon in Samba.