The longest build....

[5teve]

Build’s Name: Home Server / Workstation
Operating System/ Storage Platform: Windows 8.1 intially
CPU: Xeon e3 12XX V3 something
Motherboard: Asrock C226ws (finally)
Chassis: Fractal Designs R2XL
Drives: 12x Hitachi Ultrastar 7k3000 2TB (probably a raid 6 array), 2x Sandisk Extreme Pro 256gb SSD's and possibly 2 old SSD's as scratch disks
RAM: 16gb Crucial ECC uDIMM (2x8gb)
Add-in Cards: Probably HP P series raid card and probably an expander, Gigabyte Radeon R7 250x Graphics card
Power Supply: Corsair CX600
Other Bits: Lian Li ex36A2 Drive carrier (4in3), multiple Fractal Designs Fans

Usage Profile: File server for the home network and also as a workstation for business use as well as Lightroom / Photoshop / CAD use. To replace an aging AMD phenom X6 1075t 3ghz system with 8gb ram, 8x 500gb hitachis in raid 5 on a perc 5i, 2x 1tb hitachis in raid 1 on motherboard as boot

Other information… Possibly the longest build of all time, and the most hassle I have ever had! Conceived over Christmas 2014... first parts ordered early Jan 15
Started by ordering 8x 7k3000 ultrastars locally on special ($159aud), but ordered the motherboard at the same time, motherboard took 2.5 months to arrive! Meantime, even with multiple phone calls to check my order was held, my 8 drives reduced to 4 as people helped themselves to my 'held' order. I was offered 4x 7k4000 drives as a replacement (at a price premium of course) so I told them to send the motherboard and cancel the drives.

I then found the 7k3000 ultrastar 2tb at goharddrive at a ridiculous price, with discount for quantity, so ordered 12 drives plus another 5x 3tb toshibas for the micro server I have that is slowly killing its drives (old samsung 2tb) total 0rder was less than my order for 8 Drives would have been locally! A kind forum member has offered to handle the receival and forwarding of the parcel to me in Aus.

Ram - incredible that for something so standard it was so hard to find locally. 2x 8gb ECC uDIMMS - anything upward of $150-200aud per stick! Bought from amazon at a total of $233aud inc shipping for 2 sticks.

Case, fans, graphics and PSU were all well priced locally and sourced easily.

4 or 5 in 3 drive cage was the next problem, they used to be easy to find locally, now nobody carries them and they dont want to order them either. So overseas we went again (uk) and sourced a Lian Li ex-36A2 4in3 drive cage for $56aud delivered.

Will update the post as It gets built as the parts arrive.

I'm hoping that I can aggregate the network ports as I would like to use this new system to store all media and recordings from the HTPC (mediaportal) to minimise the energy usage of the HTPC (htpc has twin gigabit ports built into the motherboard) It may also speed up the nightly backups to the HP microserver.

Steve O

 

[Deci]

Just to check, you are aware a single network transfer can only ever use 1 link worth of bandwidth in an aggregated/teamed group.

Having it on the server means the htpc and the microserver can both have a full gigabit with of bandwdith, but neither can use 2gigabit on their own even if they are also running an aggregated/teamed link.

 

[5teve]

Yep understand this, but if I have multiple channels recording (ie different files being produced) in theory I should be able to utilise the 2x connections on the HTPC, and likewise if I am watching and recording at the same time.. it should help... I think thanks for the info.. its made me look at LAG a bit more..

Re the backups.. I'm not sure it will help now, but could I perhaps it may help with concurrent backups?

Steve

 

[Scott Laird]

Different switches distribute traffic in LAGs differently. They're trying to avoid out-of-order packet delivery, where machine A sends packets 1, 2, and 3, and machine B receives 1, 3, and then 2. That will do horrible things to a lot of TCP stacks and destroy performance.

The way this is implemented is by using some sort of hash function that maps each packet deterministically onto a link of the LAG. Most cheap switches just hash over (src_mac, dst_mac), so all traffic between a pair of machines will be bottlenecked onto a single link, and adding more TCP connections, etc. won't help at all. Higher-end switches can also hash on IP and sometimes on port; if you hash on port than multiple TCP streams will have a chance on ending up on different links, but it's all probability. If you have 2 streams and 2 links, then half of the time you'll get 2 Gbps and half of the time you'll only get 1 Gbps.

There's one other thing to be really careful with with LAGs--static LAGs will always bite you eventually and cause difficult-to-debug problems. Like, you can only talk to half of the machines on your LAN all of a sudden. Or connections between hosts only work if the port numbers are both even or both odd. Or something fun like that. You really want to use some variant of LACP, which will actually *notice* when one of the links isn't actually active, or is plugged into the wrong device, or is mis-configured in software after a software upgrade.

 

[5teve]

Finally... the motherboard is due to be delivered TODAY!... ordered January arrived with the distributor mid march, delivered to the reseller late march and delivered to me today..

Anyone would think Asrock (Asrockrack) do not want to build their market up in Aus!

Steve

 

[capn_pineapple]

Why would they want to? There's no incentive to do so here. Nobody loves us mate!

 

[5teve]

Yeah we may be the lucky Country... but in some respects its so hard to get the less mainstream stuff.

It amazes me because most stuff is so well priced (very close to US) until you get something that is that leetle bit different and then its like they have to move the whole world to get one...

At least the Aussies love the Aussies (well most of them!)

Steve

 

[5teve]

More Progress!

Hard drives on on their way..

Build is progressing sort of - First time I have used this type of case with the rubber grommets to hide the cabling.. pretty impressed to be honest.

And 16 of the 32gb Ram has just arrived today also..

 

[5teve]

OK the remainder of the ram has arrived - thanks Creolelakerfan so 32gb all up.. all disks have been tested using winDFT and passed and are now in their trays fitted..

Now just waiting for the final goodies to arrive. (including some sata power cables - 1 to 5 port ones i think to keep things tidy!)

 

[5teve]

Well almost there!

Still waiting for a sas to 4x sas cable to arrive - From China.. as well as 2 external sas cables to hook up the external to internal adapter i have.. so could be any time.. but have 12 drives running from 2 HP cards. once the cables arrive i'll have all 12 drives in one array... and finalise the benchmarks.

My findings with the HP P822 and P420 can be found in my posts here https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/hp-pmc-sa-in-whitebox.4732/page-2

Once the cables have arrived and i'm finished, i'll get some pictures and power usage stats up on here

Steve