I have been using my previous workstation as my media server, and have my media files on my NAS.... Well my media service died (technically for the second time Guessing PSU or MB), so it is time to plan a replacement.
I have temporarily cloned the old server into a VM on my workstation but I am thinking it is time to combine the media server and nas as well as increase storage.
Now here is the problem.... I really like PLEX, however, i like PLEX for the trans-coding to the various endpoints. Although plex runs on QNAP and Synology NAS boxs now none of the affordable home ones use fast enough CPUs to trans-code.
My research shows that I basically need a dual core 2 Ghz processor or better so I am thinking an i5 bottom of the line. I will probably go linux for the OS again but maybe ubuntu instead of debian for better support of current packages.
The real question is getting the cost down. I would like to have a minimum of 4 TB in a redundant RAID, however looking at the 3TB drive costs I am thinking 6TB with 3 drives in software RAID5.
I would really like to find an affordable SMALL case as well.
I have been looking at mini and mico ATX boards to see what is there, making the whole setup small would be ideal, I don't want a large tower kicking around any more, I was also thinking I could use the system directly connected to a TV as an endpoint.
Anyone seen any interesting SMALL cases that can accommodate at least 3 drives, maybe 4?
Also any killer deals on CPU and MB kicking around?
A question: what do you plan to do with your old NAS? Is it going to be the backup for your RAID array in this box?
And sorry, I can't answer for the small cases or CPU/MB deals, other than to say the combos seem to save a bit of money.
Not sure what I will do with the old NAS... It isn't much more than a 2TB drive in a case.. The read/write performance is fairly poor on it..
I found a great case however not in stock, or nearly out. IDEAL for a build it your self NAS or Media server.
Fractal Design Array R2 Black Mini ITX Storage Computer Case 1X2.5INT 6X3.5INT 140mm Fan 300W PSU
http://ncix.com/products/?sku=53545&vpn=ARRAY-R2&manufacture=Fractal%20Design&promoid=1360
Second pick for a case at the moment is this one below, much less specialized but the price is right and it isn't overly big.
Fractal Design Core 1000 mATX Computer Case
http://ncix.com/products/?sku=58341&vpn=FD-CA-CORE-1000-BL&manufacture=Fractal%20Design&promoid=1360
I really like that first case for a storage box. The second one has 2 3.5" bays, which really isn't that great. Sure you can get a 2x5.25" to 3x3.5" adapter but those cost $50 or more.
5.25 to 3.5 rails are only about $3 to $6
I really only need a total of 3 or 4 3.5In drives.
Edit: after reading more closely and on another site I see the drive problem now. It will really only just fit 3 3.5 drives, which is enough but a bit limiting.
Looks like newegg.ca also stocks the first case which has two issues, price and lots of screws.
How about this one: http://www.lian-li.com/v2/en/product/product06.php?pr_index=625&cl_index=1&sc_index=25&ss_index=62&g=spec
Suppose to be good if you can find it: http://www.lian-li.com/v2/en/product/product06.php?pr_index=624&cl_index=1&sc_index=25&ss_index=62&g=spec
Good price and the drive space : http://www.bitfenix.com/global/en/products/chassis/prodigy/
Course if you want to be cool: http://www.pugetsystems.com/aquarium-computer.php?utm_source=Puget+Systems+Press&utm_campaign=89e0a82f6a-PRESS_01_09_2011&utm_medium=email
He LIVES!
Only advise I'd give is check out the air flow designs in the small cases. I tried the small form factor cases in the past and had drives burn out because the airflow in the small cases wasn't designed properly.
Quote from: Mags on September 24, 2012, 07:17:47 AM
Good price and the drive space : http://www.bitfenix.com/global/en/products/chassis/prodigy/
Hmm it appears that NCIX has a stock problem on BOTH of the cases I like the most.
Quote from: Lazybones on September 24, 2012, 12:40:00 PM
Quote from: Mags on September 24, 2012, 07:17:47 AM
Good price and the drive space : http://www.bitfenix.com/global/en/products/chassis/prodigy/
Hmm it appears that NCIX has a stock problem on BOTH of the cases I like the most.
I've found on some stuff they say they stock, they really don't. Some more obscure or niche stuff is full filled on demand from suppliers. Sometimes its marked clearly as such, but not always.
Both the train and the aquarium cases are cool, nice find Mags!
Waii I get to be the resurrector today.
LIAN LI PC-Q25B:
http://www.lian-li.com/v2/en/product/product06.php?pr_index=584&cl_index=1&sc_index=25&ss_index=64&g=f
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112339
Super slick looking, its a Lian-Li, so the quality should be there, its not too horribly expensive, and it has 7 HDD bays. Would make for a very slick 10TB file server (7x2TB RAID6).
Makes me drool. If only there was one with 8 3.5" bays, and one 2.5". That would be perfect.
The fractal design node seems to be the successor to the Array case?
http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=75056&vpn=FD%2DCA%2DNODE%2D304%2DBL&manufacture=Fractal%20Design
Also a nice case, but only has 6 bays.
Hmm that LIAN LI is not bad...
I have had to shelve the rebuild for now... I dumping some more ram into my desktop and running the Linux media server under Hyper-V is working very well at the moment... I would love to get them separated and to increase my home storage but I have opted to purge old media and make space for now.
Quote from: Tom on November 27, 2012, 08:06:11 PM
Waii I get to be the resurrector today.
LIAN LI PC-Q25B:
http://www.lian-li.com/v2/en/product/product06.php?pr_index=584&cl_index=1&sc_index=25&ss_index=64&g=f
http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112339
Super slick looking, its a Lian-Li, so the quality should be there, its not too horribly expensive, and it has 7 HDD bays. Would make for a very slick 10TB file server (7x2TB RAID6).
Makes me drool. If only there was one with 8 3.5" bays, and one 2.5". That would be perfect.
The fractal design node seems to be the successor to the Array case?
http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=75056&vpn=FD%2DCA%2DNODE%2D304%2DBL&manufacture=Fractal%20Design
Also a nice case, but only has 6 bays.
porn for hardware nerds?
Quote from: Lazybones on November 27, 2012, 08:10:59 PM
Hmm that LIAN LI is not bad...
I have had to shelve the rebuild for now... I dumping some more ram into my desktop and running the Linux media server under Hyper-V is working very well at the moment... I would love to get them separated and to increase my home storage but I have opted to purge old media and make space for now.
Yeah, I've got a build in mind for that case, but it's going to have to wait till I actually need it. Which might be a while ;D
http://secure.newegg.ca/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=15917409
Thats what I have in mind. Note, you could build a nice little nas box for 1/3 the cost of that config. But that config gets you ECC ram, and support for the LSI SAS cards I have (most desktop boards don't support them at all).
Quote from: Thorin on November 27, 2012, 08:40:09 PM
porn for hardware nerds?
See above. (and the stack of 7 2TB harddrives that are on my desk, 1 3TB, and 2 more WD 2TB Green drives that I will never stick in a RAID array, ever).
As long as it's quiet :)
Quote from: Mr. Analog on November 27, 2012, 09:17:35 PM
As long as it's quiet :)
One of the main reasons its a tiny mini-itx based system. It'll chew up a max of 200w, and most likely 150w or less. Which means the whole thing could probably run with a single 120mm fan going at its lowest speed. It'll just sit there and chug away. Noisy part might be the 7 HDDs in there clunking away.
I think for myself I'm going with a Synology 1812+ for the good old storage server. Runs Plex natively and is an 8 Bay, 3.5" with expandable ram. Will be ideal for my home needs and I'll soon have a Drobo for sale if anyone is interested.
But Tom your wish list there looks really nice!
That synology is /very/ nice. But also twice the price of my little build :( If I were to spend that much I'd want to get myself a 16-20+ bay hotswap 4u server case.
Quote from: Melbosa on November 28, 2012, 07:15:47 AM
Synology 1812+ for the good old storage server. Runs Plex natively
I would double check how much transcoding you are depending on with your content and devices... The 1812+ has enough CPU to trans-code up to a point.
http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/topic/38419-plex-on-new-synology-models-1812-1512/page__view__findpost__p__244340
Quote
720p MKV x264 5.1 DTS : no problem playing back on ATV2 (plex Client), Klexi on Ipad and IPhone. -> CPU while transcoding @ 80% usage (45 min Episode too around 20 mins for complete conversion. Seems Plex does the conversion as fast as it can and stores the converted filde in a temp-folder to stream it to the client)
1080p MKV x264 5.1 DTS : Playback stopped after 25 secs on ATV2 (plex Client). On IPad and IPhone using Klexi it stopped after 33sec. CPU while transcoding @ 95% usage
I then had the idea to pause playback directly after starting it (to let the CPU transcode a bit more) and resume playback after about 2 mins.
That lead to the fact that I was able to watch around 5 mins of the movie without stuttering. After 4.57mins it stopped again. CPU usage was again around 95%.
It seems there is not much we are missing there, but still, the CPU is not powerful enough :-(
Maybe something can be done on the software-side of things...
Server side trans-coding is the main reason i use Plex and also why I am looking again at building a small CUSTOM NAS from standard parts to get more CPU.
Most of my content is 720p, and the CPU in the Synology 1812+ is bigger than the one in my current Plex media server. With the expanded RAM I am hoping not to see much issues. My Drobo is full, and after it crashed I don't really trust it anymore (I know no reason for that - just my gut feeling). I have bought a couple of these 1812+ for client sites that wanted small foot print NAS devices with lots of storage.
I'll keep you guys posted when I get my 1812+ and I'll let you know how it goes with the Plex stuff. If it doesn't do Plex justice... well it still gives me an 8 bay NAS device that is highly rated.
Yeah I could build a comp for a bit cheaper (I can get an 1812+ with 3GB ram for $899 CDN) but meh, I don't want another computer - I have 5 running all day at my house... I want small, compact and no hassle updating. My preference.
Quote from: Melbosa on November 28, 2012, 10:44:29 AM
Yeah I could build a comp for a bit cheaper (I can get an 1812+ with 3GB ram for $899 CDN) but meh, I don't want another computer - I have 5 running all day at my house... I want small, compact and no hassle updating. My preference.
I hear you... The only thing that bugs me about those units is the price vs build... You can slap a Linux NAS distro on top of standard hardware and get most of the easy benefits of management, but when it comes down to it, it is really nice knowing you just need to slap some disk in and away it goes.
720p tends to be my upper limit for content as well and even then most of my endpoints natively play h.264 so trans-coding is less of an issue. I am very interested in what your results are. There are also some nice personal cloud features offered standard from those Synology and QNAP units, including iPhone apps etc.
The set and forget aspect is something that really attracts me to those units. Something I may yet still do.
Good news everyone!
(http://strangesoft.net/goodnewseveryone.png)
(bet you can't not read that in his voice)
My Mediabox died today!
It's a fun story too. I install the ram, and it won't post. so I try removing one stick at a time till it does post. Then I try to see exactly which stick or sticks are dead, and it turns out its just one stick. In the middle of all that I wanted to see if maybe, possibly my old board's bios was maybe not happy with the full 8GB ram. So I updated the bios. Then when I boot into linux, the machine seems to stall in a couple places during boot. So I go try to run memtest86+, but memtest86+ won't boot from grub, it complains that there isn't enough low mem available. Seems that error is common with newer bios's, they have started using memory they really shouldn't. So I then go downgrade the bios and it fixes the memtest86+ error. After memtest86+ finished (successfully), I went to go reboot the machine.... And nothing. No post. Fans and drives spin up, but no post. It's at this point that I realize that I can smell something a bit odd, a bit like magic blue smoke, and I just swore. Also at that point, I notice that the memory is quite hot.
As a last ditch attempt to get the box running, I try my old ram, and nope. no post there either. I think the motherboard is dead.
Somewhat of a crappy day. But it's given me an excuse to pick up that NAS hardware I priced out. Put the order in already, and managed to save a bit by buying most of it at ncix. Only thing I had to buy from newegg was the case.
Fun times.
Bleh! That sucks, reminds me of my own battles with RAM
On the plus side new machine!
do you have a video card for it too?
Yeah, so, this is why we work - to afford new hardware purchases! :)
Sucks that it borked, but cool that you get to buy a new machine. Will you still get to craft mines on your big screen with the new media server?
Quote from: Mr. Analog on December 06, 2012, 07:17:13 AM
Bleh! That sucks, reminds me of my own battles with RAM
On the plus side new machine!
do you have a video card for it too?
Quote from: Thorin on December 06, 2012, 09:24:52 AM
Yeah, so, this is why we work - to afford new hardware purchases! :)
Sucks that it borked, but cool that you get to buy a new machine. Will you still get to craft mines on your big screen with the new media server?
Here's where it gets even better.
I just realized, as I woke up today that.. Get this... The board only has four sata ports, and one pcie port. I can't both use it as a nas and a mini gaming rig. Either I can put my SAS card in there or my new GPU... Not both. Bloody hell.
So yeah, no. no gaming on it. But I think I'll just have to figure something else out. Cheap ass mATX board or something. cheap ass corei3 or one of amd's new things. We'll see.
Man, this is why I shouldn't get all trigger happy.
Well, if you need a new vid card I have a GeForce 470 GTX up for grabs.
It's pretty good for most stuff.
Quote from: Mr. Analog on December 06, 2012, 10:11:02 AM
Well, if you need a new vid card I have a GeForce 470 GTX up for grabs.
It's pretty good for most stuff.
Thanks. The problem is there's no place to put a gpu in that box if it's going to be a NAS as well. :( mITX board means one PCIe slot, and it only has 4 SATA ports, and I need a minimum of 7-8. And yeah, I just recently bought a NVidia Gforce GT640. Nice little card.
My only real solution at this point is to either cancel my order(s) and rethink things, or let it go through, and also pick up a new cheap ass media box setup.
I'd slap together a new media box setup if I had the choice. Generally you won't use your NAS for anything else anyway.
Quote from: Mr. Analog on December 06, 2012, 10:16:29 AM
I'd slap together a new media box setup if I had the choice. Generally you won't use your NAS for anything else anyway.
My hope was to use it for both. But I didn't quite think things through as far as I should have. That said, I want this box anyhow. So I'ma keep it. I'll just spend a couple hundred extra on a cheap little mATX setup to go in my existing media box case. win-win.
Groovy.
Well let me know if you want the vid card anyway, otherwise I'll put it up for grabs.
Quote from: Mr. Analog on December 06, 2012, 10:20:36 AM
Groovy.
Well let me know if you want the vid card anyway, otherwise I'll put it up for grabs.
Nah I'm good. Thanks though :) Maybe if I didn't just buy the 640 :-X
I'm just saying if you are going to build another box and you want it for gaming or transcoding this is a great card.
Quote from: Mr. Analog on December 06, 2012, 10:26:08 AM
I'm just saying if you are going to build another box and you want it for gaming or transcoding this is a great card.
Hm, after looking at the specs a bit, it is a bit better of a card. Is it a full length card? The media box case can fit a max of an 8" card.
OH yeah, it's massive, 9.5" (241mm)
Minimum power 550 W
Quote from: Mr. Analog on December 06, 2012, 10:42:48 AM
OH yeah, it's massive, 9.5" (241mm)
Minimum power 550 W
Yow. Nice card. Mine is a 65W card ;D though the comparison I saw says that that card isn't /that/ much better than mine. Mine is two generations newer. Its only like one step below yours in performance. So it's not a huge loss, but yours is definitely the better performer.
Yeah, it was beefy for its day, and I got it for a good deal, but on to bigger/better things.
Quote from: Mr. Analog on December 06, 2012, 10:11:02 AM
Well, if you need a new vid card I have a GeForce 470 GTX up for grabs.
It's pretty good for most stuff.
Is it noisy?
Quote from: Thorin on December 06, 2012, 11:30:54 AM
Quote from: Mr. Analog on December 06, 2012, 10:11:02 AM
Well, if you need a new vid card I have a GeForce 470 GTX up for grabs.
It's pretty good for most stuff.
Is it noisy?
Nope, it has a large diameter fan on it, very rarely did it even get up to full RPMs.
I never noticed it anyway.
My Drobo is louder.
It's also a lot better than the 8800GTS 320/640 that I think you have. And if Mr A says its pretty quiet, its probably quieter than the 8800GTS.
Quote from: Tom on December 06, 2012, 11:35:34 AM
It's also a lot better than the 8800GTS 320/640 that I think you have. And if Mr A says its pretty quiet, its probably quieter than the 8800GTS.
It's certainly more quiet than the 8800GTS in my XP machine, then again it's starting to age a bit, I can hear it ramp up when transcoding.
In case you guys are interested in what I got for the media box, here it is:
ASUS P8B75-M LE uATX LGA1155 B75 DDR3 2PCI-E16 2PCI SATA3 DVI HDMI USB3.0 Motherboard $79.99
Intel Core i3 3220 Dual Core Hyperthreading Processor LGA1155 3.3GHZ Ivy Bridge 3MB Retail Box $109.99
Kingston KVR13N9K2/16 16GB 2X8GB DDR3-1333 CL9 DIMM Non-ECC Dual Channel Memory Kit $69.85
Noctua NH-L9i LGA1155/1156 Low Profile Heatsink Cooler w/ Slim NF-A9x14 92MM PWM Fan $49.99
I didn't really need to get the new cooler, but I can't find the LGA1155 bracket for my Scythe Shuriken, either of them.
All in all, its a beefy little low power system. faster than what I've got at any rate. That cpu is actually faster than my desktop ;D at least per core. But the desktop (and media box) is a quadcore. so for compiling and such, the old phenoms should be faster overall.
total of $350 after shipping and tax. Not too bad.
That's a nice setup!
Quote from: Mr. Analog on December 06, 2012, 11:51:54 AM
That's a nice setup!
With a nice uATX case, (smaller than what I have currently) it'd actually make for a sweet tiny gaming rig. I actually wouldn't hesitate to bring this to the next fraga.
Media box is a go!
It's nice to have it up and working again.
hmmm wonder when my synology will be in...
I'm still waiting on the Lian Li case for my nas. Being sent slow boat from LA.
Quote from: Tom on December 10, 2012, 03:57:44 PM
I'm still waiting on the Lian Li case for my nas. Being sent slow boat from LA.
Woo! It arrived today!
The PSU I got for it is just a tad larger than I'd like it to be, so I might swap it out for a smaller one if I have one. Also, This is classic... It's a NAS right? And the SAS card takes SFF8087 cables.. I forgot to order the SFF8087 -> SATA breakout cables. \o/
The darn thing so far is absolutely silent. Too soon to tell how loud it'll be when all 7 HDDs are going in raid 6.
That's fantastic hah
I'm sure it will do the job, and then some
Quote from: Mr. Analog on December 13, 2012, 09:31:32 PM
That's fantastic hah
I'm sure it will do the job, and then some
It is WAY over speced. way. I will have no performance problems with it what so ever.
The nice thing about the case is it had room for 7 3.5" disks, and one 2.5" disk. That was super handy. I was hoping I wouldn't have to just leave the ssd dangling (using my desktop's old 30GB OCZ Vertex as the NASs boot disk). Three of the disks had to mount to a plate on the bottom of the case, but that's fine. It was nice that they made it so they used rubber vibration dampers on those drives. at the very least, those ones will run pretty quiet.
Yeah, use rubber to stop vibratorsvibrations.
Anyway! Did you figure out how you're gonna play Minecraft on your big-ass TV yet?
Quote from: Thorin on December 13, 2012, 10:18:21 PM
Yeah, use rubber to stop vibratorsvibrations.
Anyway! Did you figure out how you're gonna play Minecraft on your big-ass TV yet?
Yeah, after realizing that this nas hw wasnt going to work double duty, I replaced my media box hw as well. It's also way over specced. Core i3 3120, 16GB ram... yeah. it'll be just fine.
Hmm, got my new RAID array online:
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=JA11Cnhi
moose@mrbig:/mnt/mrbig/data/test$ time iozone -a -s 32G -r 8M
Iozone: Performance Test of File I/O
Version $Revision: 3.397 $
Compiled for 64 bit mode.
Build: linux-AMD64
Contributors:William Norcott, Don Capps, Isom Crawford, Kirby Collins
Al Slater, Scott Rhine, Mike Wisner, Ken Goss
Steve Landherr, Brad Smith, Mark Kelly, Dr. Alain CYR,
Randy Dunlap, Mark Montague, Dan Million, Gavin Brebner,
Jean-Marc Zucconi, Jeff Blomberg, Benny Halevy, Dave Boone,
Erik Habbinga, Kris Strecker, Walter Wong, Joshua Root,
Fabrice Bacchella, Zhenghua Xue, Qin Li, Darren Sawyer.
Ben England.
Run began: Sat Dec 22 19:46:42 2012
Auto Mode
File size set to 33554432 KB
Record Size 8192 KB
Command line used: iozone -a -s 32G -r 8M
Output is in Kbytes/sec
Time Resolution = 0.000001 seconds.
Processor cache size set to 1024 Kbytes.
Processor cache line size set to 32 bytes.
File stride size set to 17 * record size.
random random bkwd record stride
KB reclen write rewrite read reread read write read rewrite read fwrite frewrite fread freread
33554432 8192 212507 210382 630327 630852 372807 161710 388319 4922757 617347 210642 217122 717279 716150
The read numbers are absolutely insane. Going to see about the "low" write numbers. But maybe that's normal for a big raid6.
The more spindles you have the more speed you should have in your array however writes require more CPU, RAM etc so if you are not using dedicated hardware a software raid might have poor write performance.
Hey, can you control your media hardware from your harmony remote (or any remote)?
Quote from: Lazybones on December 23, 2012, 11:01:45 AM
The more spindles you have the more speed you should have in your array however writes require more CPU, RAM etc so if you are not using dedicated hardware a software raid might have poor write performance.
Its a rather beefy machine, it barely notices when the array is in use.
Quote from: Thorin on December 23, 2012, 11:35:34 AM
Hey, can you control your media hardware from your harmony remote (or any remote)?
Yup. :)
This time with a slightly older but custom built kernel: (I disabled desktop preemption, usually gains you some throughput)
random random bkwd record stride
KB reclen write rewrite read reread read write read rewrite read fwrite frewrite fread freread
33554432 8192 277607 259159 709837 702192 399889 151629 399779 4846688 655210 251297 245953 783930 778595