New Rig for WCG/Fileserver purposes

[jcool]

Hey folks!

I was about to build a fileserver since everyone here keeps complainig about their HDDs being constantly full (including myself). I wanted to get 4 to 8 750GB Sata drives, get a decent Raidcon for a Raid 5 and put it in a cheepo Rebel9 Case on a cheepo C2D rig with some E2180, P35 and some DDR2 I have lying around. But it would be watercooled, because I was gonna put the HDDs in so-called quadboxes made by Watercool Germany (they absorb vibrations, noise, and provide great cooling for 4 drives each) and because I want it to be dead quiet.
Now I have been thinking about using something more "serious" as I would like to have a crunching monster for WCG, too.

So my eyes are set on a Dual harpertown now, having read here (http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=176183) that they are very energy-efficient and rock in general :D

So, I need assistance with the following points:

1. Which mobo to get? I was thinking about the Asus DSEB-D16/SAS (http://geizhals.at/deutschland/a306203.html) so I might even save myself the 350€ for an 8port SAS card :)
Any other suggestions?
Edit: hah, would have been to easy. Asus HP says I would need an extra addon card for raid 5... I bet it's gonna be expensive.
Anyways, found another possible mobo for the purpose, since this Asus has "SSI EEB 3.61" form factor which seems to be very exotic. In fact, I only found one case supporting it and that sucked big time so:

Tyan Tempest i5400XT (http://www.tyan.com/product_board_detail.aspx?pid=562), without the SAS controller it's only 335€ and seems to support all I need, 400FSB, 45nm quads and enough addon card slots, and its normal E-ATX :)

Edit2: Crap, that one above only supports DDR2-667 and 333 FSB.. I'd have to get the S5397 (http://geizhals.at/deutschland/a298458.html) for FSB400/DDR2-800 support. Costs another 40 bucks but what the heck. Greater problem is that I scanned the manual for these Tyans and, frustrating even though expected, couldn't find a jumper or bios setting for FSB :( So I'd have to mod the CPUs to get 400 FSB I guess...

Edit3 (lol): Ha, found something. The Asus Z7S (http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/01/09/first-exclusive-inqpressions) is standard ATX and supports overclocking in Bios! FSB, Vcore and even PLL voltage, if you can believe it. Anyone know when it's going to hit the market? I guess it should also be kinda cheap... AND I could use a smaller case. My favorite right now, except that it's not available anywhere :(

2. Which CPUs to get. I thought about getting E5420's and setting them to 400FSB so I'd have 3Ghz - should be possible because the mobo supports 400Mhz FSB.
But on the power saving aspect getting some L Harpertowns might also be interesting. They have a TDP of 50W as opposed to 80W, having 30W less per CPU will sure pay off in 24/7 operation. Am talking about those (http://geizhals.at/deutschland/a293867.html)

3. What memory to get, and how much? I really don't know anything about FBDimms, but I do know I don't need that much ram. For 400FSB I should get 800 rated FBDimms I guess, or can the 667's overclock easily like with normal DDR2?

4. What case. Now this is gonna be difficult, since I will be watercooling the setup. I will need atleast 8 5 1/4" slots and space for a triple rad, pump and so on. Also has to be dead quiet like I said... Thinking about the TJ07 but not sure whether SSI mobo will fit.

Will be running Windows XP x64 on it, as I am on my mainrig right now :)

Now, I know this is not exactly the right forum for this kind of request, but I figured, since this will be mostly for WCG crunching it's all right ;)

Thanks in advance!

[jcool]

Comments/ideas anyone? :(

[[XC] Jaco]

5400 board for sure. (with 400FSB support, some 5400 boards only do 333FSB officially). Tyan or Supermicro , both good choices, i think.

Those L5420 cpu's are very nice ,only 50w TDP :)
I would get those if you can afford it. Energy efficient also means less fan noise , and maybe 1 size smaller PSU.

Memory : I would suggest FB 800 dimms , but those are still rare .It's not sure if 667 FB dimms will work with a cpu BSEL modded to 400FSB. Depends on the motherboard *I think* . S_B and MM know more about it.

case? no idea , still looking myself

[jcool]

I can get a DDR2-800 2GB Kingston FB-Dimm here in Germany for under 100€ no problem :)
1Gig sticks are also available for under 50, but I only see Kingston - seems they have the monopoly here for now.

How is it with performance with these FB Dimms anyway? From what I understand, I have to populate 1, 2 or 4 channels. But do I get real performance improvements when running 1 or 2 channels compared to all 4?

Question is whether these L5420's will hit 3Ghz with default (assumingly very low) Vcore.. I'm afraid the risk is a bit too high, since I haven't seen any Vcore mods via pinmod so far :(

About the case, in the German HWluxx forums someone is using the above mentioned Asus DSEB (the one witht he strange form factor) in a LianLi V2000 no problem. I'm currently thinking about a lianli 343b cube or a Silverstone TJ07, both can fit E-ATX and my WC setup easily.

[[XC] Jaco]

Don't know about the L5420 cpu's. If they're running 1.1vcore standard , 3Ghz is asking much. Worth a try :) anyway 2.5Ghz is not bad either :D

[jcool]

On the other hand, my Q6600 can do 3Ghz at 1,1V easily and it's 65nm, so it should be possible. :)

[[XC] moddolicous]

I was actually researching RAID options a couple of days ago and thought that some of the rarer raid options would probably be better option (Raid 50,60, or 01). Unfortunately, none of the supermicro boards seems to offer any of those, so you will need to buy a raid card in addition to the motherboard. CPU's and RAM I am not much help with. As for cases, get something with a lot of room. I would suggest maybe a stacker or something along those lines.

[Brian MP5T]

Nice

[jcool]

Very helpful Brian :D

Anyway as for case I was thinking of getting a V343B maybe... it's got plenty of room for watercooling and 18 5 1/4" slots :cool:
Plus it looks cool for a server, just rather expensive...

[[XC] moddolicous]

What is the max amount of people you think will be accessing the server at one time? Like 2-3 or higher?

[jcool]

Not that many, max of 4-5 I'd say. Nothing the Supertrak EX8650 couldn't handle. My main concern is storage, but it's always nice to have the speed.

[Blauhung]

hehe, i'm on the same page as you guys too (only still not quite dual socket). I have been ogling one of these
http://www.highpoint-tech.com/USA/rr3520.htm

[jcool]

Nice controller, has the exact same CPU/Ram as the Promise and should perform well accordingly. Only difference is that it can't handle SAS drives ;)

[keiths]

I'd do a cheap $60 p35 + $60 e2140, two cores are beneficial, but it's unecessary to overclock it, and preferably better not for greater stability(I'd be underclocking and undervolting for power savings), and "splurge" by filling it with 8gb of $125(us) generic ddr2. More cache, faster server, and less drive access = greater disk longevity. Of course, if you go for one of those server boards that need ecc fbdimms, your memory cost is 2x, but it does give you 8 and 16 dimm slots, which I'd completely fill with the cheapest 2gb dimms I could find.
Open Solaris for zfs(which I'd configure with compression, less disk access = greater longevity & speed again), raidz, & dtrace. Configure with iscsi, etherboot, gpxe(you can boot xp, w2k, etc off of server and go diskless on your workstation.) If you're not familier with these, read up on them, you'll be salivating before you're through. No need for fretting over noise vs cooling trade off; build a regular system and stick in a closet, preferably in a room across the house connected by a long cat6a cable.

[jcool]

Thanks for your input, but I've set my mind on that dual Harpertown now ;)
I really wanna have some firepower there, and a cheapo Dualcore isn't going to give me that. As for cooling, there is no alternative to watercooling for me, and I won't put it in a closet either because it will be looking great :D

Very interested in your software opinions though. I'm not really into anything but windows, but running the server off a networked HDD sure sounds good.
I didn't want to put the servers' OS onto the Raid array anyways, but I just thought about using a small 2,5" drive for that purpose.
However I'm not so sure about WCG performance under Solaris (which this is really about, apart from the fileserving which probably my P3 500 could handle) - I heard BOINC performs best with 64bit windows and that's what I am using already.

About the case, I think I've settled on a Yeon Yang cube. A good friend of mine wants to trade in his (http://fs03.eu/wp-content/gallery/yeong-yang/thumbs/thumbs_IMG_3146.jpg) for a 100 bucks, and it'll be perfect, saves me lots of cutting and even some money compared to buying a new one.

[keiths]

The raid configured hdds would be plugged into the server with the memory, it's your workstation that would be diskless, that is, if you plan to have two systems. If your intent for this machine is it to be the same one you sit at, then the file server-diskless workstation setup isn't applicable.

[jcool]

Hey,
no, the Dual Harpertown rig is going to be a separate, new rig. Used mainly for lots of (fast) storage and of course WCG crunching.
I wanted to build the raid 5 into my main system at first, but I figured it would not be advisable to have a server-class raid 5 setup coupled with a system that normally only runs raid 0 and uses extremely overclocked hardware with experimental cooling solutions (SS..)
In the event of something burning or dying (not that unlikely with a 65nm quad over 4Ghz), I wouldn't have access to the data. :)

My primary concern is to have a great "all-in-one" system that delivers high performance (per watt). Building costs are of secondary concern. I also don't want to get too many systems, I already have the mainrig, the HTPC, and my subnotebook. This server would be the fourth and final rig, therefore I need it to be truly awesome (if that makes any sense lol).

So, like I said earlier, I was gonna set up the raid 5 with a max of 8 drives and run the servers' OS from a small, additional HDD. Nothing wrong with that, is there? Or can I run the OS from the raid 5 without loosing much performance?

[keiths]

A boot drive is fine. As for raid5, raidz is way better. Here's an explanation of why: http://blogs.sun.com/bonwick/entry/raid_z
And then there's all the features that ZFS has. Some roughly equivalent ZFS features can be found in Linux doing reiser4+lzo compression+lvm but it pales in comparision and their is no raidz linux contemporary. ZFS can be run on Linux with FUSE, but performance is horrible; FUSE is really for academic testing.

[jcool]

Open Solaris for zfs(which I'd configure with compression, less disk access = greater longevity & speed again), raidz, & dtrace. Configure with iscsi, etherboot, gpxe(you can boot xp, w2k, etc off of server and go diskless on your workstation.)

Okay... so in order to use raidZ, I would have to install Solaris OS onto the server and use zfs filesystem (instead of NTFS) rite? ...and then go from there with the programs you mentioned. RaidZ sounds great but Solaris is a bit much for a Windows-kid like me I'm afraid :(

About the software you mentioned, is that all open-source (for free) or do I have to pay?
Dou you think it's realistic I can get this to work properly by reading tutorials and doinf basic trial-and-error? I really don't know anything about software compiling and stuff, being just another hardware-addict :D

So what'd you reckon... possible/worth learning?

If so, more information/links to tutorials for noobs would be much appreciated :)

[keiths]

It's open. They even have a free starter kit: http://get.opensolaris.org/
If you want to try out solaris, linux, bsd, etc. without building a system, check out qemu and virtualbox. Qemu has a lot of images already prepared, and virtualbox has a more polished configuration process.
qemu: http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/
virtualbox: http://www.virtualbox.org/
images: http://www.oszoo.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
here's an online trial; even has a solaris image: http://floz.v2.cs.unibo.it:8880/

[jcool]

Thank you, I'll look into it.

One other storage question, can I tell a raid5/Z/whatever array to shut all drives down when there has been no access for, say, one hour? Because there will be days or even a week without a single access I think, and shutting down the drives would save some power in 24/7 operation. Does that depend on the controller or can I just tell the OS to do the shutdown after X min of idle (like with single drives attached to the mobo) ?

[keiths]

There's power management(http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/features/articles/disk_power_saving.jsp), but raid5/z works by striping data across drives in an array. You will pretty much need to not have accessed the array in that hour, which if you load up on system memory for drive cache and don't flush to disk in that time(you'll need to turn off cache flush: http://milek.blogspot.com/2008/02/2530-array-and-zfs.html), it's.. possible.