Building a high performance home server

[UA_Iron]

Has anyone had any experience building a home server?

Ideally I am trying to do something like a network gateway Untangle server with file sharing and frequent backups to multiple computers. I dont know if such a solution exists for both of these requirements but it would be nice.

I was thinking a low power consumption, highly efficient core 2 or AMD based rig. I am thinking a dedicated SAS/SATA controller with battery backup. Also thinking of SAS harddrives as the reported reliability and mutliple i/o operations would be much better than standard SATA harddrives.

This rig is for my parents house in southern California where every October all **** seems to break loose so I think the reliability and backups will be well worth it.

Anyone have any input?

 

[SapperX]

A file sharing server is extremely straightforward and you shouldn't need anything too fancy at all. In essence its just an older computer with large hard drives.

As for backing up frequently, I have never attempted this, but would be interested in learning more about it as well.

If money is no option, go with some nice parts... otherwise I would spend money on huge hard drives and cheap out on things such as processor and mobo (ie. single core old socket perhaps).

 

[UA_Iron]

A file sharing server is extremely straightforward and you shouldn't need anything too fancy at all. In essence its just an older computer with large hard drives.

As for backing up frequently, I have never attempted this, but would be interested in learning more about it as well.

If money is no option, go with some nice parts... otherwise I would spend money on huge hard drives and cheap out on things such as processor and mobo (ie. single core old socket perhaps).

Yeah, I am thinking that maybe the dedicated SAS controller card with battery backup may be unnecessary. A single battery backup for the whole computer may be the cheaper way to go - it would give enough time to turn off the computer without hard drive damage.
Perhaps a system with multiple mirrored drives would be sufficient too.

I think windows home server will do backups of your computers no problem. Would be nice if I could run untangle on it as well.

 

[Nagasama]

yes, i vote put the hard drives in RAID 1 (2 hdds, protection against loss of one disk, halves storage capacity) or RAID 5 (uses 3+ hdds and reduces storage capacity by 1 HDD however many you use). then you dont have to worry about backing them up.

 

[Hefemeister]

Even with a raid 5 or raid 1 arrays I will still have backups in place. Reasons are if you do not keep an eye on your array one drive may fail and it will still run. When the second one fails you are toast. Second I always prefer an offsite backup in case of fire or other catastrophic event if the files are very important. For all of my pictures I take a hard drive to a family members house once a month to keep there. If you data is replaceable a raid 1 or 5 would be sufficient.

 

[zedman3d]

Grab yourself a Pentium Dual core (E2160), grab yourself a cheap stick of ram and a $50 motherboard and wack some 1TB's in there.

 

[UA_Iron]

Grab yourself a Pentium Dual core (E2160), grab yourself a cheap stick of ram and a $50 motherboard and wack some 1TB's in there.

thats what I was building on newegg. got it down to like ~450 or so.

not bad

 

[zedman3d]

I got it to $425 not including any mail in rebates. Has 2 1TB HDD's and a E2180 2GHZ, a Coolermaster Case, LG DVD Drive, ECS mobo and 2GB Ram.

PM me your email and ill send you the cart if im on.

 

[Nagasama]

Even with a raid 5 or raid 1 arrays I will still have backups in place. Reasons are if you do not keep an eye on your array one drive may fail and it will still run. When the second one fails you are toast. Second I always prefer an offsite backup in case of fire or other catastrophic event if the files are very important. For all of my pictures I take a hard drive to a family members house once a month to keep there. If you data is replaceable a raid 1 or 5 would be sufficient.

yeah if you have very important stuff a hard backup is essential. if you are worried about losing more than one drive, you could use RAID 6, it can recover from the loss of 2 discs. you should be aware of a drive failure when it happens...especially if it is in your home.
but i agree with hefe that if you have some irreplaceable data, you should use a seperate backup.

 

[UA_Iron]

I got it to $425 not including any mail in rebates. Has 2 1TB HDD's and a E2180 2GHZ, a Coolermaster Case, LG DVD Drive, ECS mobo and 2GB Ram.

PM me your email and ill send you the cart if im on.

I want to steer clear of ECS mobos - never have had good experiences with them. Are you sure it has RAID too?