Not at home, but homebrewed...
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Posted by Andrew Burton on March 16, 2007, 1:59 pm
Please log in for more thread options computers. In doing that, our computer department has on its hands about twenty-seven 40GB serial ATA drives, which sparked the idea for a backup machine. We're planning to build it from scratch, and while I have experience building PC's and servers with IDE and SCSI drives, the technical challenges presented by this projects are a bit beyond what I'm used to, namely building a machine that will require space, connectivity, and power for at least six or more of these drives. What I'm curious about is this: 1. Can anyone recommend a decent ADA-RAID card for Linux? (I'm hoping for Ubuntu, but at this stage we haven't discussed that far.) 2. Can anyone suggest a place to buy a case with room for two power supplies. (Ideally we can do all this with one, but I'd rather be prepared.) 3. For this kind of project, would it be better to divide the drives up over a couple of motherboards, essentially putting a cluster in one box? Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks in advance! -- Andrew Burton tuglyraisin@aol.com http://utilitarian.us - A Guide to Esoteric Technology in Paragon City | |||||||||||||
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Posted by Paul on March 16, 2007, 4:36 pm
Please log in for more thread options Maybe I can attack this question, in a reverse order. Two brand new 750GB disks, would have the same storage capacity as your 27 disks. They use less electricity, and don't need a Herculean power supply. And there are probably two SATA ports on just about any computer you grab, to do the job. Linux should have no probs in such a simple environment. Disk cost totals $540. If you really want to build a server with that many disks, a $200 power supply might be used. A Silencer 750W has 12V@60A for example, and would be enough to spin up 30 disks at 2 amps a piece. 12V power drops to 0.6A at idle, after spinup, so 27 * 0.6A = 16.2 amps at 12V. Close to 200W of power just for the +12V rail. And on the +5V rail, the controller boards on the disk use 5V @ 1 amp, 27 amps total for 27 disks, or 135W there. All that heat must be efficiently exhausted, via multiple case fans. There are RAID racks, which might have good volumetric efficiency. I don't know what the electrical interface looks like on those, or what it takes to cable them up. A tower case has limits to how much it can hold, and a server case costs a fortune for a good one (less if dumpster diving or from Ebay). In terms of controller cards, the cheapest route I can see, is SATA controller cards based on SIL3114. That chip is four ports. You'd need 7 cards and would run out of PCI slots before you are done. Marvell makes an eight port SATA chip, which would be ideal for making a competitor to the SIL3114, but AFAIK, nobody makes cheap non-RAID controller cards with their chips. At least I haven't run into any along the way. It could be that Marvell priced the chips for usage only in RAID controllers, preventing companies like Syba from making a cheap controller. With an eight port card, you'd only need four cards. And probably the wrong bus interface, on an eight port controller chip like that. In the Cadillac class, there is Areca. They make RAID controllers. This is the most dense card I can find, and has 24 SATA ports on it. They make cards for different busses, and perhaps two 16 port PCI Express cards would be a better fit for your average desktop ("SLI" configuration) motherboard. $1170. Dunno about Linux drivers, as I expect the price is repellent enough to make checking for drivers irrelevant. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816151004 So, really, you'd have to have deep pockets, and be doing it for the fun of having a monster disk farm. There are other ways to build storage controllers. For example, a two port RAID storage controller based on SIL3132, can be used with SATA port multiplier boxes. The port multiplier box converts one SATA port to five ports. Thus, with one controller card, you get 10 ports total. Still waiting to see someone combine the three chips here, on a single controller card (with resultant price drop). SIL3132 <-----> 5 port, port multiplier box $100
2 Port Controller <-----> 5 port, port multiplier box $100 The SIL3132 is pretty cheap (cheaper than the boxes). Getting enough ports, and a power supply, might cost you $1000 or so, sans computer case. So far, the SIL3114 is about the best I could do, and maybe with a 6 slot PCI bus machine, you could host six $20 cards. So your cost is $200 for power, $120 for controllers. And hope that all six will co-exist peacefully. SYBA SD-SATA-4P PCI SATA Controller Card - (SIL3114 based) $20 each. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815124020 2cpu.com has participants with large storage servers. You might register on this site, and use their search engine, for more ideas. http://forums.2cpu.com/showthread.php?t=61453 I'm not saying it is impossible, merely wasteful of electricity. And perhaps space, depending on what you can find for a case for the 27 disks. Maybe you have a local computer recycler, and the 27 disks can be used in some computers saved from the scrap heap ? Or sell the lot on Ebay and see what they will fetch. You might get enough to make a down payment on the 2x750GB solution. Paul | |||||||||||||
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Posted by Jeff on March 21, 2007, 9:09 am
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>
> Maybe you have a local computer recycler, and the 27 disks can > be used in some computers saved from the scrap heap ? Or sell the > lot on Ebay and see what they will fetch. You might get enough > to make a down payment on the 2x750GB solution. > > Paul ...not to mention the fact that these drives are probably what, 4-5 years old? with a what, 3 year warranty? So for a "backup" you will be using disks that are more likely to fail than the disks storing the original data? The poster mentioned using perhaps only 6 of the 27 disks. That's less than 240 gigs of space, presumably knocked in half if you are using raid with mirroring or down under 200 if you are using raid 5. I just bought a few new 400 gig seagate drives for about $119 each. So about twice the space for $119? I could think of very many other things to fiddle with that would be more interesting and useful. If I had those disks, I would clone the operating systems from the the machines that they were pulled from onto them using ghost or Acronis, set them aside for use in an emergency, and buy a new drive or two for backup purposes. Jeff -- Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com | |||||||||||||
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> computers. In doing that, our computer department has on its hands
> about twenty-seven 40GB serial ATA drives, which sparked the idea for a
> backup machine. We're planning to build it from scratch, and while I
> have experience building PC's and servers with IDE and SCSI drives, the
> technical challenges presented by this projects are a bit beyond what
> I'm used to, namely building a machine that will require space,
> connectivity, and power for at least six or more of these drives.
>
> What I'm curious about is this:
>
> 1. Can anyone recommend a decent ADA-RAID card for Linux? (I'm hoping
> for Ubuntu, but at this stage we haven't discussed that far.)
>
> 2. Can anyone suggest a place to buy a case with room for two power
> supplies. (Ideally we can do all this with one, but I'd rather be
> prepared.)
>
> 3. For this kind of project, would it be better to divide the drives up
> over a couple of motherboards, essentially putting a cluster in one box?
>
> Any suggestions would be appreciated. Thanks in advance!
>