1. ANTEC Performance TX1050B with 500W Antec SPII $162.00 + tax = $186.30 2. Vantec Stealth Case Fan SF8025L $10.00 + tax = $11.50 3. HighPoint RocketRAID 1640 $122.00 + tax = $140.30 4. Maxtor 300GB DiamondMax 10 SATA/150 16M 7200RPM $139.99 + tax = $161.00 5. Maxtor 300GB DiamondMax 10 SATA/150 16M 7200RPM $149.00 + tax = $172.49 6. Seagate Barracuda 300GB 7200.9 16MB 11MS SATA2 NCQ RoHS $129.98 + tax + shipping + insurance = $151.80 7. Seagate Barracuda 300GB 7200.8 8MB 8MS SATA NCQ $129.98 + tax + shipping = $145.49 8. Motherboard + CPU + RAM + OS Hard Drive (Free) $0.00 9. Ubuntu Dapper Linux OS with RAID 5 software (Free) $0.00Grand total = $968.88 CDN
First off, yes I could've saved about $46 had I bought all 4 hard drives as #7. But I couldn't because I needed to have a variety of drives. Both Maxtors are identical, but have different manufacturing dates. About 2 months apart.
Second, The Seagate hard drives had different shipping costs, and I only got insurance on one of them. Another not is that NCIX.com where I bought them only charges the GST!
Third, yes, the case is selling cheaper at RBComputing, but I found out too late. I believe it was only $8 cheaper. Still. As for the Maxtor, the $149.99 is funny because a week later, the price dropped by $7. Right now, hard drive prices are dropping like crazy. But hey, I needed them back then, not now. No point in looking back.
Forth, the case (#1) had to be good. In this case, it was one of the best. I've had 2 power supplies die on me in the past and they cause a lot of grief. I swore I'ld never skimp out on good cases and excellent power supplies again. You pay for you what you get.
The SATA RAID controller card (#3) proved to be not so powerful, and so was relegated to a simple SATA controller card, with Ubuntu Linux doing all the work instead.
As for the core computer components (#8), that was an older computer that I had that is of excellent quality. I could've used any old thing, but chose a good core.
And last but not least, thanks to Open Source, I got Ubuntu with manages my 900GB RAID 5 array. GNU/Linux is definitely the way to go when it comes to servers. The choice of EXT3 as the filesystem also made the choice easier to make.
The cool thing about my system is that it's more powerful than anything out there below $1000 (tax included) and it's scalable thanks to Ubuntu Linux. In the latest kernel and beta version of mdadm, growing a RAID 5 system is not only possible, it's dead easy! It would be very simple to buy another SATA controller card or the same HighPoint RocketRAID 1640 card since I know it works and attach another 4 hard drives in the future and grow that into the present RAID 5 array. At this point, I'm glad I got this beast of a case. The 500W should be sufficient for another 4 drives + controller card. Of course, this is well into the future as I've only filled up 25% of current RAID disk space.
NOTE: I bought my parts from Ottawa (PCCyber, OEMExpress) and Vancouver (NCIX.com) during the month of March, 2006.
My previous entries in chronological order that finally led me to this point are:
Wednesday, March 8, 2006 - Here comes the RAID!
Tuesday, March 14, 2006 - RAID update
Wednesday, March 15, 2006 - RAID update 2
Tuesday, March 21, 2006 - RAID 5 - Block size
Tuesday, March 21, 2006 - RAID 5 - Windows
Thursday, March 23, 2006 - RAID 5 - Windows - Verification
Thursday, March 23, 2006 - Ubuntu Delayed: 6.04 now 6.06
Thursday, March 23, 2006 - I believe I may have been scammed
Friday, March 24, 2006 - RAID - The final frontier (setup and recovery)
Tuesday, March 28, 2006 - It's on
Tuesday, March 7, 2006 - My Hard drive is dying
So where is the RAID server going to be physically located?
Posted by: Brennan at March 31, 2006 08:15 AMRight in my Room at the moment. There's a bug that isn't letting me install vncserver. I *could* work around it, but I'm gonna wait for the fix. SSH and FTP are working remotely to perfection. Once VNC is up, then I'll be able to hide it in the laundry room (above the ground of course...a shelf or something) with only an Ethernet cable running to it.
To be honest, the server is more quiet than my normal pc! It's the case. It's simply amazing.
Posted by: roy at March 31, 2006 10:21 AMThanks for the info. I have been researching the very same thing and your article is much appreciated. I'd like to ask a few questions;
Why did you need a "variety" of hdds?
Is there a reason that you chose dapper over breezy?
Are you using the opensource md driver or the proprietary binary?
Why so powerfull a power supply for a headless server? I have read where others do this as well but could never find out why.
Posted by: Chris at April 1, 2006 12:53 PM
Hi Chris!
Why did you need a "variety" of hdds?
To reduce the chance of failure of 2 or more hard drives at the same time. If I bought all 4 from the same brand, with the same manufacturing date (same batch), then if there was a problem with that brand or batch, all drives would die at the same time!! All drives die. You just want it so that they die one at a time. It's just to err on the side of caution.
Is there a reason that you chose dapper over breezy?
I'm crazy. Heh..Actually, I just wanted the latest and greatest, and I know upgrading dapper Flight 5 to production version is simpler. It's almost ready anyways.
Are you using the opensource md driver or the proprietary binary?
I'm using the opensource md driver that comes with Ubuntu linux. I'm doing software RAID 5. For a home use, it's performance is good enough :)
Why so powerfull a power supply for a headless server? I have read where others do this as well but could never find out why.
The main draw comes from when you boot up the server. That's when the hard drives consume the most power. Yeah, I know, but the server never boots! heh. Well, not always. But in the future, if I wanted to add 4 more drives, I want to make sure that 2 PCI controller cards + 8 SATA drive + DVD ROM + Motherboard + CPU are handled.
Also, If this is a backup solution, the the powersupply is the last thing you want to die on you! Don't go cheap there or else you'll pay the price. Luckly, with my super duper Antec case, the power supply that came with it is awesome, powerful, and quiet.
Hope I answered your questions well and good luck with your project :)
Posted by: roy at April 1, 2006 06:48 PM