Motherboard for Media/File Server

I need a motherboard that is capable of supporting up to 20 SATA hard drives in one RAID 6 volume. I guess it goes without saying that the motherboard itself need not have 20 SATA ports, but it should have enough SATA ports, plus be able to support enough PCI controllers in order to reach 20 HDDs.

Also, I'm not sure what kind of video card arrangement I will wind up going with, but it would be best if the motherboard could work with the SLI or Crossfire set-ups.

I apologize if I've left out some important details in order for you guys to make any recommendations. I am a relative newb in this arena, but I hope you won't mind giving me some advice anyway.

Many Thanks,
Ryan

Thanks for your advice.

I figured when I started to get answers from people who know their stuff, that it would lead to even more questions. So, please bear with me, I am learning more and more about the particulars of this project everyday.

First, let me answer your "Really?" by telling you the main purpose of this file server. It's mostly just for movies; I want to store my entire collection electronically and watch them on a large HDTV. I know I will need a pretty high quality Video card if I want my movies to look good in high definition and displayed in the proper aspect, etc., but perhaps SLI or Crossfire is overboard. Then again, maybe in the future I might need something that powerful. I guess that's why I just wanted to make sure I got something compatible. But leaving video cards aside for now...

My main question after reading your reply is this:
The first link in your response was for software RAID (or at least that's what I thought it was), but in the next paragraph you recommend a RAID controller (which I understood to be hardware RAID). So, I'm confused, unless each PCI card can only unite 4 HDDs in a single RAID volume, then the VTS Pro software is for joining the groups of 4 HDDs on each PCI card, thereby creating a single RAID volume consisting of 4 groups of 4 HDDs (4x4=16 HDDs total in a single RAID volume). Maybe you could help me understand your suggestion in more detail?

Then maybe I can start to ask more intelligent questions!

Thanks ,
Ryan

Hi! I'm with cyborg, sounds like you need 2 pcs, fileserver and main pc. You need to think about how much space you really need and what quality is acceptable to you for your movie files.

I have just over 300 movies which has filled my 500gb hdd and gives me good quality (standard dvds encoded to divx at native resolution 1gb-ish), took bloody ages), if that helps give you a rough idea.

When you have this much data, you must think about you backup needs too. It would be insane to not have this much data backed up and a raid array will only protect you from disk errors, not from accidental erasure, viruses etc, only offline storage can do that.

As far as gfx cards go, you don't need sli or crossfire, they wont bring you better quality video, just go for a fairly decent single gfx card - I got a 4850 which serves me well or maybe get something a bit less beefy for purely htpc, just make sure it has hdcp built in.

I second the notion of a NAS/fileserver. Seems like you are just looking for mass storage. A NAS can be built with minimal hardware, in most cases with older parts that are just laying around. Check out Freenas.org and Openfiler.com.

DO NOT USE SOFTWARE RAID to permanently store all your media!!! A good hardware controller card is key and will determine the overall size and performance of your storage array. Do not be cheap with the hardware controller card! You might want to go with a PCI-e RAID controller card, something with onboard XOR processing, that supports live migration, preferably with at least 8 - SATA ports. Check out 3Ware, Areca, and Highpoint controller cards. RAID5 is better than RAID6, IMO. Fact is, 8 - 500GB drives is a usable space of 3.5TB and that is a HUGE amount of space. But if that's not enough, you can set up 8 - 1000GB drive for a usable array of 7TB!!!!

Generally speaking, you don't want to use the file server as the same machine that you plan on using to view your movies on and play games with. It's just not a best practice. You would better served by building 2 seperate machines, a NAS/filer server and then a second machine to watch your media and play games on.

You should decide what hardware controller you plan on using first before deciding on the mobo. Will it be PCI-X or PCI-E? If PCI-E, the 8x or 4x? A NAS/fileserver is all about storage and the machine should be built around that purpose.

If you plan using hardware controller cards, the number of SATA ports on the mobo is unimportant. What is important though, is the number of PCI-X slots or PCI-E slots to hold the hardware controller cards. For a back end file server, onboard video or a PCI video card would serve the purpose of being able to configure the OS and view the GUI. Remember that a 16x PCI-E slot is backwards compatible to 4x and 8x. So, you could just get a mobo that has at least 3 PCI-E 16x slots and just make sure that they can operate electrically at least at 4x PCI-E. By doing this, you can reserve the PCI-E slots for the hardware controllers and use the PCI or onboard video out to the monitor.

Another thing to remember is that for a filer server, the cpu, memory, and video do not have to be super powerful, they have to be just enough to process the data streaming to and from the storage array. Fact is a 1600MHz Skt775 Celeron and 2GB of RAM would be more than enough for a fileserver.

What is the budget for all of this?

I think that will partially dictate the route rlslehigh takes.

If that is the route you are going to go, the above advice is excellent. The ASUS P5Q-E Has 3 PCIe x16 slots at 8,8 and 4 electrical. Would work great.

A software RAID solution could be done with inexpensive used hardware and cheap controller cards.

Nope, you are back to a software solution. AFAIK you would have to have them all on the same controller to have the XOR engine do all the calculation. I suppose you could use software "RAID" 0 to combine the arrays with limited computational overhead.

*edit*

I think there are multiple options for combining volumes, however most can be damaged/destroyed by losing part of the set. Microsoft Dynamic Disks or LVM have these options.

Why do you HAVE to have them on the same volume? How about horror on D:, action on E: and pr0n on F:, G:, H: and I:

Too True...

Correct, the controller card determines the number of drives, performance, and storage capacity of the array.

There is no hardware controller card or hardware controller utility, that I know of, that allows you to combine the drives from multiple controller cards into one large array. However, that will be controller card specific and would depend in the manufacturer. I'm quite sure it could be done in software.

Most major controller card makers (3Ware, Highpoint, Areca) support installing at least 2-3 controller cards on the same system. Again, that will be controller specific and depend on the maker.

If you want to maximize the size of the array, then get a 12 port controller card and use nothing but 1TB drives! In a RAID5, that's potentially a total of 11TB of space! And then, put two controller cards in the same system! 22TB?!?! THAT'S A LOT OF STORAGE!!!!!!!!

If the hardware controllers are performing the RAID calculations, the motherboard does nothing more than channel the signals and take care of running the OS and background services.

Selection factor for GPU cards... be aware that there are currently almost no good options for getting Dolby True HD or DTS Master Audio out of a computer. An exception to this is the 48x0 series ATi cards, that purportedly support both of these over HDMI. If you have a receiver that can parse these out (the Onkyo 605 and 705 both can, among many other options), then one of these GPUs may be the best audio option for you. The ugly alternative would be to use a whole bunch of analog cables from PC to receiver, out of an audio card.

Since you're thinking of gaming anyway, the 48x0 series might be a great choice anyway. The biggest shortcoming is noise. If you're thinking of having your gaming PC in your living room, you will want to try to find a version of the card that has quiet cooling and vents to the outside of the case.

This is all great information. I have a much clearer picture of what I need and how everything works now... much clearer. Thanks!

cyborg has a good point, it doesn't HAVE to be on one volume. i guess i was just hoping for that because one of the reasons for this project was too many separate drives (sometimes i can't even find the movie i'm looking for). anyway, that 12 port RAID card looks awesome. i can't quite tell if cyborg is being serious or sarcastic, though, with respect to the price of the card, my greed for HDDs, and need for my own nuclear power station, haha!

i am very grateful for you guys getting me pointed in the right direction. i'm not sure i would have ever stumbled across that particular card... or understood properly why it's the right tool for the job, without your help. assuming i get the 12-port card, is the ASUS P5Q-E still the right mobo for this application?

This looks even better.

As for the mobo, are you going to use a single RAID card? If so then your choice of Mobo is not so critical, unless you want to game as well.

The card above needs a PCIe x8 slot. Many mobos only have the single PCIe x16 slot for the video card that would also fit the raid card. If you want to do high end gaming as well you would need something with 2 PCIe x16 physical slots, preferably one that does full x16 electrical on at least one of the physical x16 slots.

The P5Q-E would work, and would be fine for something like an 8800GT but the video card would only see x8 electrical I think even a 4850 could use the x16. An X38 or X48 based board would give you 2 x16 electrical slots I think.

For the file server, how many raid cards are you going to want to use & how many ports on each? It looks like the single 24 port card is the way to go so any mobo with a pcie 16x slot should work. You may have to get an old fashioned PCI video card to make that work though as PCIe x16 is usually there for video. A mobo with onboard video might work but you would have to see if the PCIe x16 slot and onboard video can be used at the same time. You usually can't use onboard vid. for an extra monitor when using a video card.

ah, X38/X48 is the intel chipset, sorry.

still, if there's a particular model that you had in mind, i would love to hear about it!

i have not picked a power supply, and i would love some pointers there as well. the case i chose is the lian li v2010.

What is your home network setup? How many computers/nodes & where are they located. What is wired, what is wireless? What speeds?

For the most part, 100 Mb wired network using your router should be plenty for streaming video... The stuttering with wireless is not really a bandwith issue, its more that the connections tend to be somewhat unreliable. For instance, I compress most of my movies to 1GB which can be transfered by wireless in a few (<<30) minutes, but I still get stuttering even though the whole movie only has to be delivered over 2 hours.

I suggest you just build the "Crazy man" machine with Vista Home Premium & the media center interface. Put it in the next room and run an HDMI cable to it. Get a usb extension cable and wireless keyboard and mouse and run those back to the computer as well.

That way you can use the RAID and game on your Big Screen HDTV @1080p. Gaming on linux is non-existent.

If you do the front end/back end setup then Linux back end is the way to go. I just have not found a decent Mobo for the back end yet. Onboard video + x8 or x16 PCIe raid support is hard to find a known working Mobo for. - Might be worth starting a new thread. Does the raid card work in linux?

the accusys card says it supports this:
Linux 2.6.x kernel (Red Hat and SUSE)

so, i guess that still leaves my options open.

I Run a linux samba file server, directly wired to my wireless g router, that connects to my HTPC wirelessly. A 1GB 2hour movie still stutters unless I buffer 3+ seconds of content using VLC player. Don't know about N, but you were talking about 5-7 GB/hour content right?

I would not say that I am keeping full DVD quality. I usually keep DVDs for that. I only have stereo sound usually as well. All depends on what you want.
*EDIT*
The stuff I have on the server is in x264 h.264, set up so it can be watched on an ipod or on a 40" TV, so there are some compromises involved.

Me too, but I haven't got the space to store my dvds "online".