Re: [gentoo-user] Rearranging hard drives and data.

[Dale]

Frank Steinmetzger wrote:
> Am Sat, Dec 19, 2020 at 07:02:23AM -0600 schrieb Dale:
>> Howdy,
>>
>> A friend donated a older PC to me the other day.  It's a fairly nice rig
>> despite its age.
> It may be adequate enough for demanding desktop tasks, but you want it to
> sit around 24/7 and serve files. To me, that looks like overkill.

It will be used to store videos on and that's how I watch TV and my TV
is playing whenever I'm home.  I even sleep with the TV on.  That puts
it in pretty much 24/7 running time.  I might add, I currently use my
puter for that and it runs 24/7 and about the only time I power off is
when the power fails.  I sometimes go 6 months or more without a
reboot.  Even as I type, if I left home and cut off the TVs, my puter
needs to keep running.  I have youtube-dl downloading videos.  I found a
gold mine and I'm digging away.  :-D


>
>> 9750 quad core CPU running at 2.4GHz.  It currently has 4GBs but
>> planning to upgrade to 8GBs, its max.  It has a ATI Radeon HD3200 video
>> card.
> If you just want to use it as a file server, think of removing the video
> card. This will save considerable power.

It would be a good idea but it's a built in mobo video system.  If it
was a card, I'd likely do just that for the reason you give. 


>> The power supply was replaced a few years ago.  I may buy a new one that
>> is a little bit larger. It has a 300 watt now, a 400 watt would give
>> some breathing room for start up power for the extra drives.
> Even if a drive draws up to 30 W, this leaves room for about six drives plus
> 100 W for CPU and the board. This is just peak power at boot, so even if it
> reaches 300 W, the PSU should be fine (as long as it is not a cheap Chinese
> firecracker). The certified PSU efficiencies apply within 20..80 %, so a PSU
> rated for 400 W will be considerable less efficient (which also means
> produces more heat) below 80 W of power draw. My PC idles at 30 W with one
> HDD and an i5-4590 (65 W CPU, but at idle, they're basically all the same
> these days). And even that value disappointed me when I build the PC 6 years
> ago. The board needs to be properly designed, too.

I like to leave a lot of extra room when picking the wattage.  My
current rig draws well under 200 watts and that includes monitor and
some other stuff.  I figure the rig itself pulls around 100 watts, or
maybe a little less, idle.  Still, it has something around 600 watts for
the power supply.  Age gets them but never lost one due to being
overloaded.  I'm not aware of ever losing a hard drive due to bad power
either.  I've had them suffer from bit rot tho, platters go bad I
guess.  I'd rather over do it than under do it. Of course, a 1500 watt
power supply for my rig would be way over kill.  I tend to aim at around
30 to 40% or so but sometimes because of a good deal or a better unit, I
may go a little higher.  I just try not to go to extremes. lol


>> I'm thinking of making a storage system out of it.  I think it is
>> referred to as a NFS.  It should be plenty fast enough to move data
>> around.
> Gigabit Ethernet maxes out at 117 MB/s. So even without RAID, every
> not-too-old HDD can max that out.

That's my thinking.  The network connection is likely to be the
bottleneck.  I've read several articles about building a NAS or buying
one.  That's one point most all of them make.  The network is usually
going to limit speed not the CPU, hard drive etc.  Speaking of, given
the upcoming internet upgrade and it's speed, I got to get a new network
card for my puter.  I currently have a old 100Mb card, I think it is Mb
instead of MB.  Either way, it's slow and likely to limit my internet
speed.  Plan to find a GB one.  My router is already fast enough.  I
bought it a year or two ago I think.


>> Only downside, not many spaces for hard drives.  I see only two
>> spaces for hard drives with one already taken.  There is a open area
>> that I could add a drive cage, I think.  May can fit two or three hard
>> drives in that.  There's also a 5 1/4 space too.  Another downside tho,
>> I'm thinking of going to SAS drives.  If I can afford that, it will be a
>> more dependable setup.
> You often mention your sometimes tight budget. From that perspective, I
> can't quite follow that thought. The cheapest SAS cards I can find in a
> local price search engine start at 70 €, whereas the cheapest 4×SATA card
> can be had for 21 €. Looking at 4 TB WD drives as an example, the cheapest
> SAS drive started at 145 €, but a WD RED NAS drive (intended for
> uninterrupted operation) at 93 €. So just the SAS premium will set you back
> as much as an entire entry-level PC.

I just found a IBM ServeRaid M1015 card for like $40.00 shipping and
all.  It claims this:  "Connects to up to 16 SAS or SATA drives".  Given
the number of drives and the price, that's good bang for buck there. 
You may want to make note of that for the future.  Maybe you can find a
good deal.  It has some good reviews.  I also found some good deals on
SAS drives, new even.  Some I found are pulls where they upgrade but
never used the drives.  If the price is right, I'm good with that. 

Add in the case I posted in another reply, it's a good start. 


>> Another option, find another case.  If I recall correctly tho, some
>> puter makers don't use standard layouts for the mobo screw holes. 
> Well, if you buy from a well-known brand, I don't think you will have any
> problem there (even if it is their cheapest model).
>
>> I could also have a open system with everything just mounted on the wall
>> in open air.
> I don't think that's a good idea. I remember you talking of lousy power
> utility reliability, and from what I heard over the years of the general
> standards of US rural power cabling (of course I'm no expert or even just
> savvy), I'd be worried of interference. I'd also be concerned about damage
> through physical contact (i.e. you bump into it, or something falls against
> it).

I have UPSs on everything I can.  Even my TVs have a UPS.  I like the
surge protection they have plus it takes care of those power blinks. 
That said, they ran new power lines from the sub-station several years
back.  My power situation is hugely better now.  I'm more likely to have
power go out from a tree breaking a line than I am anything else. 
Still, I wouldn't dare run without a UPS.  I also have quite a bit of
surge protection too.  One in breaker box, one at wall plug, more in the
UPS and whatever is in the puters power supply as well.  I was looking
at the transformer on the pole a few weeks ago, I think it has some sort
of surge protection too.  Sort of like a old timey spark gap but they do
help.  I'm also just a few hundred feet down from a MOV type protector
too.  They look like small transformers but was told they are like
MOVs.  I think they call them something else but same thing.  Just
really heavy duty and designed for high voltages. 


>> Of course, another option is to make this a media system and use those
>> little raspberry type thingys for the NFS.
> I am running raspi as a low-level server (pi-hole, Nextcloud, contacts and
> calendar server). It's a model 3B with a quadcore SoC and 1 Gig of ram,
> currently running raspbian (I am currently examining arch). For what you
> want, it is not powerful enough. Even the gen 4 does not suffice. It has
> gigabit ethernet (the 3 only has 100 Mb), but has no SATA connectors. So you
> either need a SATA bridge or are limited to USB enclosures. It has two
> USB-3-Sockets. Either way, you need a separate power supply for 3,5″ drives.
> On [0], the Pi 4 is benchmarked and reaches 363 Mb/s over USB. That is a
> third of Gigabit speed. Not counting overhead for filesystems.

That's one negative for those.  If they had a full speed SATA support
built in or as a add-on, then it would be better.  From what I've read,
you have to use the USB which is fairly fast but still limited when you
have several drives going at once.  I wish they would just jump up to
SAS myself.  That would make a lot of people happy I bet.  You make a
good point tho.


>> Or, buy a used NFS off ebay, kinda pricey last I looked.
> I built a NAS in a for-purpose cubic case [1] a few years ago. The system
> was costly, maybe even unnecessarily high, because I went with a niche
> Mini-ITX form factor, ZFS (for redundancy), thus ECC RAM, thus a server
> board that supports ECC. On the other hand, that board supports staggerd
> spin-up. At idle that system slurps around 50 Watts with a 300 W gold PSU.
> It has four WD RED 6 TB drives and a small SSD for the system.
>
> It is actually the last Gentoo system that I run and maintain. :'-( System
> upgrades puts some heat stress on the drives because they sit right atop the
> CPU due to the crammed dimensions, but since it's a server, the package
> count is hugely reduced compared to a desktop. And since I don't keep it
> running 24/7, I usually do upgrades right after bootup.
>
> My case is quite cheaply-made, with sharp edges here and there and some
> design flaws. An adequate, high-quality alternative might be [2].
>
> A tailored-to-the-use-case device might be your best option. You may not be
> able to use that hand-me-down machine at all, but I think it is unsuitable
> for 24/7 storage anyway. When I built my NAS, I was considering an HP
> Microserver, which has the same general specs as my system, but comes in a
> one-stop package including an optimised mainboard (think of HDD cabling).
>

You may want to look on Ebay for a Fractal Node 804, maybe Amazon too. 
You're in Europe it seems but I can get them new here for around $100. 
It holds 8 or 10 drives and looks to have great cooling.  It may be
something you want to look at for future needs.  They also make smaller
versions as well if that is to big.  I usually don't skimp on cases.  I
get what I need and then some and lots of fans.  I bought a Cooler
Master HAF-932 years ago.  As long as mobos fit in it, I'll use it for
any future builds.  It has great cooling and quite a bit of hard drive
spaces.  Looks pretty good too.  I'm not into the LEDs and all that
stuff.  Just function, no glitzy stuff required. 


>> Either of those would likely pull less power.  I'm sure the little
>> raspberry thingy would pull very little power.
> That indeed. But 3.5″ disks would need their own power supply anyway.
>
>> Heck, even fans can add up. 
> For the raspi itself you would need no fans. But there are dedicated
> external enclosures that have no mainboard and OS themselves, they are just
> multibay enclosures that are connected to a host, usually through eSATA or
> USB. For an example see [3]. However, I don't have any knowledge about their
> suitability for a storage server.
>
> Yet another alternative is an actual off-the-shelf NAS such as synology or
> qnap. They don't run our preferred Linux and some even are mentioned in the
> news due to security vulnerabilities in their admin interfaces. But they are
> very efficient in their use of space and power. You can install applications
> into them, some even do containers, but I'm not sure about youtube-dl and
> friends.

I've looked at some of them, even used ones, and they get pricey pretty
quick.  Plus some can't be modified or anything or even add more drives
to them either.  If it's designed for four drives, four drives is the
end of the line.  Parts can get interesting too.  Most seem to be more
about RAID as well.  I likely need to jump into RAID but I just do
backups.  Then hope for the best.  Weighing positives and negatives gets
rough.  ;-)


>> Would a small raspberry thingy be better in the long run from a light
>> bill point of view?
> Definitely, but it cannot handle what you intend to do (hook up multiple
> 3,5″ drives).
>
>> Keep in mind, I plan it to run 24/7.  My TV is almost always on, if I'm
>> home which is a LOT since I'm disabled. 
> AFAIK, electricity is dirt cheap in the US. Here in bureaucratic Germany, we
> pay between 25 and 30 €ct per kWh. But what also comes to my mind: Power
> consumption is not just about what you pay. If you consume less, then
> somewhere in the world there will also be less pollution. This is the hidden
> cost that is not written on the price tag. If the majority of people thought
> that way, it would really make a difference.
>
>
> [0] https://magpi.raspberrypi.org/articles/raspberry-pi-4-specs-benchmarks
> [1] https://www.inter-tech.de/en/products/ipc/storage-cases/sc-4100
> [2] https://www.supermicro.com/en/products/chassis/tower/721/SC721TQ-250B2
> [3] https://skinflint.co.uk/silverstone-towerstor-ts431u-v2-sst-ts431u-v2-71128-a1706726.html?hloc=uk
>

Where I live, we have some of the cheapest energy there is.  We get
power from TVA but I think there is a nuclear plant a ways off.  I saw
it on a map one day.  I didn't know it was there but it had a little dot
on the map a couple hundred miles away.  Still, it's takes a lot of
heating and cooling here.  Poor insulation, if there is any.  Plan to
work on that at some point.  Still tho, I try to consider power needs
because it does add up.  Plus, heat and electronics isn't good.  Cooler
the better, within limits of course.

Thanks for all the info and links. 

Dale

:-)  :-)