Atom Based File Server

[cw4u]

We're switch over from local based church management software hosted on our server to a cloud based solution. I can no longer see a necessity to have such a powerful server when it'll just be hosting files.

I was thinking about moving our current server to video production and just building a rackmount atom setup for file hosting. I'll run some form of Linux and just run it as an NAS.

Anybody doing this currently?

[blonborg]

Depending on your setup, number of user's, number of hard drives, and RAID configuration, you might be able to do it with an Atom or AMD Brazos processor.

I've been planning to replace an old server here at home with a new one running FreeNAS 8. I've got all the pieces, but haven't bought the mobo/cpu yet. I'm leaning towards the AMD option.

Conventional wisdom says you need a moderately fast CPU to support software RAID. I've read about folks getting good performance with the Atom D525 and/or AMD e350/e450's.

Bill

[mifantrax]

It all depends if you are going to run Software or Hardware RAID.
If your budget is low I would suggest to look at a NAS box like ReadyNAS from Netgear they start very low, I have one for a second backup store and it has been very good.

[EricE]

Originally Posted by cw4u

Anybody doing this currently?

We have an Atom based HP StorageVault running Windows Home Server. It runs along side our SBS 2011 server to backup the workstations and also backup the user files from the SBS server. It came with WHS v1 and I have upgraded it to SBS 2011 which I like much better. It has an Atom 310 and 2GB of RAM and runs just fine - I will up it to 4GB at some point because the extra memory would make administering it a little more pleasant - sometimes the GUI lags a bit. I've got two old 1TB drives mirrored with Windows Server software mirroring for the boot drive and two recycled 2TB drives for the workstation and SBS server backups. WHS is on sale for $45 all the time...

If you have Windows workstations at all, WHS is awesome because it has a workstation backup that supports bare metal restore and de-dupe for up to 10 computers. De-dupe means if you have Windows and Office, it stores one copy of Windows and Office in the backup for all the machines. Backups are also block level and incremental - if you have a large graphic file and only a portion of it changes, only the portion of the individual file that changed is in the incremental backup. It's very space efficient. All 10 of our machines with a years worth of history (including the pastors laptops which have lots of files stored locally) take about 300GB.

With WHS 2011 recovery of a failed machine is really slick. Say a machine's hard drive dies - to recover: 1) replace the bad hard drive 2) attach a blank USB flash drive to the WHS and go to the console 3) Click on the backup tab, click on the computer then click on the option to create a bootable flash drive 4) Boot the computer to be recovered with the flash drive, follow the prompts and watch it restore!

Mac's before Lion back up with no issue too. Lion changed TimeMachine and a workaround for WHS hasn't been released yet (other than running openfiler in a VM - might be a bit extreme tho!)

The workstation backup is really a great sleeper technology and an under-rated feature of Windows Home Server. Of course, WHS will also do file and printer sharing too.

If you have no server at all now, I would really encourage you to look at Small Business Server Essentials - it supports up to 25 workstations and gives you Active Directory back for management. Charity licensing for SBS Essentials puts it a little over $100 and it will run on an Atom box just fine.

However, I would keep an eye out for the HP MicroServers. They are AMD Turon based and just as power efficient as the Atom servers. I scored one on sale from MacMall last month for $200 - that included the CPU, 2GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive. It has two PCI Express slots and 4 hard drive slots - combined with SBS Essentials from the charity open license and you would have a very inexpensive yet powerful server that would be perfect for your environment. Throw WSUS on there to provide centralized and managed updates for your Windows machines and off you go!

The Microservers aren't rack mountable (with a shelf they are) - if you prefer rack mounted, NewEgg has a really nice SuperMicro 1U atom Unit on sale for $350 - but it only holds a couple of drives tops.

I really wish MS would build in the workstation backup to either SBS 2011 or full Windows Server - or at least offer it as an add on...

[cw4u]

We actually run Windows Server Standard and are looking to do away with it. Licensing costs along with technical staff ability to manage the system are just too high. I'm really looking at building a rackmount NAS with an Atom processor and capability for around 8 drives.

Two mirrored drives for general staff storage, two mirrored drives for production staff, and two mirrored drives for workstation backups. We have about 16 full time staff members.

The plan was to start off with a Intel Atom 2700, 2gb ram, dual 2tb hard drives, etc...and add more drives later on as the year progressed.

[blonborg]

One can upgrade the HP N40L to 8Gb RAM.

Originally Posted by EricE

HP MicroServers .... I scored one on sale from MacMall last month for $200 - that included the CPU, 2GB of RAM and a 250GB hard drive.

[EricE]

Originally Posted by cw4u

We actually run Windows Server Standard and are looking to do away with it.

Home Server and SBS Essentials is pretty much point and click. Think appliance, not open ended OS like Windows Server Standard.

And neither require CALs (although it sounds like you already own 'em...)

Licensing costs

You do know about charity licensing, right? About 1/5 the cost of retail - I got full SBS Standard and CALs for 15 users for $400 - that's a huge discount off of retail! Essentials is well under $200 and no CALs. Crazy cheap for all you get for client backup and Active Directory for single sign on and workstation management.

Throw WSUS on there and now you have managed patching/updating for your clients.

Add the free Local Update Publisher to your WSUS server and now you can update Adobe Flash, Acrobat Reader and Java centrally - and see when clients are out of compliance.

along with technical staff ability to manage the system are just too high.

What are you going to replace it with? Linux? Think your admin costs are high now? Unless you have a Linux guru - but then what if they leave?

If no expert, were you thinking of FreeNAS or another appliance build? SBS Essentials will give you the same point and click appliance factor AND you get the management benefits of Active Directory with the excellent workstation backup. And the ability to load things like WSUS and local update publisher

I'm really looking at building a rackmount NAS with an Atom processor and capability for around 8 drives.

SuperMicro has some great white box server packages that are a great foundation - Newegg seems to be about as good as anyone on pricing.

The plan was to start off with a Intel Atom 2700, 2gb ram, dual 2tb hard drives, etc...and add more drives later on as the year progressed.

Sounds perfect - however, don't assume an Atom will be the most power efficient - I can't lay my hands on the thread but on one one of the windows home server boards (MediaSmartServer.net, Homeserverland.com or ???) one of the guys on there did a comparison of a bunch of atom systems and some of the Celeron systems and the a few of the Celeron combos were not only more power efficient than the Atom systems, but had more horsepower too. Weird, eh? I thought i bookmarked the thread but can't find it now - sigh...

[EricE]

Originally Posted by blonborg

One can upgrade the HP N40L to 8Gb RAM.

Yup, but for what I'm running (pfSense) the 2GB is overkill as it is