Server with Raid -OR- server and separate NAS?

[Konig]

Current setup:
-Dell inspiron 4600 (2.8Ghz P4), PVR-250, SageTV Server in basement
-56" 1080p Samsung LCD with HD200 in living room
-27" samsung 480P tube with MVP in play room in basement
-Sage PC client/Playon server on workstation in office

I need more storage and I'd like to have a real server. I've looked at a lot of your posts. The rigs a lot of you have are amazing. You have a lot of drives spinning in a lot of boxes. I'd like to build something with lower power consumption.

I've been thinking of getting two boxes:
-WHS in a PC with Core2Duo/64GB SSD/WD green 1TB for server (low power consumption, but CPU power if transcoding is needed)
-4TB QNAP NAS for storage of DVDs and BDs. I really like the QNAP specs. It only consumes 20-40W depending upon the model.

But I wonder if I should put just the storage in the server. As long as already I'm building a server it would be cheaper to buy a raid card and put the drives in that box. Heck, this will be located in the back room of the basement. I could just mount the components on a piece of plywood on the wall Plenty of expansion capacity there.

What do you all think? Is there a good reason to have the storage in a separate box? Can bandwidth between the server and NAS become a bottleneck with BD rips playing off the NAS thru the SageTV server?

[Fuzzy]

The way I see it, if you are going to have a 24/7 server already for sage, I don't see the point of a separate NAS device. You won't gain anything in terms of power savings, will be paying for more equipment, and will take a hit on performance. The ONLY advantage I can see to a NAS with Server combo, would be in the case where you need to access files off the shared drives, at a time when the sage server could otherwise be asleep. For me, my recordings are so often, this would practically never happen.

[Lucas]

I agree with Fuzzy. It's best to stick with just a SageTV server.

I had the same system as you and went the NAS server way for 2-3 years but the power consumption led me back to a single server.

You may also do away with a RAID card. For 5-6 drives, it will be cheaper to buy an external eSata Hard Disk Dock and back your internal drives to large capacity hard drives like doing a backup to tape and then store the drives in a closet or offsite.

[tmiranda]

I also started out with storing most things on a NAS but in the end ditched that and now store all of my recordings on the Sage server. I still have a NAS to store music and other files that are shared between computers, but the NAS gets turned off when not needed.

[Konig]

Thanks for all the replies.

I don’t actually record much. Only about 1-2 hours per day. And my wife, kids, and I catch up with our weekly recordings mostly on the weekends. The system(s) would be sleeping a lot.

So if I built a server with internal storage should I use WHS’s drive extender or get a raid card? I really don’t like the idea of manually backing everything up. I’d have to be more disciplined than I am now.

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by Konig

Thanks for all the replies.

I don’t actually record much. Only about 1-2 hours per day. And my wife, kids, and I catch up with our weekly recordings mostly on the weekends. The system(s) would be sleeping a lot.

So if I built a server with internal storage should I use WHS’s drive extender or get a raid card? I really don’t like the idea of manually backing everything up. I’d have to be more disciplined than I am now.

A RAID card is not a replacement for backup. Even with RAID you should backup. That being said WHS does not support the use of a RAID card. Not saying people haven't done it. Just saying it's not supported. I use WHS and have 6 drives running with the WHS pool. The media I'm concerned with is backed up but not the TV recordings or the ripped DVDs. I can always record or find other sources (hulu/netflix) or re-rip the DVDs. Adding a drive for more storage took nothing more than shutting it down, sticking in the drive, turning it on and adding it to the pool and formatting it with 64k blocks. On top of this all of the PCs in the house are backed up to the WHS.

Gerry

[Spartan]

Originally Posted by gplasky

A RAID card is not a replacement for backup. Even with RAID you should backup. That being said WHS does not support the use of a RAID card. Not saying people haven't done it. Just saying it's not supported. I use WHS and have 6 drives running with the WHS pool. The media I'm concerned with is backed up but not the TV recordings or the ripped DVDs. I can always record or find other sources (hulu/netflix) or re-rip the DVDs. Adding a drive for more storage took nothing more than shutting it down, sticking in the drive, turning it on and adding it to the pool and formatting it with 64k blocks. On top of this all of the PCs in the house are backed up to the WHS.

Gerry

+1

I recently tore down my dual opteron, 4 core server with a RAID 5 PCI-X card in favor of a low power dual core phenom II based system running WHS -- and I love it.

Not only is my power considerably reduced, but the features of the WHS are impressive (remote access, automated backup, etc).