View Full Version : About to build a server?
bobkoure
2008-01-06, 07:53
I've had slimserver/squeezecenter on a 900Mhz C3 based server, and, although it was working fine, I found that, along with the other things I had that server doing, the web interface (browser on a different PC) to squeezecenter to be really slow. The issue was mySQL needing more than 1G memory when responding to the "typical" queries that come from slim/squeeze (i.e. "all albums starting in 'A'").
I could add more memory, but this system uses PC133, which is still expensive. So I went web-shopping, and found that I could get a VIA motherboard, including a C7 (1500Mhz) and 2G of memory for just a bit less than it would cost for a single 1G stick of PC133.
After doing a bit more searching, It looked as though this was the only sub-$100 motherboard with a C7. And it occurred to me that there might be folks in DIY who'd find this to be useful info VIA C7-D 1.5GHz w CN700 Chipset Motherboard PC2500E (http://www.clubit.com/product_detail.cfm?itemno=A4842001&cmp=OTC-fr00g13#)
I paid $50 plus about $8 shipping. The price could change, they may be out, blah blah, blah.
Pros: fairly low wattage, but higher than my C3, part of gOS developers' kit, so there are definitely linux drivers, pretty cheap, comments indicate that even though it's an ITX, it'll fit in place of a micro-atx (so cheap cases are fine)
Cons: fan on motherboard, so not dead silent unless you do something clever, 2G memory max, only 2 SATAs, limited PCI slots (1 or 2, unclear from spec), NIC only 10/100.
Still, it might be a "deal"...
My music collection is moderately large (3K+ CDs), and if mySQL is doing some kind of join, the memory usage isn't unreasonable, and with no transcoding, there's no problem with my current C3 system playing, at least to one squeezebox...
Yea, Those Via boards are great for low power setups. I have an old EPIA 1000 board I use as a 4x CD/DVD drive ripping station. I have it setup with a 300G SATA drive and 4x lite-on PATA optical drives. I have linux on it setup so that one ethernet port is a dhcp client, and the other is a dhcp server network. That way I can just drop it off at a friends house and they can use it to "backup" their music/dvds. Everything gets ripped to flac via abcde and some shell script wrappers I wrote to auto-detect inserted CDs and then eject them when it's done.
I recently replaced my 5 year old 900MHz Xeon (!) clunker with this mobo in a new case with high efficiency power supply as my home server. I've got somewhere around 30k tracks and also use the thing for backups, file serving, dns, dhcp, etc.
I've been pleasantly surprised by the performance of the system and it uses a LOT less electricity.
In fact, the small office that I keep that system in is about 20 degrees cooler now.
Highly recommended.
bobkoure
2008-01-07, 19:43
You can likely reduce that power usage a bit more with an "80+" power supply.
If you buy an Antec "EarthWatts" 380W at newegg for $50, there's a $30 rebate.
I put one of these in my current server and dropped by nearly 10W (before and after measured with kill-a-watt). YMMV - I'd had a piece-o-junk 250W supply in there previously (what I had on hand when slapping things together).
It's also got something called "active power factor correction", which won't reduce your bill (not something residential power meters measure) but it will reduce the actual power the electric company needs to generate by a bit.
I recently used (http://wiki.syburgh.com/display/project/SlimServer+on+FreeNAS) a similar board: Intel D201GLY2 (http://www.intel.com/products/motherboard/D201GLY2/index.htm) which is in the same price/performance/spec market segment. The 1.2GHz Celeron CPU is similar to an Intel Core2 Solo, and is excessively powerful (http://resources.mini-box.com/online/MBD-I-D201GLY/intel-d201gly-power-consumption.html) for a dedicated SlimServer box. It can run passively with SlimServer, but does need some minimal airflow when fully loaded.
I saw this system was announced at CES by Shuttle. If it's reliable,
it could make a great SqueezeCenter:
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-9847365-7.html?tag=nefd.only
$199US for a whole system or $99 for barebones...
bobkoure
2008-01-14, 07:53
Too bad there isn't a board in this range with 4 or 6 SATA connectors on-board.
Of course, the board I migrated from didn't have any SATA connections, so I just moved the PCI RAID card I already had over (not using it as RAID, just SATA).
Of course, these days, individual drives are pretty big, and you can even get up to 750G PATA, so a server based on one of these boards (VIA has 2 PATA, 2 SATA; Intel has 1 PATA, 2 SATA) could end up with over 3T storage. Should be plenty for the next few years.
What kind of power usage are people seeing with servers based on the C7 mobo? I'm thinking about rebuilding mine which is running an old Athlon I had lying around. It's running 4 HDDs and currently uses 120W pretty constantly. If I can save a significant percentage of that it'd be worth a rebuild.
mephisto
2008-01-20, 12:30
What kind of power usage are people seeing with servers based on the C7 mobo?
I've built a server using the VIA EN12000EG board running Ubuntu linux. It uses 29W in normal use, and 20W with the HDD spun down via laptop-mode.
I've built a server using the VIA EN12000EG board running Ubuntu linux. It uses 29W in normal use, and 20W with the HDD spun down via laptop-mode.
Wow! Thanks...I'll look into it.
What kind of power usage are people seeing with servers based on the C7 mobo? I'm thinking about rebuilding mine which is running an old Athlon I had lying around. It's running 4 HDDs and currently uses 120W pretty constantly. If I can save a significant percentage of that it'd be worth a rebuild.
Using an old Via II 1200M board, clocked at 1.2Ghz, 512M RAM, according to my "Kill-a-watt" it's 24 Watts at idle (disk still spinning). If I attach the second hard drive, it goes to 30 Watts at idle and up to 64 watts when the CPU is spiked (when I'm ripping a CD). A good power supply makes a HUGE difference. I'm using a PicoPSU which dropped the power consumption down at least 70% from an older, standard PSU.
Glad to know Dean has tried the Everex gOS board, I stumbled on this thread to see if anyone else had used it successfully with slimserver.
Kaizen28
2008-01-25, 13:12
Hi All
I really want to move off my Infrant X6 which has done a beautiful job for two years but isn't going to work too well with the new SC releases.
I'm looking to build a dedicated, low-power server which will serve two functions (SC box and *cough* t0rrent box - leagal stuff only of course as I don't fancy those black helicopters).
The KPC from Shuttle that Dean referred to looks really promising.
Has anyone tried using the A61e from Lenovo with 1G of RAM? It's running at 45W with Windows XP and uses a Sempron LE-1150 processor.
I'm also considering building my own NAS. I have read reviews on the new Intel D201GLY2 motherboard and it's more powerfull and cheaper than the VIA. It has even been tested with 2Gb RAM even if Intel still says that it only supports 1 Gb RAM. I'm anlo planning to use a PicoPSU.
There is a benchmark test on the board here : http://resources.mini-box.com/online/MBD-I-D201GLY/intel-d201gly-power-consumption.html
I was playing around with FreeNAS on my old PC. But the old PSU, fan on the 700Mhz Duron CPU and the 18Gg HDD makes more noise than a F15 jet !!!
bobkoure
2008-01-26, 09:15
Yup, that might be the right one, particularly if you look at the LAME encoding scores (think trans-coding) but only if they now support 2G(or +) memory.
I had a C3 based system with 768K of memory, and, at least with ~35K tracks, MySQL was page-faulting like crazy. That system only supported SDR memory - and the C7 board plus 2G of DDR2 memory was cheaper than a single 1G stick of SDR).
The Intel specs at the time showed 1G memory max for these boards(know if that's still true?) IMHO if "the word on the web" is that they will support 2G, but the specs don't show that, then, that's something that might change if the board gets stepped (revised).
I'm also considering building my own NAS. I have read reviews on the new Intel D201GLY2 motherboard and it's more powerfull and cheaper than the VIA.
I have just such a system, and while it performs very well it is not silent. Initially used a picoPSU-120, but it does not fit well on this board (touches the LAN+USB port).
The D201GLY2 is adequately cooled by a 40x40x10mm fan @ 1,500 RPM, which is much less noisy than a laptop fan. The trouble is that as a dedicated SlimServer (SlimNAS, really) it is unnecessarily powerful, and with one 3.5in disk consumes just under 40W at idle. I have it configured for WOL, but would prefer a lower powered (passively cooled) system that is practical to run 24x7.
The LX800 based Koolu appliance has 512MB of RAM (probably adequate, also upgradeable to 1GB) and is passively cooled for CDN $199. Experiences on this forum seem favorable. It's the same CPU+chipset as the PC Engines ALIX router platform, so it might not be too much work to use the FreeNAS distribution for ALIX. Will probably give it a try in the coming months, once SC7 goes stable.
While embedded SlimServer projects often seem to have performance problems, the D201GLY2 certainly does not (though it probably won't run Vista well). The trouble is that it's much more powerful than necessary and seems impractical to cool without fans, which is really what I was looking to accomplish. If you are OK with the fan, then the D201GLY2 can do an excellent job running SlimServer at an attractive price point.
Potentially useful reading:
My own D201GLY2 project (http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=41044) (also 1 (http://wiki.syburgh.com/display/project/SlimServer+on+FreeNAS), 2 (http://wiki.syburgh.com/display/project/Minimize+Startup+Time), 3 (http://flickr.com/photos/21836199@N02/sets/72157603455384375/), 4 (http://occident2.com/project/2007-11-22%20D201GLY2%20Test%20Stand/Thermal%20Results.PNG))
Other D201GLY2 SlimServers (1 (http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=42535), 2 (http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=42388))
D201GLY2 thread (http://www.silentpcreview.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=44140&start=240&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=&sid=41523a433356e217edee823d6c10a242) on SPCR
picoPSU-120 fitted (http://occident2.com/project/2007-11-21%20D201GLY2%20picoPSU-120/)to D201GLY2
A successful example of passively cooled D201GLY, the Tranquil TGV7 (http://www.tranquilpc-shop.co.uk/acatalog/TGV7_Series.html) (no 3.5in disk)
SlimServer on Koolu thread (http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=38640)
Best of luck with your evaluation!
The LX800 based Koolu appliance has 512MB of RAM (probably adequate, also upgradeable to 1GB) and is passively cooled for CDN $199. Experiences on this forum seem favorable. It's the same CPU+chipset as the PC Engines ALIX router platform, so it might not be too much work to use the FreeNAS distribution for ALIX. Will probably give it a try in the coming months, once SC7 goes stable.
Hi syburgh,
I am interested in getting the Koolu for slimserver as well. Would you please point me to where in Canada you got it for $199?
Thanks.
It's called the "Net Appliance (http://shop.koolu.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=2)", which is the FIC A603 (http://www.fic.com.tw/product/minipc.aspx) (1 (http://wwwd.amd.com/catalog/SalesCat.nsf/doclookupweb/CEF3492F57763CCF8625725800148E8D?OpenDocument&id=First+International+Computer,+Inc.~ION+A603)) without the internal 80GB 2.5in disk. Looking to mount an internal IDE flash module for the OS as well-- not sure what will fit.
Afraid my SlimServer storage needs exceed the capacity of a 2.5in disk, so I'll probably do one of those external WD 1TB disks via USB2 assuming the app side of things works well enough.
It's called the "Net Appliance (http://shop.koolu.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=2)", which is the FIC A603 (http://www.fic.com.tw/product/minipc.aspx) (1 (http://wwwd.amd.com/catalog/SalesCat.nsf/doclookupweb/CEF3492F57763CCF8625725800148E8D?OpenDocument&id=First+International+Computer,+Inc.~ION+A603)) without the internal 80GB 2.5in disk. Looking to mount an internal IDE flash module for the OS as well-- not sure what will fit.
Afraid my SlimServer storage needs exceed the capacity of a 2.5in disk, so I'll probably do one of those external WD 1TB disks via USB2 assuming the app side of things works well enough.
Thanks syburgh,
When you said "net appliance", I thought you were referring to the one with the HD. This is what Koolu called them. The one without the HD is called "thin client". Anyway, thanks for the info.
I am still undecided whether it is better to buy a Eee PC or a Koolu to use as a server. Both are low power and I will use a external hard drive with it anyway. Which one do people think will have better performance?
Thanks.
Biu
> Which one do people think will have better performance?
The eeePC
--
Michael
dgpretzel
2008-01-30, 01:03
Too bad there isn't a board in this range with 4 or 6 SATA connectors on-board.What might be a candidate for a 6 SATA (planning 6 [effectively 5 w/RAID 5] of the WD 1 TB drives), gigE, low power board (24x7)?
[3 TB] Should be plenty for the next few years.:) :)
Had just replaced my power supply with an Antec Earthwatts 380. Found that the power draw lowered by 20%. Now the computer just use 45W when streaming with 1 3.5" harddrive on. (Not bad for a AMD 3600 x2 2G with asus M2A-VM HDMI).
I also found out that the Koolu or the Eee PC appears not supporting WOL. Therefore they will need to be on 24/7 using 20W with a external HD.
As on average I only use the SB3 for 8 hours, my computer will go into S3 sleep mode when not serving (only 1.5w).
My simple calculation would be:
PC: 45W x 8 x 365 + 1.5W x 16 x 365 = 140.16KWh per year.
Koolu: 20W x 24 x 365 = 175.2KWh per year.
Looks like my current PC will actually use less energy overall compared to a Koolu. Very interesting.
I also found out that the Koolu or the Eee PC appears not supporting WOL. Therefore they will need to be on 24/7 using 20W with a external HD.
You would have to save a lot of electricity to justify replacing an existing system, especially one that has become as efficient as yours, so it seems like you made a well thought out decision. Out of curiosity for those that are considering a Koolu/EeePC in order to start something from scratch, I have a few questions about your observations:
Is the power consumption figure you're using for the Eee PC with the screen on or off? Might be somewhat less if lid is closed and screen off.
Also, is the lack of WOL an issue with hardware, software, or both? If the hardware is capable of WOL but it just isn't supported in the software then that might be overcome with a different OS.
Came across the new ASUS motherboards. They now have the new "AI Nap" power saving feature. By the description, it seems to be the perfect mode to run slimserver. Did anyone tried how low a power it uses in this mode?
Kaizen28
2008-02-04, 13:46
The trouble is that as a dedicated SlimServer (SlimNAS, really) it is unnecessarily powerful
Is this still true for a Intel D201GLY2 system serving three SB3s with a library of some 50k songs all on Windows XP and SS7?
I have picked this OS as I will also need to run iTunes and embarrassingly I'm not too familiar with Linux.
bobkoure
2008-02-05, 08:44
I had had a low-wattage server with 768M. The issue was (with 35K songs) that MySql needed more memory than I had physically available, so browsing by artist, album, or genre got really slow, as it was swapping virtual memory on and off disk like crazy.
If you have your server setup on WinXP (or Win2K) you can see this happening by going to the TaskManager, open the processes tab, select view/select columns, and check the option "Page Faults Delta". Click the top of that new column, so you can see the most-page-faulting process, open a web browser to SS or SC and browse.
BTW, I tried only loading part of my music library, and this memory usage seems to be at least somewhat proportional to library size - but there could have been something else going on there...
Anyway, my issue with the D201GLY2 was that it's specs indicate that it only supports 1G of memory.
With 50K songs, I'm pretty sure you're going to need more than that.
Maybe someone here has tried the D201GLY2 with 2G? Did it work OK?
Is this still true for a Intel D201GLY2 system serving three SB3s with a library of some 50k songs all on Windows XP and SS7?
Am currently at about 700GB with 3 SB3s, will add controller and receiver when they begin shipping. Each FLAC stream is about 1 mb/s (128KB/s), so throughput is not an issue (no drop outs).
Haven't seen MySQL use a significant amount of RAM (even when browsing by genre, track, etc.). With ~16,000 tracks my memory usage is under 30% including FreeNAS services (of 901MB available) while running and about 35% when rescanning.
Of course, YMMV. Haven't tried a 2GB module, but it has been confirmed to work a few places (SPCR, etc.)
Kaizen28
2008-02-10, 19:51
Hi All
I have decided to go with a mini-ATX system with a Celeron as a compromise between processing power and power efficiency. I will have to run XP as the OS will need to support SC 7 and some home automation software only coded for Windows.
Okay, this is what I'm about to buy:
- ANTEC Minuet 350 case
- INTEL Celeron D 420 1.6GHz
- ASUS P5VD2-VM motherboard
- Kingston 2GB Kit DDR2-667 PC2-5300 Memory
- Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 ST380815AS 80GB SATA
I'd appreciate any thoughts before I pull the trigger.
Thanks!
tyler_durden
2008-02-15, 10:01
I just put together an audio server only machine using some old HDDs, and power supply using a new Via PC2500e motherboard (C7 CPU) with 1 GB of ram. I installed Kubuntu 7.10 and use the SqueezeCenter 7.0 nightly builds. Kubuntu found and installed drivers for all the mobo hardware and the "all deb" SC7 packages installed without any trouble. $84 mobo and memory with free, RELIABLE OS. What more can you ask for?
I can report that the server runs fast enough for serving audio and cover art to my SB3 and beta Duet equipment. I find no difference in performance between this $60 mobo and my DFI Lanparty nF4 Ultra-D machine running an AMD64 3400+ CPU.
TD
I wish more of the generic cases would come with high efficieny power supplies - too bad you have to buy this extra and swap out or buy all the part to create it yourself (though some may say that is half of the fun ;-)
BTW, I'd seen an article somewhere that certain disk drives were more power efficient than others. For this kind of application I think that most any disk drive will be able to fill the available ethernet bandwidth - so it would be good to get a disk drive that is power efficient as well...
tyler_durden
2008-02-28, 17:52
If you think about it, your HDD should be running while music is playing and when it isn't playing it should spin down. The majority of power it consumes will be when it isn't running because in most systems it won't be running for more than a couple hours a day. Under these conditions I think there will be very little difference between a "low power" HDD and a standard one.
I would guess that notebook HDDs are lower power than 3 1/2" drives because of smaller platter size and lower speed, but they typically aren't available in the same capacities or for the same low cost. It would take a very long time for the price difference to be offset by power savings- probably longer than the system lifetime.
It's sort of like getting a Prius to be "green". What happened to your old car and what is the impact of building another car (even a green one) and putting it on the road compared to running your old one until it fails completely? It is usually better to run existing hardware until it is no longer functional- the longer you can delay replacement the greater the overall efficiency, and not surprisingly, the lower your overall cost. That applies to computers, appliances, and cars.
I built my server replacing only the motherboard because the old motherboard failed. Sure, I could get a new, higher efficiency power supply, but when the old one still works it would be very wasteful to scrap it in order to get the new one. Of course I lose low-power bragging rights that may be important to some people, but I know there is one less power supply at the dump because I am using the old one. The power difference between a new one and the old one doesn't amount to a hill of beans.
The politics associated with being green are ridiculous. The US auto companies, faced with falling sales of giant SUVs and trucks start claiming that they make lots of high mileage cars "based on segmentation". That has the same lack of meaning as the top rating "in its class" when they define the class so narrowly that it includes their car and no others. They add hybrid systems to the big SUVs to boost acceleration, not efficiency. They wonder why they are on the verge of bankruptcy? If they paid as much for R&D as they did for lawyers and lobbyists to insert gigantic loopholes into environmental laws they might actually be able to produce a reliable, high mileage car.
Then you have compact fluorescent lightbulbs. They cost more but claim you'll get longer life and save money through reduced power usage. But they lie about the lifetime and about the light output. They also don't have any systems in place to deal with disposing of the old bulbs that contain mercury.
This green stuff is just a fad. It's all a scam. In a couple years, when the muslim countries have been subjugated, the price of oil will fall and everyone will be back to driving 5 ton trucks.
TD
pichonCalavera
2008-02-28, 19:18
I saw this system was announced at CES by Shuttle. If it\\\'s reliable,
it could make a great SqueezeCenter:
http://www.news.com/8301-10784_3-984...?tag=nefd.only
$199US for a whole system or $99 for barebones...
It seems they had launched the product:
http://us.shuttle.com/kpc/index2.htm
Going to keep an eye on it.
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