Hardware Analysis - HP Netserver & 2003 Server

Re: HP Netserver & 2003 Server

Shawn Langley — 2008-05-19T06:30:18-05:00

very much so... damb raid is getting clever... lol

i think im going with what you said then 3 disks for the OS, and some Sata's for storage....when i figure out where to fit them

thanks alot gerrit you have been a great help

Re: HP Netserver & 2003 Server

Gerritt — 2008-05-19T03:30:03-05:00

In RAID 5 the data is spread across the disk in a helical manner in chunks such as Byte 0, Byte 1, and Parity. In a typical 3 disk system the data would be written in the following manner:

Disk 1 Disk 2 Disk 3
B0 B1 P
P B0 B1
B1 P B0
B0 B1 P
P B0 B1
etc.
In a 4 disk system the same structure is followed, but with B0,B1,B2,P, and a five disk system B0,B1,B2,B3,P, and a ten disk system B0,B1,B3,....B9,P.
So as you can see you need at least 3 disk, but can scale upwards from that as much as you want, and still keep redundancy while only loosing 1 disk worth of storage space. Now upon the failure of any one disk, the data can be reconstructed from the Initial B0,B1 or B0+P, or B1+P, etc. Upon the failure of two disk, you're hosed. In order to provide for better redundancy, the next step up is a RAID5 +Hotspare, wherein a 4th or additional drive above the number needed for the Bytes and Parity is sitting powered up but unused, until a disk fails, at which point the system will mark the failing drive as bad, and automatically start rebuilding the RAID using the hot spare. There are other more complex RAID types and scenerios that provide for higher levels of redundancy, but at a higher cost in lost storage space.
Does this help?

Gerritt

Re: HP Netserver & 2003 Server

Shawn Langley — 2008-05-18T14:58:43-05:00

Hokey in regards to raid 5 im assuming two are striped and the third disk mirroring? if so it seems weird how thatd work if the first and second disk add up to twice the capacity of third disk which is mirroring them 0.o or am i missing somthing, sorry not a big buff on anything other than 1 & 0 =P

although im am being tempted to use one SCSI for the OS, and stick a SATA controller in there and put some 750GB SATA's in 0 for simplicitys sake, bear in mind theres only 3 3.25" bays available.

finaly yes i think i will stick to windows VPN as you sugested... it just seems easier and more cost effective at the end of the day if it does the job.

Re: HP Netserver & 2003 Server

Gerritt — 2008-05-18T02:51:05-05:00

Shawn Langley said:

Thank you for your reply gerrit it was most usefull which leads to further questions =P

Hokey so ima try out the SCSI's in Raid well two of them in 0 the third i have little use for so itll make a nice ornament, if its too noisey (although considering the fan noise of my other PCs i dont think theyll be that loud) ill ditch them and stick in a SATA controller without RAID cause its not realy essential for a file server i dont need that quick of access to it.

and in regards to VPN servers i havent looked into any specificaly (at the moment im using VNC remote admin from my PDA at work which does the job but makes acessing files hard) do you have any recomendations for VPN software that supports PDAs? or do you think sticking with windows VPN is acceptable?

EDIT: im using a netgear DG834G v3 with v4 firmware i have not looked properly only noticed the word VPN i think that might allow me to use this as a vpn server rather than using the server, what would you recomend? server or router?

If you've got 3 matched SCSI drives put them all to work! Configure them as a RAID 5, which is a stripe set (like RAID0) but with parity, giving a level of redundancy to your data in the case of a drive failure, and runs almost, if not as fast as a RAID0 (this is dependent on the RAID controller used).

Insofar as PDA VPN, you're probably going to be better off using the 2003 server and it's supported VPN configurations. This supports PPTP and L2TP, but if you need IPSec I think you'd have to invest in another system. The router will need to be configured to provide for pass through of the ports required for your VPN in any case.

Re: HP Netserver & 2003 Server

Shawn Langley — 2008-05-17T16:28:40-05:00

Re: HP Netserver & 2003 Server

Gerritt — 2008-05-16T21:14:43-05:00

Shawn Langley said:

ok quick few questions about a home server im putting together

currently im using an athlon xp 2600 + 500gb HDD and windows XP which serves its purpose but single core makes things a little dodgy when im running a games server and trying to do something else at the same time

Now im getting my hands on an oldish rackmount HP Netserver
Dual cores
3x 15k SCSI's
2Gigs ram
ect

planning to put Server 2003 on it and have a few silly questions but still it needs clarifying

Firstly SCSI drives will power down like a normal SATA or ATA drive right? because i can imagine they make a little noise

Secondly scaling, if for example i put on a BF2142 server and then start encoding a DVD, will 2003 automaticaly think hey theres a spare processor here doing nothing and move the workload over? so one process per core? or do i have to manualy assign a process to another core

Thirdly i need to setup a VPN server on it, cause i need to be able to access it 100 miles away, i assume 2003 is suitible for that?

I think im forgetting a question but itll come to me later, im planning for the most part to be running a file server, twonkey upnp av server, a bf1942/cs:s server and VPN from it, i assume its suituble for the task? and running 24/7

OK firstly. Most Server Hardware is not conducive to powering down any components. Most servers incorporate RAID controllers, so you would not want the devices to shut down, ever, even if SATA, IDE or SCSI. To the best of my knowledge, SCSI bus design is not conducive to on demand shutdown and restart, nor do most modern SCSI drives make a lot of noise, running or not.

Second, W2K3 does support a dynamic process assignment. Even if the process is single threaded, the OS will try to assign the process to the under utilized core/s.

Third, the distance is not a factor. It does support MS-VPN, as well as RDC Remote Desktop Connection from whatever certified sources, whether it be any IP address, down to just a few or one. MS-VPN is good, and supported out of package, but the MS-VPN is limited compared to other VPN solutions. Be aware that this is not the most secure way of dealing with remote connections, but is extremely flexable.

Gerritt

HP Netserver & 2003 Server

Shawn Langley — 2008-05-16T20:51:47-05:00