Stone me. Where are you keeping it all in your house? Man you must have some Air Con to cool them babies down.

We have some HP DL380 kicking around that i may build to do something the same but not to the scale you are you doing

It is very impressive, no doubt.

Cost of this is at a level where pretty much no one else can go.

One question - if a server such as this were used to stream to a number of clients - and given that you could put it into a 1000 mbit switch, and have more than one network card, how many clients do you think you should stream to stable?

Not HD streaming, only SD.

i'd like to know the last 3 questions also.

I'm guessing about 75 clients, as Gb speeds are rarely achieved in full.

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core2duo E6600 - 2gb ram - 8600gt gfx - vista ult x86

Yes, it spins them down as an option - see my section under Q&A where I went into more detail. I don't know about watts per year, but at full load (24 disks with I/O plus both CPU's pegged at 100% on all 8 cores) it draws around 550 Watts. At idle its around 400W. Again see my Q&A in the first post for more info.


Perhaps, but if someone wanted to build a MyMovies server with this chassis and a low cost motherboard and drives, the chassis is still an amazing value at around $1000 for 24 drive bays and dual 900W PSU's in 4U. Someone could buy only a few drives at first and add as they go. In this build, a lot of money was spent on things like a server-class motherboard and dual CPU's to be able to do things like batch transcode media to H.264 24x7 for months at a time. This has me thinking to do another build, with the scope being "the most amount of space at the cheapest price" because a lot of corners can be cut off the price if we focus on being strictly a media server/streamer. This build was a mixed use server more than just for media serving.


I'm actually about to add a quad-port PCIe network card, which would bring the total # of gigabit ports on the server to 6. In answer to your question, its hard to say due to variables (ie where are the clients, where is it being hosted from), but if we assume 4mbps average bitrate for an SD stream, You should be able to do 250 or perhaps more. If I wanted to build a server with the goal of max throughput for streaming media, it would be a different parts list, and would likely involve 4 or 8 port PCIe NICs, and smaller arrays (max 16 drives per array in raid0 or raid5).


I guess you didn't read my whole post - the thread is called "Building a 48Tb array", and its in progress, and I'm providing updates along the way. I've already acquired 16 Seagate 1Tb drives and have populated the second chassis since the pic was taken. Raid controller #2 arrives today, so I'm going to create the second array this weekend.


I have a rack in the garage, otherwise I would go insane from the noise. Noise level is about like a DL380 (i'm very familiar with those). Surprisingly, the heat output isn't as much as you'd think. No A/C is required. Summer might be a different story.


That's silly - jealousy is a useless emotion, just like worrying. This build is intended to inspire and help others that have wondered what to do about the challenge of building a server with a lot of storage to house all their media. In 6 months, when 1Tb drive prices are half of what they are today, I'll be the one crying for not waiting! :)

It takes E-ATX or ATX. I've seen builds with low end ASUS boards and a single CPU. For just a media streamer I'd get a sub $100 motherboard (ideally with onboard video, to save on cost of a separate video card - just make sure it has 1Gigabit ethernet), and a sub $100 dualcore CPU (i haven't researched them in a while; don't know which one has the best cost/performance ratio right now - you might check Tomshardware.com or Anandtech.com and look at the CPU buying guides). You could find an inexpensive raid controller on ebay, 8 or 16 ports, and you could add more raid controllers later if you needed to add more space. You could get away with 1Gb of memory for streaming media as well. The biggest cost would really just be an upfront investment in the case and the drives, everything else could be done very inexpensively, adding raid controllers and drives as you need more disk space. You could also get away with Windows XP instead of Windows Server 200x for operating system, or cheaper yet, unRAID which is cheap and boots off a USB drive.

Here is someone else's build with an ASUS board, and 8 drives, and an older Areca raid controller:


(click to enlarge)

For the fun first

Well there is misunderstanding, as you must take my sentence with the next one which was this was a great solution.


I loved that one, i was hearing seven of nine in Star Trek Voyager
Same here i guess, this is not a negative thing, the contrary. The fact is you're showing us the latest top Ferary car, even more the latest F1. We sure would like to have this at home as this is a dream solution, this is why we are spechless and a little jealous as you could realise tis dream, this isn't a bad thing here

Now you can't say this is to inspire and help other people. You can't help people build there own by showing a F1. Your solution is too high level even for advanced users. But this is for sur a very nice dream you are showing us.

Now more seriously
I would never want such a system in my home, and here is why (i don't say it is a bad solution, this is a F1, but i just can't afford having a F1 at home, this is only a dream).

First, even if the disc go idle, when you'll be watching one movie, this will wake the all 24 drives, as there are only 2 arrays. So this will use a lot of watt each year, meaning the price for power will be noticable (400 Watt idle is quite something anyway).

But the worse thing for me is the RAID used, even 6 (you can loose 2 discs) for a 23 TB array. I know RAID is secure, blablabla... But i live, work, sleep in computing, and i saw what RAID could do. I saw a 1 disc broke taken away (hot plug), put back a new one. Very easy, the only thing is for some reason, that broke everything, and it took one week to make the server back online, of course using a backup on tape as everything was lost. I also saw a RAID controler broke, then changing it, the new one wouldn't recognize the array, meaning they had to create a new and go from tape backup to put back the data.

When you have a 1TB array this can be ok, but for a 23TB array, i can't imagine what would make the loss of 4000 RIP. The array is just too big in my opinion. You see companies use RAID and backup it, meaning they know raid by itself is not enough. An end user just can't afford two 23TB backup solution.

Not to mention that usualy, you buy the discs by group, and one begin to broke, others will follow, which means you can have several failure in the same timeframe.

You see for me this is the trouble for very big RAID array. I don't want to risk a failure of such a space as you never got a backup (don't tell me you have the discs, having to rip again 4000 DVD is not what i call a backup, this only works when you lost just one or two drives).

This is why i actualy use 12 external drives, without RAID. The go to sleep and only the one containing the movie wakes up, and i know they can braoke, but i will only have to RIP again the movies on that disc.
I also know i am in an end as you can't plug 50 external drives ;-)

But i will more look at unRaid solution, as this is some kind of RAID4, where a movie is only on one drive, meaning only one drive (well maybe the parity disc also) will wake up when watching a movie. And if you have a 2 broken discs (it can handle one drive loss) or any trouble with the array, you will only loose the movies on the broken disc, as each disc can be read individualy with all the riped movies on them.
Now, the IO of each disc (30-70MB) is far enough to stream several movies at the same time (you'll most likely not watch every movies on the same drive anyway), as this is working with just USB2 external drives. So no need for a 1TB/s streaming size (which is the F1 dream)


But don't misunderstand me, you have build a dream hardware solution that i would love to have at home, but this can only be a dream. For me it will use generate too much heat in the room i have to put it, the rack size is not easy when you don't have a server rack (i only have a small cable rack). It will also use too much power (i can't imagine the number of A it uses when the 48 are turning).

Now for you, unless you have a backup solution, i would advise smaller arrays, to minimise the work in case of an array loss

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My personal FRENCH website about DVD and DVD HD

My titles, or my HD red pill

The ONE reason that I do not like the unRaid system is that all discs must be individual shares.

It means that there is a manual process to select where to store stoff, and you have to check capacity on 10 drives instead of one, ect.

Not anymore Brian. That was changed some time ago, you can create the same share on any number of drives (up to the max of course) and they will show up as a single drive and display capacity of the combined total.

There are also a couple of methods you can use to automatically allocate where a movie is stored.

Cool, I guess I will have to read up on it again.

Well this isn't very clear in their documentation. By reading it only (i don't have unRaid yet), it seems to be read only, meaning when you make the RIP you have to work with the discs and not the global share as it won't know what disc to use. Even more, it must have different names for the folder just under the first one, if not it will never see the others, meaning you still have to be carefull naming them (personaly i use RIP\MOVIES, RIP\SERIES, RIP\CHILDREN, and that for all my discs). So i will have the same folder names on different disc, and it doesn't seem to agregate that.

But as it seems you are using unRaid, you are well better placed to tell what the limits are for the global shares, if there are any.

Just from what i read on their website, i wouldn't want to use it as it wouldn't work with the names i give to my folders

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My personal FRENCH website about DVD and DVD HD

My titles, or my HD red pill