audiosceptic Posted January 11, 2011 Report Posted January 11, 2011 So I decided to upgrade my home file server from a Windows 2003 Server platform to something else. All the server does is serve files to Mac clients and run the Squeezebox Server. DNS and DHCP is performed by my router. No Email or Web serving. The reason I'm upgrading is because the Squeezebox server is running kinda flaky lately and file server speeds are kinda slow for a small Gigabit network. The hardware is semi heavy duty. It's a HP xw8200 workstation with dual 3.2 GHz Xeon CPU's, 6 GB Ram and 1.5 TB of internal disk. I also have a LacIe 4TB estata/FW/USB that's configured as a 3 TB RAID 5 external drive via esata. I recently installed a Linux SUSE 11.3 64-bit OS (Ubuntu 10.10 crashed on install) and am testing it as a file server. I formatted the 1.5 TB drives with XFS partitions and shared them via AFP and NFS. I can write files at around 1GB in 60 seconds for either NFS or AFP mounts which is a little faster than the same hardware under Windows 2003 Server with SMB mounts. I haven't hooked up my LaCie external drive yet to the Linux box. I haven't tested Squeezebox server under Linux yet. My other hardware platform is an older Mac mini with 1.66 GHz dual core Intel CPU and 2 GB RAM. It can connect to an eSata drive with a hardware hack. I have a OS X Leopard Server license but would most likely use a standard Leopard client OS because I don't need all the garbage the server OS provides. Performance wise I think both platforms will offer comparable speed for AFP transfers. I'm currently running Squeezebox server on a separate Mac Mini and it seems to work fine on OS X. Another concern I have is power consumption. Although I haven't tested it I'm assuming the Mac mini would use less electricity than the HP workstation. Has anyone else done similar evaluations?
tkam Posted January 11, 2011 Report Posted January 11, 2011 I used to run a separate file server but switched to a ReadyNAS Pro, the pro is pretty expensive, but it's damn fast and theres a special version of squeezebox server you can install to it. Takes up a lot less space than my old server and has no problems maxing out the 1gig network port.
Dusty Chalk Posted January 11, 2011 Report Posted January 11, 2011 No, but I will follow your findings with interest. The dual Xeons seem complete overkill. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Fitz Posted January 11, 2011 Report Posted January 11, 2011 I used to run a separate file server but switched to a ReadyNAS Pro, the pro is pretty expensive, but it's damn fast and theres a special version of squeezebox server you can install to it. Takes up a lot less space than my old server and has no problems maxing out the 1gig network port. I've got a little fanless mini-itx system I use for NAS, DNS, squeezebox, etc, and performance has never been an issue with it, and it's got some pretty wimpy hardware. I've been wanting to get a commercial NAS at some point though, to make upgrades & backups easier to manage. If only the ones that have everything I want weren't so expensive. :/
audiosceptic Posted January 11, 2011 Author Report Posted January 11, 2011 I used to run a separate file server but switched to a ReadyNAS Pro, the pro is pretty expensive, but it's damn fast and theres a special version of squeezebox server you can install to it. Takes up a lot less space than my old server and has no problems maxing out the 1gig network port. That would be a nice solution but I'm trying to utilize what I already have.
grawk Posted January 11, 2011 Report Posted January 11, 2011 sell them both, buy something designed to do what you want, pocket the remaining money
Nebby Posted January 11, 2011 Report Posted January 11, 2011 sell them both, buy something designed to do what you want, pocket the remaining money With the newer technology being more efficient, electricity bill would probably be lower as well. Double win.
luvdunhill Posted January 11, 2011 Report Posted January 11, 2011 I also use a ReadyNAS. I actually like Windows Home Server as well.
Grahame Posted January 11, 2011 Report Posted January 11, 2011 (edited) Install Vortexbox on some modern energy efficient hardware ? [url=http://vortexbox.org/about/]vortexbox.org Edited January 11, 2011 by Grahame
audiosceptic Posted January 11, 2011 Author Report Posted January 11, 2011 sell them both, buy something designed to do what you want, pocket the remaining money Thought about that. I have the HP listed on Craigslist and haven't received any offers. I hope to get at least $100. I'm not sure what a 2007 Mac Mini would go for but I don't think more than $100. What would $200.00 buy me towards server hardware not including hard disk if I use the 4TB external raid? Ideally I want an esata interface for max disk speed.
Sherwood Posted January 12, 2011 Report Posted January 12, 2011 (edited) I actually like Windows Home Server as well. THIS. I've enjoyed using my HP WHS immensely. I have an EX475 with a few hardware upgrades, and it is a great piece of gear. A newer 490 or 495 includes out of the box Time Machine compatibility, as well as an active community for plugins, troubleshooting, etc. It also supports selective backup, or multi-drive redundancy of only certain folders. I have my photos, music and documents duplicated, but leave TV and Movies to the cruel hands of fate. 4 drive bays on my hardware itself, plus support for esata/port multiplier for a 4-bay JBOD external enclosure. 8 bays is decent storage, especially with 2 Tb drives going for under $100. I have no problems FTPing files from my wired iMac to the wired WHS over a pretty standard Apple Airport Extreme router at 65 MB/s. I can move 1080p streams across the network without stuttering. I would be stunned if it wasn't fast enough for Squeezebox Server. I haven't kept up, but the new Beta version of Windows Home Server seems very promising as well. Edited January 12, 2011 by Sherwood
CarlSeibert Posted January 12, 2011 Report Posted January 12, 2011 I like Linux for this sort of thing. As Grahame pointed out, I've become a big Vortex Box fanboy. I can say that Squeezebox Server on Mandriva was a pain in the neck every time I needed to upgrade SBS. If I was building something that was not going to be a desktop, where I wouldn't have to worry about a GUI and a hundred favorite applications, I would just use a distro that is really supported by Squeezebox. Which would be Fedora, which more or less was my path to Vortex Box, which is indeed built on Fedora. IMHO, the best hardware is whatever happens to be around and already paid-for, which is yet another point in favor of the Linux distro of your choice. Why AFP? Most folks have dumped it for SMB in Windows/Mac mixed environments. I still run it on my file server, out of habit mostly, but SMB is what gets used.
audiosceptic Posted January 12, 2011 Author Report Posted January 12, 2011 Why AFP? Most folks have dumped it for SMB in Windows/Mac mixed environments. I still run it on my file server, out of habit mostly, but SMB is what gets used. In my testing SMB was the slowest of SMB, AFP and NFS when using only Mac clients to a server. This is for mounted volumes with drag and drop capability. I have also bumped into weird file name errors under SMB that I have not encountered through AFP or NFS. FTP is by far the fastest transfer protocol but not really feasible for drag and drop file manipulation.
CarlSeibert Posted January 12, 2011 Report Posted January 12, 2011 Yup. SMB has a pretty narrow view of filenames. Linux is wildly permissive. And music files have horrible names. Accordingly, I have suffered greatly. That's why I now have FTP servers on all my machines that I use for music.
n_maher Posted January 12, 2011 Report Posted January 12, 2011 I also use a ReadyNAS. I actually like Windows Home Server as well. Marc, remind me, which model are you running?
Grahame Posted January 12, 2011 Report Posted January 12, 2011 In my testing SMB was the slowest of SMB, AFP and NFS when using only Mac clients to a server. This is for mounted volumes with drag and drop capability. I have also bumped into weird file name errors under SMB that I have not encountered through AFP or NFS. FTP is by far the fastest transfer protocol but not really feasible for drag and drop file manipulation. Use FileZilla - The free FTP solution ( free. , Win / Mac / Linux , graphical client Drag N Drop Support) What's not to like ? FileZilla - Client Features
grawk Posted January 12, 2011 Report Posted January 12, 2011 Thought about that. I have the HP listed on Craigslist and haven't received any offers. I hope to get at least $100. I'm not sure what a 2007 Mac Mini would go for but I don't think more than $100. What would $200.00 buy me towards server hardware not including hard disk if I use the 4TB external raid? Ideally I want an esata interface for max disk speed. if it works, I'd give you 250 for the mini with osx server installed.
luvdunhill Posted January 12, 2011 Report Posted January 12, 2011 Marc, remind me, which model are you running? I have a ReadyNas Duo, which is the entry level model. Oh and I was serious about Windows Home Server. It's actually really nice.
Sherwood Posted January 12, 2011 Report Posted January 12, 2011 I had to set up NFS for the Windows Home Server box, as it doesn't come enabled from the factory, but it's pretty bulletproof now. SMB still gets used more often, but that's due largely to laziness. I can't say I ever considered AFP, mostly because my media streamer (popcorn hour C-200) doesn't support it.
Iron_Dreamer Posted January 12, 2011 Report Posted January 12, 2011 The dual Xeons seem complete overkill. Not that there's anything wrong with that. There is if you're talking about a 24x7 device and you pay your own electric bill. I run a media server off an underclocked, undervolted single-core 45nm Sempron @1.6GHz, and have all the performance I ever need (granted, it only gets hit by two clients simultaneously, at most). The whole system runs about 24W AC at idle with hard drives spun down, and that's with a normal ATX power supply (Corsair 550w) which is far from optimally efficient at such a low load.
audiosceptic Posted January 13, 2011 Author Report Posted January 13, 2011 if it works, I'd give you 250 for the mini with osx server installed. Thanks but I'm going to test it as a server once the eSata card arrives. I put Leopard 10.5.2 on the HP workstation today using the Hackintosh Kalyway install DVD. Surprisingly it works although the NIC card fails to enable after reboot. I'm going to test for a while and see what happens.
audiosceptic Posted January 30, 2011 Author Report Posted January 30, 2011 Well after a couple of weeks testing I settled on my Mac Mini running Snow Leopard as my file and Squeezebox server. Since all of my clients are Macs I discovered that setting up native AFP file shares delivered the fastest throughput for file sharing over both NFS and SMB. I also realized that while esata has the fastest throughput for local file transfers, it didn't add anything when transferring over a gigabit network. I might as well as attached the external raid via firewire as opposed to hacking the Mac Mini to accommodate estata. I also discovered that the router I was using affected my wired network throughput. I had a Netgear FVS318G firewall router connected to my broadband modem and would see congestion when doing simple things like time machine backups while listening through the Squeezebox. The router would also lock up every time I tried to use a Bittorrent client. I upgraded to the Netgear FVS336G firewall router and speed and reliability dramatically improved. So in the end I sold my HP workstation and kept the Mac Mini. Squeezebox runs well and is reliable. I have lessened my electrical usage and increased my throughput all using equipment I already had on hand (except for the router). This should hold up for a while until I get the urge to tweak it again.
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