Episode 3 – A New Server

As mentioned in my previous couple of posts (here and here), I recently upgraded the hardware on my home server. I decided to document the original hardware and the new hardware (along with prices) and also write down my objectives and how I went about deciding on the hardware.

I built the original version of this home server back in 2010 – this is the set of hardware I purchased at that time for the build:

I reused 4GB of DDR2 SDRAM I had from earlier upgrades, a 500GB Western Digital drive that came free with the Motherboard + CPU purchase from Newegg. I built this machine and installed Windows Home Server on it and ran it that way for a few years (till 2013). At that point, I realized what a horribly broken product Windows Home Server was and switched over to using Linux + SnapRAID + mhddfs. Around 2011, I also replaced the 500GB drive with a Western Digital 2TB drive (which failed last year, note that the Samsung 1 TB drives are still going strong). Everything was working very smoothly except that transcoding of video when using Plex was very hit or miss – the main bottleneck was the single-core processor. Sadly, the Sempron single-core wouldn’t stably unlock to a dual-core – bluescreen’d during Windows setup consistently and I didn’t want to run an unstable configuration for my home server. After a couple of years more of pulling along with this hardware, I finally decided to upgrade the CPU + Motherboard + cooler. After looking around, I settled on the following set of hardware for my upgrade:

If the two $10 rebates come through, the total cost for the upgrade will drop to $157.97. Again, I reused 2 x 2GB of DDR3 SDRAM that I had leftover from an earlier upgrade.

Objectives, motivations and constraints for my new home server:

• Protect me against one hard drive failure at a time – while it is possible that I may face multiple simultaneous hard drive failures, the probability of that happening make it worth taking the chance. The benefits of allowing for only one failure at a time is the reduction in expense and resource usage.
• Provide a transparent store of all the available disk capacity in my house without having to worry about individual disk sizes – I have 3 1 TB drives and 2 2 TB drives. I have no intention or desire to micromanage them – what I want is transparent storage of 7 TB (or assuming we give up one drive for redundancy/fault tolerance, 5 or 6 TB).
• Act as a centralized repository of media and entertainment – I have ripped a few of my DVD collection and over time have wanted to rip all of them and store them in a central repository so I can watch them without having to hunt for disks. In addition, I wanted the repository to be accessible from all kinds of devices – iPad, Windows Phones, Windows desktops, XBox etc.
• Cheap and commodity hardware wherever possible – I’m a big believer in commodity hardware. Things like ECC RAM and server processors strike me as ripoffs or unnecessary overkill for consumer scenarios (and even a vast majority of business scenarios). You are better off spending the money on higher quality power supply, fans, a good UPS etc in my opinion.
• Low power wherever possible – I’m not interested in the fastest or hottest components money can buy. I’m more interested in cooler, eco-friendly and quieter components
• When it comes to CPU, for my workload, it is better to have multiple cores over fewer faster cores

Based on the above constraints, AMD APUs have always stood out as attractive candidates for the upgrade. I was trying to choose between the older Trinity based APUs and the newer Kaveri based APU. In the end, the A8-7600 with its ability to run at 45W TDP sold me and I went for it. Overall, I’m quite happy with this upgrade – Plex video streaming is really good now, especially when multiple devices are accessing it simultaneously. While I was tempted by some SoC boards with Intel Atom, I’m glad I stuck to my commodity hardware guns and I think AMD is missing out on a niche opportunity here by not producing a cheaper version (with basic graphics, but improved CPU performance perhaps) that’s targeted at the headless home server role. Given how cheap DDR3 SDRAM is at present, I’m tempted to update the RAM to 8 GB or even 16 GB, but realistically, 4 GB is more than enough for the use cases for my home server. I’m going to see if I can hold off till Thanksgiving and maybe snag a cheap deal for RAM at that point.