Jukebox Server

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Festa! The “Bits” Arrive

[UPDATE – After you’ve read this, jump to our updated JukeBox MkII article]

Old Timer – since ripping and centralising all our DVDs and CDs a few years ago our “Jukebox” server had grown and grown and was in need of replacement. With 5 years of digital photographs taking up 10s of gigabytes alone and ripped DVDs taking anywhere from 3gig to 9gig each!, no matter how much disk space you have it never seems quite enough.

The donated ancient motherboard and RAM that I had received three years ago had performed well. despite being a lowly Pentium pro 200 with 128meg, it had coped admirably with serving multiple PCs, Xboxes and other IP clients. however the drive bay configuration in the old AT rackmount case (that had been “modified” with a hacksaw to allow the ATX board to be fitted) meant there was no room left to add any more hard disks, and keeping the drives that were already in there amazing was becoming a major issue too.

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The “Old Timer” Retires

NASty – In my hunt for a replacement I considered buying the Buffalo Terastation NAS (network attached storage) device. This gives you 1 terabyte of drive space in a small, quiet, stand alone box for under £700. A nice option, but more than I wanted to spend. I also have plenty of large drives to re-use out of the old Jukebox, as well as some smaller 120gig and 160gig drives that I wanted to utilise too.

Hardware – After getting some input from the guys on our Mailing list and IRC channel I finally settled on the Compucase S411 4U rack mount case from xcase.co.uk. There are many better, stunning rackmount cases out there with caddies included etc, but they are way beyond my budget. This case costs under £90 and allows me to fit 6 drives in caddies all accessible from the front of the machine, with space for at least another 6 drives internally if required. Be warned this is a full depth case and requires a large rack to accommodate it. It also weighs 23Kilos with the 8 drives fitted.

I chose an EPIA motherboard with the via M10000 (1Ghz) Nehemiah CPU. This tiny little main board is a big improvement in terms of speed on the previous via machines I’ve owned (500Mhz and 800Mhz). Although it only has one PCI slot (it can take a dual riser in the appropriate case) it already features pretty much everything you need on-board – 10/100 LAN, USB2, Firewire, Graphics, Sound. The PCI slot is used for the promise TX2 IDE controller card I was already using in the old Jukebox machine.

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Some of the Caddies in Place

This card along with the 2 IDE channels included on the motherboard allowed me to connect up 8 IDE devices. To reach the full potential of 12 drives in this case, you would need to replace the IDE controller card with a more expensive one with more channels. You could also change the IDE controller for a SATA one if you are buying new drives. one of the biggest advantages of this setup is the running costs. The EPIA board is a miser when it comes to electricity usage when compared to most modern boards/CPUs. In a server running 24/7 that has to be a consideration.

I had some old IDE caddies spare which I used for this project. using caddies has several advantages:-

It’s very simple to remove and replace drives

The fan in each caddy helps keep the drives cool

There’s no need for rails to mount the 3.5″ HDs in the 5.25″ bays

I fitted the 5 drives out of my old jukebox, plus 3 more spares I had lying around from previous upgrades. So the finally tally is 400gig x 1, 300gig x 3, 160gig x 2, 120gig x 2 giving a total of 1.86 terabytes

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Spot the tiny EPIA via Motherboard!

Although the fold up case front does just close with the caddies in place I decided to remove it for convenience – it’s really so I can see all the Flashing Lights!

OS – rather than take up a bay with a CD-ROM drive I just hung one out of the case temporarily to install the OS and then disconnected it when done. I chose to stick with Windows XP pro as the OS, despite protestations from my “mates” on the IRC channel. I need to run a couple of other apps on my jukebox that run under windows

and whilst I could probably have found Linux alternatives, I’m still pretty much a Linux virgin and so have stuck to what I know. I need good control of the rights for the jukebox data. I want my 4-year-old to be able to access media from his PC, but not delete it! Anyway, here are a couple of interesting NAS specific OS’s which the more sandal wearing amongst you may like to try NASlite – open Filer .

The 8 Drives in device Manager
IDE Drives on the promise Card appear as “SCSI”

I haven’t employed any kind of raid in this new setup. Experience here seems to differ quite a bit, but I seem to have heard more horror stories of people losing data with raid than saving it. problems with cheaper raid devices that are usually used in a home servers typically mean you lose the daTA em todas as suas unidades, em vez de apenas uma com os problemas. Backup dos “dados” todas as noites para outro PC no rack (que são documentos, fotos digitais etc.), mas a “mídia” não é de forma alguma. Eu possuo os originais dos CDs e DVDs, portanto, colocá -los de volta no servidor não é um problema, exceto o inconveniente e o fator de tempo. Não existe uma maneira prática e econômica de apoiar um volume tão grande de dados que encontrei.

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Nova jukebox no rack!

Problemas-Com alguns testes muito não científicos usando um pequeno pedaço de papel, fica claro que os fãs na frente de alguns dos meus caddies estão nas últimas pernas. Atualmente, estou investigando caddies de substituição e este Vantec MRK-102FD parece apenas o trabalho. Embora não seja um problema para mim, pois meu nó zero é uma pequena área da nossa garagem, essa caixa soa um pouco como um caça a jato decolando. Com este muitos movimentos e fãs, você não deseja esse caso no armário embaixo das escadas.

Conclusão – Como diz o ditado, existem muitas maneiras de esfolar um gato, então essa configuração é exatamente o que é adequado para mim. Se eu ainda não tivesse as unidades, eu teria ido para a terastação. Ou talvez eu tenha ido para a mesma configuração, mas com novas unidades SATA em vez de Pata. Meu interruptor tem duas portas de gigabit, por isso teria sido bom se a Ethernet embutida na placa -mãe também apoiasse isso, embora no Realty não tenha problemas para atender a vários clientes simultaneamente na LAN de 100 meg. No final, é difícil superar a flexibilidade dessa configuração. É fácil substituir as unidades à medida que as maiores e as mais baratas ficam disponíveis. Mesmo mudar tudo para o SATA não é difícil exigir uma mudança de placa PCI e caddies. Agora, role nos próximos anos 800gig dirige a £ 200

[ATUALIZAÇÃO – Depois de ler isso, pule para o nosso artigo atualizado do Jukebox Mkii]

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Lista de componentes
(Preços aproximados – incluindo IVA)

Compucase S411 RackMount 1 x £ 86,50

HIPER HPU-4S 425WATT 1 x £ 35

Via Epia M10000 Nehemiah Minantelboard1 x £ 96

Kingston 512MB PC2100 266MHz DDR DIMM 1 x £ 48,50

Promise TX2 Ultra IDE Controller 1 x £ 21,50

Cabos redondos de IDE 4 x £ 3,80

IDE Caddies 6 x £ 4,00

Total – £ 326,70 (mais unidades e os)

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