File Server Building Guide - Operating System and Processor

A growing number of mobile devices, multi-computer homes, broadband Internet access, low-cost mass storage, and many other home electronics are being replaced by PCs, such as DVDs, Blu-ray Discs, and CD players, which are home theater PCs. Substituted, this has led to an increasing interest in dedicated file server computers. Whether you're an average home user with desktops and laptops, or an advanced user with multiple desktops, laptops, netbooks, and tablets, you often have remote access to your home system at work or on the road, and your computing experience is likely Will be enriched by shared data access. Regardless of your budget and storage needs, the file server system build guide described in this article will meet your needs.

File Server Operating System

Windows Home Server 2011

Microsoft released the latest version of Windows Home Server (WHS) earlier this year. Its sales price usually does not exceed $50. Among all file server operating systems on the market, WHS2011 is the easiest to build and manage for users who are familiar with the Windows family of desktop operating systems and are not familiar with Unix or Linux. If you have previously installed and configured Windows XP, Vista or 7, you can install and configure WHS2011 with almost no extra consideration. Of course, although it is easy to use for home file server novices, the disadvantage is cost ——WHS2011 is not free.

FreeBSD and FreeNAS

FreeBSD course is free of charge. Since it is a Unix operating system, it takes a little time and effort to learn how to use it. Although the installation process uses the old text-based method, the interface is based on the command line, but you can use a terminal like PuTTY to manage it through a Windows PC. I usually don't recommend using FreeBSD for users who are not familiar with Unix. However, if you are obsessed with the Unix world and are interested in trying to use a non-Windows operating system for the first time, learning how to build a file server with FreeBSD is a relatively easy process compared to other Unix projects.

FreeNAS is based on FreeBSD but is designed to run as a file server. In addition to the command line interface, it also has an intuitive, easy to use web interface. Both FreeBSD and FreeNAS support ZFS. This file system is like NTFS and FAT32. Compared to NTFS, ZFS has many advantages, such as unlimited file and partition size limits, auto-repair, and RAID-Z for home users.

Ubuntu and Samba

Ubuntu is probably the easiest Linux distribution for Windows users to learn. As a result, it has the largest user base of all Linux distributions: it’s no surprise that the number of users exceeds 12 million. Although there is an Ubuntu server version, one of the easiest ways to turn Ubuntu into a home file server is to install and use Samba. (Samba can be used not only on Ubuntu, but also on FreeBSD.) Samba is especially useful if future mixed clients (ie Windows, OS X and Unix/Linux) use a home file server. Although FreeNAS is definitely compatible with Windows clients, Samba sets the standard for seamless integration with Windows, and interoperability is one of its focuses.

Simply put, WHS2011 use them very easily, but it costs money. Installing Ubuntu and Samba is not particularly difficult; even if you have never used any kind of Linux before, it may take half a day to set up and run the Samba home file server. FreeNAS may be a bit more difficult than Ubuntu and Samba, but for beginners, it only takes a few hours to master. The functionality of FreeBSD may be much more powerful than WHS, Ubuntu/Samba and FreeNAS, but many of its features are basically irrelevant to the home file server and are quite difficult to learn. All of the above solutions are safe enough for the average home user if properly configured. Most importantly, all of these operating systems are fully applicable to home file servers. A comprehensive and in-depth comparison of the advantages and disadvantages of each operating system in a home file server environment is beyond the scope of this article. Ok, we have discussed several operating system choices that are worth considering, and then start talking about hardware!

Processors

Again, the main purpose of a file server is storage, not processing power, nor a high frame rate in the game. In the case of a home file server, all other components, including the processor, should be placed on the hard drive, chassis, and power supply. To reiterate, the file server does not require the latest, fastest, and strongest processor to run smoothly. In fact, file services are not a particularly cumbersome task, especially for file servers that may never have to distribute data to multiple clients at the same time. Therefore, it is more sensible to use a chip that is slightly weaker but consumes less power than a powerful, power-hungry processor.

From Atom to Zacate

Intel's Oak Trail (using Atom processors) and AMD's Brazo (using Zacate Accelerated Processing Unit) platforms are capable of serving file services. However, when using Windows Home Server 2011, neither platform provided a particularly satisfying experience. Installing WHS2011 on both platforms took a long time, basically only dealing with some simple file services —— transcoding the video on the Axis or Zacate system with WHS2011 is very slow . Having said that, Oak Trail and Brazos are more than enough to run WHS2011, especially if your file server is just performing basic tasks like streaming MP3s and storing photos.

I prefer the home server Atom motherboard /processor combination is ASUS AT5NM10T-I, this passive cooling Atom D525 (1.8GHz dual-core technology with ultra-line type) has four solutions SATA ports (instead of two SATA ports on most Intel motherboards) and one PCIe x4 slot. In case you want the file server to have more than four hard drives, the PCIe expansion slot is suitable for adding SATA controller cards. Note: It uses a laptop's SODIMM instead of a standard desktop DIMM; however, considering that DDR3 is currently inexpensive, it does not affect the cost of the system. One aspect to be aware of when choosing an Atom-based file server is to choose the latest processor with dual-core and hyper-threading technology —— the price increase is not much, but the performance improvement is obvious.

ASRock's E350M1 is a full-featured Zacate motherboard that includes the E-350 Acceleration Processing Unit (1.6GHz dual core), four SATA ports, one eSATA port (for backup), and VGA , DVI and HDMI output ports. While multiple display output ports are not an important consideration for a file server, the flexibility is always as strong as possible. The board is currently available for sale at the Newegg shopping mall for less than $100. The expansion performance is limited to one PCIe x16 slot, which can also accommodate PCIe x4 and x1 cards — — PCIe up-plugging is not good on different motherboards, but I am on this motherboard Inserting up is very successful. Inserting upwards means inserting a PCIe card with a small number of channels into a PCIe slot with a large number of channels.

In a file server environment to take the Atom when compared with a Zacate make use of a laptop or desktop computer experience is very telling. Atom is very stubborn, and Zacate is more than enough. Zacate's main strength lies in its integrated graphics processing unit (GPU), which is not particularly useful for file servers, but its processor power is far superior to that of Atom. Although the Atom processor officially claims that its power consumption (thermal design power is 13 watts for TDP) is less than the E-350 accelerated processing unit (18 watts), the power consumption of these two platforms is very close. Whether the file server is idle or in a typical load state. Considering that these platforms are similar in price and close in power consumption, the flexibility of the AMD platform is generally stronger, so given that Zacate is significantly superior in performance, it is difficult to recommend an Atom-based solution.

Sandy Bridge Pentium

We recently evaluated the Pentium based on Sandy Bridge, some of which have been on the market for several months. These processors are excellent home file server processors; they have enough performance to run WHS2011 smoothly, providing a very satisfying computing experience; they consume less power and are less expensive under load. Since the release of the Intel Pentium G620 in the second quarter, it has become a file server processor that I trust. It's the cheapest Sandy Bridge desktop processor, priced at less than $80; although its TDP is theoretically 65 watts, it actually consumes much less power under real-world load. It consumes less power than the more powerful yet still power-hungry Core i3-2100 processor; it's powerful and power-hungry, making it difficult to recommend any AMD processor at a comparable price. Unless your budget is particularly tight, the G620 is more suitable for file servers than other processors such as the AMD Athlon II X2 250. Just look at the benchmark and you can see how the G620 compares with the 250—— but since the benchmark does not include 250, we used 255, which is slightly faster than 250. Pay special attention to the power consumption; in the idle state, the G620 system consumes more than 20 watts less than the 250 system; under load, the power consumption is less than 50 watts.

So, what about the low-end, cheap Sempron 145? Its TDP is only 45 watts; although it is a single-core processor, it is still strong enough for file servers (even file servers running WHS2011). However, there is a difference between the official TDP and the actual TDP: my test shows that the Sempron 145 consumes nearly 20 watts more than the G620 in the idle state. Therefore, the same conclusion above applies to this: unless you have a tight budget, using G620 is better than 145. Compared to the Sandy Bridge Pentium, this increase in AMD processor power consumption directly means that the file server's chassis emits more heat. Whether this heat is enough to affect, depends on your chassis and cooling solution —— but in my experience, this is enough to raise the hard drive temperature from nearly 40 degrees Celsius to around 45 degrees Celsius, especially in small cases.

Although power consumption is an important factor in our recommendation to use the Pentium G620 instead of the Athlon II X2 250, it is important not to see only trees that are not visible: for file server processors, the power consumption is 20 watts. Roughly equivalent to a relatively small low-voltage incandescent lamp (such as a desk lamp) at home 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. In the end, the decision is simple: the price of the G620 is at least $25. Is it worthwhile to save more than 20 watts in your electricity bill in the long run?

Intel Pentium G620 little heat sink and fan are fully demonstrates that the amount of heat dissipation chip index.