Storage and Servers

[M-Callahan]

Hello everyone,


Hope everyone is doing fine.



Since animation takes up quite a bit of disk space, I am starting to set up servers.  Will be frankensteining a SAN network (Storage Area Network) with a dell t710 and a t610 servers that are modified for rack mounts and starting out with a Emc VNX 5300 array with 15 sas 3.5 inch disk drive bays at two terabytes each to start with one block  (switch gear between the servers and storage) and a hub (where the san can connect to the computers in the network)  so other spare workstations can be used here to render and still be able to use the internet at the same time. One could have done a NAS (network attached storage)  system but the fact that if the one server goes down you can also lose the whole network and sometime data, with the extra server you can keep going save some money and replace the servers. ( about $250 to $350 is what servers go for if you know where to find them to replace a down server and who knows one might be able to do simple repair on the down server and keep in reserve.)   Now I am learning how to setup servers and program in Linux.  All my equipment is beyond end of life but it is really affordable when you get equipment that is over 10 years old which cost a fortune when it was new.  With the use raid five for the disk it will leave me 15 terabytes to work with and be able to backup files. (Raid backs up data so if one disk goes down you don't loose data or files. Raid 5 uses about 50 percent of disk space but is usually considered as one of the most reliable in this system. )  My plan is to get more drive arrays as soon as my saving allow me so in order to expand to 200 terabytes as a hobbyist hopefully that will be enough to have 100 terabytes to work with.   ( However there was a time in the late 70s and early 80s when I thought 5 megabytes was more than enough for storage when most file were in kilobytes.)  Now to remember the importance of Cable Management as this network goes together.   

[McGrandpa]

Mr. Callahan, all that sounds right do-able and very very cool!   I thought my own rig with 3 to 4 terabytes internal storage was great.  But even that is beginning to fill up.  So.  Time to go external for more, I think!  But rather than spinner drives, I am looking at static RAM storage.    SSD's.  I know, Solid State Drives.  But they ARE Static RAM!  LOL!  I am delighted that they have come way down in price while their reliability has gone up, and capacity has increased too.Have a great evening!

[M-Callahan]

Mr. Callahan, all that sounds right do-able and very very cool!   I thought my own rig with 3 to 4 terabytes internal storage was great.  But even that is beginning to fill up.  So.  Time to go external for more, I think!  But rather than spinner drives, I am looking at static RAM storage.    SSD's.  I know, Solid State Drives.  But they ARE Static RAM!  LOL!  I am delighted that they have come way down in price while their reliability has gone up, and capacity has increased too.Have a great evening!

Hello McG 



SATA drives cost less than SAS drives.  Both of these type of drives are mechanical and Solid State.  The reason why SAS cost so much is that it can read and write at the basically at the same time, where the SATA can only read or write taking turns or can only take one function at a time.  I would like to have solid state sas drives but it would cost a small fortune to get them, for me it is more practical to get mechanical drive that are refurbished when it comes to SAS drives.   I have a SATA solid state as a boot disk in my home built, it is very fast with the i5 processor on an MSI gaming board.  They do have their advantages.  With 15 external drive I have outside my computer with wires all over the place I feel that it is time to get a server network.  Servers very strong computers that have built in redundancy.  They will keep running if something burn out on one side like and it will tell you if something is wrong with it has fault lights and small screen in them that will give an error code so it help in times you need to repair or correct a fault in the programming.  There is so much information on the internet about servers and networks and the different type of networks that all you have to do is read, and/or watch tutorials  and check everything you do carefully to put you own network together.  Plus there are people on forums and websites that will help you if you are stuck somewhere since  there are people who put together networks as a hobby.

[Noshoba]

Morning..wish I could go the server route myself .
Went externals a long time ago for my stuff after my old faithful of a Toshiba went tits up after 10 years of good service and lost everything. Now have 12 Tb of external and needing to get more lol.

[M-Callahan]

Morning..wish I could go the server route myself .
Went externals a long time ago for my stuff after my old faithful of a Toshiba went tits up after 10 years of good service and lost everything. Now have 12 Tb of external and needing to get more lol.

Hi Noshoba,



I get a lot of things cheap that are either second hand or refurbished so I can do things for little money.  If you have a college or a university near you.  You can see if they have a place where they sell their surplus also local government sell workstations and servers dirt cheap too.  Then there is ebay.  I got an HP 8100 workstation for 20.00 dollars and installed windows 7 on it from the university out here.  Monitor are very inexpensive too  they are most in small sizes but if you are OK with that they are around 20 dollars out here too. Plus I got an old Dell Optiplex 755 pentium grade for 20.00 and that is one of my back ups.    Also some charitable organization like the Blind Center for people who are legally blind rebuild computers and workstations and sell them at very reasonable prices too.   You could build yourself a NAS server and the software is free from an old computer using sata drives.  You can gut the old computer and put in in a case that can hold maybe eight or more drives.  A couple of years back  like 5 year ago I got a HP Z400 which I use all the time I think I paid 30 for.   If you are interested in building a NAS system to use on your computer here is a youtube video that is of interest.
 

[Noshoba]

Thanks for the links.  Yeah I am interested since I have been interested in doing short animations for awhile now. Had a cute one of Tabby I want to do and think my current rig can handle it . Just need to pick up the basics . 

[M-Callahan]

If you look for what you want on the internet nowadays you can usually can find a way to do thing like making your own home brew servers for storage. 

[parkdalegardener]

  ( However there was a time in the late 70s and early 80s when I thought 5 megabytes was more than enough for storage when most file were in kilobytes.)  Now to remember the importance of Cable Management as this network goes together.

I remember the first really big WD drive I bought for internal storage instead of 5.25 inch floppys I was using. It was 3.5 meg and is still sitting in a box along with a dozen or more internal drives from over the years. I still have floppy and 1.44 drives in that same box. After all; I may want to install DOS or Win3.x. I still have all the disks. Have a zip tape drive and a few carts here as well from when that was my backup strategy. Pack rat. I may need this some day. Yeah right.

[rrkknight3]

M-Callahan and McG, you all are mightily confusing me.

M-C: if you're building a SAN, what file system are you going to use on your rendering computers?  Getting the blocks to and from them can be something like iSCSI but how will Windows know which blocks are associated with which files?

McG: Most commodity SSD's use flash memory, not static memory.  SSD's will retain the information for a year or more in a powered off state.  Static RAM only retains its data for seconds.

What am I missing?

[M-Callahan]

M-Callahan and McG, you all are mightily confusing me.

M-C: if you're building a SAN, what file system are you going to use on your rendering computers?  Getting the blocks to and from them can be something like iSCSI but how will Windows know which blocks are associated with which files?

McG: Most commodity SSD's use flash memory, not static memory.  SSD's will retain the information for a year or more in a powered off state.  Static RAM only retains its data for seconds.

What am I missing?

Hello RRKKnight


Now starting to wake up after a short nap. 


One of the Reason why I am going to an Open Source Linux based operating system for a SAN is to be able to write an API (API is Application programming interface) that will link windows to recognize blocks for data storage. There are references for this.  You can think of the SAN as a back office where things are kept the API as the hallway to the front office where the windows based computers are.   I just want the SAN to store data nothing else.   Back when I was programming in UNIX, public libraries where doing away with physical paper files and going to computerized file as things progress and the introduction of microcomputers in the library environment is when API starting linking such systems.  There are site and forums  on the web that can give you insight on how to link such things together.  No use banging your head against the wall reinventing the wheel.