What OS for seedbox(6x2TB+5805 raid6)

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MustRotate

Limp Gawd
Joined
Aug 24, 2007
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227
Hello everyone,
I have installed everything(i3 530,Gigabyte H55M-USB3,2x2GB DDR3-200,Adaptec 5805,Corsair 650W,WD 150GB Velociraptor as OS drive).
I will order the 6 2TB Hitachis on tuesday but now the question for me as a RAID noob is what OS to install on the Velociraptor and what filesystem to use for the big raid6 partition?
Is PC Bsd fully compatible with the Adaptec card?
Some additional information:
- i want to use some kind of torrent software with the OS
- it should be accesible from a Windows PC(remote desktop or something in the genre)
Thanks for the tips!
 
If you are going to use linux, bsd ... I would sell the raid card and use the motherboard ports. A hardware raid card is completely unnecessary on these systems. Performance wise it will not perform much better than a modern cpu and it will perform worse if write cache is not enabled or is too small. You may as well consider freebsd and use raidz.
 
I want to use the card for added redundancy. OS should be as user friendly as possible, that is why i'm considering PC Bsd.
Should I go with Windows 7 then?
 
What I was saying is the os software raid (has the same redundancy as your card) on linux, bsd ... is not that much inferior than the the HW raid card actually in several ways the builtin os software raid can be better. However if you move to windows you will need the hard ware raid card since under windows software raid performance is bad.
 
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The H55-USB3 motherboard has no raid capability. Can I somehow have raid using BSD?
 
The operating system has raid that is part of the operating system and is totally independent of the hard drive controller. You never want to use the motherboard (fakeraid) in linux or bsd. The os raid is much better. To boot you generally create a very small raid 1 that contains your kernel and is bootable and a raid 5 or 6 for your os and data. With os raid you can create raid arrays that are partitions and not whole disks. This is actually the preferred method under these systems.
 
So you are telling me that under linux/bsd os raid is comparable if not better than hw raid under Windows?
Can you please point me to a tutorial on how to make a raid array under those systems?
Which OS should be then better to use(keep in mind that i'm used to windows so user friendliness is a must :D).
Thanks!
 
So you are telling me that under linux/bsd os raid is comparable if not better than hw raid under Windows?
Click to expand...

On modern hardware yes.

Can you please point me to a tutorial on how to make a raid array under those systems?
Click to expand...

I really do not have any great tutorials here. I have been using linux software raid at work for 6+ years now (around 30 TB+ raid 5/6 at the moment) so I do not look for such guides anymore. Here is one I found with a google search.

https://raid.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Linux_Raid

The other guides, I would highly recommend looking at a few of the zfs server links on this forum specifically ones that mention raidz. If you are not set on an os, this is a very good option.
 
If you're interested in FreeBSD, have a look at the different GEOM modules available:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOM

In FreeBSD you can stack all kinds of GEOM modules to eachother, and act like a chain, for example:
(disks) -> geom_mirror -> geom_stripe -> geom_eli encryption -> filesystem

But you may also want to opt for ZFS, which also supports all important RAID-levels. FreeBSD8 has good support for ZFS. A word of caution: Samba performance tends to be worse on FreeBSD.
 
You should install windows 7 and use utorrent 2.0. You'll be done installing and configuring your OS in 3 hours instead of 50 hours.
 
Tried today to put OpenSolaris with the LiveCD but its stuck when posting the message:
Code: 
SunOS Release 5.11 Version snv_111b 64-bit
Copyright 1983-2009 Sun Microsystems, Inc.  All rights reserved.
Use is subject to license terms.
:(
Repeated multiple times, same result each time. Probably HW is not compatible( i did not add the Adaptec card).
 
I am currently using WinXP/utorrent but I can change to pretty much anything.
Biggest thing for me is ease of use.
 
MrGuvernment said:
ease of use = windows.
Click to expand...

+1.

Linux is great and all, but not for ease of use.

Yes you can follow guides and get it setup, but then what about when the shit hits the fan? If you don't know it well you can get into trouble quick.
 
rTorrent as the CLI + ruTorrent with a GUI isn't too different compared to uTorrent.

Depends on how much time you want to devote to setting things up on a Linux/BSD/Solaris/*n*x compared to a Windows set up.
 
Windows is easy to use but the alternatives have some major advantages like no HW raid card needed and more reliable filesystem.
Which are the top3 most user friendliest OSs from the non-Microsoft bunch?
 
btw utorrent & wine works just fine.

Ubuntu + Neatx for remote desktop + Utorrent + md raid5 + ext3/xfs filessytem = done.

Windows is easier. You can however just buy the hardware, try Linux out, if u arn't happy, install Windows.
 
Why would you not use windows?

I mean really if you have both what is the disadvantage?
 
i love linux, but considering this is a large array with what will presumably be a lot of large files, you'll want to stick with the OS you can handle in a disaster scenario
 
@nitrobass24: i do not care if i have to sell the Adaptec card because i want the setup to be as reliable as possible. I really do not want to install everything and end up with ~8TB of data junk because Windows lost a file or something went wrong due to an update.
ZFS promises a lot, if only i could get some OS to work with the H55+i3 530 combo.
@SinShiva: you are right, it will be a lot of files.
 
I don't see what is so hard about using Linux. Especially just for seeding some torrents. You install it, install a Torrent client, and do it just like you would in Windows.
 
Which Linux distribution are you thinking of? Does it support ZFS?
Maybe things got a little bit foggy. I am requesting your help for:
- OS for a station which should be reliable(RAID6 or somekind of protection against the failure of 2harddrives)
- user friedliness( writting commands in the console to start the array is rather new to me)
- ability to control it from a Windows pc
- ability to handle a lot of files
- torrent application should be supported by the OS
 
ZFS isn't in the Linux kernel due to licensing issues, the solutions that exist (ZFS on FUSE) don't seem very elegant to me, but maybe others have had some practical experience there.

This really seems like Solaris territory, if you're looking for a pretty specific task to be performed reliably and with high performance. It won't take "50 hours" to setup, it's quite easy to do and you'll only have to do it once.

As for torrent clients, there are literally dozens of them available Open Source, and if you're particular you can probably run your favorite Windows one in WINE without discernable penalty. I would personally look for one with a Web GUI, that you can login to with a browser from your Windows clients to manage your torrents, etc. I have a similar system setup on my Linux box to handle downloading from Usenet, it's been trouble free for a few years now, though the storage on said Linux box is getting a little dated now. Clutch http://recurser.com/code/p/clutch/ is one example of a WebGUI for Transmission (a popular Open Source torrent client). I think this is a better option than using remote desktop for just adding, removing and monitoring torrent downloads, though you might still want to have a way to access the desktop for maintenance and the like.

Dustin
 
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Perhaps he needs to look at Nexenta? That's basically Ubuntu Linux with the OpenSolaris kernel; would allow using ZFS while being in a friendly to use GUI.

To be honest; any PC could do what he wants; share torrents. So if you pick Nexenta/BSD that means using ZFS is very important to you. If its not, you may want to try more mainstream OS like Ubuntu or Windows.
 
I have to state again, use windows 7 or server 2008 R2 and utorrent 2.0. You can go the linux route, but unless you're already good it will be a pain to manage once your data is critical, as someone above mentioned. I use ubuntu for my seedbox. It goes like this:

install ubuntu, install vsftpd, find bugs, compile from source, find bugs, try to remove vsftpd, install proftpd, find bugs. install libtorrent, compile rtorrent from source. find bugs, recompile rtorrent with different flags, find bugs, crap need different gcc version, change gcc. compile rtorrent. works mostly. install rutorrent, figure out scgi permissions, apache permissions, figure out mod_ssl, crap wrong php version installed, figure out how to install correct php libraries/modules/whatever. realize that rtorrent rocks but the documentation is nonexistant and shitty. spend days reading bug reports and mailing lists for info. install rutorrent modules to get basic rss functionality. read more bug reports to figure out why it doesn't work. oh wait, rtorrent doesn't start up automatically, learn about service levels and search the interweb till you find a startup script for rtorrent to rip off. Realize there are like 5 that are completely different and some work and some don't, and some kind of do. Figure out how to use screen with your startup script.

OR

install windows 7. install utorrent, set to autostart on bootup. (rss, web interface, web server = all included) configure your RSS. (by the way, every site has a tutorial for utorrent RSS, no site has a tutorial for rutorrent RSS) install filezilla server for ftp. DONE.

Unless you have a compelling reason to go with linux/zfs, it's completely the wrong choice for moderate torrenting and serving files.

If you're going to run a 100mbit seedbox, run/write shell scripts, automate stuff, and you can code, (and you can read other's code, like the rtorrent code) and are already all familiar with linux, or if you have a deep, burning desire to get your hands dirty then go with linux. Otherwise, it's the fool's choice. Go with windows 7 and keep your hardware raid card. Besides, utorrent 2.0 has uTP which will benefit you greatly on a home connection.

(yes I know utorrent runs in wine, but why bother? it runs better on win 7)
 
Disclaimer: I don't think I have a torrent app on any of my machines (not bad for now 12U's of storage servers). I may have one that is a company's software/ patch updater somewhere.

That being said, the above randomlychosen post is not so far off from accurate. My experience is that you can pretty much always have some open source Linux or other software do something better than what you can with windows (save gaming which even with wine is, let's face it, way worse than PC's from an ease of use standpoint). However, Windows is pretty darn easy to get up and running, and hardware compatibility, if you use mainstream parts, is not an issue.

I've been playing around with about ten different open source NAS OSes over the past few weeks. Literally every one has required some sort of troubleshooting. It isn't that something didn't work, or couldn't be done (usually) but if I think of my billing rate v. the amount of troubleshooting time on other OSes, WHS is a bargin at $99 if it saves 20 minutes of my time.

If you don't feel super comfortable with daily administration of the system and more importantly disaster recovery, Windows is a fairly strong choice despite the fact that it is a bloated OS in comparison.
 
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