[jack-o-bytes]

Will that work?

Thanks

[jack-o-bytes]

Also what software will I need on the server and what software will I need on the computers that are going to be pluged into the server?

[JohnWill]

That switch is fine, exactly what the doctor ordered. You need standard Windows all around for the workstations. The server software is going to depend on what you intend to accomplish with the server and what resources you plan on making available through it. It can be as simple as an XP-Pro machine, a Linux server, or even Windows server. It all depends on what you want to spend and how complicated you want it to be.

Truthfully, for simple file/print sharing, you can also use a Network Attached Storage box like the D-Link DNS-323, much smaller footprint and will do file/print sharing very well. I have one of these in my network, and a DNS-321 as well.

[jack-o-bytes]

What I want it to do is whichever computer I plug into one of the ethernet ports gets acsess to all the hard drive on the computer and also the internet.

[JohnWill]

Like I said, an NAS is by far the simplest way to do this, and it will allow you to access it from any computer and all the computers will also have access to the Internet. This is a pretty standard way of configuring a home network.

[jack-o-bytes]

Sorry about this but does that meen that I can still build the storage computer exactly how I want it or do I have to buy a ready built one?

[JohnWill]

You can build one with the same functionality, but it'll be more expensive than a NAS and also cost a lot more in power consumption to operate, but it's your money.

[jack-o-bytes]

Can I use filezilla as the network program on the server?

[zx10guy]

I highly suggest you listen to John's recommendation on getting a NAS appliance. It's much easier to set up one of those appliances than for you to build a server from scratch. This recommendation from me is based on what I can infer as your experience level based on your posts.

If you still want to build your own file server, here are the things you need to take into consideration. You first have to settle on an OS. Your options are Windows (either workstation or server versions) or something Linux/Unix based. There are open source stripped down OS's built to be a NAS OS you would load on your PC. Depending on your OS selection, you have to configure file sharing. With Windows you would just configure it like any normal shared resource. For Linux, you would have to look at something like Samba to provide Windows like sharing. Samba is not installed by default and when you do install it can get involved in configuring it properly.

The other consideration would be to figure out if you want to set up data redundancy. If you are going through the trouble of setting up a purpose built fileserver, you would be wise to consider a RAID configuration. There are three variants of the way you can configure RAID. One way is to set up a software RAID setup which uses the OS to approximate a hardware RAID configuration. The downside of an OS based software RAID is the absence of some nice hardware features that are included in hardware based solutions. The second method is to use a hardware card which isn't a fully hardware solution. This is a hybrid configuration where you do load a card in but the RAID processing still requires drivers for a specific OS and has more demands on the CPU to process the RAID overhead. These cards are a cheap alternative to a full up hardware RAID controller but do have some pitfalls. The final option is to get a full hardware RAID controller. These cost the most but have all the features one expects from a RAID solution and requires the least in CPU resources. I would consider using RAID 1 (mirroring) to gain the best data protection but you do lose out in space efficiency with "wasted" available storage space.

I built a fileserver for my own specific reasons. Here are my system specs:

Dell PowerEdge 650 server 2.66 GHz PIV with 3 GB of DDR ECC memory.
Areca 1120ML RAID controller with 256 MB DDR3 ECC memory
2x150GB WD Velociraptor drives in a RAID 1 configuration for the OS
6x300GB WD Velociraptor drives in a RAID 5 configuration for the data volume
Dual port Intel GigE NIC channel bonded with LACP into my managed switch
CentOS 5.4 for the OS

You should also consider the use of a UPS. I have a 1500VA APC hooked up to this setup.

[JohnWill]

FWIW, the DNS-323 or DNS-321 offer RAID-1 functionality, and I've actually tested it by yanking one drive out and then allowing it to rebuild after reinserting the drive.

[jack-o-bytes]

Can I just install windows xp and turn on file sharing on a certain port. That is what my freind said that works at a computer shop. Also cant I just use the motherboard raid feature?

[JohnWill]

Like I said, that's certainly an option. As long as you have money to burn, that'll work fine.

Have you ever done an analysis of how much it costs to run a dedicated machine just as a server?

For me, for instance, my electric rate averages around 12 cents a kw/hr. A typical computer configuration consumes about 200 watts. Running this configuration for a month here at my electric rate costs around $17/mo. This ends up being over $200 a year, roughly the price of the DNS-323 and a pair of 500gig drives! In addition, in the summer months, you have the added A/C load of 660 BTU's of heat to deal with.

This makes this an easy analysis for me.


.

[jack-o-bytes]

ok thats good. Power realy ins't that much of an issue. It will be turned off at night and whenever we go out. It will on average only be on about 8 hours a day and to be honest that is about the same as my normal house computer.

[zx10guy]

Constant cycling of hard drives where you have to spin up hard disk platters will decrease the life expectancy of any hard drive. It's not a coindence that large SAN units are built so that the drives are supposed to run 24/7/365.

Running RAID on the built in motherboard controller is the same as getting a software based RAID controller. Actually it's a bit worse. If your motherboard takes a dump, many times you have to get the same motherboard as the controller chip used lays down the data in a specific way which makes it incompatible with other controllers. So this has huge implications when you want to upgrade motherboards as you don't know if the drives will be recognized by the new motherboard. Also, you need to check to see if the motherboard based controller supports hot swapping of drives.

I still don't understand your insistence on building this thing as there hasn't been any reason given to drive forward with this.

[jack-o-bytes]

ok thanks for that I will most likely buy a raid controller card then.

The reason I am building it is for speed. A lot of the ones I have seen can only have additional hard drives added by USB and that isn't good enough. Also it is cheaper compared to ones I have seen and also I get some experience building it and setting it up.