My Media server build

digitaldr

Thinking of building your own server? Well after a lot of planning/saving I finally got around to it. My old setup was:

HTPC

Acer Revo 3100 250 Gb internal and 500 Gb external usb 2.5 inch



XBMC Live Dharma installed to HDD dual booting with windows XP home (as have a legit disc and bought Revo with Linux)

TP-Link Homeplugs



from Revo to router and to Desktop PC.
Hama remote control



bought on ebay - cheap but a bit of work to set up (there's now a much easier way to do this now).

iPhone XBMC remote app - works really well but not family friendly (not everyone has an iPhone)

Pioneer Amp (oldie but goodie - can control it with Sky+ remote)

Hitachi 32LD720 TV - needs upgrading but suprisingly good PQ for it's age



I was doing most of my downloading on an ancient (about 9 years old) noisy,power-hungry PC. For backups I was using a USB RAID enclosure (in RAID 1)


with 2x 1.5 terabytes discs (I realize this is not a real backup as discs are in same location but it's good enough for me!)


SMB shares over the homeplugs didn't really work that well as PC was in the attic (converted) and I guess the mains wiring wasn't the best??

Anyway, needless to say I was getting a bit sick of running up and down the stairs, messing around with external discs etc. so decided to go for a server . I briefly considered a NAS box but decided against it as I wanted something I could expand easily and do all my downloading on. I know you can load custom Linux distros onto NAS boxes that allow you to torrent/usenet etc but I really don't have the time to learn how.

Requirements

Low power
Low noise
Plenty of SATA ports
Onboard RAID
Case with good cooling and lots of spare drive bays

After a lot of research here's what I came up with


Motherboard

Jetway NC9C-550-L Mini-itx (CPU pre-installed)


Fanless
4 x SATA ports (2 in RAID 0,1 JBOD)
1 x IDE port (for 2.5 inch drive)
2 x Gibabit Ethernet Ports

This particular board has a propriatory slot for daughter boards including a 4 port SATA one. In the end I went with a cheap 4 port SATA PCI card off Ebay



on cost grounds - not in use at the moment but will be there when I need it.


RAM

2 Gb (1 Gb would probably have been grand but was only €10 more)

Case

Coolermaster Elite 360



Comes with 1 x 120mm fan and added Akasa 120mm silent fan at front of case



PSU

Low noise 350 watt one I had hanging around


Obviously no monitor, keyboard or mouse needed.

HDD

I already had these (would probably be 2 Tb if I was buying then now!)

2 x 1.5 Tb drives in RAID 1 configuration - for new media files

1 x 1.5 Tb drive partitioned for OS - Windows XP home and "old" media files (was previously part of a RAID array so have its twin stored safely)

When the RAID array fills up I'll split it - moving one to a non-RAID channel and putting the other in storage. Will then have to get two new 2 Tb HDDs for a new RAID array.


I might put the OS on a 2.5 inch HDD/SDD/Flash card on the IDE channel when I get the time/money.

I know XP home is not ideal for networking but I'm comfortable with it and like the fact that I don't have to change file system (awkward if you want to transfer files to an external disc to use on Windows).


Softwarewise all I have on it is a VNC client for remote access from laptop/iPhone, Firefox, uTorrent, SABnzbd (good usenetserver offer here), MKVtoolnix (for removing unwanted audio tracks etc), theRenamer and get-iPlayer (in conjunction with a UK VPN service). Might check out Sickbeard at some stage.

I have it hooked up to my router (Linksys WRT54GL running Tomato ) by an ethernet cable. I keep it at the back of a large walk-in wardrobe - it runs very cool and quiet.

I have it set to go into standby at 1am and rewake in the morning as I haven't managed to get to get XBMC to run the Wake-on-Lan add-on at resume/startup - any suggestions as to how to do this greatly appreciated. I toyed with the idea of setting the server to standby after x amount of hours (in Power Management) but figured this would p*ss of the missus.

All in all very pleased with it - everything streams really well using SMB -including 1080p MKVs. Interestingly AVG free (running on server) seems to block access to stop xbmc and my W7 laptop from accessing my shares - is there any fix for this? (Google didn't help)

I'll post up some photos of the internals tomorrow.

PogMoThoin

Nice build
Thats a massive case for a tiny mini itx motherboard :eek:

tommiejoie

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Nice build
Thats a massive case for a tiny mini itx motherboard :eek:

Large case makes sense if he wants to fill it with HDD's now or in the future.

Nice idea to have a dedicated server. I would do the same if I could afford it; do you have an idea of how much it has all cost?

digitaldr

You're right there - I wanted the large case for cooling & loads of drive bays. Here's the cost:

I already had HDDs and PSU.


Motherboard €149
RAM €25
Shipping €14
Case €36 (bought a SATA cable too so qualified for free shipping)
SATA Card €10 (incl. Shipping)
Fan €16 (from Maplin shop would have been cheaper online)

Total €250

I already had HDDs and PSU. You'd probably be able to do it chreaper with second hand stuff from eg adverts.

Managed to figure out how to get remote Wake Over Lan working via dyndns over my iPhone using this guide. So can now wake and access server remotely with Mocha VNC app on my iPhone (have very secure password). Now all i have to do is figure out how to get XBMC to wake the server when it resumes from suspend (no reply to my query on XBMC forums - nowhere near as helpful as posters on boards!)

PogMoThoin

digitaldr wrote: »

Managed to figure out how to get remote Wake Over Lan working via dyndns over my iPhone using this guide. So can now wake and access server remotely with Mocha VNC app on my iPhone (have very secure password). Now all i have to do is figure out how to get XBMC to wake the server when it resumes from suspend (no reply to my query on XBMC forums - nowhere near as helpful as posters on boards!)

Just setup a vpn, then you'll land on your lan and will have no ports to open for WOL and will be able to WOL and remote to any pc in the house using its lan ip, just connect to the vpn first. Vpn is also handy for internet banking/paypal etc on the move, I've used it on my phone a few times while out and about, its great to have a secure connection you can trust. Should be pretty simple with Tomato, I've done it with Dd-wrt.

digitaldr

I like the sound of a VPN - can you point me in the direction of any guides to save me googling!

PogMoThoin

digitaldr wrote: »

I like the sound of a VPN - can you point me in the direction of any guides to save me googling!

If you flash to Dd-wrt I can guide you through this and setting up working QOS, I've never used Tomato, should be guides if you Google, its not as straightforward to setup as Dd-wrt

tommiejoie

digitaldr wrote: »

Now all i have to do is figure out how to get XBMC to wake the server when it resumes from suspend (no reply to my query on XBMC forums - nowhere near as helpful as posters on boards!)

That's somthing I've been wondering about too. I had though it could be done using the command line but I couln't find anything suitable and I'm not sure if it's possible. I have found some code that will refresh mapped network drives when you want and is useful is the PC can't find mapped drives on startup, there can be some access issues.

I'm also thinking you may have some issues with 'resume lag' as I'll term it. Think of it like this; you resume your XBMC machine using power button, remote, whatever... That will take ~10-20sec I'm guessing before a wake-up command will be sent to the server, which itself will take time to resume. What I'm getting at is your XBMC machine will be fully awake and usable before your server so you might have issues with accessing files in the media library or also updating the libraries. What do you think?

digitaldr

Thanks for the offer of help PogMoThoin but I think I'll stick with Tomato until I have time to look into DD-WRT.



tommiejoie I got WOL to work on resume thanks to a guy on the xbmc forum:

Install wakeonlan so the OS can send magic packets:
Code:

sudo apt-get install wakeonlan

put the script in: /etc/pm/sleep.d


so do the following to create the file and make it executable:
Code:

sudo touch /etc/pm/sleep.d/01-wake_server.sh
sudo chmod +x /etc/pm/sleep.d/01-wake_server.sh

Then need to edit the file to put your script in it:
Code:

sudo nano /etc/pm/sleep.d/01-wake_server.sh

paste in the following (substituting the mac of your server):

Code:

#

!/bin/sh

case "$1" in
thaw|resume)
/usr/bin/wakeonlan 00:e0:4d:c4:d2:29
;;
*) exit $NA
;;
esac

Seems to be able to update the library fine at startup (slight delay but nothing too annoying).

digitaldr

Forgot to say that server CPU load is very low when streaming - averages about 4% for a 1080p MKV file



Also to get the server to sleep just set up a scheduled task in XP with:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\rundll32.exe powrprof.dll,SetSuspendState

in the run box and

C:\WINDOWS\system32

in the start in box.

digitaldr

Finally got sickbeard working - have the server scheduled to wake at 6am and sleep again at 7am which allows plenty of time for sickbeard/SabNZBd to download all the shows I'm interested in (US shows shown the night before seem to be on usenet by this time in the morning).

PogMoThoin

Yeah, Sickbeard is the right idea alright, but I'm having issues with the choices it makes. One show I sent it looking for, all episodes were available from the same scene group, but it didn't select them, it picked a varied selection of different groups. That annoys me.
Another show I've been downloading, I like to download it in Web DL tv rips (have 5.1 dolby digital surround, where HDTV rips have stereo only) but Sickbeard opts for HDTV.
It will be better when they add more features and filters, but in the state its in it needs work. It may be OK for some, I'm just fussy and am a HD snob.

digitaldr

Finally got around to installing the 4 port Silicon Image 3114 SATA card I got off Ebay. It turned out to a bit more more complicated than I anticipated. Basically it came with a RAID 5 BIOS which only allowed a RAID 5 driver to be used. So I ended up having to flash it to a non-RAID BIOS (as I wanted 4 independent SATA channels) before I could install a non-RAID driver. Instructions/files were all on the Silicon Image website.

keithclancy

Thats pretty cool.

Although with DD-WRT I have PPTP Setup so I can just VPN in from my Android tablet, send a WOL Packet and watch streaming Satelite TV

And all my stuff on the shares

PogMoThoin

digitaldr wrote: »

Finally got sickbeard working - have the server scheduled to wake at 6am and sleep again at 7am which allows plenty of time for sickbeard/SabNZBd to download all the shows I'm interested in (US shows shown the night before seem to be on usenet by this time in the morning).

Check out CouchPotato, its Sickbeard for Movies. It even comes with a browser plugin that adds an "add to couchpotato" to IMDB movie pages
http://couchpotatoapp.com/

digitaldr

Quick update - now using Remoter VNC for secure SSH encrypted remote access from iPhone. Bit complicated to set up but works very well.