OS for server and small network advice

[snipa101]

I recently purchased a dell machine that is comparable to the specs you mentioned. it was sold with Windows Storage Server 2008, and i am really impressed by it. it has some useful features such as single instance storage and can be configured as an iSCSI target(which costs extra). single instance storage basically means that you can reduce your storage usage if you have the same file multiple times. it will just create shortcuts to one file instead of replicating it several times.

other things like DFS replication offer redundancy if you have multiple servers.

[olson]

A few questions that will help, is the current operating system not meeting your needs or is it new equipment that hasn't been setup yet? What operating system are the clients? Do you or anyone else at the studio have any Linux experience? Cheers!

[cgbeige]

be careful if you go with Windows server since you have to pay for client licenses once you go over a certain amount. I'd recommend Linux.

If you were a Mac network (which I don't think you are), this is actually a great cost-efficient option if you tack on a FW800 RAID drive for speed:

http://arstechnica.com/apple/reviews/2010/01/mac-mini-with-snow-leopard-server-review.ars

Even if you're not in the market for a Mac server, that article makes a really good read since it tells you what sort of options there are for small office servers and what a good feature/price breakdown should look like. You could consider that machine actually, since it does SAMBA and OS X Server is a really nice OS to configure. Linux/BSD can get a little tricky if you don't know what you're doing. But even with the OS X option, you might have to dig into the command line.

[mirkoj]

cgbeige got the point that I forgot to mention.
we have gone over existing number of licences and now looking for different solution.
so plan is to have linux (for now thinking of suse from some recommendations) with samba on server. workstations are with windows7. there are also bunch of macs in our sister company (we are at same location right now and it would be great to have all comps able to share that storage).
two of us have some (read some basic) linux experience, nothing much, but we have company that would take care of setting up server system for us. plus guys from that company are our close friends so we have that covered :)
so our DAS storage with 3x4Tb would be "shared" using linux so all other comps in network can access folders on it. also to mention that storage is connected to proliant server with rocketraid 23xx controller (2300 series, not sure right now which exactly model)
primary and for now only role of that server would be to provide access to our storage.
I've figured out to check with people on cgtalk because all here are more familiar with demands of CG production.
thanks again!

[olson]

cgbeige got the point that I forgot to mention.
we have gone over existing number of licences and now looking for different solution.
so plan is to have linux (for now thinking of suse from some recommendations) with samba on server. workstations are with windows7. there are also bunch of macs in our sister company (we are at same location right now and it would be great to have all comps able to share that storage).
two of us have some (read some basic) linux experience, nothing much, but we have company that would take care of setting up server system for us. plus guys from that company are our close friends so we have that covered :)
so our DAS storage with 3x4Tb would be "shared" using linux so all other comps in network can access folders on it. also to mention that storage is connected to proliant server with rocketraid 23xx controller (2300 series, not sure right now which exactly model)
primary and for now only role of that server would be to provide access to our storage.
I've figured out to check with people on cgtalk because all here are more familiar with demands of CG production.
thanks again!

I have a RocketRAID 2320 in my workstation right now with Ubuntu, note it is not supported in the mainline Linux kernel. This means you have to install the third party drivers which are kernel version dependent. I'd go with CentOS or Debian (Lenny) for the operating system, update everything, and then install the RAID drivers. Once the drivers are installed don't update anything again because the kernel could change and break the drivers.

If a Linux veteran is not available to maintain the system on a regular basis then I'd highly encourage you to get a different card that's supported in the mainline Linux kernel and it'll be much smoother and won't ever break from updates. LSI, 3ware, and Adaptec controllers are supported in the mainline Linux kernel without the need for third party drivers. Some Areca controllers are too but its hit and miss.

From my brief experiences with openSUSE I can say its not a good choice for what you want to do. Maybe the enterprise version would be better if you're dead set on SUSE. Cheers!

[goldilocks20]

My old powerbook was getting too slow for my film editing software, but other than that, it is still a good computer. There is no way PC notebooks or computers would be as usable over that many years and I had good luck with my Sonys.

[leigh]

goldilocks20, please don't post replies that have absolutely nothing to do with the thread.

[mirkoj]

Looks like 3210 controller is supported on Suse as I was going through manuals again.
btw check this out... I've bin working last whole night and just got back home around 10am after sleepless night... when my co-worker called with some alarm noise in behind..
I;ve loged remotely and there was an HDD in raid5 array in critical and it is now rebuilding array :)) And we are right in the midd of cleaning up all trash on storage before backing up... ugh
close shot but seems like everything on that partition is still there.

I guess that we should replace that critical HDD ASAP when rebuilding is done?

my god.. I'm an animator not tech guy! :) hhehehe

[mirkoj]

Hmm..
I've downloaded live CDs for Fedora12 and suse. And Fedora can easily see NTFS partitinos while Suse can't. There is probably something else to be added to Suse then?
Maybe I should give it a try with Fedora and see how it will behave? We are backing up everything anyway so...
Any opinions for Fedora? By the way I saw that both Fedora and Suse are supported with our rocketRaid 2310.

[goldilocks20]

my bad. wrong forum.

[olson]

Hmm..
I've downloaded live CDs for Fedora12 and suse. And Fedora can easily see NTFS partitinos while Suse can't. There is probably something else to be added to Suse then?
Maybe I should give it a try with Fedora and see how it will behave? We are backing up everything anyway so...
Any opinions for Fedora? By the way I saw that both Fedora and Suse are supported with our rocketRaid 2310.

Good to know! I might have to give Fedora a try because dealing with the RAID drivers breaking after every other update is getting old. As for NTFS, you don't want to keep that NTFS when you install Linux. Probably best to setup a new ext4 partition since Linux doesn't implement all of the features of NTFS and NTFS is missing many of the features that Linux needs (like extents so it doesn't get fragmented). Something to be aware of with Fedora is the short life cycle and reliability issues here and there (its more or less RHEL beta). Cheers!

[PanzerMKZ]

Yep yet again 3d nerds are not computer network nerds. If it where me then linux and a better supported raid controller. And then start tweaking your setup. someone on another thread talked about uping the send receive buffers on samba. I am actually going to have a setup like this. I am going for ubuntu server edition without the gui. I will be tweaking samba and I will be running VM's remotely so I get use out of the machine. 8x1or2TB drives on a 3ware 9650se. 12gig ram with dual E5520's. and if you are really luckly then your software can use the file server as a rendernode.


Panzer

[olson]

Yep yet again 3d nerds are not computer network nerds.

What's your problem? Thread after thread you keep bashing people and mouthing off. Please contribute professionally and respectfully or not at all.

[mirkoj]

Everything is done!!

I've found an friend and he logged remotely and we spend two nights to seup everything. Got some problems with raid controller drivers conflicting with raid of the system but everything took care of.
Finally got CentOS running with samba ofc. Making 4Tb partition made some problems too as I wasn't aware that I can't make partitions larger than 2Tb with fdisk but gparted solved that as well.

So at the ending everything is done and running!!!

Also to mentioned all win problems are solved and btw speed is a bit higher as well.
Just to mentioned that large files are going with full speed and smaller files are a bit slower to copy over network but that is normal.
So, server and CentOS up and running.

[PanzerMKZ]

What's your problem? Thread after thread you keep bashing people and mouthing off. Please contribute professionally and respectfully or not at all.

You seemed to have taken this out of context. As a guy that respects the artist I want to keep the artist actually working. This is the tech section. When an artist is here it means there is an issue and something needs to be fixed. Since I have no art skills yet I have computer skills here is where I am happy. As the problem was fixed by bringing in someone all is well. Each of us has a different skill set. It takes working together to fix all issues.


Panzer

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