The last couple days I have been trying to wrap my head around the matter of audio formats. I have a collection of CDs sitting in boxes in the basement currently and am planning to rip them all to store on the NAS as a central repository that all our devices can pull from instead of having individual libraries. Storage space is obviously not a concern so an uncompressed or lossless format would be ideal, although I understand that I won't be able to tell the difference aurally between those and good MP3/AAC encodes according to everyone on the interwebs but this guy. I just want reference quality because I can.
That would be fine if I was only concerned with playback on our laptops and HTPC and had no interest in embedded information tagging. Unfortunately, I am also targetting iPods, a PS3 and a D-Link DSM-320. This restricts me to lossy encoding if I only want 1 copy of each song. So, seemingly I can rip my CDs to 320Kbps VBR MP3 and be none the wiser when listening (see the first two links above) while having playback support on all my devices. But I will know all the same that it is not reference quality that I have stored. I could also just use WAV files but that is too much space even for me and supports no embedded tagging. I need to find a middle groud.
Now, the PS3 and DSM-320 can be serviced by uPnP/DLNA media servers which can transcode my media on the fly but that's a story for another day and will not work for syncing with our iPods. There are other servers though such as FireFly (not maintained but works) which is a DAAP server and shows up as a shared folder in iTunes and Subsonic which I'm not sure how but apparently works with iTunes. Both servers transcode on the fly like the uPnP servers but since they show up in iTunes allow for syncing to the iPods. This will allow for ripping to a lossless, tagged format such as FLAC while being transcoded for iPods without the required storage.
Ripping to FLAC will also require more software for ripping such as MediaMonkey. Ripping to MP3 or AAC would be easy through iTunes while ripping to WMA-Lossless would be easy through Windows Media Player but that format is not well supported by the transcoding servers.
This brings me to my current dilema. Do I just rip to MP3 for full native support on all my devices, do I rip to AAC for full support on all but the DSM-320 and trash it (have no current use for it but do own it) or do I rip to FLAC for lossless audio but require extra client/server applications for ripping/transcoding to my non-PC devices. I plan to test out how well the various servers work in the near future but I guess in the meantime I'll just keep listening to my downloaded music and wait on ripping those CDs.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Friday, June 4, 2010
So Many Windows: Performance Bottleneck Diagnosing, Part 2
Before I started diagnosing any problems I thought I would give a try to transferring the same kind of files from my HTPC to the NAS rather than my laptop. My HTPC is running Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit SP1 (up to date on patches, don't want SP2) and is only wired while my laptop is running Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit (also patched to date). Transferring files netted me an average throughput of ~10.5 MB/s with peaks up to 11.5 MB/s. This is what I would be expecting, nearly maxing out the theoretical cap. I will take a closer look on the weekend to make sure I was not simply still getting wireless speeds when I wired the laptop. If not, then I may need to look into whether it is a 32/64-bit thing or if it is a Windows 7/Windows Vista thing.
Thursday, June 3, 2010
I feel the need for speed? Performance Bottleneck Diagnosing, Part 1
Having setup of the RAID array over the weekend and configuring my SAMBA settings so that my Windows machines had full read/write permissions on the shared media space, I happily started copying files to the NAS. Happily, that is, until I saw the transfer speeds.
I basically have 3 scenarios that will be applicable when copying data to from the server:
Connecting my laptop to my router (which is only 100 Mb and will be replaced with a Gigabit switch for my network backbone), I still saw the same results with the larger files but did not confirm that my laptop had switched to wired connection (stupid me). So now I am on a quest to find my bottlenecks and elimate them. My tests will be targeting my hard disks and network adapters themselves as well as my filesystem settings and network protocols. The inital tools I plan to use are hdparm, dd, ethtool and iozone. Once I start getting repeatable results, I will begin to elimate the causes of my problem. To that point, with my current router I expect to be near the theoretical 12.5 MB/s cap; once I get the new switch I would hope to be near the theoretical 125 MB/s cap.
I basically have 3 scenarios that will be applicable when copying data to from the server:
- Tree structures with many small files (image folders, MP3 folders)
- Single file or a folder with a few files that are large (> 1GB) but below my RAM cap (single TV episodes in MKV container, media disk copy with VOB/M2TS/EVO files)
- Single file that is larger than my RAM (> 4GB) (ISO rips, compressed BluRay/HDDVD MKVs)
Connecting my laptop to my router (which is only 100 Mb and will be replaced with a Gigabit switch for my network backbone), I still saw the same results with the larger files but did not confirm that my laptop had switched to wired connection (stupid me). So now I am on a quest to find my bottlenecks and elimate them. My tests will be targeting my hard disks and network adapters themselves as well as my filesystem settings and network protocols. The inital tools I plan to use are hdparm, dd, ethtool and iozone. Once I start getting repeatable results, I will begin to elimate the causes of my problem. To that point, with my current router I expect to be near the theoretical 12.5 MB/s cap; once I get the new switch I would hope to be near the theoretical 125 MB/s cap.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
It feels like...Win!
After getting my motherboard working a couple nights ago, I got to work on putting the whole thing together. Last night I powered it all up, worked through the BIOS options and finally installed the OS. Having successfully used SSH to remotely login following that, I decided to leave it for the night. I will get back to installing all the required apps and storage drives this weekend which I will now be able to do from the comfort of my couch or yard on my laptop. Sweet.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
NineBall Versus the Tricky Socket
While I was on the phone with Tech Support last night with Jetway, I used a different screwdriver with more torque than my normal screwdriver when tightening the socket to lock in the CPU and heard a click. The next thing I knew, my motherboard worked. In that moment I realized the awful truth about what it means to epically Fail. 1 RMA, 2 CPUs and several months later I found out that I simply had not turned the screw on the socket far enough when seating my CPU. Per Tech instructions I always made sure that I turned the screw 180 degrees until the socket firmly held the CPU in place. I guess they left out the part where there should have been a distinct clicking sound when it actually locked (I'm used to clamp-type sockets).
While I'm excited at having my current setup working, I was really looking forward to getting that SuperMicro board. If I were starting all over again, that is what I would likely do although Jetway has been pretty good throughout all of this.
While I'm excited at having my current setup working, I was really looking forward to getting that SuperMicro board. If I were starting all over again, that is what I would likely do although Jetway has been pretty good throughout all of this.
Thursday, May 20, 2010
The Parts List, Part 2
After some random searching at my favourite online retailers, I found an even better replacement board than the Jetway one if I decide to go with the Atom CPU and ditch my current choice. The SuperMicro X7SPA-H will allow me to keep my existing RAM and use the ATX 20pin connector from the built-in DC board on the chassis at the cost of needing a new OS drive or buying a SATA-44pin IDE converter. The cost of the board is actually lower than my existing board at $190 but only has VGA output instead of HDMI and DVI; but since this will be a headless server, that's not really a concern. Now I just have to get my purchased price back from Jetway on the board sitting lifeless on my desk.
Wednesday, May 19, 2010
The Parts List
So, as I indicated at the last post I will be going over the parts I selected and what they cost me. This will give you a baseline to work from for your own servers. As I do already own all the parts, I will go over any experiences worth noting with them. Due to certain circumstances (related to the motherboard as noted below) I do have several extra parts that I plan to use in the future for starting some review/benchmarks. Hell, I paid for the parts so I might as well use them. An important thing to keep in mind is that this is a dedicated server, and as such there are not discrete parts for tasks such as graphics, sound, etc.; it should all be on integrated on board. With that noted, onto the parts list.
Chassis (or Case) - Chenbro ES34069 - $185
This case is exactly what I was looking for but is hard to find. No other case captures the look and feel of the pre-made NAS servers as this case does. The only retailers that had any stock in North America were in the US so I had to import it. There is a new ES34169 model with an internal 120w power supply but the model I chose uses an external power brick with an option for 120w or 180w (this is the one I went with). When the brick is plugged into the wall it emits a low hum.
Motherboard - Jetway NF93R-LF - $200
This motherboard met all my needs in an ITX form-factor required to fit in the above chassis; GM45 chipset for Core 2 Duo/Quad and integrated video, dual RTL8111C gigabit ethernet ports for Link Aggregration, 4 SATA 3Gbps ports for storage and an extra port for OS. On the other hand, I am now on my second board after sending back the first for RMA and am experiencing the same problem with this one. Tech support has tried to be helpful and are nice enough but I now have had the same problem on 2 boards and have eliminated other parts as the source by swapping with alternate parts as suggested. Hopefully I can get this worked out; otherwise we will see how they handle a return (purchased originally from a third-party retailer).
CPU - Intel Core 2 Duo Mobile T5670 - $50
Chosen specifically for low TDP and performance that will be more than enough for NAS functions and allow for light transcoding at night if required. I was able to purchase this online from eBay as a laptop replacement part. I also purchased a T5270 to elimate my CPU as the problem when testing the motherboard.
Memory - Kingston HyperX So-Dimm KHX6400S2LLK2/4G - $110
A 4GB kit was chosen to allow buffering large files (VOBs, MKVs, etc.) for streaming over the network instead of having to read directly from disk which is the largest bottleneck when streaming. So-Dimm memory specifically was a neccesity for this chosen motherboard. Other memory by Qimonda and Hynix has also been used for testing with the motherboard.
OS Drive - Western Digital Scorpio Blue 80GB 2.5" IDE - $60
Again a neccesity of the motherboard, this drive connects directly to the 44-pin IDE port on the motherboard and draws power through it. I would have gone for a smaller drive (not from this line) but the price/size ratio and previous experience with WD led me to choose this one.
Total before storage = $605
Storage Drives - Seagate Barracuda 7200 1.5TB 3.5" SATA x4 - $500 combined
I purchased these as the largest drives available at the best price at the time. These would cost you only $400 combined now and you would have the option to get them at lower power 5900 RPM. Alternatively, for slightly more (about $550 combined) you could get 5900 RPM 2TB drives. If I was purchasing now, that would be what I would do.
Total with storage = $1105
All-in-all, you could do this with less money by not needing such a specific chassis or wanting such a robust motherboard. For example, for less than half the power required and 4 threads instead of 2 at the expense of a little processing power and only 1 gigabit port, you could get the Jetway NC96FL-510 for $140. This would save you $110 between being a cheaper board and not requiring a seperate CPU (comes with Atom D510 chip). You could save another $110 if you have some regular DDR2 memory lying around to use with it (and who doesn't). In fact, maybe if I can't get my current board to work this is the route I will take and try to recoup the cost of the 2 CPUs and memory on eBay...
Chassis (or Case) - Chenbro ES34069 - $185
This case is exactly what I was looking for but is hard to find. No other case captures the look and feel of the pre-made NAS servers as this case does. The only retailers that had any stock in North America were in the US so I had to import it. There is a new ES34169 model with an internal 120w power supply but the model I chose uses an external power brick with an option for 120w or 180w (this is the one I went with). When the brick is plugged into the wall it emits a low hum.
Motherboard - Jetway NF93R-LF - $200
This motherboard met all my needs in an ITX form-factor required to fit in the above chassis; GM45 chipset for Core 2 Duo/Quad and integrated video, dual RTL8111C gigabit ethernet ports for Link Aggregration, 4 SATA 3Gbps ports for storage and an extra port for OS. On the other hand, I am now on my second board after sending back the first for RMA and am experiencing the same problem with this one. Tech support has tried to be helpful and are nice enough but I now have had the same problem on 2 boards and have eliminated other parts as the source by swapping with alternate parts as suggested. Hopefully I can get this worked out; otherwise we will see how they handle a return (purchased originally from a third-party retailer).
CPU - Intel Core 2 Duo Mobile T5670 - $50
Chosen specifically for low TDP and performance that will be more than enough for NAS functions and allow for light transcoding at night if required. I was able to purchase this online from eBay as a laptop replacement part. I also purchased a T5270 to elimate my CPU as the problem when testing the motherboard.
Memory - Kingston HyperX So-Dimm KHX6400S2LLK2/4G - $110
A 4GB kit was chosen to allow buffering large files (VOBs, MKVs, etc.) for streaming over the network instead of having to read directly from disk which is the largest bottleneck when streaming. So-Dimm memory specifically was a neccesity for this chosen motherboard. Other memory by Qimonda and Hynix has also been used for testing with the motherboard.
OS Drive - Western Digital Scorpio Blue 80GB 2.5" IDE - $60
Again a neccesity of the motherboard, this drive connects directly to the 44-pin IDE port on the motherboard and draws power through it. I would have gone for a smaller drive (not from this line) but the price/size ratio and previous experience with WD led me to choose this one.
Total before storage = $605
Storage Drives - Seagate Barracuda 7200 1.5TB 3.5" SATA x4 - $500 combined
I purchased these as the largest drives available at the best price at the time. These would cost you only $400 combined now and you would have the option to get them at lower power 5900 RPM. Alternatively, for slightly more (about $550 combined) you could get 5900 RPM 2TB drives. If I was purchasing now, that would be what I would do.
Total with storage = $1105
All-in-all, you could do this with less money by not needing such a specific chassis or wanting such a robust motherboard. For example, for less than half the power required and 4 threads instead of 2 at the expense of a little processing power and only 1 gigabit port, you could get the Jetway NC96FL-510 for $140. This would save you $110 between being a cheaper board and not requiring a seperate CPU (comes with Atom D510 chip). You could save another $110 if you have some regular DDR2 memory lying around to use with it (and who doesn't). In fact, maybe if I can't get my current board to work this is the route I will take and try to recoup the cost of the 2 CPUs and memory on eBay...
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