How much processing power do I need to run a headless home automation server. without a gui running CentOS 6 with the following options:

web server
email server
stream 2 1080p (already ripped) movies at the same time
Handel backups for computers
control Arduino censors (I think this is minimal)
control X-10 system
voice recognition ( This is optional but would really like to have.)

I am trying to build a micro ATX headless system that will run 24/7 and control my house and be a media server. I just do not know what kind of processor I NEED to buy to meet my needs. I know this is probably not the correct forum to post this but I figured that the people here would know because all of this stuff is running on linux.

Thanks

The smallest cheapest system you can find would do if you ask me. The lower energy use the better I'd think. Both intel and AMD are producing some pretty good little cpu. If you want you can step up to a core i3 or A6. The cpu is not the critical part here if you use ssd and a nic that can offload checksums. The backplan of any may be some issue with 2 hd streams at once.

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I was looking at one of AMD's apu and I liked them a lot. What is an ssd and can you send me an example of a nic that can do the check-sums? Do you think that if I get an amd a6 processor that it will be able to stream 2 1080p movies to remote tv's? Do you have any thing to recommend that would help with the tasks above?

SSD is a Solid State Drive. It is somewhat like a flash drive or compact flash card in some respects however they are meant to replace a normal hard drive in a system. A hard drive is the slowest part of a system usually.

As for checksum offloading it would be in the specs of the device usually. Almost all enterprise level nics do it but not all linux drivers support them. I'd spend more on a good nic or you will have to pay for the cpu to do the calculations.

Hopefully someone here uses MKV to stream hd movies and could comment on one the network speed needed. Guess that is a well documented web number too.

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I am thinking about getting a motherboard that has built in raid level 5 or 10, and 6 SATA III (6G/sec) ports. I would then get one SSD that will hold the OS and the servers. Then I would get 5 2T drives that are raided with 5 or 10 and store all of my media, such as music, movies, picture, ect., then I will have a script spin down the drives to save energy and the life of the drive. I can not have them all SSD because that will be way to expensive.

Thanks for the information on nic's. Do you know of a nic and driver that will work on linux and pass the check-sum processing to the nic?

You wont need onbaord RAID for that....you wouldnt (or shouldnt) be using motherboard 'fake RAID', use mdadm (software RAID).

Be careful with picking your HDDs for RAID. The cheaper 'Eco/green' drives have been known to cause major problems.

*edit- SATAIII (6Gbit/sec) HDDs are a bit of a joke really. No problem with the new faster SATA version, its just mechanical HDDs havent even broken SATAII speeds.

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I like the intel brand pro nic's, but others may know of some less expensive brands.

cascade9 is correct about the fake raid. Most cheap or less than server grade boards have these faux or fake raid controllers on them. Even using the chip sometimes as a non-raid can be an issue.

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I'll have to highly vouch you on your insult to 6gbps HDD's I'm amazed how many there are, while most barely break SATA 1 speeds (1.5gbps, while 1gbps is 125MB/s most hard drives hit around 100 at burst maximum speeds.)

also definitely use mdadm software raid, it works amazingly.

at OP to do all of that an i3 sandy processor with a graphics card, or a new ivy bridge i3 should handle it fine, I know two 1080p videos isn't very straining, the biggest part is your video issue which I want to ask you, how are you outputting these videos, two HDMI or over ethernet?

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I plan on sending it over Ethernet to something like a "roku" box that is located at all of the tv's. I am not sure what I will be using just yet. I need to get the hardware for the server.

About the RAID:

I was thinking about getting 5 2tb drives with raid 5 or 10 and 1 solid state drive that will host the web servers and the OS. These are/were the drives I was thinking about because the have very low power consumption. CLICK HERE
I really did not want to have to worry about an other software package, so I thought I would just set it in the bios and just have the OS read the 1 drive. Why is it that so many people hate the bios raid? It sounds (sounded) good to me. What am I missing?

Thanks for all of the great incite.

The WD 'green power' drives have been known to cause issues with RAID, a lot caused by TLER (Time Limited Error Recovery).

While WD has changed the specs there are still issues, in particular with high or complex RAID levels.

WD used to say "Western Digital manufactures desktop edition hard drives and RAID Edition hard drives. Each type of hard drive is designed to work specifically in either a desktop computer environment or a demanding enterprise environment.

If you install and use a desktop edition hard drive connected to a RAID controller, the drive may not work correctly unless jointly qualified by an enterprise OEM. This is caused by the normal error recovery procedure that a desktop edition hard drive uses"

Now WD says 'Desktop/Consumer RAID enviroments- WD Caviar Green drives are tested and reccomnded for use in consumer-type RAID applicatins (RAID-0/RAID-1).'

They then go on to basicly say 'they might not work with other RAID levels and enterprise HBAs, get WD enterprise HDDs'.

The CPU does the majroity of the work, the discs need to be identical, if you have a hardware error with the controller/motherboard its a real pain, and most if not all the fakeRAID doesnt support linux anyway.....

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The cheap raid controllers offered onboard are not like a real hardware raid. They may be fooling windows users but are a cheap gimmick. They may work on one level of a distro and when you change distro's or levels they don't work. They act oddly if they do work. They are not a good choice for linux. Get a real hardware based raid if you want it to work correctly and be sure of recovery and speeds.

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If the raid is enabled in the bios then why does it matter what OS you are running.

Then do any of you recommend a good hardware raid?
Also do any of you know of a good nic that will move the checksum processing to the nic?

I am leaning to this motherboard for my server. I am having trouble deciding if I should get a micro atx or a normal atx formfactor. Knowing what you know already what do you think will be the best solution?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...n=asus+fm1+a75

this depends on what you intend to do with the webserver, do you intend to run process intensive tasks like converting uploaded videos? or searching a large database?
what is the average amount of traffic you are expecting at any given moment?

probably negligible unless you are talking a horrendously high volume (hundreds to thousands of simultaneous users)

at this point, unless you are going to shell out for an ungodly expensive fibre line, then the choke point is going to be your Internet connection rather than your computer, a standard 100bT Ethernet card should suffice, though most modern computers come standard these days with a 1000bT, which should be more than adequate for your needs, as for processor overhead, serving files is probably one of the least processor intensive processes, merely serving files could be comfortably accomplished decently with a 100Mhz Pentium class machine (though higher volume of traffic might require a slightly faster processor, but not much I don't think, unless again you are talking hundreds to thousands of simultaneous users).


this would be more a matter of shear hard drive space rather than processor power, in this case i would say get as much storage as you can afford, but make sure your storage volumes are separate from your OS disks in case you have to re-format the OS for some reason or another, you can leave your data untouched.

indeed, the kind of data you are talking about could be handled probably by a 9600 baud serial line, so in case of modern equipment literally a drop in the bucket.

unknown, but probably minimal

voice recognition on a headless system? pointless, functionless, unnecessary, install that on the workstation from which you are going to administer the server, not the server itself,

sorry for lack of specifics, but hopefully I have pointed you closer in the right direction.

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"If the raid is enabled in the bios then why does it matter what OS you are running." (?)

The bios is only an on off switch to this device. As with any device on a computer it needs to have code or driver support.

Real hardware is like Adaptec, Highpoint, LSI and such. See any of the corporate servers being sold at Dell, IBM and HP for the devices they use. They aren't cheap. They tend to start at $100 or so but tend to be well worth it in speed and ability to recover.

I'd get an Intel Pro card for the nic myself but if you go up in the cpu you may not need this feature. Many cheaper cards offer this offloading. I think the realtek do.

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Because it still needs drivers.

SATA hardware RAID 5 cards arent cheap. To get 5 HDDs you normally need to get a 8 port RAID card, which is a fair amount more expensive than a 4 port card. Probably over $400, depending on which company you go to.

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