JETWAY NF94 ATOM IN A 40TB HOME SERVER

It's 2010, and everyone is concerned about power consumption, green this, green that.  And in this day and age, we create terabytes and terabytes of data, whether it be movies, pictures, music, or data files.  We high-end geeks typically like to run our own home server, but we prefer not to pay through the nose for an obscene electric bill.  And until we have super efficient and affordable solar panels, we still have to pay utilities for power.

Luckily, Intel's Atom N270 CPU was engineered in a way to provide enough computing power to run a home server while sipping less power than typical home servers.  But mate with with 40TB of storage?  Yes, and here we shall show you how it was done...

Jetway's NF94-270-LF Motherboard

Consuming less than 5W at idle, the N270 Atom still has features such as Hyperthreading to improve processing efficiency per clock cycle.  The SO-DIMM design, smaller ITX formfactor, and fanless cooling all contribute to the overall power-efficient nature of Jetway's NF94 motherboard.  A single 1GB SO-DIMM is more than enough to run Win7 as a file server.  And best of all, its $149 pricetag is tough to beat.  No other ITX platform gives you the ideal mix of performance, functionality, connectivity, and power efficiency in a small, robust package.  Our tests have shown the NF94 to consume about 12W on average, peaking to 20W when at 100% CPU usage. 

Silicon Image SiI3124 and Port Multipliers

The Jetway NF94 only has 2x SATA ports.  If these SATA ports were tied to a southbridge or controller that supported FIS-based switching Port Multipliers, then life would be far easier.  But the Jetway NF94 only has an ICH-7 southbridge, and it does not have any support for port multipliers.  The solution to this problem is the Silicon Image SiI 3124 SATA controller in the NF94's one and only PCI slot:

So now we add this PCI card with 4 ports.  How do we get 40TB from 4 ports?  Well, we use 2TB HDDs and the magic of Silicon Image's port multipliers:

With four of these port multipliers, one for each port on the SiI 3124 Host Adapter, we now provide the Jetway NF94 access to 20x total HDDs!  Keep in mind that port multipliers simply allow the host to access these various HDDs, just as how a computer can access various network resources through a network switch.  Speed is not affected because of the switching nature of the port multiplier.  Also, each HDD is accessed as an individual drive letter.  Port multipliers don't perform and RAID functions, making them the ideal solution for mass storage without the need for speed or redundancy.

2TB Hard Drives

Today's highest capacity HDDs are 2TB, and our two favorites are as follows:

The WD Caviar Black 2TB sports an insane 64MB of cache and a 7200RPM spindle speed.   This is the capacity and speed demon for sure!  Warranty is 5 years.

Another 2TB monster is the Seagate Constallation ES.  This one also has 64MB of cache and a 7200RPM spindle speed.  But the Constellation ES carries a high price because Seagate markets this family of drives to Enterprise markets.  5 years warranty as well.

Lastly, we have Western Digital's 2TB Caviar Green.  This gentle giant nnot only gives you 2TB of cavernous storage, but does so while minimizing power consumption through varying its spindle RPM.  Its 32MB of cache may not be as large as the others, but it does help performance while saving energy.

Western Digital Scorpio Blue as Boot HDD

Possibly the most power efficient HDD for the money these days is the WD Scorpio Blue.  Its 2.5" form factor is designed explicitly for long-running notebook use, whole its 5400RPM provides adequate speed without sucking gobs of power.

Norco RPC-4020 4U Rackmount Enclosure

So we now have the mainboard and the storage subsystem.  Next is the ideal enclosure - Norco's RPC-4020.  This 4U behemoth may not be the most well-built enclosure on earth, but for the price, it is a steal.  It features 20x hot-swap SATA bays, one slim FDD bay, one slim optical drive bay, standard ATX power supply mounting holes, standard ATX motherboard mounts, and 7x full-height slots:

Seasonic X650 80 Plus Gold Power Supply

Because our server will be on 24/7 we need the most efficient power supply available.  Currently, that's the Seasonic X650.  With 650W of clean power, this unit is 80 Plus Gold certified, meeting at least 90% efficiency at 50% load.  Ideally, we'd prefer a lower wattage power supply, but none are as efficient as this one. 

Operating System, Software, and Usage Tips

Our choice these days is none other than Win7.  The Atom CPU supports only the x86 version of Win7, which is fine for server duties.  Microsoft Security Essentials will also be tapped for security duties.  Some of the other required software packages and best-practices settings for a home server are as follows:

• Log Me In Free

• 7zip

• uTorrent

• Spin down HDD when not in use

• Any Uninterruptable Power Supply with a USB connection

Future Upgrades

In a few months, this setup will be considered obsolete.  Here is what we'd like to see:

• More efficient motherboard with the Atom N270, preferably using the Ion platform so as to serve as HTPC as well

• Lower wattage power supply with 80 Plus Gold or Platinum certification

• Cost-effective SSD as boot drive