Help with Basic Home Media Server Build

Hey everybody,

I want to build a media server for my network. I currently have two desktops, an HTPC, and two laptops that use my network. I would like to centrally store all my media, mostly movies and TV shows, as well as serve as a backup for important files on the network. So here is what I have been thinking. I am completely new to building a server although I have lots of experience building my own gaming PC's over the last fifteen or so years. So please excuse my ignorance on certain technologies.

Requirements: Store media for streaming to other devices on network (I currently don't have a need to do any transcoding). Serve as a location to store backups of important files on the network, as well as run sickbeard, sabnzbd, and couchpotato.

Setup:
Media Storage - 5x3TB or 4x4TB in RAID5 depending on hard drive prices.
Backups - 2TB dedicated drive for backups, as well as use crashplan for offsite backup.

Hardware: This is the list I've begun piecing together, but is by no means final, I really would like a lot of input here based on the requirements I've listed above.
Motherboard - Asus H87M-E LGA1150
CPU - Pentium G3220 Haswell
Harddrives - Seagate Barracuda or Western Digital Reds
Power Supply - Corsair CX430M
Memory - Probably 2x4GB, not sure specific type
Case - Fractal Design R4

I've been building PC's for many years now so I feel very confident with the basic hardware, but when it comes to server specific hardware, such as RAID and SAS/SATA controllers I'm not as knowledgeable and not sure if there are some parts missing that I should be considering based on my requirements.

Software: This is where I really need the most help, I have zero server experience, or Linux experience. I don't know what the best OS would be for my situation. I would like to use something that will work with sickbeard, sabnzbd, couchpotato, and crashplan. Also I would like to be able to add storage in the future without too much hassle.

Thanks for reading and I really look forward to your guys' feedback.

Harry883 said:

Media Storage - 5x3TB or 4x4TB in RAID5 depending on hard drive prices.

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For that much storage, you really shouldn't be looking at RAID 5: You should be looking at RAID 6 since the sheer size of the RAID array means a greater chance of a second hard drive dying during the RAID rebuild process.

Harry883 said:

Memory - Probably 2x4GB, not sure specific type

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Just get the cheapest 8GB stick of DDR3 1600 RAM you can find.

I've been building PC's for many years now so I feel very confident with the basic hardware, but when it comes to server specific hardware, such as RAID and SAS/SATA controllers I'm not as knowledgeable and not sure if there are some parts missing that I should be considering based on my requirements.

Harry883 said:

Software: This is where I really need the most help, I have zero server experience, or Linux experience. I don't know what the best OS would be for my situation. I would like to use something that will work with sickbeard, sabnzbd, couchpotato, and crashplan. Also I would like to be able to add storage in the future without too much hassle.

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Well here's the thing: Are you willing to get your hands dirty and taking the time and effort to learn and use Linux or FreeBSD?

How much are you willing to spend on the server?

Any server discussion should at least involve some research into ZFS. I recommend reading this article to get a feel as to why you really should go with ZFS:
http://arstechnica.com/information-...-and-atomic-cows-inside-next-gen-filesystems/

And here's a how-to as well:
http://arstechnica.com/information-...h-using-the-zfs-next-gen-filesystem-on-linux/

Media Storage - 5x3TB or 4x4TB in RAID5 depending on hard drive prices.

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Consider Snapraid with 2 parity disks. These can be external and only need to be connected to the Media box when you are doing a sync or scrub. For my linux based HTPC (which I have used for over a decade now) I sync about 1 time per week to 2 external 4TB HGST touro drives that I paid less than $150 for over a year ago. My HTPC storage is a mix six drives. I believe 5 of these are 2TB (WDC green, Samsung f4 and Hitachi 5K3000) and 1 Seagate 4TB.

Dangman said:

Well here's the thing: Are you willing to get your hands dirty and taking the time and effort to learn and use Linux or FreeBSD?

How much are you willing to spend on the server?

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I am definately willing to put the effort in to learn and gain some experience with Linux or any other OS. That's part of the fun of building your own system. I just don't want to get in over my head and I do want to have a working product at the end.

I would like to spend less than $1000, I believe right now my parts list is somewhere in the neighborhood of $800. I am hoping to take advantage of some of the Black Friday deals after Thanksgiving and hopefully save some money there or buy more storage than I can afford right now.

Consider Snapraid with 2 parity disks.

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I just went to Snapraid website and it does sound like a good solution, at least for the media side of things. I like that is provides some backup capability for large media storage and that I can add and remove drives easily for future growth. Does snapraid build a large drivepool like I would see with a similar RAID setup or is each drive still individual? Also could I setup Snapraid on say 4x4TB with one parity drive (12TB useable) and then have a seperate RAID1 array using 2x2TB (2TB useable) for storing backups from my desktops, or is there a better way to go about setting that up.

I'm looking to do a similar build. From the reading I've done it sounds like FreeNAS might be a good alternative for you as well.

I would honestly ask yourself how much fault tolerance you want with this build. From the specs its just going to be doing light streaming and storage tasks.

If you are comfortable with windows just save the time spent learning an entirely new OS and file system and just stick with that. I have used drivepool to and snapraid as a simplton solutions to the problem. Just don't be surprised if you lose all your data some day to catastrophe.

It will be only doing some light streaming, and I want fauly protection mainly for the backups or my other systems, but I would rather have some protection for my media in the form of a zpool in freenas. At least then I would be able to restore the pool due to a drive failure.

Does snapraid build a large drivepool like I would see with a similar RAID setup or is each drive still individual?

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With snapraid each drive is individual. Although this is best for my linux based htpc since it (MythTV) supports more than 1 storage device in what it calls a storage group and automatically pools your and balances your recordings, music ... to the storage groups that you assign to it. There is a link option in SnapRaid that makes your files look like they are in the same folder if you need that however I have never tested this.

About a year ago I just set up my first file server with snapraid and AUFS for pooling the drives on Debian linux running without a GUI. It was my first time ever setting up a linux server and it was pretty straight forward. The box has literally been bullet proof as well and hasn't crashed or been turned off since I first set it up about a year ago. I was previously using Flexraid on Windows 7 before and that software was a DISASTER. Flexraid was without a doubt one of the worst decisions I had ever made....