advice on a file server

[myktek]

So I want to build a file server for my house.
Here is the catch, I'm not home about 90% of the time so I want to be able to stream movies from it in HD if possible and setup accounts so that my friends can use it also.

ZFSGuru, Unraid, and etc? What should I go with.

I've been mostly a Windows user most of my life, so I'll have to learn stuff if I don't use an Windows OS.

Could have a slick interface like media center or something like that remotely?

 

[DieTa]

Hi myktek,

of course it depends if you already have hardware or not Do you?
For example: Running a ZFS system on an expensive hardware RAID controller does not make much sense - a cheap SAS controller from LSI (recommended: cheaper, re-branded Intel SASUC8i) works great. You can get it for ~130-150€ - not sure what it costs in your country. Don't forget to buy SFF-8087 (MultiLane) to SATA breakout cables (2x).

I would highly recommend ZFS, it's stable, it's proven, it's enterprise class and pretty fast.

As hardware I personally recommend for low bugdet:
- AMD 245e CPU (DualCore, very low voltage)
- Gigabyte board (very stable) with ECC support!
- Hitachi drives (all (or most) of them are 24/7 ready). No need to get TLER RAID drives
- a bunch of RAM. At least 6GB, but more = better
- RAM should be ECC (AMD CPUs) or ECC Registered (Xeon CPUs)

Why ECC? Because it does not make sense to have a proven system that is able to see and correct mistakes if the RAM itself creates them.

I personally won't use i3,i5,i7 for this - as mentioned before AMD is a cheap and very good way, Xeon is a bit more expensive, but also very good way (but requires ECC Registered RAM).

Software - well - ZFS works on a bunch of systems nowadays; I personally use and love Nexenta Core (NCP), because it allows me to maintain it mostly as I know it from Debian (it's a Ubuntu Server with an OpenSolaris (still. soon: Illumos) kernel). There's a great GUI called napp-it available (which I honestly don't use). napp-it is maintained by gea (he's also active in this forum). napp-it runs on: OpenSolaris, Nexenta Core, OpenIndiana and Solaris 11 Express.

There's also FreeBSD and the great ZFSguru available. Using ZFSguru allows you to store the system itself onto you ZFS RAID-set which doesn't require a seperate harddisk/maybe lost SATA port You should look for sub.mesa's threads in this forum.

OpenSolaris is no longer available - you can get ORACLE Solaris 11 Express, which is not available free, but for "evaluating" you may use it (if you really want to do so). I personally find it pretty hard to get into Solaris and would recommend using a Nexenta or FreeBSD base.

Depending on your estimated storage size, if it's 16TB or less, you could also try NexentaStor which comes with a GUI. That's all I can say about it as I haven't used it.

Fact is: You should put your nose into a new OS if you want a reliable long-term storage and ZFS is very secure and (as far as I know) till today the only filesystem/RAID engine that has this kind of self-healing.

Good luck with your project and don't forget to post us some geek-pr0n (photos) of your rig

Ciao
Dennis