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Building a home NAS

Inate8

Inate8

Limp Gawd
Joined
Mar 15, 2011
Messages
240
Just looking for opinions and differing options than what I have laid out here.
My plan is just for massive data storage(bluray rips, anime, music, HD TV rips, etc...) data redundancy isn't high on my list currently.
I DO plan on using WD green drives for this project, and I will be upgrading to a 24-bay Norco case in about 6 months, in the mean time I am using an older thermaltake armor case with 5-3 replacement drive bays.

The current plan is:
Case: Thermaltake Armor
OS: Windows Server 2012
Mobo: Tyan S5512G2NR-LE (http://www./products/?sku=66012&vpn=S5512G2NR-LE&manufacture=TYAN)
CPU: Intel i3 2100 series(undecided atm, probably just get the lowest option available)
RAM: http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820147174 x2
PSU: Seasonic X-560 (http://www./products/?sku=55672&vpn=X-560 Gold&manufacture=Seasonic Electronics)
HDD: Mixture of 2tb/3tb WD Green drives.

I'm looking for opinions on the Tyan mobo. I'm relatively experienced with supermicro boards, but I have never used a tyan board before. Is the quality up to snuff for a 24/7 storage board? I've chosen this board due to the numerous onboard Sata ports, and the availability of PCI-E slots for upgrading to RAID cards in the future if needed.

Windows Server 2012 was chosen for it's "drive pooling" and the fact that everything I deal with at work is MS software so it's logical to stick with what I know.

Any opinions or ideas about something I should change?

Thanks for your time!
 
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Inate8 said:
I'm looking for opinions on the Tyan mobo. I'm relatively experienced with supermicro boards, but I have never used a tyan board before. Is the quality up to snuff for a 24/7 storage board? I've chosen this board due to the numerous onboard Sata ports, and the availability of PCI-E slots for upgrading to RAID cards in the future if needed.
Click to expand...

In which case I'd consider the Supermicro X9SCM board to be better in just about every respect, including price.

http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/Xeon/C202_C204/X9SCM.cfm
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182254
 
The supermicro looks to only have 6 sata ports, where as the tyan has 12.
I need 8 sata atm minimum. That is a nice board though.
 
Inate8 said:
The supermicro looks to only have 6 sata ports, where as the tyan has 12.
Click to expand...

Not as far as I can tell it doesn't.

http://www.tyan.com/product_SKU_spec.aspx?ProductType=MB&pid=706&SKU=600000227

Storage
SATA Connector (6)
SATA Controller Intel C202
Speed 3.0 Gb/s
RAID RAID 0/1/10/5 (Intel RST)

I need 8 sata atm minimum. That is a nice board though.
Click to expand...

There's LOTS of ways that you can add extra SATA / SAS ports to your system, and quite cheaply too.

Compromising on the motherboard for the sake of a few onboard SATA ports is NOT a wise decision IMHO.

PS - Most of the links in your OP are actually broken.
 
Dang, I'll have to fix them.

***edit***
I give up. [H] is shortening my NCIX urls by default.

It looks like you were right about the Tyan Mobo, I was judging by the picture and the "specs" sheet, which lists the same ports, twice, under different categories. Thanks for pointing that out I may have mistakenly made a terrible mistake!
The Supermicro board in that case is a better over-all value.
Are there any add-on boards that you could recommend within the $100-$300 range? Considering that I do not need full on RAID capabilities for this project.

I wasn't trying to compromise, only trying to find an all-in-one solution at the time. If you search on for the mobo in my OP and look at the picture, it looks like they've used a generic tyan picture for it and in that picture it has more ports than the specs list. Was my bad.
 
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Inate8 said:
Are there any add-on boards that you could recommend within the $100-$300 range? Considering that I do not need full on RAID capabilities for this project.
Click to expand...

Keep an eye out for cheap IBM M1015 cards being sold on eBay. They're your best bet at the moment.
 
Ebay has been the best source of M1015 pulls of late, they used to be ~$75 but lately have been in the $95-$110 range. Make sure you get the proper (forward) breakout cables if you go that route.
 
Four thoughts:
1. i3-3220 is newer... might be a thought to go Ivy Bridge over Sandy Bridge
2. As noted, you need unbuffered ECC
3. The Supermicro X9SCL+-F is another good C202 option, fairly similar to the Tyan board and not overly expensive. If you can sped a bit more the X9SCM-F or X9SCM-iiF are decent options (but with Windows may just get the -F)
4. Another thought controller wise is the IBM ServeRAID M5014. They are not much more than the M1015.
 
young_einstein said:
Keep an eye out for cheap IBM M1015 cards being sold on eBay. They're your best bet at the moment.
Click to expand...


x2 on the IBM M1015

I'm running 2 of them in 2 different machines and have had zero problems. Whats nice is down the road, You can add a HP Expander and run Your 24 drives with this card.
 
M1015 are too expensive at this point, especially when you can get an M5014 with BBU for $130.

If you're planning on running Server 2012 anyway, just use RAID 5 or 50 off the card and be done with it. M5015s are running closer to $250 but you get RAID 6 and 60 without having to purchase the advance key with them and they have more cache.

http://www.dealzpc.com/servlet/the-172468/Refurbished-IBM-46M0916-dsh-B2-IBM/Detail

It flashes to an LSI 9260-8i, works great with Server 2012.
 
Thanks for all the ideas and input guys. I'm going to be getting into this a bit more and I will repost when I've made some more choices!
 
Inate8 said:
I need 8 sata atm minimum.
Click to expand...

Greetings

How about a Gigabyte X79S-UP5 for around $330.00

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/pro...px?pid=4287#ov

It has 2 x SATA 6Gb/s, 4 x SATA 3Gb/s, 8 x SAS/SATA 3Gb/s and 2 E-SATA's so that would be more than enough, The SAS/SATA ports are provided by the C606 chipset which replace the X79 chipset.

You can put in an I7-3820 for about $300.00 or you can go the Xeon E5 2603 route for a bit over $200.00, finally it also takes ECC RAM and being a Socket 2011 board you have 40 PCI-E lanes available so it could presumably take another 1 or 2 M1015 cards and not even bother with expanders. I'm also presuming that it would have less hassle with raid cards generally due to the server chipset compared with the chipsets on consumer motherboards.

Power consumption and heat would be higher but you could have 64GB of RAM and if your running VM's you would have some serious horsepower. I'm currently setting mine up as a gaming rig but will test it when Solaris 11.1 is released, Solaris 10 installed OK but Solaris 11/11 locked up during the install, I am hoping that 11.1 will work and that it will recognise the C606 chipset SAS controller.

Cheers
 
I've not been able to get the SAS ports on the X79S-UP5 working with Server 2012 yet. The built in drivers work for the SATA ports, but the current RST drivers kill the install. I'm using the M5014 flashed to a 9260-8i for my SAS drives until Intel releases a good driver. Just a little hiccup if the OP wants to use 2012, I'm sure intel will get out some good drivers soon though.
 
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