First NAS build

[balance101]

Hi guys sorry if this is a noobish question.

I'm still in the processing of deciding on what to do with my HDDs.

I currently have 8 hdds in my main rig which is in a Lian Li A77 FB in the future when Ivy bridge comes out. I will be upgrading my system and having it water cool. The drives got to go lol



When I was checking out the The [H]ard Forum Storage Showoff Thread - Post your 10TB+ systems thread i came across

Hello

please find underneath my new server based on PC Q25

CASE : Lian Li PC-Q25
PSU : BeQuiet 350W 80+ Gold
MB : Asus P8H67-I
CPU : Core I3-2100
RAM : Gskill DDR3 1600
STORAGE : 12.064 TB
- SSD OCZ 64 GB
- 2*2TB WD EARS
- 1*2TB WD EARX
- 2*2TB Samsung F3 ECO 2
- 1*2TB Seagate Green
PCIE : Sata/Esata 3 Card
OS : Server 2008 R2


- Video& music streaming
- UPNP
- FTPES
- …

Connected to gigabit lan and optical fiber 100/100MB

I try looking for the Asus P8H67-I but the motherboard is discontinued. I really like the Lian Li Q25 but I don't know which mother board to choose now. There is the Asus P8H61 available.

Also another question is should I go for an atom or i3 ?

What performance/price raid cards should I be looking at for like home use media/file server.

Also I have an antec p182 available previous to moving my system to the Lian Li A77FB, maybe I should use that? To save money?

Thanks you very much

 

[bleomycin]

There are a few questions that should probably be answered before anyone can really help you.

1. What is your budget?

2. Which operating system are you looking to run and are you open to something new (willing to learn)?

3. What kind of performance are you looking to achieve (max out gigabit lan, faster, slower)?

4. Are you looking to use all 8 of your current hard drives? What drives are they?

5. How quiet does the system have to be?

6. Do you plan to add any additional hard drives in the foreseeable future after building?

7. What is the main purpose of the machine (simple file server where data is held, iscsi target, VM data store, etc.)?

I think answering those is a good start.

 

[balance101]

1. $1000 lower the better
2. Windows Home server seems the easiest, been reading about OpenSolaris and freenas. I don't mine learning something new, I will take it slowly lol
3. Performance maybe like 50 MB/s (my dlink nas 321 did like 10MB/s it was killing me)
4. I plan to put my 4 samsung 2 TB and 3 WD Green 2 TB and a Kingston SSD 64GB for OS
5. quiet and energy efficient will be nice because the machine should be up 24/7
6. It will be a while before I will add more drives because most of the drives are empty and hdd price are too expensive from what they were
7. main purpose is just data storage for my movies, music and a BT downloader

I also been looking into the AMD E350 it performs better than the atom D525

Thanks belomycin

 

[Dangman]

Well the AMD E350 route is out for you since the max amount of SATA ports on most AMD E350 motherboards is 4-5. You have eight drives. Then there's the somewhat limited expansion slots as well. So I'd recommend the Intel route instead for longevity and better expandability.

CPU wise, you can go with the Core i3 2100/2120 but I have a feeling those CPUs are a tad overkill for you. If you want to spend the extra money for extra power just in case, go for it. But you should be fine with this Intel CPU:
$70 - Intel Pentium G620 CPU

Motherboard wise, I recommend the following:
$145 - Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3 Intel Z68 ATX Motherboard

Has 8 SATA ports and allows you to use the onboard video capability of the CPU. As such, that frees up the PCI-E slots for any future expansion plans.

RAM wise, that's largely dependent on what OS and setup you plan on using. IIRC, ZFS RAID on OpenSolaris and FreeNAS uses up a lot of RAM. As such, I'd recommend 8GB of RAM there:
$37 - G.Skill Value Series F3-10600CL9D-8GBNT 2 x 4GB DDR3 1333 RAM

But for simple file serving, 4GB of RAM is fine:
$20 - G.Skill F3-10666CL9S-2GBNT 4GB DDR3 1333 RAM

As for the case, you can reuse the Antec P182 if you want to. But it only has 6 hard drive slots. In addition, hard drive cable routing is a pain in the ass sometimes in the Antec P182. As such, I recommend just paying the $50 for a case with a simpler cable routing setup:
$50 - NZXT Source 210 Elite Black ATX Case

The above case fits 8 hard drives right off the bat. If you want to add more drives to either the NZXT Source 210 Elite case or the Antec P182, just grab this module to add an additional 4 drives:
$28 - Cooler Master STB-3T4-E3-GP 4 in 3 Device Module w/ 120mm Fan

As for the PSU, I recommend this:
$63 - Antec NEO ECO 520C 520W PSU

 

[dougal1957]

1. $1000 lower the better
2. Windows Home server seems the easiest, been reading about OpenSolaris and freenas. I don't mine learning something new, I will take it slowly lol

Try looking at NASLite http://www.serverelements.com It is very light weight in terms of resources but very powerfull at the same time runs in a 32Mb Flash disc (yes 32 Mb) I use a CF Card on an IDE Adaptor. along with a decent Hardware Raid card from say 3Ware/LSI/Adaptec/Areca and you wont go far wrong. I am getting arround 70-80 MB/s out of mine on a GIGe network useing a 3WARE 9550SX raid card with 8x2TB drives.

3. Performance maybe like 50 MB/s (my dlink nas 321 did like 10MB/s it was killing me)
4. I plan to put my 4 samsung 2 TB and 3 WD Green 2 TB and a Kingston SSD 64GB for OS
5. quiet and energy efficient will be nice because the machine should be up 24/7
6. It will be a while before I will add more drives because most of the drives are empty and hdd price are too expensive from what they were
7. main purpose is just data storage for my movies, music and a BT downloader

I also been looking into the AMD E350 it performs better than the atom D525

Thanks belomycin

HTH

Regards Doug

 

[balance101]

thanks for the reply guys

I seem lots of members have IBM ServeRAID BR10i but it only supports raid 0 and 1

good for ZFS?

$60~ vs a LSI megaraid 9240 8i which is like 300~

thanks

 

[leeleatherwood]

thanks for the reply guys

I seem lots of members have IBM ServeRAID BR10i but it only supports raid 0 and 1

good for ZFS?

$60~ vs a LSI megaraid 9240 8i which is like 300~

thanks

The drives do not go into a Raid Array, you flash the firmware to IT Mode and have the drives presented to the OS as raw discs. ZFS handles the rest.

 

[balance101]

thanks lee

been reading a lot, so much information to take in lol

so ZFS/free nas is like software raid? it can recovery lost data but loose performance compare to hardware raid?

btw is free nas = zfs or zfs is like a program that runs on freenas/OpenSolaris

also i also stumble on unRaid (lime tech) i dont like how you have to pay for licensing fee i tho it suppose to be opensource but i read that in unRaid you can add drives as you go and drive doesn't have to be the same as on ZFS you cannot add addition drives when array is build is this correct?

thanks guys

 

[Dangman]

so ZFS/free nas is like software raid? it can recovery lost data but loose performance compare to hardware raid?

ZFS is both a software RAID engine and file system combined. ZFS' performance can sometimes exceed that of certain hardware RAID controllers.

btw is free nas = zfs or zfs is like a program that runs on freenas/OpenSolaris

The latter in a way

also i also stumble on unRaid (lime tech) i dont like how you have to pay for licensing fee i tho it suppose to be opensource but i read that in unRaid you can add drives as you go and drive doesn't have to be the same as on ZFS you cannot add addition drives when array is build is this correct?

Correct-ish. But this quote better explains ZFS' expansion capability better than I can:

What you cannot do, is expand an existing RAID-Z (RAID5) or RAID-Z2 (RAID6) array with one or more disks.
But, you can add new disks or RAIDs to an existing pool. So if you have a 4-disk RAID-Z, you can add another 4-disk RAID-Z so you have 8 disks. The second array would share free space with the first; in essence it would be a RAID0 of two RAID5 arrays. ZFS can expand this way.

What you can do, is expanding mirrors and RAID0's. In the example above that's what actually happened: a new array is RAID0-ed with the existing array. New created files will be written to both devices, for additional speed. Setting copies=2 would make files in that directory be stored on both RAID arrays; for extra redundancy.

For ZFS, I recommend reading the following links:
OpenSolaris derived ZFS NAS/ SAN (Nexenta*, OpenIndiana, Solaris Express, napp-it)
Building ZFS Based Network Attached Storage Using FreeNAS 8
napp-it ZFS server appliance
Building your own ZFS fileserver
ZFSguru NAS fileserver project

As for the BR10i, while it's a good card, the problem is that it lacks support for newer drives IIRC. I might be wrong about that.

 

[leeleatherwood]

ZFS if a filesystem.

FreeBSD(FreeNAS), Solaris and Linux currently employ the ZFS Filesystem (among many others)

unRaid is crap.

 

[_Gea]

so ZFS/free nas is like software raid? it can recovery lost data but loose performance compare to hardware raid?

btw is free nas = zfs or zfs is like a program that runs on freenas/OpenSolaris

1. With modern hardware, ZFS is mostly faster than hardware Raid and lacks the hardware Raid-whole problem. Because its done in software, you can build pools from any disk on any controller and move the pool to another server with different controllers.

2. ZFS is: mainly
- a filesystem like NTFS, ext or FAT +
- a built-in Raid management tool +
- a built-in Volume Manager +
- a built-in data repair toolset

It was developed by Sun as most known part of a revolutionary new server os (OpenSolaris) intented to beat Windows NT years ago. Kompatibilty was not needed. Therefore ZFS is now years ahead from other filesystems regarding limits or data security. Because it is OpenSource ZFS is available also in FreeBSD and Linux, even for Macs there is a port. If you look only at ZFS, best implementation is on OpenSolaris derived systems like Illumian or OpenIndiana (or SmartOS if you need a cloud OS)

 

[balance101]

wow awesome didn't know zfs was so powerful

a quick question when using a window client (windows 7) to access/transfer files to zfs can you use it like a network drive or you need to use like a ftp client

thanks

 

[cantalup]

1. With modern hardware, ZFS is mostly faster than hardware Raid and lacks the hardware Raid-whole problem. Because its done in software, you can build pools from any disk on any controller and move the pool to another server with different controllers.

2. ZFS is: mainly
- a filesystem like NTFS, ext or FAT +
- a built-in Raid management tool +
- a built-in Volume Manager +
- a built-in data repair toolset

It was developed by Sun as most known part of a revolutionary new server os (OpenSolaris) intented to beat Windows NT years ago. Kompatibilty was not needed. Therefore ZFS is now years ahead from other filesystems regarding limits or data security. Because it is OpenSource ZFS is available also in FreeBSD and Linux, even for Macs there is a port. If you look only at ZFS, best implementation is on OpenSolaris derived systems like Illumian or OpenIndiana (or SmartOS if you need a cloud OS)

Yes or No, that's depend on the perspective

Most Critical system would have Hardware Raid. average home users does not need that.
the newest Hardware Raid adds many features that does not exist on previous generation

talking abount"RAID" technology will goes no where, just pick which is the best for our needs
------
ZFS is good for home users or SOHO with many features, not much money to spend on Hardwares

as on my needs, I would stick with Linux mdraid (RAID 5 or RAID 6) that serves me well more than 5 years, but I prefer hardware RAID if possible for less headache during maintenance since my all in one machine provides me all the services such ass CIFS/SAMBA, WBEM(management), Plex, NFS, and others.
if any drive failed, hardware RAID ( not old hardware generation) does not take many hours to recovers (talking about suhc as LSI 6G SAS Roc or PMC Sierra 6G that I know).


Using ECC ram when implementing software RAID, that would avoid some headaches in the long run , just my experience...



all go back to our needs, choose wisely .... either Hardware Raid or others

 

[FrostBite]

If you want to run WHS, I'd consider going with FlexRAID. If you are storing mainly movies, music, or other things that you don't very often move around or delete, e.g., static data, the snapshot version with it's storage pooling is a pretty neat feature for data storage. That is the route I am about to go when hard drive prices drop albiet with W7 as a combo HTPC box.

 

[balance101]

cool thanks frostbite, so with flexraid its another software raid for WHS interesting good to see more options available

if I dont' ready have to get a hardware raid card it would save me lots of money

I could get a mini-itx like Intel S1200KP and a Xeon E3 1260L

and IBM ServeRAID BR10I

 

[cantalup]

cool thanks frostbite, so with flexraid its another software raid for WHS interesting good to see more options available

if I dont' ready have to get a hardware raid card it would save me lots of money

I could get a mini-itx like Intel S1200KP and a Xeon E3 1260L

and IBM ServeRAID BR10I

br10 does not support hd greater than 2T. As I know. M1015 is a good candidate for hba since support 3T.

 

[Trepidati0n]

If you want to run WHS, I'd consider going with FlexRAID. If you are storing mainly movies, music, or other things that you don't very often move around or delete, e.g., static data, the snapshot version with it's storage pooling is a pretty neat feature for data storage. That is the route I am about to go when hard drive prices drop albiet with W7 as a combo HTPC box.

Same route i'm heading. The only thing that ZFS, for my applicaiton, provides that WHS+FlexRAID doesn't is bitrot. Bit rot is nefarious. However, what I finally was able to convince myself of was i've been living with bit-rot this long (decade) and it hasn't crippled me yet due to the other mechanism's I have in place. Don't get me wrong, I would love to have bitrot protection vs what I currently do, but not at the expense of ease of use

 

[GioF_71]

ZFS if a filesystem.

FreeBSD(FreeNAS), Solaris and Linux currently employ the ZFS Filesystem (among many others)

unRaid is crap.

Linux does not support ZFS, at least not natively. Unless you refer to things like zfsonlinux o zfs fuse, which are not (yet) meant to be used with valuable data.

 

[GioF_71]

Linux does not support ZFS, at least not natively. Unless you refer to things like zfsonlinux o zfs fuse, which are not (yet) meant to be used with valuable data.

to be fair, the last sentence is my opinion. The package is declared stable. However, I wouldn't trust zfsonlinux for my data, at least not yet.
I think FreeBSD/FreeNAS and the OpenSolaris derivates are better options.

 

[leeleatherwood]

Unless you refer to things like zfsonlinux o zfs fuse.

Thats what I meant yes.