Looking for suggestions on a NAS box

[Booyaah]

Hi,

I've been a long time lurker of this site as it seems like most of the people are fairly knowledgable here, just never bothered to sign up until now.

Anyways, I'm currently sitting on 2x 1 TB HDDs that have <100 GB free space, and I am going to be starting work with 4K video in the near future, so you can imagine I am in dire need of a decent size RAID array. Now I looked at that 10 TB sticky...I'm not looking quite looking at building a small datacenter in my basement with a thermonuclear reactor, just something more prosumer-ish. I was thinking of starting out with 4x 4 TB WD Red's in a RAID 5 setup.

What I'm not quite sure on is the rig I wanted to use to house RAID array. At first I thought about getting one of those Netgear ReadyNAS devices, but then I thought why lower myself to buying an appliance when I could probably just build something for the same cost or less maybe?

So I was kinda looking for some suggestions on the case/internals to use. I was thinking just an i3, but not sure on the case or mobo. This box would purely be used for media storage. Also I'm not sure if it's possible to buy something that can extend an existing 4 disk array with a 5th disk later, or am I better off waiting until I have enough money to build a 2nd array? Basically, I'm looking for people to suggest a part list for a diskless system within the $500-$600 range. I would obviously need at least 4 bays, but 6-10 bays would be preferrable. I should probably mention I'm not a huge Linux guy, it would probably be all Windows machines accessing the NAS anyways, so I don't want anything super complex to maintain. Thanks.

 

[kenned3]

Might be a bit "off base" considering your ask, but how about something like this:

http://www.nzxt.com/product/detail/134-phantom-530.html
You can find it easily at the re-seller of your choice.

It holds like 6 drives so you can do a raid-5 over 5 drives and still have a boot device.

I actually use this for something similar at home and have 5x1TB drives in it.
Many people here rave about the IBM SATA card which can run like 8 disks (not needed if your mobo has enough sata ports).

 

[Abula]

Since you want windows and you want to build your own setup, then consider going into Flexraid, there is real time pairty or snap (limited to 2 max drives for parity), you can also add drives to the array when ever you want, its has pooling, so you basically are creating a logical drive out of the phisical drives you add to it, so you see it as a single drive that can grow as you need increases.

Another option is to go with pooling solution, since the shift from WHSv1 to WHS2011, MS decided to drop the pooling option, imo one of the biggest and loved features of it, so third parties started to develop pooling solutions for WHS2011, in time they have expanded to almost any windows OS, this is what im running atm, if you care to read more check Stablebit and Drivebender, there are other options but imo those two are the top, personally i tried both, and liked a litlte more stablebit out of the ease of use, but both work really well. Both have trial periods where you can test them even on your pc you own atm to see if fits what you are looking. The downside of both is that they are just a pooling solution for windows, no parity nor recovery, but upon a disk fail you only lose what was on that disk, and all disk are readable outside the pool on any windows pc.

For hardware, i guess depends on what else you want to do with it? transcoding on the fly, cameras, etc, lots of things that can be done, or maybe just storage? if its just storage you could be fine with a low end cpu, personally i just dislike working on slow setups so i would suggest something like celeron/pentium, but you can go into the atoms if you wish.

For cases depends if you want compact or big, a small case but a little expensive for a storage server is Silverstone Tek Premium Mini-ITX DTX Small Form Factor NAS Computer Cases, Black (DS380B) or Fractal Design Node 304 Mini-ITX Hybrid Computer Case FD-CA-NODE-304-BL or you can go with a traditional case, there are some that hold 8 or more.

 

[Booyaah]

Since you want windows and you want to build your own setup, then consider going into Flexraid, there is real time pairty or snap (limited to 2 max drives for parity), you can also add drives to the array when ever you want, its has pooling, so you basically are creating a logical drive out of the phisical drives you add to it, so you see it as a single drive that can grow as you need increases.

Another option is to go with pooling solution, since the shift from WHSv1 to WHS2011, MS decided to drop the pooling option, imo one of the biggest and loved features of it, so third parties started to develop pooling solutions for WHS2011, in time they have expanded to almost any windows OS, this is what im running atm, if you care to read more check Stablebit and Drivebender, there are other options but imo those two are the top, personally i tried both, and liked a litlte more stablebit out of the ease of use, but both work really well. Both have trial periods where you can test them even on your pc you own atm to see if fits what you are looking. The downside of both is that they are just a pooling solution for windows, no parity nor recovery, but upon a disk fail you only lose what was on that disk, and all disk are readable outside the pool on any windows pc.

For hardware, i guess depends on what else you want to do with it? transcoding on the fly, cameras, etc, lots of things that can be done, or maybe just storage? if its just storage you could be fine with a low end cpu, personally i just dislike working on slow setups so i would suggest something like celeron/pentium, but you can go into the atoms if you wish.

For cases depends if you want compact or big, a small case but a little expensive for a storage server is Silverstone Tek Premium Mini-ITX DTX Small Form Factor NAS Computer Cases, Black (DS380B) or Fractal Design Node 304 Mini-ITX Hybrid Computer Case FD-CA-NODE-304-BL or you can go with a traditional case, there are some that hold 8 or more.

Basically the only thing I would be using my NAS for is serving files. I wouldn't be doing any intensive operations like live streaming or video encoding, it would just be for storage and file I/O. I already have a server with dual Xeons for stuff like that.

I kind of liked that Silverstone case you linked...8 total bays would be plenty for me. I threw this part list together real quick...I realize it's kind of meh: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/JzcfnQ

I dunno about the mobo/RAM, but I can get a i5-4690K from my local Microcenter for $199 though, it's only $10 more than a regular 4790. This total diskless setup as is ~$700 which is about what I'm willing to spend. I'm wondering if there'd even be a point to throw a small 32 GB SSD for a boot drive.

------

So it seems like your suggesting to build an array using software? Why not just use the built in hardware on the motherboard? (still need to check it's RAID capabilities). Or are you just talking about management software for the file system? Also I wasn't suggesting I was 100% closed off to using Linux. The last thing I want to do is add more costs by paying licensing fees. I'm also not so sure about ZFS

 

[Abula]

Basically the only thing I would be using my NAS for is serving files. I wouldn't be doing any intensive operations like live streaming or video encoding, it would just be for storage and file I/O. I already have a server with dual Xeons for stuff like that.


I dunno about the mobo/RAM, but I can get a i5-4690K from my local Microcenter for $199 though, it's only $10 more than a regular 4790. This total diskless setup as is ~$700 which is about what I'm willing to spend. I'm wondering if there'd even be a point to throw a small 32 GB SSD for a boot drive.

pure storage any celeron/pentium can do it, probably even an atom. But here its up to you and whatever else you might do down the road, but you can save a good chunck of money into a lesser cpu.

I kind of liked that Silverstone case you linked...8 total bays would be plenty for me. I threw this part list together real quick...I realize it's kind of meh: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/JzcfnQ

Its up to you what you need in terms of cpu power, but the case is pretty nice for a small server but it has its limitations, one of them is that you can install a standard size hba without doing some modding to the case as the lenght is too small. So unless down the road you find a small hba, you will be binded to whatever sata ports the motherboard has, in this case the asrock you are looking into has 4 sata ports and i think a sata express port (not sure on this one), so thinking that you want an ssd you will have to sacrifice a a hdd and at the end you will be using only 3 hdds slots with little possibilities of going with more drives or you will need to hard mod it to introduce an hba.

There are very few motherboards that could use the full 8 slots wihtout an hba, like ASRock C2750D4I Mini ITX Server Motherboard FCBGA1283 DDR3 1600/1333, just its an expensive motherboard.

So it seems like your suggesting to build an array using software? Why not just use the built in hardware on the motherboard?

Its more like fake hardware raid, its not true hardware raid like a raid card, but it works. I personally dont like stardard raid arrays mostly out of having my info binded to a parity that if it fails i lose everything, this is more a decision you have to take into what you need and willing to accept. Software raid or pooling bring other options like i already mentioned before, weather it fits what you are looking its up to you.

Also I wasn't suggesting I was 100% closed off to using Linux.

Well you gave me that impression, but if you are open look into Amahi. If you were to stay on 3 hdd, you can also use unraid for free, but if you go up, you will need to pay the licence.

The last thing I want to do is add more costs by paying licensing fees.

Since you dont want to pay a licence, FreeNas could be an option. Or if you want to remain on windows and still have something similar to FlexRaid, but dont want to spend on the licence, check SnapRaid.

If you really want small i would also consider a prebuild, synology does do pretty good setups imo, just a little overpriced, but their software is pretty easy to learn, their ui is intuitive, and they have also their hybrid raid system that you can add drives as you need, or classic raid arrays.

I'm also not so sure about ZFS

Plently people here that can talk about this more than me, for it just not worth it, as my server is mostly a storage for movies, and i prefered to remain with something that i did know.

 

[Booyaah]

pure storage any celeron/pentium can do it, probably even an atom. But here its up to you and whatever else you might do down the road, but you can save a good chunck of money into a lesser cpu.

Its up to you what you need in terms of cpu power, but the case is pretty nice for a small server but it has its limitations, one of them is that you can install a standard size hba without doing some modding to the case as the lenght is too small. So unless down the road you find a small hba, you will be binded to whatever sata ports the motherboard has, in this case the asrock you are looking into has 4 sata ports and i think a sata express port (not sure on this one), so thinking that you want an ssd you will have to sacrifice a a hdd and at the end you will be using only 3 hdds slots with little possibilities of going with more drives or you will need to hard mod it to introduce an hba.

There are very few motherboards that could use the full 8 slots wihtout an hba, like ASRock C2750D4I Mini ITX Server Motherboard FCBGA1283 DDR3 1600/1333, just its an expensive motherboard.

Yeah that was the one thing I was thinking I didn't like about going mini-ITX...it just limits your options. I actually have a little zbox downstairs in my living room as my HTPC that has a D2550 Atom in it, they aren't that bad. I didn't even think about the motherboard not having 8 ports. Bleh most non server mobos only come with 6 SATA ports...hmm. I think I would honestly rather just stick with ATX. I kind of wanted to try a dual lan port and ITX doesn't really have room for PCIe cards. Is there a similar ATX version of the case you linked?

Its more like fake hardware raid, its not true hardware raid like a raid card, but it works. I personally dont like stardard raid arrays mostly out of having my info binded to a parity that if it fails i lose everything, this is more a decision you have to take into what you need and willing to accept. Software raid or pooling bring other options like i already mentioned before, weather it fits what you are looking its up to you.

Yeah I think after I do end up getting the parts and building the machine, I might take a hard look at trying out ZFS first.

 

[Abula]

Is there a similar ATX version of the case you linked?

Well no in the same style. There are lots of opions though, Fractal Design Define R4 and Arc Midi R2 are pretty decent options for up to 8x 3.5 hdd.

If you want hotswaping, look inot norco, or a case with 5.25 slots and get some 5in3 or 4in3 cages.

 

[vr.]

This total diskless setup as is ~$700 which is about what I'm willing to spend. I'm wondering if there'd even be a point to throw a small 32 GB SSD for a boot drive.

Aren't the WD Sentinel 4000 like $649 with 4TB of disk and a pre configured OS included?
I mean if it's about cost, you can't realistically build it cheaper. But if it's about controlling your own build and personal growth by accomplishing said build, by all means build that hobby project!

EDIT: just wanted to add, the 5in3 / 3in2 hot swap cages. You may be better off rolling the would be money spent on those into a chassis that has built-in bays. There seem to be a fair amount of 12 bay, 2 RU and 3RU options currently on the market. You get the flexibility to stuff more disks in less space which will matter a lot 8 months from now with those 4K files.

 

[iroc409]

I should probably mention I'm not a huge Linux guy, it would probably be all Windows machines accessing the NAS anyways, so I don't want anything super complex to maintain. Thanks.

Basically the only thing I would be using my NAS for is serving files.
...
Also I wasn't suggesting I was 100% closed off to using Linux. The last thing I want to do is add more costs by paying licensing fees. I'm also not so sure about ZFS

With these in mind, I would probably pretty seriously consider just getting a NAS device. There are several good ones out there. The only reason I built a storage server is because I wanted ZFS, but I seriously considered the NAS. Unless of course you want to build a system with dozens of drives, I would put it high on my list.