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looking to build a NAS

C

Cudenver

Weaksauce
Joined
Jul 7, 2012
Messages
126
Anybody know what I would need to build a NAS, and use it as my backup
I am looking to build something similar to what a drobo does, where if one drive fails you can replace the drive and be good to go again. I have a spare system I could use, But I have not experience with Raid, or setting up a array.
thanks for the help.
 
What's your budget?
What's your experience with non-Windows OSes?
What's the specs of the spare system?
 
A NAS with RAID is not a backup, its just a redundant place to store data, like in a file server with RAID, you still need a backup.
 
Depending on your hardware or lack there of, FreeNAS is a great option. It has redundancy if it is set up properly. It will run on almost anything, and has support for many different raid cards, nic's, etc. I currently run my FreeNAS of an older Athlon II x4 with 4gb of ram and 6x 1tb hdd's. I have ZFS setup, so I can lose up to 2 drives before I lose any data. ZFS requires more ram than processing power.

Post up your hardware that you will be using and the amount of usable storage you would like to achieve.
 
4fingerninja said:
Depending on your hardware or lack there of, FreeNAS is a great option. It has redundancy if it is set up properly. It will run on almost anything, and has support for many different raid cards, nic's, etc. I currently run my FreeNAS of an older Athlon II x4 with 4gb of ram and 6x 1tb hdd's. I have ZFS setup, so I can lose up to 2 drives before I lose any data. ZFS requires more ram than processing power.

Post up your hardware that you will be using and the amount of usable storage you would like to achieve.
Click to expand...

Hardware is a i7 930 , X58 SLI LE, Geforece GTS 250, 6 gigs of ram I think.
looking for something like 2-4 TB.


Danny Bui said:
What's your budget?
What's your experience with non-Windows OSes?
What's the specs of the spare system?
Click to expand...

Budget is anywhere up to $500 i guess.
Not much experience with anything but windows. sigh.


ashman said:
A NAS with RAID is not a backup, its just a redundant place to store data, like in a file server with RAID, you still need a backup.
Click to expand...

I was planning to have a few 1tb drive in my main computer and use the NAS as my backup.

thanks guys sorry I took so long to reply.
 
Cudenver said:
Hardware is a i7 930 , X58 SLI LE, Geforece GTS 250, 6 gigs of ram I think.
looking for something like 2-4 TB.
Click to expand...

In my eyes, that hardware is too powerful to run something as simple as FreeNAS. You are better off running Windows Home Server or something along those lines in you are only used to windows. Plus the current hardware will be used to its full potential
 
I've put together a couple of NAS boxes on HP n40l microservers recently. They are perfect for that function, small, quiet, and, importantly, don't use much power. The one on the desk next to me has 5 2TB WD reds, a 7200 laptop drive and 8gb ram and is using 49 watts at idle, running openindiana. It's a good combo.
 
4fingerninja said:
In my eyes, that hardware is too powerful to run something as simple as FreeNAS. You are better off running Windows Home Server or something along those lines in you are only used to windows. Plus the current hardware will be used to its full potential
Click to expand...
That is just a spare system I have , but I could easily build a low power cheap system for it.
Do you have any specific suggestions, on what else i would need. like a raid card etc.


dave99 said:
I've put together a couple of NAS boxes on HP n40l microservers recently. They are perfect for that function, small, quiet, and, importantly, don't use much power. The one on the desk next to me has 5 2TB WD reds, a 7200 laptop drive and 8gb ram and is using 49 watts at idle, running openindiana. It's a good combo.
Click to expand...

is that is basically a drobo, without the proprietary raid system ?
I need something like that I think.
 
It's basically just regular HP server in a cheap/small form factor, you can run whatever you want on it, windows, linux, and solaris/openindiana (for ZFS). You can get 5 3.5" drives in there (slots for 4, then 1 in the top bay where a dvd drive would go) and 1 2.5" drive for an OS. There is no built-in raid, so you'd use software raid for whatever OS you choose.
 
dave99 said:
It's basically just regular HP server in a cheap/small form factor, you can run whatever you want on it, windows, linux, and solaris/openindiana (for ZFS). You can get 5 3.5" drives in there (slots for 4, then 1 in the top bay where a dvd drive would go) and 1 2.5" drive for an OS. There is no built-in raid, so you'd use software raid for whatever OS you choose.
Click to expand...

That sounds like your best option. To me, it sounds like you want more of a network drive than a server or a NAS. Low power consumption, no need to fuss around with software, and easy to use.

All I am using is a quad core athlon and a motherboard with 6 sata ports. I do have the ability to add a raid card down the road, but do not see the need for ever having one.
 
If you want an easier solution with a nice gui, go synology. not cheaper than the microserver (or not by much), but almost a plug and play solution. Anything where you want to roll your own requires a lot more work, although things like freenas and napp-it (for solaris/openindiana) make it pretty easy also.
 
dave99 said:
It's basically just regular HP server in a cheap/small form factor, you can run whatever you want on it, windows, linux, and solaris/openindiana (for ZFS). You can get 5 3.5" drives in there (slots for 4, then 1 in the top bay where a dvd drive would go) and 1 2.5" drive for an OS. There is no built-in raid, so you'd use software raid for whatever OS you choose.
Click to expand...

How hard would it be to setup the o/s, I know there are many different options, and then set up the raid array.


4fingerninja said:
That sounds like your best option. To me, it sounds like you want more of a network drive than a server or a NAS. Low power consumption, no need to fuss around with software, and easy to use.

All I am using is a quad core athlon and a motherboard with 6 sata ports. I do have the ability to add a raid card down the road, but do not see the need for ever having one.
Click to expand...

yes I can see what you are saying about wanting more of a network drive.

dave99 said:
If you want an easier solution with a nice gui, go synology. not
cheaper than the microserver (or not by much), but almost a plug and play solution. Anything where you want to roll your own requires a lot more work, although things like freenas and napp-it (for solaris/openindiana) make it pretty easy also.
Click to expand...

thanks, yea it seems way easier than dealing with the software and setup.
 
OP don't give up just yet. I have very limited non-Windows experiences (unless you count my Android smartphone lol) and still set up a Nas4Free server very quickly.

First off, you want ZFS. The Synology etc. solutions do not have the kind of powerful integrity checking ZFS has. Second of all, you want something easy, or at least I did, lol.

Go to: http://www.nas4free.org/

FAQ and other documentation and setup guide here: http://wiki.nas4free.org/doku.php and here: http://wiki.nas4free.org/doku.php?id=documentation:setup_and_user_guide and here: forums.nas4free.org

Download the latest ISO here and burn it to a CD-R or -RW (no official support for using USB flash yet): http://sourceforge.net/projects/nas4free/files/latest/download?source=files

Boot up with the CD and follow the instructions. I recommend using an embedded installation onto a USB flash drive, but you can sacrifice a bay and use a SSD or HDD or something. That's really unnecessary though. You can even install the embedded version onto a SSD/HDD to save on wear and tear--the OS will basically live in memory most of the time and only rarely write to disk, if you do it that way.

When done installing onto the drive, boot up with it and tell it to auto-detect your LAN settings. DHCP or something. It'll tell you what your NAS's IP address is. Write that down somewhere.

Go to Firefox or whatever and type in that IP address. I think the default user/pw is admin/nas4free.

The system autodetects hard drives and lists them under Disks > Management. Format each one individually as ZFS devices and trigger the 4K/advanced format flags if applicable.

Go to Disks > ZFS. Now you can make ZFS virtual devices out of drives. As a simple example, you can make a pair of drives into a ZFS Mirror vdev. Then you can make pools. A boring example would be a pool with only one vdev in it (that vdev being the mirrored pool we just made under Disks > ZFS > Pools > Virtual Device).

RAIDZ1 and Z2 are like software versions of RAID5 and RAID6 but with a few extra improvements.

Go to Access > Users and make a user with the same login and password as you use on your Windows PC. Give yourself admin access if you want... makes it easier to overwrite/delete files at will. Safer is giving yourself guest access or something.

Go to Services > CIFS/SMB > Settings and check the Enable box near the right side somewhere. Select Local User and SMB2. Give your server a name, workgroup name, and description. Do NOT select Asynchronous I/O (AIO) right now, as that can break compatibility for large file transfers.. in fact just leave the rest default.

Go to Services > CIFS/SMB > Shares (it's right next to the Settings tab you were just on) and create a new share. Give your share a name such as "MirroredPool1" or something. Click on the ... button and select the directory associated with that pool. Makes sure you set to Browsable. I'd leave the rest as default for now, except maybe Recycle Bin which you can enable if you want... it's a hidden directory though so make sure you set it up so you can view hidden directories too.

Save. Note that a lot of times you need to hit some sort of "Save" or "Apply Changes" button after making a change.

Now you should be able to see your Nas4Free box as a network drive in Windows.

This is just the basic setup and I know I left out some other stuff, but it will get you up and running quickly. To better secure your Nas4Free box, see this:

http://wiki.nas4free.org/doku.php?id=faq:0096

I am a complete newbie to all of this, haven't used a non-Windows OS on a PC much, and still managed to get most of the basics set up within an hour. So from one newbie to another, I hope this guide helps, if you choose to set up a Nas4Free box.

Btw, anyone know if Hitachi 5k3000 3TB's drives are 512 or 4k? They say 512 but I'm skeptical.
 
blastingcap said:
OP don't give up just yet. I have very limited non-Windows experiences (unless you count my Android smartphone lol) and still set up a Nas4Free server very quickly.
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Btw, anyone know if Hitachi 5k3000 3TB's drives are 512 or 4k? They say 512 but I'm skeptical.
Click to expand...

Thank you for your helpful post , now I just need to get a low power system something like the N40L, my power usage is through the roof due to folding.
 
Since you need the drives no matter what, you could always buy them, try Nas4Free/other options on your i7, and decide if it's for you of if you'd rather buy a commercial NAS.
 
good idea, that way I can try it out on the i7 spare machine, and if I can get it working with the software, then I can buy the low power system, and if I cant then can buy a commercial NAS
Aesma said:
Since you need the drives no matter what, you could always buy them, try Nas4Free/other options on your i7, and decide if it's for you of if you'd rather buy a commercial NAS.
Click to expand...
 
Cudenver said:
Thank you for your helpful post , now I just need to get a low power system something like the N40L, my power usage is through the roof due to folding.
Click to expand...

No problem, though I would recommend something better than a N40L if you want to make a large array. The rule of thumb is that for optimal performance, you want 1GB per 1TB of ZFS storage, plus 2GB of RAM for the OS (Nas4Free/FreeNAS ... Nas4Free is basically an updated version of FreeNAS... don't use FreeNAS 8 as that's for businesses).

Since the N40L is limited to 8GB RAM that would limit you to 6TB arrays for optimal performance.

However if you need a modest-size array and want to save power, the N40L is hard to beat. I am using a somewhat more power-hungry setup with an Athlon II X4 610e + 16GB of ECC RAM.
 
Cudenver said:
Thank you for your helpful post , now I just need to get a low power system something like the N40L, my power usage is through the roof due to folding.
Click to expand...

What are you folding using? NAS applications do not take much CPU power TBH. Depending on how you want to setup redundancy, actually not a bad idea. A lot of folders use DP or 4P systems which means server grade hardware which makes life much better esp if you are using ECC memory.
 
pjkenned said:
What are you folding using? NAS applications do not take much CPU power TBH. Depending on how you want to setup redundancy, actually not a bad idea. A lot of folders use DP or 4P systems which means server grade hardware which makes life much better esp if you are using ECC memory.
Click to expand...

Folding with a Supermicro H8QGi-F-O Quad Socket G34
and quad 6180SE , But I recently just took offline my old hardware, bc I purchased the 4p to save energy costs over the long term. so the power bill will be going down alot now.
 
That isn't the 6 version with the LSI controller, but if you only needed to use a few drives (1-5) you could fairly easily setup raid with Linux on the onboard controller.
 
when I do this I am only going to use 5 drives max, so maybe I can use it.

pjkenned said:
That isn't the 6 version with the LSI controller, but if you only needed to use a few drives (1-5) you could fairly easily setup raid with Linux on the onboard controller.
Click to expand...
 
If you are only going to use 5 drives max, then I would head over to the FreeNAS forum and find a board that is known to work with the onboard raid. Then there is not any fussing or fighting try to setup the raid. But I still kind of think you are going the wrong direction based on what you described IMO.
 
Thanks for the link to the blog, which way would you go, if you think im going in the wrong direction.
4fingerninja said:
If you are only going to use 5 drives max, then I would head over to the FreeNAS forum and find a board that is known to work with the onboard raid. Then there is not any fussing or fighting try to setup the raid. But I still kind of think you are going the wrong direction based on what you described IMO.
Click to expand...
 
Cudenver said:
Thanks for the link to the blog, which way would you go, if you think im going in the wrong direction.
Click to expand...

No I am just saying for what from I understand, you would like a place to store documents, music, files, etc. and your backups. I do this with FreeNAS. My Windows 7 rig along with my MBP both back up to it. I made separate "partitions" for each to go to. And the third is for my music, movies, etc. Even though I have 6 hdd's I can set the size of each subset. I like this option because of the expandability. I have have multiple nics' and run LACP which I do and runs flawlessly. I run it as a server, not a network drive. Yes, it does consume more power than something like a drobo, but I also think this is faster, and I also don't pay for electric so it doesn't bother me :p
 
Please remember that Nas4Free is the newer version of FreeNAS at v28. FreeNAS is using an older version of ZFS (v15 I think).

The N40L is a nice box and more than enough for most people, but it's limited to 8GB ECC RAM which may not be enough if you are running a massive amount of space. Ideally you want about 1GB per 1TB of ZFS space and another 2GB just for the Nas4Free OS. You can get away with less but should avoid using advanced features like deduping if so. The N40L comes with a paltry 1-2GB IIRC, so you will want to buy extra RAM for it if you go down that road.

Note that if you want, you can roll your own box as well, which may be cheaper if you spare PSU and other parts laying around. Just make sure the mobo and CPU can support ECC and use the appropriate ECC RAM. Most ASUS mobos with socket AM3/3+ support unbuffered ECC RAM, and I think pretty much every Athlon/Phenom II also supports it. The FM1/2 socket CPUs do NOT support ECC, which sucks considering that they tend to be lower-wattage.

A single Sempron 140 or 145 is enough for home file server duties from what I've seen. They idle at decently low wattage, too.
 
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