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NAS/RAID Guide/Setup for beginner

J

johnmandrake

n00b
Joined
Mar 28, 2014
Messages
2
Hi,

a lot of things have been answered on this forum, I found several very informative threads, but I am too new to the topic to put them together properly.

Currently I have a DroboFS (5 slots) for backup, but it is hitting it´s limits with disk space. My options are to either migrate everything to a bigger drobo (8...12 slot), or to build my own storage system. Since the Drobo´s proprietary filesystem doesn´t even allow to access the data from another Drobo (it has to be the same type), doesn´t support linux, and is pretty pricy (especially the 12-bay), I would like to go with building my own.

Problem is, I´m new to this, and don´t know where to start. My priority list is:

Very Important
  • Protection against corruption. The files have to be as secure as possible, everything stored is very important to either me or someone in my family. Because of this, the only way to go is probably ZFS (if I understand this correctly?), as it uses multiple stages of checksums. Self healing is a must.
  • Protection against hardware failures. The current setting on the Drobo is dual-redundancy, and I would like to be able to even increase this for an increased number of disks (e.g. 3-4 out of 20).
  • Expandability. The system needs to be expandable by adding drives. It is no problem for me to add a set of 5 disks at once.
  • Size. Medium-term the system would have to support at least 15 drives.
  • HDDs. The system has to support SATA disks, since this is what all my disks are. I don´t use SSDs, even though additional support is always great to have.

Should-have´s
  • Linux. I´m a Windows-user with only basic knowledge of linux, but the system should be based on linux.
  • Connectibility. It´s purpose is to be a NAS, and I would like it to have at least 2 1GBit ports for speed (if it can handle data though more than one port).
  • Portability. I would like to be software-independent, meaning, no use of proprietary, close-source software.
  • Noise. It won´t have it´s own room, so the noise is important.

Great to have
  • Protection against power-outage. The Drobo usually runs only when I backup data, or copy data to my HDD to use it. It does not run 24/7. Nevertheless it would be great to have the system write data in a way, that it does not corrupt data in case the power goes out.
  • Disk size. New drives will have the size of 4 TB, but in order to use the ones I have (several 1-2 TB), it would be great to mix drive sizes, if possible. Either as (2-2-2-2-1-1-1) or as (2-2-2-2) and another (1-1-1), but the first option would be great.
  • Spin-down. I don´t expect the system to run 24/7, but I would like to have some method of a drive spin-down if the drives aren´t accessed for some time, or some other method of preserving disk life.
  • Encryption. Would be a nice feature, what would be the down-sides when using it on a system like this?

Not important
  • Cost. A 8-bay Drobo would be very expensive, even barebone. As long as the price stays below that, I prefer a better setup to a low priced one lacking stability. I have a few disks from older external drives, as well as a few new 3 and 4 TB disks, so no cost here.


In order to not totally screw this up, could someone please post a (or more) possible software/hardware combination, that makes sense for my purposes?
What are the minimum requirements?

Also, some directions on how to set it up, or a pointer to a tutorial using this hard-/software combination would be appreciated. I have no experience with RAIDs.

Thanks in advance!


Please remember, I´m new to this, I might ask questions with very obvious answers without knowing it.
Please excuse any mistakes, I´m no native speaker.


Edit: Hardware list:
Motherboards

Software List:
OS
  • FreeNAS
 
Last edited:
One option I would urge you to research is FreeNAS. It should meet just about all of your requirements.
 
Thank you, I´ve put it on my list.

Can you recommend any Case/Chassis with Expansion Modules for 5-6 HDDs per row?
 
Supermicro is the biggest game in town for whitebox servers and chassis. They have several of them with multi-disk setups, some up to 24 units.

Norco is another chassis builder for rack stuff that has pre-installed drive cages.

Are you looking for rack or tower form factors?
 
Regarding your OS choices with ZFS:

Based on BSD
- FreeBSD
- FreeNas
- Nas4Free

based on Linux
- many Linux distributions

based on Solaris (where ZFS came from)
- NexentaStor
- OmniOS
- OpenIndiana
- Oracle Solaris

My personal favourite is OmniOS

Regarding mixing of disks with different sizes:
You can partition your larger disks and use the partitions together with smaller disks but I would strongly avoid this as this is very dangerous in case of failures.

I would create a pool with multiple vdevs of different sizes like vdev1 from 2 TB disks and vdev2 with 1 TB disks. You can later replace the 1 TB disks with 2 TB ones. You should only care about creating vdevs where you can replace disks with current 4k disks. This needs a ashift=12 setting.
 
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