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LstBrunnenG
Supreme [H]ardness
- Joined
- Jun 3, 2003
- Messages
- 6,676
I've been researching and considering a server/NAS build for a while. Before that, my plan was to stick some large hard disks in my desktop, present the raw disks to a VirtualBox Linux guest, and let that do mdraid on them, sharing the resultant volume with the host. I've done that before and it was...moderately reliable.
Then recently I came across some glowing reviews for products from companies like Synology and QNAP. What really got my attention is how the high-end models are multi-purpose. The high-end Synology units have enough horse-power to do 1080p transcoding and streaming, and the QNAP devices can double as media centers. Once you start looking at home products above 4 bays, though, the CPU horsepower starts going down and the price starts going up. So I was curious what I could do if I built myself, and here's what I came up with - and there are any number of articles describing similar setups:
DS380B - Mini ITX NAS case that holds up to 8 HDDs in hot swap cages - $150
ASRock C2750D4I - Server motherboard with a built-in octocore Atom, ECC, and 12 SATA ports - $400
ST30SF 300W PSU - I'm told this model spins down to passive when not under load - $50
Crucial 16 GB (8GBx2) ECC DDR3 - I've heard reports of compatibility with that motherboard - $180
6 TB WD Red HDDs - $300 ea. Might go smaller, we'll see.
So $780 or so diskless. Price competitive with some of the high end 4- or 5-bay Synology and QNAP offerings, but with more bays. I'd be using it for server duties and NAS duties. For instance, I want to take a second crack at virtualizing WMC now that all my tuners are network tuners anyway. Tried it once on my desktop but had network issues playing back to the extender.
Reviews say that a system like this idles around 50 watts (probably diskless). Not bad for something that can supposedly do two real-time 1080p transcode jobs at once. What do you guys think? I don't need something with serious oomph - I have my desktop for that - but I don't want something that will choke on file serving duties or WMC duties.
If I do go this route, what do you guys recommend for software/OS? I'm quite familiar with mdraid, but open to learning new things. I only require that whatever I use is open enough that I can run arbitrary VMs on it.
Then recently I came across some glowing reviews for products from companies like Synology and QNAP. What really got my attention is how the high-end models are multi-purpose. The high-end Synology units have enough horse-power to do 1080p transcoding and streaming, and the QNAP devices can double as media centers. Once you start looking at home products above 4 bays, though, the CPU horsepower starts going down and the price starts going up. So I was curious what I could do if I built myself, and here's what I came up with - and there are any number of articles describing similar setups:
DS380B - Mini ITX NAS case that holds up to 8 HDDs in hot swap cages - $150
ASRock C2750D4I - Server motherboard with a built-in octocore Atom, ECC, and 12 SATA ports - $400
ST30SF 300W PSU - I'm told this model spins down to passive when not under load - $50
Crucial 16 GB (8GBx2) ECC DDR3 - I've heard reports of compatibility with that motherboard - $180
6 TB WD Red HDDs - $300 ea. Might go smaller, we'll see.
So $780 or so diskless. Price competitive with some of the high end 4- or 5-bay Synology and QNAP offerings, but with more bays. I'd be using it for server duties and NAS duties. For instance, I want to take a second crack at virtualizing WMC now that all my tuners are network tuners anyway. Tried it once on my desktop but had network issues playing back to the extender.
Reviews say that a system like this idles around 50 watts (probably diskless). Not bad for something that can supposedly do two real-time 1080p transcode jobs at once. What do you guys think? I don't need something with serious oomph - I have my desktop for that - but I don't want something that will choke on file serving duties or WMC duties.
If I do go this route, what do you guys recommend for software/OS? I'm quite familiar with mdraid, but open to learning new things. I only require that whatever I use is open enough that I can run arbitrary VMs on it.
. 4X4 ECC unbuffer DDR3.