Need Advice on NAS

[Stormin]

I want to build a RAID 5 NAS that will store mostly media for HTPC type devices throughout the house. I don't have much experience with NAS except for the general concept so I am seeking advice on the hardware and operating system.

My requirements are:

• Preferably around $600 or less but as high as $1000
• Low power usage
• 4+ 2 TB hard drives
• RAID controller that can be easily replaced if it fails in order to recover my data
• Fast enough to stream HD and perform backups at a reasonable speed

Thanks.

 

[Dangman]

1) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.
2) When do you plan on building/buying the NAS?
3) Just how much storage do you think you'll need in the future?
4) Do have any experience with Linux or BSD?

 

[Stormin]

1) What exact parts do you need for that budget? CPU, RAM, case, etc. The word "Everything" is not a valid answer. Please list out all the parts you'll need.

Case, RAM, CPU, power supply, motherboard, 4 2TB Hard drives, RAID controller (can be embedded or software. I am open to recommendations.)

2) When do you plan on building/buying the NAS?

Later this month unless there is a good reason to wait.

3) Just how much storage do you think you'll need in the future?

The 6 TB of space I will get from the four hard drives should be good for at least a year or two. I would like room to expand if I need to but it is not a requirement.

4) Do have any experience with Linux or BSD?

I used Linux in school and I use Unix on a daily basis at work but I have never installed them at home.

 

[Dangman]

All right here's the deal: Due to the fact that your $1000 includes the hard drives themselves (That $360 right there for 4 x 2TB drives), you won't be able to fit in a true hardware RAID controller (around $430 to $450 minimum for a 8 port card). That basically means you're stuck with software/fakeRAID solutions. However Windows doesn't exactly perform that well with a software RAID 5 judging from some of the comments here in this subforum.

So I'm gonna list a few builds and see which one floats your boat:
Long-term expansion Linux/BSD/Windows Home Server/Most non-windows Software-RAID/drive pooling setup:
$130 - Intel Core i3-550 CPU
$270 - Supermicro X8SI6-F
$51- Kingston 2 x 2GB ECC Unbuffered DDR3 1333 RAM
$360 - 4 x Samsung Spinpoint F4 HD204UI 2TB 5400 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$80 - Antec Truepower New TP-650 650W PSU
$70 - Xigmatek Utgard PC-T90DB-U02 Case
$30 - 2 x Coolermaster 621013210-GP 4in3 Device Module
----
Total: $991

Before you ask, the reason why I recommend the above mobo is due to this review:
http://www.servethehome.com/supermi...ew-including-onboard-lsi-sas-2008-controller/

$270 for a motherboard that comes with an onboard SAS controller, two Intel NICs (Intel NICs are some of the fastest and higher quality NICs around), IPMI 2.0, KVM over IP support (you can access the BIOS and install the OS from a remote computer, no keyboard, mouse or monitor needed) is quite the bargin. In addition, should 14 hard drives not be enough for you later on, as noted in the review, you can always connect the onboard SAS controller for an additional 32 drives.

So for long-term expansion, the above build is definitely your best bet. You may have to swap cases but that's a minor issue.

But if you want to use Windows or don't really want to spend that much on a long-term expansion plan for Linux/BSD/Windows Home Server/Most non-windows Software-RAID/drive pooling setup, I recommend this setup:
$130 - Intel Core i3-550 CPU
$108 - Intel BOXDH57DD Intel H57 mATX Motherboard
$40 - G.Skill F3-10600CL9D-4GBNS 2 x 2GB DDR3 1333 RAM
$360 - 4 x Samsung Spinpoint F4 HD204UI 2TB 5400 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$54 - Antec NEO ECO 400C 400W PSU
$55 - Cooler Master Elite 335 RC-335-KKN1-GP ATX Case
----
Total: $747 plus tax and shipping.

Cheaper than the above long-term build but has less expansion capability as a result. I went with the above Intel setup for three reasons:
- The onboard ICH10R RAID controller works fairly well with Windows.
- The onboard ICH10R RAID controller allows for Online Capacity Expansion which lets you expand the RAID array without losing data. However do note that the above Intel mobo only has 5 SATA ports. So you're limited to a total of 8TB if going RAID 5.
- The Intel NIC which allows for faster LAN transfers if you have a mostly all-gigabit network.

I would have gone with a much cheaper AMD setup but I could not find out whether or not the SB750 or SB850 southbridge supported Online Capacity Expansion or whether or not it's RAID 5 performance was acceptable with Windows.

Though if you want a short-term Linux/BSD/Windows Home Server/Most non-windows Software-RAID/drive pooling setup:
$61 - AMD Athlon II X2 250 CPU
$80 - MSI 880GM-E41 AMD 880G HDMI mATX Motherboard
$40 - G.Skill F3-10600CL9D-4GBNS 2 x 2GB DDR3 1333 RAM
$360 - 4 x Samsung Spinpoint F4 HD204UI 2TB 5400 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$54 - Antec NEO ECO 400C 400W PSU
$55 - Cooler Master Elite 335 RC-335-KKN1-GP ATX Case
---
Total: $650 plus tax and shipping

 

[Vengance_01]

I also would like to suggest the following. I am thinking for your needs, this device would be perfect

Hp ProLiant Micro server. Its a very small cube like chassis that can fit 4 3.5inch drives, plus another in the ODM slot (for OS like FreeNas or ZFSguru NAS which has ZFS)

You could create a ZFS Raid-Z with 4 2TB drives I am guessing you should end with 5-6GB of usable space with a parity drive, have even better redundancy over hardware raid and solid read and write performance enough to come close to capping gigabit speeds. Plus with ZFS, you could add an internal USB 3.0 / E-SATA card and even more storage with the 2 PCI-E expansion slots. Most people say under a normal load, this box draws 30-40 watts of power.

Here is the Link

The only thing is you should add 4GB's of ram which is cheap as it takes standard DDR3 ram.

 

[Chimel]

If you're buying new and not cheap refurbs, I'd boycott motherboards that don't have USB 3.0 and even more importantly for a NAS, SATA 6 Gb/s or UEFI. This won't scale up well in 2 years time. I'd boycott Intel motherboards as well, they usually ship with just the few SATA ports present in the CPU chipset, we need to push them to offer more SATA 6 Gb/s ports, all other manufacturers have to include one or two extra SATA controllers to palliate Intel deficiencies.

Availability of the Supermicro is weird, newegg doesn't have it anymore, it's $180-400 at amazon, and it's a "special order" at provantage meaning they don't stock it. It's a 2009 model anyway.

 

[omniscence]

I don't see SATA harddisks saturating SATAII (3 Gbps) ports in the near future. Faster connectivity is only needed for SSDs and these are starting to saturate SATAIII (6 Gbps) today. Normal desktop motherboards do not need more than 6 ports and additional onboard controllers just waste power. 6 onboard SATAII ports can already saturate the DMI interface between the processor and P67 (Sandy Bridge) generation chipsets, let alone P55 generation chipsets where it was only half as fast (two 6 Gbps ports would have already a higher throughput than the P55-DMI). Which means you want a SATA/SAS controller card anyway if you need more than the two 6 Gbps SATAIII ports offered by the P67 gen chipsets.

 

[Chimel]

Well my point is you don't need a SATA controller card if there's one SATA 6Gb/s RAID chipset already, and the channel won't saturate because of the number of storage disks, it depends mostly on the number of simultaneous video streams desired. The OP will probably upgrade to a SSD or two for the operating system disk anyway, in a year or two when budget allows, so you definitely want on-board SATA 6 Gb/s from the start. And I don't call it SATA 6 Gb/s just because of the speed, only because it's the official name (says SATA-IO), which is a bit confusing as there's more to the new SATA than just the speed.

I totally agree about additional on-board controllers wasting power, that's why I'd rather see Intel offer a decent chipset instead of being so reticent with SATA 6 Gb/s and USB 3.0. Because it's not happening, Asus is still forced to include 4 extra controllers, two for SATA and eSATA, one for USB 3.0, and one for Firewire.

Another advantage with new motherboards is that you are more likely to find powered eSATA for backups, since the specs were finalized only last year.

 

[Stormin]

Thank you for your responses. A lot of good information. I noticed that the builds above all have a 3+ GHZ dual core processor but the pre-built Hp ProLiant Micro server has a 1.3 GHZ processor. Is the processor speed important in a NAS? I would like to go with a 35 or 45 watt CPU if it isn't to save some power since it will be on all the time.

Also, as you pointed out it appears I will have to go with an on-board solution or a software RAID. What operating systems would you recommend to implement either solution? For example, the Raid-Z seemed interesting. Is this a good way to go?

 

[Dangman]

Thank you for your responses. A lot of good information. I noticed that the builds above all have a 3+ GHZ dual core processor but the pre-built Hp ProLiant Micro server has a 1.3 GHZ processor. Is the processor speed important in a NAS?

Depends on your performance needs and what RAID type you go with.

Also note that the Core i3 idle power is very very low. Even at full load, it takes less power than the AMD setup I listed.

Also, as you pointed out it appears I will have to go with an on-board solution or a software RAID. What operating systems would you recommend to implement either solution? For example, the Raid-Z seemed interesting. Is this a good way to go?

It's a good way to go. For more info:
ZFS File Server:
Links:
ZFSguru NAS fileserver project
napp-it ZFS server appliance
Building your own ZFS fileserver

Pros:
+ Free
+ Fairly resilient against crashes, corruption, and such due to the copy-on-write feature as well as the snapshots feature.
+ Maintenance free in that the file system will periodically check and fix itself
+ Very flexible in terms of hardware and software changes.
+ Supports encryption of data

Cons:
- May be difficult to learn for a person who've never worked with BSD before
- Requires a large amount of RAM (4GB+ recommended)
- Cannot expand an existing RAID array with additional drives.

Notes:
* ZFS uses a different method of storage expansion:

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.

* Here’s another thread filled with tips and an excellent hardware list for a large sized ZFS server:
http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1572188

Linux MDADM Software RAID:
Links:
How to create RAID using Ubuntu Software RAID
Linux Software RAID
MDADM
The Software-RAID HOWTO

 

[GeorgeHR]

Just a couple comments.

RAID is not a backup solution. And you can stream several HD videos from a single hard drive without a problem. You might find it better to store your videos on several disks and back up each disk off line.

Planning for "future expansion" seems foolish to me. The cost of planning now most likely will excede the cost of a new system down the line.

----

Get a low end motherboard from a manufacturer you trust. 6 SAtA ports should be enough. I use ASUS. Get onboard video. Get a low power CPU to work with it. Get a reasonable amount of memory.

Get a small power supply. The machine should not use much power. I use Antek 380w, 80% efficiency units.

Despite what many will say: there is no need to spend a lot of money or time in planning.

 

[Vengance_01]

For home storage, you don't need a fancy setup. But planning is still a must. The Dual core Neo would be enough for a NAS box in a home setting. But take some time and read about ZFS. Its free, works well, and has better protection then Hardware raid setups ( outside of high end and enterprise level gear.) Much better then fake raid. I am this close to pulling the trigger on that little HP box. Also the nice thing is it has 2 PCI-E expansion slots. Which means you could also add a few external drives for backups or more storage. One thing with ZFS if I am reading this right, you can have more then 1 raidZ group in one storage pool correct which then should present it as one big pool?

 

[drjaymez]

Ask yourself if you really want a separate PC as the NAS. I bought a Synology DS410 after running an older AMD Athlon server with an older slower hardware RAID 5 SATA card in it for a long time. The power use was insane and it was reasonably slow. Now I have this little box that draws like 60 watts. It reads at 120 MB/s and writes at about 20-25 MB/s. That's good enough for me. I have 3 2TB Samsung drives in there with the ability to easily add a 4th if I ever fill those up. I love the damn thing.

 

[SirMaster]

Ask yourself if you really want a separate PC as the NAS. I bought a Synology DS410 after running an older AMD Athlon server with an older slower hardware RAID 5 SATA card in it for a long time. The power use was insane and it was reasonably slow. Now I have this little box that draws like 60 watts. It reads at 120 MB/s and writes at about 20-25 MB/s. That's good enough for me. I have 3 2TB Samsung drives in there with the ability to easily add a 4th if I ever fill those up. I love the damn thing.

Yeah I had the same idea and went with a Synology DS1010+ 110MB/s reads and writes on a RAID5 array.

I have it loaded up with 5x2TB drives.

Also there are so many services you can run on a Synology NAS that take seconds to set up. I like the NAS because it's super low power and small enough to easily bring somewhere if I want to bring my collection of 1000 HD movies

Also the new ones use intel x86 CPUs so you can install any linux software package. Ive got SABnzbd+ and transmission on mine.

 

[Abula]

Around $600 i would consider Synology DS411+, very good performer (netsatbuilder NAS charts).

 

[Vengance_01]

Not bad at all, but look at the cost, and you don't get to tinker Its twice as much as the HP box and is less powerful (Atom 510)

 

[Abula]

Not bad at all, but look at the cost, and you don't get to tinker Its twice as much as the HP box and is less powerful (Atom 510)

Really depends into what you intend to do with it, i mean the 411+ has really good transfers, if its basic use and the priority is low power consumption could end up as good choice, not saying thats the best there is, simply it does have market for it.

 

[Vengance_01]

Really depends into what you intend to do with it, i mean the 411+ has really good transfers, if its basic use and the priority is low power consumption could end up as good choice, not saying thats the best there is, simply it does have market for it.

I agree 100% but we are [H] right?

 

[Stormin]

So I have been considering getting the Hp ProLiant Micro server and installing Free BSD to do a RAID-Z 5 with the four drives. However, I have been reading the forum post below and I have been getting the impression that it is not powerful enough for a RAID Z even with 4 gig of RAM.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1555868

Also, why do most of the builds on this forum use the Samsung drives? The green WD drives are ten dollars cheaper and I have heard good things about them.

 

[Dangman]

Also, why do most of the builds on this forum use the Samsung drives? The green WD drives are ten dollars cheaper and I have heard good things about them.

Because a lot of those builds end up using hardware RAID controllers. The Samsung drive are more compatible with many hardware RAID controllers than WD Green's drives. In fact, if you're using an actual hardware RAID controller, Green drives are not recommended at all.

 

[Vengance_01]

So I have been considering getting the Hp ProLiant Micro server and installing Free BSD to do a RAID-Z 5 with the four drives. However, I have been reading the forum post below and I have been getting the impression that it is not powerful enough for a RAID Z even with 4 gig of RAM.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1555868

Also, why do most of the builds on this forum use the Samsung drives? The green WD drives are ten dollars cheaper and I have heard good things about them.

the HP box is more then powerful enough. Most of these guys have very large arrays, and use some of the more advance features that ZFS has to offer. What speeds are you expecting? that HP box can handle 50MB/s in both read and writes very easy and probably can go higher.

 

[Stormin]

the HP box is more then powerful enough. Most of these guys have very large arrays, and use some of the more advance features that ZFS has to offer. What speeds are you expecting? that HP box can handle 50MB/s in both read and writes very easy and probably can go higher.

Due to my inexperience I am undecided as to what is good enough for the price. 50 MB/s would probably be good enough for my needs but I have a gigabit network at home so it would only use up 40% of my available bandwidth. I am thinking that the second build that Danny Bui posted might give better performance for only $30 more and have only a slightly higher power consumption. However, this is my first NAS build and I may be wrong. Feel free to correct any of my misconceptions.

$130 - Intel Core i3-550 CPU
$108 - Intel BOXDH57DD Intel H57 mATX Motherboard
$40 - G.Skill F3-10600CL9D-4GBNS 2 x 2GB DDR3 1333 RAM
$360 - 4 x Samsung Spinpoint F4 HD204UI 2TB 5400 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive
$54 - Antec NEO ECO 400C 400W PSU
$55 - Cooler Master Elite 335 RC-335-KKN1-GP ATX Case

Danny Bui, why use a micro ATX board with a normal ATX case? Is there no ATX equivalent?

 

[Dangman]

Danny Bui, why use a micro ATX board with a normal ATX case? Is there no ATX equivalent?

There's no ATX equivalent. You do know that mATX works just fine with a ATX case right?

 

[Stormin]

There's no ATX equivalent. You do know that mATX works just fine with a ATX case right?

Yes I do but I figure I might as well use a full sized ATX board since the case fits one but since there is no equivalent I'm fine using the smaller one.

 

[justin2net]

No need to push ZFS so hard...for just media streaming to a few computers, use a Windows based server.

Perhaps:
Core i3/i5, 4 to 8GB of DDR3, four hard drives, a mITX board with PCI-e, Fractal Design mini-ITX server case (which I think supports six drives). WHS, Windows Server, Unraid, WSS....keep it simple.

 

[drjaymez]

Also the new ones use intel x86 CPUs so you can install any linux software package. Ive got SABnzbd+ and transmission on mine.

Plenty of (but not quite as much) compiled software for the PPC processor in the DS410 as well. I run pyTiVo and a whole bunch of stuff including transmission. Being able to ssh in and really tinker is awesome, but it still had like a 5 minute setup time. For ease of use, power consumption, but ability to customize, I would rescue this right after my dog if my house was burning down, and THEN I'd go back for the macbook. Plenty of products on the market for different people and needs. Knowing what I now know, I would be heavily tempted by the 411+ if I were buying again. The 1010+ would be way overkill for my midget/sheep porn collection.

 

[vraa]

No need to push ZFS so hard...for just media streaming to a few computers, use a Windows based server.

Perhaps:
Core i3/i5, 4 to 8GB of DDR3, four hard drives, a mITX board with PCI-e, Fractal Design mini-ITX server case (which I think supports six drives). WHS, Windows Server, Unraid, WSS....keep it simple.

Sounds like someone isn't [H]ard enough
Your setup needs at least 4x # of cores and 8x memory, otherwise fuggetaboutit