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Recommendations on building a file back-up server

A

Artificiary

Gawd
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May 27, 2007
Messages
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Hello folks,

I'm looking to put together a home back-up server with some measure of redundancy to store all of my family's multimedia files (close to 3TB all said). I haven't bought a single thing yet and am literally just starting to do my research so I thought it would be wise to ask the friendly folks at [H] for a bit of advice and some suggestions before I buy anything.

What I'm trying to achieve:

  • I would like to have at least 6TB of available storage.
  • Planning to use 2TB or 3TB drives (depending on price per GB at the time).
  • Support for at least 4 drives (likely to expand over time).
  • Protection against single drive failure.
  • Ability to automate or schedule back-ups

Now, I feel pretty comfortable picking out the hardware on my own but I'm open to a lot of options so I'm looking for suggestions or guidance on any of the following:

  1. Hardware vs Software Raid
  2. Raid array recommendations
  3. Software recommendations
  4. Common conflicts or considerations when buying hardware (Windows backup and drives with 4k sectors, etc.)
  5. Barebones cases / racks
  6. Decent pre-built NAS options

Not looking to spend more than $600 to $700 on the setup.

Any help you guys can give will be much appreciated. Once I've done some of my own research I will post back here with what I find and what options I'm looking at.

Thanks.
 
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Artificiary, I am in a similiar boat. I am aiming to back up my DVD collection, music, and family photos as well. I currently work in system administration and have priced typical rack servers. The rack servers tend to be pricey in comparison to doing a tower build.

1. Software cards tend to be cheap, but all of the reviews I have read make them out to be unreliable. I think a good build would be to use the software on the motherboard and do a tower build. Although Hardware cards are expensive, they seem to be the most reliable. Again, this is based on reviews I have read and that the servers I manage haven't dropped raids unless the battery died out on the card.

2. I would suggest RAID 5 to save on costs and have some reliability. As long as you do not lose more then one drive at a time your RAID is safe. That and it provides the most space with parity. Wikipedia and google have some neat graphs to help you wrap your head around it. There is also a neat RAID calculator floating around the net. Overall though, you should be aware that RAID is not backup.

3. I cannot offer a valid software recomendation, but there is a nifty FreeNAS thread floating around the forums.

4. Some conflicts with hardware will be simply matching SATA to SATA and SAS to SAS depending on your build. Software I can think of different Windows versions, but if you roll with FreeNAS I think there are few.

5. I recomend a case with plenty of internal slots. Racks tend to start off in the pricing at the more expensive towers. Although, having a rack would definitely impress your non-tech friends.​
Hopefully this bump will draw someone with more experience. Best of luck.

Edit: Your budget will be really tight with drives that big. 2TB ~120 USD 1TB ~80 USD.
 
1. Either is fine. In the case of software don't use the onboard stuff. Use what the OS itself provides built in.
2. Please don't use RAID 5 for drives over 1TB in size. Use Raid 6.
3.Unless you've got an Xbox or another device that absolutely needs Windows skip it. This leaves quite a bit. You've got FreeNas which isn't too hard to stand up and a variety of Linux flavors, and for the daring ZFS and it's flavors.
4.If you go with Hardware RAID then go with an enterprise MB for compatibility reasons.
5.Your choice on that one. It's really whatever you like.
6. I think there's a few options that other people use, but I don't use them.
 
kac77 said:
1. Either is fine. In the case of software don't use the onboard stuff. Use what the OS itself provides built in.
2. Please don't use RAID 5 for drives over 1TB in size. Use Raid 6.
3.Unless you've got an Xbox or another device that absolutely needs Windows skip it. This leaves quite a bit. You've got FreeNas which isn't too hard to stand up and a variety of Linux flavors, and for the daring ZFS and it's flavors.
4.If you go with Hardware RAID then go with an enterprise MB for compatibility reasons.
5.Your choice on that one. It's really whatever you like.
6. I think there's a few options that other people use, but I don't use them.
Click to expand...

On your point 2 you say use 6 over 5 because of the drives over 1TB. Why is this? Is this because of unrecovable read error during rebuild, or the increased protection against block errors provided by raid 6? I am reading alot of users do not suggest going to RAID 6 until 4 or more disks or 12 TB. I know the build time will be longer, but under the budget I think RAID 5 would be better.
 
May I suggest ZFS with scheduled scrubbing and email notifications (as someone already pointed out, FreeNAS does this job well)? Considering your use case and budget, I don't think it's likely that you'll run into any performance bottlenecks, as long as you stay away from dedup. Be aware of how ZFS vdev expansion works.

If you for some reason change your mind and rather go with some linux based solution you could always just install ZoL, deport/import zpool's and move your data.

Personally, I think I would've gone for 4x3TB setup in some kind of raid10 solution for family photos and other important stuff (not to mention off site backup).
 
1. Software raid will save you a fair bit of money when buying the motherboard/drives/controller cards

3. Consider ZFS (napp-it on Solaris, ZFSGuru/FreeNAS on FreeBSD) or SnapRAID (Windows/Linux). I'm currently running ZFSGuru, but am also looking into Windows Server + SnapRAID (with ReFS). The advantage of using SnapRAID is that even if drive failures exceed fault tolerance, the data on the healthy drives remains intact. It does come with its share of drawbacks, though - snapshot RAID is not realtime (although it's not really a huge problem for mostly static data). The other thing that has me interested in Windows Server is being able to have the data backed up with services like Crashplan/Backblaze.

5. I really like Fractal Design's cases for home servers. Their Define R4 mid tower has 8 drive bays (and 2 5.25" bays that can take another 2-3 drives), and their Define Mini has 6 drive bays (and 2 5.25" bays). If you're expecting to expand to more than that you'll probably have to look at full towers or racks though.

6. Building your own is always going to be cheaper than an equivalent prebuilt solution, I think.
 
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If your data is important just use raid 10. Disks don't cost that much. Whatever you do have an offsite copy for disasters. If the data is important enough and it is your first time managing a given configuration, someone prudent like me will recommend having an easily accessible offline backup locally for when you screw up. Deciding on a nas is a whole new barrel of fishies
 
dbonetrain said:
On your point 2 you say use 6 over 5 because of the drives over 1TB. Why is this? Is this because of unrecovable read error during rebuild, or the increased protection against block errors provided by raid 6? I am reading alot of users do not suggest going to RAID 6 until 4 or more disks or 12 TB. I know the build time will be longer, but under the budget I think RAID 5 would be better.
Click to expand...

Rebuild times. If you are rebuilding your array after a disk failure you are one disk away from losing your data or extreme data recovery methods. Rebuild times can vary wildly but rebuild times of 24 hours + isn't uncommon at all. The larger the disks the longer the rebuild times. During this process your hard drives will be at 100% utilization or pretty close to it for hours. Comparatively for RAID 6 you could lose another drive during rebuild and still have your stuff. The cost is worth it.
 
glassdarkly said:
1. Software raid will save you a fair bit of money when buying the motherboard/drives/controller cards

3. Consider ZFS (napp-it on Solaris, ZFSGuru/FreeNAS on FreeBSD) or SnapRAID (Windows/Linux). I'm currently running ZFSGuru, but am also looking into Windows Server + SnapRAID (with ReFS). The advantage of using SnapRAID is that even if drive failures exceed fault tolerance, the data on the healthy drives remains intact. It does come with its share of drawbacks, though - snapshot RAID is not realtime (although it's not really a huge problem for mostly static data). The other thing that has me interested in Windows Server is being able to have the data backed up with services like Crashplan/Backblaze.

5. I really like Fractal Design's cases for home servers. Their Define R4 mid tower has 8 drive bays (and 2 5.25" bays that can take another 2-3 drives), and their Define Mini has 6 drive bays (and 2 5.25" bays). If you're expecting to expand to more than that you'll probably have to look at full towers or racks though.

6. Building your own is always going to be cheaper than an equivalent prebuilt solution, I think.
Click to expand...

Amen to the fractal design define mini. Just built myself a home esxi box with the define mini. Robust, silent, good build. Best experience I've had with a home user computer case.
 
HP n40l microserver + 4 or 5 WD red drves + zfs (with napp-it if you want a gui). quiet, low power consumption (about 45 watts with 5 drives + a 2.5 laptop drive for the OS), small and within your budget.
 
ondmagi said:
Amen to the fractal design define mini. Just built myself a home esxi box with the define mini. Robust, silent, good build. Best experience I've had with a home user computer case.
Click to expand...
Another +1 on the Define Mini. My 6x3TB server's been running in that box for about a year now, and I liked it enough that I bought another for my backup server/gaming rig.
 
I'm running a Fractal Define R2 with 8x 3TB Hitachi drives with OI+nappit ZFS in a single raidz2.Great case, been running strong for well over a year now with no issues.
 
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