Small Home NAS Build Question

[USF-Nealio]

My home storage needs have grown, and I'm trying to figure out if I can re-purpose some equipment I have on hand so that I can do it for as little money as possible. At the same time, I'd still like for it to be power efficient. From everything I've read, I'm leaning towards Napp-IT w/OpenIndiana for an OS.

I have a pair of identical Rackable Systems 2U servers that I had been using as part of a VM lab that I'd be happy to reuse. 4 hot swap SATA drive bays, Intel S5000PSL Mobo (Dual socket 771), single Xeon L5420, and 4GB of RAM. (I can always combine the CPUs and RAM into a single server for now.)

I lack the drives currently, but after reading the reviews about the new WD Reds, I'd like to start by getting a pair of 3TB drives, then grow the array 1 drive at a time as money allows for the purchase of the other drives.

Thoughts, ideas, opinions?

 

[BecauseScience]

then grow the array 1 drive at a time as money allows for the purchase of the other drives.

Can't do that with ZFS.

 

[MrD1234]

add a striped vdev 1 disk, then convert to a mirror with next disk

however you are certain to lose the array at some point with a single disk sittin in the breeze

 

[odditory]

add a striped vdev 1 disk, then convert to a mirror with next disk

however you are certain to lose the array at some point with a single disk sittin in the breeze

yeah thats not an ideal solution and happens to be my #1 dealbreaker with zfs - the lack of dynamic expansion. chaining multiple arrays together to achieve 'expansion' is mickey mouse not just for the expense of needing more parity disks every time you add another vdev to the pool but due to the inconsistent performance profile created by, say, an 8-Disk RAID6 + 2-Disk RAID1 + 2-Disk RAID1 .. And then there's the fact you're creating additional points of failure if you're not keeping a consistent number of parity disks in every vdev. because a raidz2 and a raidz1 is really just a raidz1 as far as protection level, all it takes is one disk in the raidz1 to fail and you're flying with no parity. nothing profound here but it doesn't hurt for the casual lurkers here to gain a better understanding of some of the limitations when it comes time to increase your space.

and then there's always just backing up, recreating the pool with the additional disks and restoring but that will tend to get old once you're into like 20+ terabytes.

 

[Billy_nnn]

I'd like to start by getting a pair of 3TB drives, then grow the array 1 drive at a time


Then TBH, you probably need to re-evaluate your choice of OS.

OI has ZFS and SVM, and AFAIK, napp-it is designed to work with ZFS.
ZFS can't do what you want!

SVM is the other alternative on OI - however, while it's fine for mirroring, it's raid5 performance isn't great - with the advent of ZFS, very little development (other than bugfixes) has been done on SVM for some time now - it certainly lacks the more advanced features of linux mdadm for instance (which is a whole new thread ).
AFAIK, napp-it isn't geared up for SVM either!

 

[USF-Nealio]

Ok then. Assuming I purchase all the disks at once, how well will this setup fair?

 

[kac77]

I personally think that the 2U is holding you back. You could do some funky setup by DA'ing the second box in there for more storage but you'll still be confined and you'll waste electricity and space for no apparent reason.

What I would do is disassemble one of those boxes and get that board into a either a larger rack or pedestal. Then you'll have options aplenty to do whatever you want.

With regards to how many drives you should buy, you should buy enough to start off with the raid level you desire.

 

[USF-Nealio]

I personally think that the 2U is holding you back. You could do some funky setup by DA'ing the second box in there for more storage but you'll still be confined and you'll waste electricity and space for no apparent reason.

What I would do is disassemble one of those boxes and get that board into a either a larger rack or pedestal. Then you'll have options aplenty to do whatever you want.

With regards to how many drives you should buy, you should buy enough to start off with the raid level you desire.

Sounds fair. As long as the board and processor are good to go, I think I'll stick with the 2U chassis for now. I just need to get something going now, and I need to do it on a relatively tight budget.

Eventually I will need more storage, but I'm already starting out with 2 Generation+ old hardware, and while it's sufficient for now and relatively power efficient, by the time I need to expand I'd rather build a new device and copy everything over to it than try to continue milking the hardware I have now. As it sits, I only have 1 TB of data now, so out of the 9 TB of usable space in equivalency to Raid5, there will be roughly 90% of that array free to use for new data.

 

[kac77]

Sounds fair. As long as the board and processor are good to go, I think I'll stick with the 2U chassis for now. I just need to get something going now, and I need to do it on a relatively tight budget.

Eventually I will need more storage, but I'm already starting out with 2 Generation+ old hardware, and while it's sufficient for now and relatively power efficient, by the time I need to expand I'd rather build a new device and copy everything over to it than try to continue milking the hardware I have now. As it sits, I only have 1 TB of data now, so out of the 9 TB of usable space in equivalency to Raid5, there will be roughly 90% of that array free to use for new data.

If both sockets are populated you should be able to use that until the wheels fall off. There's more than enough CPU power there from now until you die for a file server.

While building things on a budget is a good thing. There comes a point when you are just hurting yourself. RAID 5 at this point should not be used on discs larger than 1TB. Can you? Of course you can, but rebuild times are going to be lengthy. If a drive fails during the rebuild you are screwed.

Since that's a dual socket board there's a good chance it's E-ATX or will fit in an E-ATX chassis (but check to make sure). Cases in general are pretty cheap. You can even reuse the PSU if you are savvy enough. Although the Norco 4U's would be perfect for you since I'm assuming you already have a rack for your 2U's.

The total cost increasing your storage space + drives is minuscule in comparison to what people spend. You're looking at the following:

4 Red's in RAID 6: $716 @ 179.00
NORCO RPC-4220 4U: $329.00

Total: $1046

That's cheap considering that case will last for years and you won't ever have to buy another case again for file storage in a home use setting. If you don't have the money then you should just save up until you do. There's no point in setting up a system for storage that you will be have to either disassemble or rethink in a 6 month to a year time span.

 

[USF-Nealio]

Thanks Kac, I appreciate the help!