Home Server/NAS build

ED E

Hey all,


I'd have an ok idea how to spec up a gaming rig but I'm not really sure for this so I'll need some input from your good selves.

Currently the role is filled by this: [And a bespoke 1drive NAS and a router hosted drive]

Operating System
	Microsoft Windows 7 Professional 64-bit SP1
CPU
	Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 @ 2.66GHz	33 °C
	Conroe 65nm Technology
RAM
	4.00 GB DDR2
Motherboard
	Dell Inc. 0CT017 (Microprocessor)
Graphics
	Standard Monitor (1548x980@60Hz)
	NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS (nVidia)
Hard Drives
	233GB Seagate ST3250820AS ATA Device (SATA)	39 °C
	75GB Western Digital WDC WD800JD-23JNC0 ATA Device (SATA)	49 °C
	699GB Seagate ST3750640AS ATA Device (SATA)	43 °C
	75GB Seagate ST380013AS ATA Device (SATA)	41 °C
Optical Drives
	GBUXKV 2BGX67CP23 SCSI CdRom Device
	HL-DT-ST DVD+-RW GSA-H31N ATA Device
Audio
	No audio card detected

Consumption:
	Off/SB: 13.85W On: 165W Peak: 210W

While it works ok, I need a larger storage pool and Id like to do that on something I can keep long term. Also getting the power and heat usage down as its always on would be very beneficial.


1. What is your budget?
It depends on a few things in the next month to two months but for now we'll say €500 + cost of drives.
2. What will be the main purpose of the computer?
Home server/NAS/VPN Host/FTP Host/Learning environment. Im a student and do some dev work so I may run some services intermittently on this but economy and price are more important than processing power.
3. Do you need a copy of Windows?
Nope. Have Server 08 already. Will be using Standard Ed as I dont have the need for the weight of enterprise
4. Can you use any parts from an old computer?
I may transplant some drives for extra non important content at a later date, but for now all new.
If budget is tight I can get an old super tall case and spray it black for free
5. Do you need a monitor?
Headless machine
6. Do you need any of these peripherals?
Nope. Maybe a raid card though
7. Are you willing to try overclocking?
Underclocking maybe, we want to keep her cool and quiet.
8. How can you pay?
Wire Trans, Paypal.
9. When are you purchasing?
Within 2 months

Additional requirements to the 10 Q's

Requirements:
	Decent NIC, dual intel would be nice
	Low power/cool operation
	Large number of HDD bays
	Dolly wheels on case would be nice, but not essential
	Small SSD boot drive
	RAID 5 Hardware support (assume Mobo wont do this)

My main PC(Gaming/Browsing/Development) uses an old 775 Workstation board which I find great, but I dont know if Ill have the budget for a modern WS board.

Ive been trying to build a base spec but Im not sure what platform is going to give me good value and good energy efficiency, 1155?

As I come up with more thoughts Ill add em here,
Thanks in advance,
ED-E

Serephucus

This is what I'm planning to move my server to when my current one runs out of drive bays (only one left).

Board+CPU
Case

The board comes with dual Intel NICs, a 20W 8-core CPU, four RAM slots, twelve SATA ports, aaaand... IPMI!
The case is awesome too. 8 3.5" hot-swaps in the front, and four 2.5" bays in the back.

There's also a C2550D41, if you want to save some money. All the same, except a 4-core CPU. It's harder to find though.

Have a look at FlexRAID as well. It's what I'm currently using, and it seems to work pretty damn well. What I like about it is that there's very little overhead, certainly in comparison to something like ZFS (which really isn't a great solution if you're just doing media storage anyway) which leaves the CPU much freer for stuff like Plex transcoding.

ED E

Serephucus wrote: »

This is what I'm planning to move my server to when my current one runs out of drive bays (only one left).

Board+CPU
Case

The board comes with dual Intel NICs, a 20W 8-core CPU, four RAM slots, twelve SATA ports, aaaand... IPMI!
The case is awesome too. 8 3.5" hot-swaps in the front, and four 2.5" bays in the back.

There's also a C2550D41, if you want to save some money. All the same, except a 4-core CPU. It's harder to find though.

Have a look at FlexRAID as well. It's what I'm currently using, and it seems to work pretty damn well. What I like about it is that there's very little overhead, certainly in comparison to something like ZFS (which really isn't a great solution if you're just doing media storage anyway) which leaves the CPU much freer for stuff like Plex transcoding.

Thanks Serephucus.

That board looks delish, really is everything in one little package. Amazon has the C2550 for more than scan have the 2750 :rolleyes:

Case is nice but I can go bigger + cheaper for a less neat package, but I dont know if thats worth it to lose the nice SATA backplane. Have to have a think on that.

I was considering ZFS for a long while but its not worth the ram consumption to be bothered with, though the features do rock. I'll have two data sets, one not very important and one that consists of backups from the rest of the LAN, my main image store from my DSLR etc and other "keepers" like that. Not going to run two disk arrays though, so RAID5 with two software pools/volumes on top is the plan right now. Will have a look at flex though I wouldnt mind having the array running on a hardware level.

Rebel Rebel

Serephucus wrote: »

Case

What PSU are you going to put in this case?

Serephucus

Probably Silverstone's 300W Bronze one, unless they come out with a lower wattage gold one between now and then.

Johnboy1951

Something like this might also be worth considering as an alternative

http://www.pcworldbusiness.co.uk/catalogue/item/P172433P?from=category&heat=more-info

ED E

Johnboy1951 wrote: »

Something like this might also be worth considering as an alternative

http://www.pcworldbusiness.co.uk/catalogue/item/P172433P?from=category&heat=more-info

After the popularity of the N40L they are definitely on my radar, but the limit of 4 drives max is a little low long term.

ED E

CM N600

Can fire 7x drives in main bays +3 in the 5" bays. Doesnt have the backplane though, but half the price. Hmmm

Build A:

430W Corsair Builder Series CP-9020046-UK	35.32	
8GB (2x4GB) Corsair Value Select DDR3	59.76	
8 Bay Silverstone SST-DS380B 	107.04	
ASRock C2750D4I, Intel, Intel Octa Core	263.4	
	465.52	GBP

588.54 Euro

Build B:

430W Corsair Builder Series CP-9020046-UK	35.32	
8GB (2x4GB) Corsair Value Select DDR3	59.76	
8 Bay Silverstone SST-DS380B 	63.12	
ASRock C2750D4I, Intel, Intel Octa Core	263.4	
	421.6	GBP

532.64 Euro

When I add fans, SATA cables and shipping, and an SSD they'll both be over a good bit. Will probably have to increase the budget or drop to an atom/celeron :eek:

Serephucus

Also, the CX PSU won't work with the DS380. You'll need an SFX PSU. Only £2 more though.

ED E

Very glad I posted now.

Silverstone SST-ST30SF Strider 300W SFX	37.56	
8GB (2x4GB) Corsair Value Select DDR3	59.76	
8 Bay Silverstone SST-DS380B 	63.12	
ASRock AD2550R/U3S3 Server Board	104.35	
	264.79	GBP

334.53 Euro

There's the Cavan man's budget version there. Intel Atom D2550 Dual-Core 1.86GHz (10W). Way too low power to do anything with though.

Think I'll scrape the pennies for the octa core, be worth it for not tearing my hair out later on.

vibe666

If it's for future expandability, you could go with the microserver now and then get an esata disk enclosure to add some external storage later?

ED E

vibe666 wrote: »

If it's for future expandability, you could go with the microserver now and then get an esata disk enclosure to add some external storage later?

Yeah, tis an option. Can you add drives to an array through an extenal esata bus?

vibe666

might depend on what OS you go for I guess.

I gave up on my homebuilt NAS and got a big Synology instead before that became an issue though.

ED E

Think it'd have to ba a separate array run by the inclosure or an intermediate board, nice but not what im aiming for.

An off the shelf unit like that is tempting but Id eend up leaving a second box on to run other stuff. Which would ruin the energy savings.

ED E

Linus' recommendation and the headline benefits of RAID5 had me aiming that way, but more research has made it clear that isn't a good plan. So now I'm thinking two arrays, one RAID0 volatile recoverable data and RAID1 important data. So the next step in planning is expansion. This is the hiccup.

Does average joe not running a SAN really take a raid totally offline, backup entirely to another pool of drives(which few would have Id suspect), create a new larger array and then image back over? Or is that the selling point of things like drobo etc?

smacl

ED E wrote: »

Linus' recommendation and the headline benefits of RAID5 had me aiming that way, but more research has made it clear that isn't a good plan. So now I'm thinking two arrays, one RAID0 volatile recoverable data and RAID1 important data. So the next step in planning is expansion. This is the hiccup.

Given large drives are cheap enough these days, I prefer to use a single RAID10 over separate RAID0 and RAID1, as you get performance and redundancy on everything. Currently on a four drive configuration on my server, but will move to 8 drive my next build. Following article may be of interest; http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/raid5-vs-raid-10-safety-performance.html

vibe666

that's why i like synology.

just replace one drive at a time with a bigger one, let it rebuild onto the new drive, then do the next etc. etc. till they're all done, then expand the array into the newly added free space and you're sorted and the array is still usable the whole time the drives are rebuilding, so you don't have any downtime. you don't even need to reboot it.

i've been using raid6 since i had a bit of a scare with a URE with raid5 a few years back and nearly lost everything.

its mostly just downloaded movies and tv shows, so not the end of the world, but would be a pita to replace all over again.

i do keep meaning to create a scheduled task to do a folder print to a text file so i'd at least have something telling me what i'd lost if it did ever go titsup.

anything critical is backed up elsewhere anyway, but still.

..Brian..

Dudes, can any point me towards some recommended reading re home servers? A Home Server 101 if you will?

I have a WD MyBook Live NAS drive but find it quite slow to stream TV shows from when torrents are downloading at the same time.

I want something that I can stream from to various platforms incl Windows, iOS and Android and download directly to via torrent client. I'd like to be able to access it from anywhere.

What sort of hardware do I need? What OS can I use that I can stream to the other platforms above? etc

Where do I start?

Serephucus

Plex. Plex, Plex, Plex.

Also, Couch Potato and Sick Beard.

Can't go into detail as I'm at work, but those should get you started.

..Brian..

Thanks man, Plex looks ideal.

So in a nut shell, I just bang that on a PC and I can then stream content from that PC to any other device I have?

wheresmybeaver

..Brian.. wrote: »

Thanks man, Plex looks ideal.

So in a nut shell, I just bang that on a PC and I can then stream content from that PC to any other device I have?

Yep, build yourself a nice pc with space for at least 2 or 3 full size hard discs. Install Windows unless you're handy with Linux. Plex Media Server indexes and manages your media - literally any format - and serves it up to any client you want. There's a desktop client based on xbmc but also a range of mobile clients for android, ios, windows phone etc. Plex syncs or transcodes your media to whatever format the client needs, both locally and over the web. I've been using it almost 2 years and it is excellent. Plex.tv has the info, and lots of support in the forum. It has some premium features that can be purchased with a lifetime licence or a small monthly fee - very good value though.

..Brian..

How about something like this? I chose that board as it supports 6 SATA6 drives and I can build it up over time to have another 5 of those 3TB drives in there if needed! However I can only see 4 SATA ports on the mobo, whats that about?

PS sorry for hijacking your thread EdE !

Item|Price
Total build cost: €481.94 + €11.99 shipping
FRACTAL DESIGN Node 304 schwarz, mini-ITX, ohne Netzteil|€61.98
Seasonic G-360, 360 Watt, 80PLUS Gold|€51.14
Intel Core i3-4150T Tray|€100.23
4GB HyperX FURY Black 1866MHz DDR3 CL10|€36.28
ASRock H87M-ITX, Sockel 1150, ITX|€81.61
Samsung SSD 840 EVO Basic 120GB SATA 6Gb/s|€61.53
WD Green 3000GB, SATA 6Gb/s|€89.17



Or this. Is an SSD really necessary? The thing will be on 24/7 anyway.

Item|Price
Total build cost: €481.75 + €11.99 shipping
Antec ISK Family 600 Mini-ITX - schwarz, ohne Netzteil|€52.95
Seasonic G-360, 360 Watt, 80PLUS Gold|€50.55
4GB HyperX FURY White 1866MHz DDR3 CL10|€36.22
Intel Core i3-4150T Tray|€100.23
WD Green 4000GB Intellipower 64MB (SATA 6Gb/s)|€127.27
Thermalright AXP-200 Muscle|€32.92
ASRock H87M-ITX, Sockel 1150, ITX|€81.61

ED E

No problem man, the more info the better.

Wossack

fwiw, Im running an asrock c224 (8 sata ports, ipmi etc good board imo)
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00G9TZAGA/ref=oh_details_o03_s01_i01?ie=UTF8&psc=1
4G kingston ecc ram
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00CMEEI46/ref=oh_details_o03_s01_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
intel g3220 3ghz cpu
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00EF1G9DW/ref=oh_details_o03_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
with an intel m1015 raid card
http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B005GPO6EU/ref=oh_details_o04_s00_i00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

running 9hds at the mo, with another 4 on standby for hotswaps or quick expansion, in an old monster thermaltake armour case. Need a new cpu cooler though, as stock intel one is a good bit louder then equivalent amd ones, even at idle

ED E

Think the onboard NIC on the current unit might be on the way out, has dropped offline twice in 24hrs. Might have to do this build sooner than expected.

crazydom

I would not go for raid, not needed, try a good SSD from Samsung or the new M.2 spec SSD's, just backup essential data and you should be fast enough!

Wossack

SSD's do not a NAS make...

their main selling point; speed, is wasted just serving media, and the cost/GB is exorbitant

ED E

crazydom wrote: »

I would not go for raid, not needed, try a good SSD from Samsung or the new M.2 spec SSD's, just backup essential data and you should be fast enough!

I dont think you understand what a NAS is buddy. The RAID isnt for speed, its for redundancy. This is the backup.

vibe666

crazydom wrote: »

I would not go for raid, not needed, try a good SSD from Samsung or the new M.2 spec SSD's, just backup essential data and you should be fast enough!

i think you might be in the wrong thread mate. :pac:

Lu Tze

vibe666 wrote: »

i think you might be in the wrong thread mate. :pac:

I think he is trying to boost his post count, nearly 60 posts in 1-2 hours today accross an array of forums! I wouldnt imagine there was a lot of thought in his post - just trying to make it look some what relevant to each of the threads!

And also...

crazydom wrote: »

Please add me. I don't have many posts but I've been around with a while and am genuine in wanting this phone for myself (Just sold my S4) Would greatly appreciate the invite and will be willing to help others.

ED E

Lu Tze wrote: »

I think he is trying to boost his post count, nearly 60 posts in 1-2 hours today accross an array of forums! I wouldnt imagine there was a lot of thought in his post - just trying to make it look some what relevant to each of the threads!

And also...

He's on the list but Ive left a post for the maintainer to make him aware of doms activity.

crazydom

No I was trying to be helpful. Merely stating the reliability of Samsung SSD's. NAS (Network Attached Storage) And I get it is for reliability. If this is the case Western Digital large capacity drives 4TB (RED) Lower power consumption, lower spindle speed (5900rpm I think) and yes in RAID configuration (or scheduled clone backup non raid) Don't jump to conclusions when you comment. And don't Chinese whisper mis quote me either.

crazydom

ED E wrote: »

He's on the list but Ive left a post for the maintainer to make him aware of doms activity.

Why not just message me privately and find out whether I was a spammer or not. I have posted on many gaming forums yesterday as I made a gaming build last month and learned many pieces of information that I though could benefit others. Sorry for trying to be helpful.

ED E

ED E wrote: »

Think the onboard NIC on the current unit might be on the way out, has dropped offline twice in 24hrs. Might have to do this build sooner than expected.

Crisis averted. Turns out it was just the 8800 GTX finally dying for the third time :P Time to swap in some lower power unit.

ED E

So, funds almost ready. Plan to build now sometime during September so I can have it running before college picks up again if possible.

Problem is, I cant for the life of me make up my mind on the storage config.
RAID 5, has issues
RAID 0, Nooooope
RAID 1, alright
RAID 10, can either do a "hack"/workaround to trick windows into doing it or buy a raid card(hurts the budget)

Going with the Asrock octa board the onboard SATA controller are too dispersed to be usable. This is where Storage spaces could amalgamate up to 11 drives into a storage pool nicely. Then a VHD on top.

Or go with flexraid, Serephucus you seem to love it but their site isnt great at really detailing features, seems a little empty. I'd want to be sure its tested fully before adopting it as once its in Ill be dependent on it. They say:

Moreover, parity is computed transparently to enable data recovery in the event a drive failure. New drives being protected can be added while preserving their existing data. This makes it easy to add and remove a drive from the protective array. So, you get all of the protection benefit of RAID without actually running in RAID mode and none of the restrictions!

Is it really as easy as they make it sound, like a drobo?

This is turning into a thread for server & systems, not that you'd ever get a reply over there

Regarding the disks themselves

======STORAGE:====(Amazon prices)========
2TB:
WD RED-
Current£68.53 Highest *	£99.00 Lowest *	£68.39 Average +£70.29	
SG Barra- (Potential issue)
Current	£60.04Highest *£94.98 Lowest *£62.99 Average +£66.97
SG NAS-
Current	£77.73	Highest *£102.49 Lowest *£77.98	Average +	£90.03 

3TB:
WD RED-
Current	£87.41	Highest *	£145.00 Lowest *£87.34 Average +£89.63
SG Barra- (Potential issue)
Current	£77.05 Highest *£137.99 Lowest *£85.00 Average +£91.95 
SG NAS-
Current	£93.55	Highest *£124.94	Lowest *£93.55	Average +£97.19

4x WD reds for a start should do it. €440.

/rambling. Ill add more to this tomorrow.

vibe666

The last time I used RAID5 on a consumer NAS (4x 1.5tb drives) I had a disk failure, then got a URE whilst trying to rebuild the array and almost ended up losing everything, although the NAS mfg support guys were able to remote on and recover *almost* everything and get it rebuilt, it was a good warning for me.

Ever since then I've always gone with RAID6 with a 2nd non-RAID copy of all the critical data (documents, family photos etc.) stored on another box locally and backed up to something cloud based, just to be 100% sure.

Anwyay, there's a good article about URE's in RAID here: http://www.zdnet.com/has-raid5-stopped-working-7000019939/

ED E

Mmmm, there are a good few examples of that online, no point investing in redundancy only to have it totally doom you.

Flexraid seems to be good in this regard. Take 4x3TB drives. 3xData, 1xParity. Lose the parity drive? 3 Data drives are safe. Lose a data drive, recover it with the parity drive. Lose a data drive and then get a URE on the parity drive? Only lose one very small chunk of data. Lose the parity and a data in one go? Keep 2/3 of the data.

Hopefully Serephucus will confirm I'm interpreting this correctly.

Wossack

yea I wouldnt be a big fan of hardware raid in a home environment for reasons above. Need to couple it with backup regime, or mirrored array to have peace of mind from the big 'lose everything scenarios' methinks - grand for corporate stuff, as they have the budget for that sort of thing, but for home use, I'd take the performance hit for a software raid type setup - unraid, flexraid, snapraid, zfs, WHS drive extender/pooling (RIP?)

your post above ED_E, dont know offhand if thats how flexraid works, but thats certainly how unraid does it

with unraid infact, further to the above, if the server goes entirely tits up (PSU kills the mainboard or whatever), you can remove the disks, and (after installing a suitable reiserfs driver), you can read the data directly from them individually - data's not stretched across drives etc

unfortunately its become a bit stagnant of late, so I dont know if I'd be rushing to recommend it over some of the newer offerings without doing a lot more research, but when I bought into it (~4 years ago), I weighed a lot up and went with unraid. zfs was a close second, but looked considerably more complex to get going

ED E

ZFS is lovely, but the overhead is too high for this role.

Flexraid disks are NTFS so you can pull them and pop em into a dock if the worst happens. The more I read the more I like it.

Serephucus

And that's where I am with FlexRAID at the moment. :P

You've done your research it appears. All correct. (In so far as I've read up on it; we could both be wrong).

It should also be noted that I don't use FlexRAID for everything. Only my movies and TV rips are stored on the array. My documents, pictures, and any other irreplaceables are stored on a separate drive, which backs up nightly to a twin. It's only literally popped into my head this second, but I suppose I could simply backup the data to the FlexRAID array to cut down on a disk... Hmmm...

As far as I've read/seen, the only real place you lose out with FlexRAID over something like ZFS or a dedicated RAID card is performance (and the real-time security, obviously). But really, who cares, when 4TB drives can sustain ~120MB/s speeds, and all you're doing is streaming off the thing?

ED E

Yeah, IO load will be very low, there'll be some tasks that will thrash the disks a bit but they'll be scheduled at 2-4AM when nothing else will be happening.

One thing I cant get my head around is the parity system. I understand the concept of parity, but as theres no striping and files are kept intact on drives, how does a single 2TB drive provide parity for several other drives enough to entirely recreate the files.

To the google machine!

[20 minutes of reading and confused faces later]

This makes it so much clearer:

am still confused on how the parity works for flexraid. For example. I have 3 x 2tb drives containing data and a fourth which is designated as my parity drive. If there is 4tb (3.8 actually) of combined data between the three 2tb drives, how is a single 2tb drive going to have enough capacity to handle parity of the three 2tb drives?

This is where I am getting confused. How can 4tb of data fit on a single 2tb parity drive? I understand parity is not necessarily the sum of the total data but it just doesnt make sense to me.

In simple terms, the parity looks at the same bit block on each HD and sees if it is a 1 or a 0. It sums this total and stores it on the parity drive. If one of the drives fail, the parity will look at the other HDs bit total and compare it to the parity. If it matches, then that bit on the missing drive was 0. If it's short one, it knows the bit was 1.

FlexRaid's parity works well. I've restored 930GB of data on a HD.

If nothing else comes from this, my understanding of RAID will be much better. Now sold on FlexRaid, back to hardware.

Serephucus

Yup, took me a bit of googling to figure that one out as well. It's basically one big XOR check, if that helps.

Just as a refresher, what's your current thinking RE hardware?

ED E

Cant say no to that Avaton.



I saved some parts lists as examples:

Amazon Sample Build

Corsair CMV8GX3M2A1333C9 Value Select 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 1333 Mhz CL9 Mainstream Desktop Memory Kit £63.50
Silverstone SST-DS380B - SST-DS380B External 8x 3.5" SAT Hot-Swap ; 4x 2.5" - Black £139.62
Silverstone SST-ST30SF - Strider SST-ST30SF SFX Series - 300 Watt £46.84
C2750D4I - ASROCK MAINBOARD MINI-ITX WITH INTEL AVOTON C2750 8-CORE CPU £340.00

Subtotal (4 items): £589.96 + UNKNOWN SHIPPING

Eh no amazon, thanks.

Scan Sample Build
300W Silverstone ST30SF Strider SFX, 80Plus Bronze, PSU£30.30 £36.36
8 Bay Silverstone SST-DS380B Premium Small Form Factor NAS Case with 3 Fans 3.5"/2.5" HDD/SSD SATA/SAS w/o PSU (SFX) £89.20 £107.04
ASRock C2750D4I, Intel, Intel Octa Core Avoton C2750, DDR3, SATA III 6Gb/s, D-Sub, Mini ITX £219.50 £263.40
8GB (2x4GB) Corsair Value Select DDR3 PC3-10666 (1333), Non-ECC Unbuffered, CAS 9-9-9-24, 1.5V £51.80 £62.16

Total Inc Vat + P&P: £480.46

€600.85
That+drives would be €1040, say €1100 with accessories. Oh and an SSD for like another 80.

Its a little more than I initially had in mind, but considering the working life of a unit like this it makes sense to invest in something decent. Can shave €55 by dropping from the Silverstone to the CM N600, I dont need the hot swap bays, but they are nice (again shut up and take my money).

Theres no geizhals.de for Scan is there? Also if I manage to spot a good deal on the 3TB reds I could save a good few quid that way.

Serephucus

That's pretty damn similar to the build I have in mind (if/when money actually gets saved). I think Geizhals has a pretty good deal on the Reds at the minute. The 3TB ones are around the €100 mark IIRC.

Then there's also Denverton...


Edit: Oh, I'd also spend the extra £3 and get ECC memory. It's also on ASRock's QVL.
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/8gb-crucial-ddr3-pc3-12800-(1600)-240-pins-ecc-unbuffered-cas-11-low-voltage

Altheus

I'm in same boat now, and I'm troubled. I'm finding it hard to justify the e300 spend on the C2750/2550. It's a hardcore server board, but going a Celeron/Pentium/I3/Atom route would be seriously cheaper, which frees up enough for an extra 4TB drive for better reliability/redundancy.

I'm probably headed the FreeNAS route (running off a USB Stick / no SSD needed) as it seems like it has plenty of great plugin support. I'll run around 8-12 devices off it, but probably never more than 2-3 at a time, with that in mind, not so sure I need an 8-core chip. I'll never use the awesome LAN management stuff and the extra redundancy outweighs ECC RAM.

I'm looking at 5x4TB instead of 4xTB .

16TB RAID6 config ~7.5TB vs 20TB RAID6 - ~11.6TB
16TB RAID5 config ~11.3TB vs 20TB RAID5 - ~15TB

Using this calc: http://www.servethehome.com/raid-calculator/raid-reliability-calculator-simple-mttdl-model/ - It gets me down to a conservative estimate of data being safe for 10 years (0.00285%)

I was looking at the Lian Li Q08B as it has enough internal HDD trays to sate my glut of drives. http://www.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsps?adp=0&aid=35870&agid=1200&apop=2

I'm thinking of going the HGST Deskstar route (5 year warranty) based on this (https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/)- http://www.hardwareversand.de/en/7200+RPM/161128/HGST+Deskstar+NAS+4TB+6Gb+s+SATA+RTL+3%2C5.article

Wossack

think the sweet spot at the moment for €/Gb is with 3TB drives - but could be wrong

Altheus

Wossack wrote: »

think the sweet spot at the moment for €/Gb is with 3TB drives - but could be wrong

Yep, for the HGST drives, it works out around 50 euro more expensive for 5x4TB vs 7x3TB.

ED E

Serephucus wrote: »

That's pretty damn similar to the build I have in mind (if/when money actually gets saved). I think Geizhals has a pretty good deal on the Reds at the minute. The 3TB ones are around the €100 mark IIRC.

Then there's also Denverton...


Edit: Oh, I'd also spend the extra £3 and get ECC memory. It's also on ASRock's QVL.
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/8gb-crucial-ddr3-pc3-12800-(1600)-240-pins-ecc-unbuffered-cas-11-low-voltage

Thats because you suggested all the parts at the start of the thread and I couldn't find better stuff, you were on the ball with your first reply.

Assume Denverton is going to be even more costly :pac:

Thanks for saving me from another idiot mistake.

Altheus wrote: »

I'm in same boat now, and I'm troubled. I'm finding it hard to justify the e300 spend on the C2750/2550. It's a hardcore server board, but going a Celeron/Pentium/I3/Atom route would be seriously cheaper, which frees up enough for an extra 4TB drive for better reliability/redundancy.

I'm probably headed the FreeNAS route (running off a USB Stick / no SSD needed) as it seems like it has plenty of great plugin support. I'll run around 8-12 devices off it, but probably never more than 2-3 at a time, with that in mind, not so sure I need an 8-core chip. I'll never use the awesome LAN management stuff and the extra redundancy outweighs ECC RAM.

I'm looking at 5x4TB instead of 4xTB .

16TB RAID6 config ~7.5TB vs 20TB RAID6 - ~11.6TB
16TB RAID5 config ~11.3TB vs 20TB RAID5 - ~15TB

Using this calc: http://www.servethehome.com/raid-calculator/raid-reliability-calculator-simple-mttdl-model/ - It gets me down to a conservative estimate of data being safe for 10 years (0.00285%)

I was looking at the Lian Li Q08B as it has enough internal HDD trays to sate my glut of drives. http://www.hardwareversand.de/articledetail.jsps?adp=0&aid=35870&agid=1200&apop=2

I'm thinking of going the HGST Deskstar route (5 year warranty) based on this (https://www.backblaze.com/blog/what-hard-drive-should-i-buy/)- http://www.hardwareversand.de/en/7200+RPM/161128/HGST+Deskstar+NAS+4TB+6Gb+s+SATA+RTL+3%2C5.article

The Avaton is OTT for a basic NAS, Im only going for it as it'll be running other stuff too.

Wossack wrote: »

think the sweet spot at the moment for €/Gb is with 3TB drives - but could be wrong

Im seeing the same, 3TB is definitely the best value right now.

vibe666

I have seven of the 4tb HGST drives in my Synology and they've been great so far, not skipped a beat in the last 9 months and performance is exactly as you'd expect, although they're definitely noticeably quieter and running slightly cooler than the samsung 2tb's that they're replacing.

and yes, could hardly say no with the price and warranty on them.

possibly over-cautious, but I bought them at 3 different times from 3 different suppliers just in case there might be a bad batch, didn't want to risk having them all fail at once due to some manufacturing fault or dodgy firmware revision.

but yes, likely over-cautious.

ED E

Funds sorted, amazingly.

Starting the final build list, just realized we never specified it was RAID-F and not tRAID we were talking about

In terms of drives these are on HDUK but now at 1-2 months for dispatch
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-3-5-inch-Desktop-Hard-Drive/dp/B008JJLW4M/ref=sr_1_1?s=computers&ie=UTF8&qid=undefined&sr=1-1&keywords=Western+Digital+Red

But, HWVS have them at €105! Sorted. Thinking I may just go for 3x3TB for now, 6TB should be plenty for now and with 8TB drives hitting the market the 3's are just going to drop further between now and when I fill em.

For the SSD I'm thinking Samsung again. 830 has served me well and iirc 840 Pro = 830, so thats the one. That said the EVO is a chunk(50 vs 76 GBP) cheaper, thoughts? Or this is at its best price yet?



So thats an idea of what we're at now. Look right?

Serephucus

I was talking about RAID-F the whole time, just to be perfectly clear. :P

There's also the MX100 from Crucial. Doesn't quite beat the 840 Pro on performance, but it's not far off, and it's cheaper than even the Evo.

Also, make sure you have enough room for Plex's database files. With my ~6TB of stuff, my database files are around 95GB, though they can be moved to any drive you like. I also have verbose logging enabled in PMS, just in case anything does happen, to have as much info as possible.