1000$ DIY NAS build

[Trunko]

Hello.

I know many of you are proberly sick and tired of these kind of threads but I did a quick search and didnt find any thread that I got what I needed from so here we go again. I am looking to build a high performance, high capacity NAS. I would really appriciate tips on everything from hardware to software and RAID solutions. Some info:

* Going to serve as NAS for 2PCs, 1 laptop, 1 NMT (PCH) and possibly a xbox 360.
* Budget is 1000$, give or take a few hundred.
* I want the RAID solution to be expandable and the motherboard/RAID card and chassi to be able to handle atleast 8 drives.
* The server is not only going to act as a NAS, I want to be able to have a torrent client running on it 24/7 and maybe a mediaserver client to make streaming easier.
* I do not want anyone outside my home network to be able to acces any files on the NAS, but I do want it to be fully connectable to the internet.
* The NAS is going to be connected to a GBit network on a DIR-655.

I'm guessing it's best to choose what type of RAID and software I'm going to run before I go spending money on hardware. Hardware RAID 5 or ZFS feels like the best options for me. I'm not that familiar with OpenSolaris and I'm not sure how easy it would be to run a torrent client and mediaservers on it? Is there any way to run ZFS under linux? Does it matter what OS I use when running HW RAID 5?

When it comes to hardware I have a few setups in my mind but it all depends on wether I choose to run ZFS or HW RAID. If I choose to go with HW RAID I'm looking at a M-ITX board with a Atom 330 CPU, ION (or other integrated chip) with atleast 1 PCI-E slot for the controllercard. I would like to run ECC RAM but I have not found any motherboard with atom cpu that supports it. Do they exist?

If I choose ZFS then I'm thinking a S775 or AM2 board with integrated graphics, ECC support and atleast 2 PCI-E slots. Any suggestions? Also, what CPU would I need to run 8 1.5TB drives in ZFS (RAID-Z) without loosing any performance?

I'm ofcourse very aware that I can't fit eight 1.5TB drives in the budget right now. But I'm thinking of buying 2-3 WD green 1.5TB (WD15EADS) drives now and then expand the storage later.

The size of the chassi doesnt matter that much size I will stuff it into a closet. However I would like it to be some what quite since I will sleep in the same room that the closet is in. I'm thinking about a Fractal Design Define R2 chassi (8 drive bays and bitumen covered chassi sides for silencing) but if anyone have any other suggestion feel free to mention it.

I'm thinkin about using a UPS and/or a redundant PSU. Do I need both?

I really appreciate all input.

 

[Muunsyr]

You haven't mentioned whether the NAS is for backups or for storage? I am assuming you are wanting to consolidate all your media into one location?

Certainly, the hardware overhead needed for the NAS to download torrents is minimal; nor does it require a fast disk sub-system. As for (software) RAID 5/ZFS, I am not so sure - best ask someone else. I am running an atom 330 (RAID 1) as a NAS and it downloads torrents, streams music to my squeezebox and serves as a place to store all my data in one place. It serves up to 3 PC's and 3 laptops, and while it doesn't have any RAID overheads, the atom chip is way overkill for what it needs to do (CPU utilization rarely gets above 1%).

 

[00Roush]

Well in general high performance and an Atom CPU don't seem to go together very well. My definition of high performance is a setup capable of around 100 MB/sec file transfers for large amounts of data. So far I have not seen any DIY Atom setups that can manage that. Best I have seen so far is around 70 MB/sec from an Atom based server. Actually I have been considering buying an Atom setup so that I can see what kind of performance it really offers. Problem is you either get a board that is based on an old chipset or you get an ION based board that is quite a bit more expensive.

I probably have more to add but it is getting late so maybe another night...

00Roush

 

[Trunko]

You haven't mentioned whether the NAS is for backups or for storage? I am assuming you are wanting to consolidate all your media into one location?

Certainly, the hardware overhead needed for the NAS to download torrents is minimal; nor does it require a fast disk sub-system. As for (software) RAID 5/ZFS, I am not so sure - best ask someone else. I am running an atom 330 (RAID 1) as a NAS and it downloads torrents, streams music to my squeezebox and serves as a place to store all my data in one place. It serves up to 3 PC's and 3 laptops, and while it doesn't have any RAID overheads, the atom chip is way overkill for what it needs to do (CPU utilization rarely gets above 1%).

Yes you are correct, it's primarly for storing my media files. I might use it for a third backup to all my most important files but other then that it will be for storage.

The few services I want to run other then the NAS function shouldnt demand much resources indeed. However I'm trying to figure out how easy it is to run a torrent client for example on the different platforms.

Well in general high performance and an Atom CPU don't seem to go together very well. My definition of high performance is a setup capable of around 100 MB/sec file transfers for large amounts of data. So far I have not seen any DIY Atom setups that can manage that. Best I have seen so far is around 70 MB/sec from an Atom based server. Actually I have been considering buying an Atom setup so that I can see what kind of performance it really offers. Problem is you either get a board that is based on an old chipset or you get an ION based board that is quite a bit more expensive.

I probably have more to add but it is getting late so maybe another night...

00Roush

But what kind of setups have those people been running? HW RAID or SW RAID? I'm planning on using a decent hardware controller that will take care of all the calculations and handling of the RAID. Shouldnt an atom 330 be able to handle networking and torrenting without bottlenecking the network transfers? I might also mention that my home connection is a slow ADSL link so the torrenting shouldnt hog any resources.

I might be getting a AM3 processor but it seems like they dont offer that much against the AM2 when it comes to my needs. And the new i7 or i5 processors really isnt an option. Also I failed to mention in my original post that power consumption is a factor, but it ofcourse is since the NAS will be on running pretty much 24/7. Yes boards with ION chip is a little bit more expensive and I have no need for it, but all the boards with atom 330 processors and PCI-E slots that retails here in Sweden have also included ION chipsets (from what I have seen atleast) so I don't have much choice.

My first prioritization right now is to choose a operating system and RAID solution and then I will take it from there. I'm researching by checking in the forums and reading about the different OSes suitable for NAS usage. So far these are on my list of possible candidates:

FreeNAS (ZFS)
Openfiler (HW RAID)
OpenSolaris (ZFS)
UnRaid (SW RAID)
Ubuntu

If you have any other suggestions that you feel could be a good solution for me then please tell me. How easy would it be to set up a torrent client etc on the above operating systems without that much hassle? Ubuntu is the only one that I know would work for sure but I'm feeling pretty skeptic about UnRaid and OpenSolaris in this particular matter.

 

[hybris]

Hello,


For operating system I would recommend Debian 5 (Lenny) as this has built in support for setting up RAID during installation of the system. You have several RAID levels to choose from(0,1,10,5,6...). Debian is free software.

To make the server easy to maintain and administrate I would recommend installing webmin(http://www.webmin.com/) which is also free software. Administrate your server over https://.

For torrents have a look at http://mldonkey.org/


___You do not need hardware RAID with this system or even RAID built into the motherboard(aka fakeraid)__

What Debian(as many other linux distros) sets up for you is software raid. And you can set this up during the installation of the system! This means that Debian(linux) handles the raid interface to your sata/ide/whatever ports that you want to use. You do not have to worry about getting the exact same hardware raid card if it breaks down. You can buy a new motherboard of a different brand, plug in the discs and you are up and running again!

I am speaking from personal experience with this. The following setup gives me around 85MB/write performance and 110MB+/read performance (maxing out my gigabit network!). The previous numbers are at file sizes of 4GB when the files are smaller the numbers get ridiculously high. This has been measured with iozone.

Intel E5200, 4GB ram, Asus p5q-pro MB. No extra cards besides a graphics card.
Debian 5 Lenny 64-bit.
Webmin.
Four seagate 7200.11 1TB drives. The drives are running in RAID-10. (For your own good don't run RAID-5. It is just unnecessary).
Antec P181 case. <---- most important HW
Corsair 500W PSU.

My network setup is something like this:

Internet <----> DLink DIR-615 <---> DLink DGS-1008D <---> Computers

This whole setup works very well for me.

/hybris

 

[Trunko]

Hello,


For operating system I would recommend Debian 5 (Lenny) as this has built in support for setting up RAID during installation of the system. You have several RAID levels to choose from(0,1,10,5,6...). Debian is free software.

To make the server easy to maintain and administrate I would recommend installing webmin(http://www.webmin.com/) which is also free software. Administrate your server over https://.

For torrents have a look at http://mldonkey.org/


___You do not need hardware RAID with this system or even RAID built into the motherboard(aka fakeraid)__

What Debian(as many other linux distros) sets up for you is software raid. And you can set this up during the installation of the system! This means that Debian(linux) handles the raid interface to your sata/ide/whatever ports that you want to use. You do not have to worry about getting the exact same hardware raid card if it breaks down. You can buy a new motherboard of a different brand, plug in the discs and you are up and running again!

I am speaking from personal experience with this. The following setup gives me around 85MB/write performance and 110MB+/read performance (maxing out my gigabit network!). The previous numbers are at file sizes of 4GB when the files are smaller the numbers get ridiculously high. This has been measured with iozone.

Intel E5200, 4GB ram, Asus p5q-pro MB. No extra cards besides a graphics card.
Debian 5 Lenny 64-bit.
Webmin.
Four seagate 7200.11 1TB drives. The drives are running in RAID-10. (For your own good don't run RAID-5. It is just unnecessary).
Antec P181 case. <---- most important HW
Corsair 500W PSU.

My network setup is something like this:

Internet <----> DLink DIR-615 <---> DLink DGS-1008D <---> Computers

This whole setup works very well for me.

/hybris

How sophisticated is the RAID integrated in linux? How does the expanding of an array work? Does it support migration? What would happen if the operating system would fail in any way and become unbootable for example, is it possible to save the RAID then? Is it possible to recover the RAID if the harddrive that the operating system is on fails? I know that a standard SW RAID in a linux dist would be the easiest to set up but from my understandings there are other RAID solutions that offers major advantages over a linux SW RAID.

Feel free to elaborate "For your own good don't run RAID-5. It is just unnecessary". I have never build or maintained a fileserver before but from what I have read RAID-5 is the type of RAID that is best suited for this purpose. Running without any RAID is not an option.

If I choose to go with a software based RAID then I think ZFS will be my first choice. The only real problem is that I have to find a operating system that does what I want it to and integrates ZFS in a good way to offer decent performance. From what I have read here on the forums FreeNAS offer poor performance. OpenSolaris should offer the best performance but it's actually one of my last choices since I'm not familiar with it at all and because the hardware compability is pretty poor.

I'm currently considering Nexenta/NexentaStor or EON for a ZFS based system. The downsides that I see is that those projects feels like they are very young, I have a feeling that there will be plenty of bugs and if I run into problems it might be hard to get help from the community. Have anyone runned any of those operating systems on there NAS? Would it be possible to get a torrent client running on either of those systems?