NAS New build, old parts.

[nbat58]

Hi Everyone,

I have been lurking around here for a while trying to read and understand as much as I can, now the time is nearing to build my first NAS but still uncertain about a few things which I hope you experts can help with.

Originally I was going to buy new parts for my NAS build but then changed my mind and decided to upgrade my PC first and use the left over parts for the NAS build, which I hope they're adequate enough.

My left over parts are as follows:

Abit AN8 SLI Mobo
AMD Opteron 165 x2
3gb of DDR 184 pin crucial ram

Initially I will start with 3 x 2tb hdd or 4 x 1.5tb (green type) using the mobo onboard sata with hopefully the board hardware raid, for future proofing I would like to add a drive when required.

When I reach my maximum 4 x onboard sata capability I would like to invest in a 2 sata x 8 controllers in the like of the supermicron, LSI, Adaptec or highpont with hardware raid slotted in the SLI slots.

Sorry for the long post I hope I haven't crammed too much in, so my questions are:

1) Will I be able to use my old parts as a NAS for streaming media and music mainly via my Popcorn C-200.

2) Will the hardware SLI raid controllers mentioned above work in SLI on the Abit mobo?

3) How do I continue with the raid with the controllers when I start with my onbord raid?

4) What is the best raid mode to use for safeguarding against loosing data and disk failure being able to swap discs out if they fail?

5) Will I be able to use WOL to trigger waking the PC up when I turn the Popcorn on?

6) What is the best software to use for the above (FreeNas, Openfiler, WHS etc)? (hopefully I will be able to use this via usb key).

7) Is it better to use the 1.5 or 2 tb's hdd's for reliability and which manufacturer, model to go with.

I hope that someone can answer some of my questions based on your experience build, set up.

Many thanks for all your help, greatly appreciated.

 

[00Roush]

1) Yes the hardware should be fine.

2) Well I don't think you can do SLI with anything but a Nvidia graphics card. Since both slots are PCIe x16 slots you should be able to use two separate raid cards. This does depend on if the board supports it though... I have heard that some motherboards only support graphics cards in PCIe x16 slots. But technically any card that fits in a PCIe x16 slot should work.

3) If you are using a software RAID you should be able to just add onto the existing array. Not sure how it would work out if you did a hardware RAID.

4) Well generally RAID 1 or mirrored is considered the safest. But this is at the cost of capacity. I imagine you would not want to do four 2 TB hard drives in a mirror and only have 2 TB of data storage.

Next up would probably be RAID 10 as you still have the mirroring at the base. Capacity is half of the total. So four 2 TB drives yield 4 TB of storage space. In my opinion this has the best balance between performance and data security.

Third would be RAID 6. This mode requires the CPU or RAID card to calculate parity data which can greatly reduce write speeds. Minimum of 4 drives and capacity is reduced by the size of two disks. So for five 2 TB drives it would be 10 TB - 4 TB = 6 TB of space available. But this mode can survive two failed disks.

Last would be RAID 5. This mode requires the CPU or RAID card to calculate parity data which can greatly reduce write speeds. Minimum of 3 drives and capacity is reduced by the size of one disk. So for four 2 TB drives it would be 8 TB - 2 TB = 6 TB of space available. This mode can survive only one failed disk.

In short ... it really depends on what kind of protection you want and also what kind of performance you need. For more info about RAID modes go here.

5) Yes. But this does depend on the OS you choose to use.

6) FreeNAS, Ubuntu, or any Windows version (2000 and up) could most likely do what you need. There are others but generally these are the most widely used and best supported. (i.e. best chance of success)

7) I have no experience with drives that large so I can't be of much help on this one.

Overall how much storage space are you needing? Also do you have a performance goal in mind or are you just needing what is necessary for the Popcorn?

00Roush

 

[nbat58]

Hi 00Roush,

Thanks for the quick reply, sorry for the confusion regarding the SLI bit, I meant the PCIe (X16) slot, what is the best way to find out if my mobo support other cards besides graphics?

I would probably go Raid 5 HW as I believe it's safer than software, I could be wrong.

I have heard that some SW don't support Raid, like WHS for example, so a SW that support Raid is a must in my case, so that I can pull at least a drive out and replace it if any fail. Also I am not sure how a SW Raid would handle adding drives when required, or is this handles by the NAS SW IE FreeNas etc...

I would like the system to be fast enought at read speeds so that I can at the least stream from two locations possibly at the same time.

Write speeds are somewhat important but as long as it doesn't take ages to write to the NAS it would be fine, I assume the HP Pro Curve 1810G-8 switch that I have will help towards that.

Storage space would eventually grow to possibly 10 drives x 1.5 or 2tb as I would probably add 2tb every six months or so to save SD, HD movies, photos and music.

Many thanks for your help and input.

 

[MyPod]

Hi Nbat ,

I have a similar setup and use 2 sata x 8 controllers ( Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 ) besides the on board sata. They work well with WHS ,
didn't get them to work on FreeNAS though ( maybe I didn't try hard enough ).
My system drive is mirrored using the on board (Tyan 2882) sata the data drives are managed with WHS. Adding and removing drives is no problem.
I use a mix of 1TB & 1.5TB drives.

O.

 

[nbat58]

Hi Nbat ,

I have a similar setup and use 2 sata x 8 controllers ( Supermicro AOC-SAT2-MV8 ) besides the on board sata. They work well with WHS ,
didn't get them to work on FreeNAS though ( maybe I didn't try hard enough ).
My system drive is mirrored using the on board (Tyan 2882) sata the data drives are managed with WHS. Adding and removing drives is no problem.
I use a mix of 1TB & 1.5TB drives.

O.

That sounds really good to be able to mix 1tb & 1.5 tb drives, I thought that you couldn't do that with Hardware Raid, I was also under the impression that you couldn't run Hardware raid with WHS.

So your hardware raid is controlled by your onboard and I assume that your Supermicro mv8 have not got raid? that sounds good, I could go similar route to yourself and use the onboard Raid controller, is your raid set up as raid 5?

I would like to set up my raid as to be able not to loose to much space so if I could at the least take a drive out and replace it if any failures occur and not loose any data.

Are your mv8's PCIe OR PCI? are they quick in reading and writing data?
Are you using your set up to stream HD contents?

Your help is greatly appreciated MyPod.
Many thanks

 

[MyPod]

The only drive I use hardware raid with is for the system drive which is mirrored.
( the onboard controller ). Raid5 controllers are pricey between 300-500 $US and the
difference buys you several drives easy and might be overkill. The Supermicro controller
I use is 8 x SATA II 64-bit PCI-X133MHz and I have 2 of those.
They are around 100 $US each. In WHS you can select directories and set them
to "Folder Duplication". If a drive fails it is easy to remove it from the storage pool
and replace it. There are several useful addins for WHS for all kinds of things.
If you are looking for software raid5 FreeNAS is worth a look.I use that with a mix
of different size disks also.

 

[nbat58]

Many thanks for the info, great help, I will look further into WHS.

 

[cspinner]

SuperMicro Board

I am ready to build a NAS and wonder if the SuperMicro SUPERMICRO MBD-X7SLM-L-O board would be good? Also what CPU would be suggested?

I'm looking to keep power usage and noise down but have not been able to find a mini-itx board that has 4+ SATA2,RAID 5 support.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813182168