NAS Venture - help with hardware and an account of the build

[zambalek80]

Hi everyone


I have tried for some time now to run a virtualised NAS (VMware, RAIDz, Freenas). This worked OK for most of the time, but it's a rather painstaking thing and in the past few days I had to click through the snapshot manager more than once, because the Freenas server kept restarting endlessly.

So I decided to build a physical stand-alone NAS. Since I think FreeNAS is a good piece of software, offering enough features, I didn't want to get a ready-made NAS (Synology, QNAP and what have you). However I am also considering other NAS-software - just haven't decided yet. But then I can do that on short notice, so to speak.

I had the following duties in mind, the NAS should be able to handle:
RAIDz or RAID-2z (I think it's way more practical than RAID5)
Serving media across the home network
Sharing media over the internet (maybe even stream)
Running scheduled backup tasks across the network

So, after searching the net back and forth and digging deep I finally came up with a hardware configuration. I hope some of you guys out there would like to share their opinion on my chosen setup - so I can change items before ordering. Here we go then:

Case: Lian LI PC-Q25B (delivers enough internal 3.5" slots)
MB: Zotac H67itx-C-E (sports enough SATA-ports onboard)
CPU: Intel G850 (since the Lian Li has a backplane with RAID capability)
RAM: 2GB DDR3-1066 from Corsair
PS: be quiet! Pure Power CM L8 with 430 Watt

The bunch will cost me 477 Swiss francs at the moment (around 526$ or 385€). Since I already got 5 HDDs (Samsung HD154UI) I don't need to buy any more.

So, let's have those comments coming.

I shall be making a little documentary of my build and keep posting in this thread along the way.
Any comments, suggestions, discussions and questions are welcome!


Cheers

 

[zambalek80]

New items & ordered

Well, I have searched a bit more and altered my suggested configuration a bit. Since I saw the whole delivery takes up to around 3 weeks I thought to myself to order immediately

Case: Lian LI PC-Q25B
MB: Zotac H67itx-C-E
CPU: Intel G850
RAM: 1x2GB DDR3-1333 from Corsair (ValueSelect)
PSU: Corsair CX430 V2

So, now it's waiting time. I'll be updating as soon as everything has arrived and give a detailed account of my build. Hope you enjoy it.

 

[00Roush]

Welcome to the site!

The virtual machine shouldn't be too difficult to get working... http://www.fixtheexchange.com/Budget-Laboratory-Part2-iSCSI-Virtual-SAN-with-FreeNAS-8 Maybe I'll give it a go a bit later and see how I fare.

Sorry I didn't respond sooner... Your build hardware looks good but you might want to look at getting more RAM. With ZFS (RAIDz) 4 GB or more is a good idea if possible. Also wanted to mention that according to Newegg Feedback the Zotac board has given some people problems. Either way definitely let us all know how it goes.


00Roush

 

[zambalek80]

Hi, thanx a lot for the feedback. I am glad to be here and hope to make a little contribution to this forum.

I have read through the feedbacks concerning the Zotac H67ITX over @ newegg.com - but most of these don't really concern me. Except for the SATA-issue of course! For those who do not want to hop over to newegg.com here are the other (technical) issues complained about: jerky WiFi (I plan to hardwire the NAS to my LAN), trouble with the DisplayPort (I won't need a monitor after initial setup) and finally not blazingly fast SATA speeds (which isn't critical to me).
Nonetheless I think I'll take the dive and hope for the best

As for RAM I have already suspected so and have just updated my order to get 2 matching pairs of that RAM (2x2GB Corsair ValueSelect DDR3-1333).

Alright, I'll keep the updates coming then.