New DIY NAS Build advice (OS) and opinion

[squidgy]

Hello,

I currently own a Readynas Duo and it's been great but i'm looking for more storage capacity now and I don't think going down the route of another readynas is the smartest move financially.

So, after some looking round on the web I've come up with this setup.

Case Lian Li pc-q08b 95.99
Mobo Zotac H55-ITX 93.30
Antec Basiq Power 350W ATX 12V PSU 28.89
core i3 530 HD on Chip 82.11
2gb kingston ddr3-1066 35.00

£335.39

This will allow me to build a 6x Drive gigabit connected nas where as the readynas ultra 6 is £720.99

I haven't factored in P&P or the cost of the drives yet, but from a hardware standpoint this seems to make sense, it's small and quiet VERY powerful for a NAS and the only downside I can see is... software. I was looking at using FREENAS but I believe people are having problems with NIC drivers with this board and not being very good at BSD or Linux I don't have the time or patience to go through the pain of troubleshooting that.

So to my questions...

Anyone recommend a software solution similar to the readynas that will never require a keyboard and mouse or monitor attaching post install (or during install?) Assuming a web based GUI here.

Is it better to run the os off a usb memory stick and having the drives solely for file sharing?

I think its overkill hardware wise - maybe a cpu with video on chip is too much just to have video enabled for OS the install any ideas?


Won't be starting the build until at least next pay day so plenty of time to plan.

Thanks!!!!

 

[Osamede]

Anyone recommend a software solution similar to the readynas that will never require a keyboard and mouse or monitor attaching post install (or during install?) Assuming a web based GUI here.

Is it better to run the os off a usb memory stick and having the drives solely for file sharing?

You could can install a Windows Server headless:
http://migeel.sk/blog/2009/10/16/headless-windows-installation/
http://ochoco.blogspot.com/2009/02/installing-windows-server-2008-on.html

I would not recommend running any OS off of a USB stick. If you have a multi-bay unit, just put a simple 30 or 40 GB GB SSD drive on the first bay and run the OS off of that. I have Windows 2008 R2 Server running on an SSD and it takes up less than 18GB with all the relevant services installed plus Squeezeserver as well.

 

[Jesse B]

FreeBSD or a Linux distribution would work just fine if you're into that jazz. Free too

I'm running Ubuntu Server 10.04.1 (No GUI, all CLI ) on my server, and I love it.

 

[memilanuk]

FreeNAS seems to run okay from a USB stick... it's one of the supported boot/install modes. You still need a keyboard/monitor for about five minutes during initial install, though.

 

[squidgy]

Thanks for the responses!

This has become vastly more complex now - due to the motherboard not supporting RAID! how bad is that!! H55 Chipset limitation apparantly.

So - was looking at windows home server. As I understand it is uses some kind of file duplication method (not raid) for backups so I can still use this hardware. I'm dubious about not using some kind of hardware RAID setup - i like the idea of having a drive fail, remove it, plug in the new one and walk away.

What I need is a mini itx mobo thats 6x port sata with raid though and as long as it's compatible with FREENAS use that. I think i'll have to wait until the intel H57 boards come out some time in the next month and revisit this. Thanks for the suggestion on using an SSD seems like an excellent choice seeing at there will be very few writes on it and unlikely to fail.

CLI! hahaha i'm pleased you like your setup I do enough of that at work though

 

[memilanuk]

If you find a mobo with on-board RAID that is actually supported by Linux or BSD... let me know! My understanding has been that short of dedicated and expensive hardware RAID cards, all of the mobo RAID and 'cheap' RAID cards are still software controlled and not recognized by Linux/BSD. Given the flexibility of Linux software RAID, I would be surprised if that changes anytime soon. I do agree that not having to go root through the OS to replace failing drives or expand an array would be nice, though.

 

[00Roush]

FYI FreeNAS does raid on just about anything as it is a software implementation so you should still be able to use your board just fine. There is a possibility that you could do RAID in hardware with FreeNAS but the hardware would have to be supported and I believe you would have to do some command line work to get the correct driver installed.

Also if you really are worried about getting the NIC drivers working just get a Intel NIC. Drivers work right out of the box in just about any recent OS.

00Roush

 

[squidgy]

FYI FreeNAS does raid on just about anything as it is a software implementation so you should still be able to use your board just fine. There is a possibility that you could do RAID in hardware with FreeNAS but the hardware would have to be supported and I believe you would have to do some command line work to get the correct driver installed.

Also if you really are worried about getting the NIC drivers working just get a Intel NIC. Drivers work right out of the box in just about any recent OS.

00Roush

very interesting Roush! So FreeNAS works in a similar fashion to WHS where it doesn't need hardware RAID to have an "array of disks" if you like. Cool. Seems like I need to do alot more reading on FreeNAS and it's setup before I proceed. Thanks for chipping in !


From a power consumption perspective, could I make any improvements in that area with the hardware i've chosen do you think? I'd like it to be as low power as possible. I intend to get some 2tb 5400rpm "green" disks, I suppose at this point I should mention noise too. Both are important to me.

 

[Jesse B]

You could try to lower the voltage of your CPU. You could even underclock it if you wish, but just trying to get the lowest stable voltage at stock speeds would be a good start. Get a very efficient PSU (80 Plus Silver/Gold) would help too.

Samsung's Spinpoint F4's come in 2TB, 5400rpm models, and they perform very well from what I've seen. Very inexpensive too.

 

[00Roush]

Squidgy-

I wouldn't really say FreeNAS works like WHS. But with the software RAID it does allow you to setup a RAID array without needing a RAID card. For more info on RAID check out Wikipedia. There is actually a section that better explains software RAID versus hardware RAID. And really you don't need to worry about studying up on FreeNAS... Just burn a CD and boot from the CD. This website should be enough to get you up and running. At first I would not even worry about setting up RAID. Just setup a disk and then share it.

As for lower power consumption... I am fairly sure your setup will be able to idle pretty low. Probably 30 watts or lower. The only thing I would change though is using the Antec EarthWatts Green 380w PSU in place of the Antec Basic you had chosen. It is 80 PLUS Bronze certified and overall is a better built unit. It is a bit more expensive though but in my opinion it is worth it for the better build unit.

00Roush

 

[squidgy]

I've did ALOT of research on hardware and software last night including a rather interesting forum post on someone using the Lian Li case I mentioned above. Have a look for case mod project: shrink.

I've made the decision to change the PSU after the recommendation here, so I started thinking about how quiet I wanted this NAS to be, thanks for the suggestion on the earthwatts but I think it might be worth looking at the silverstone SST-ST45SF, I read its whisper quiet and small too, hoping having some extra air in the case will help keep the drives nice and cool(er). I agree on the build quality - hate to see the PSU pop and lose valuable data!! Looking around you can get suprisingly good PSUs for not alot of cash now, even alot of the Corsair PSUs are down to <£50 sensible prices. lol I remember splashing out on a Enermax 850w 2 years ago for about £180! What a mug!

Roush, what's your opinion on RAID 5 on FreeNAS. I'll be using 4x 2tb disks and adding more as my needs increase. I read so many forums and articles yesterday, I read that trying to change a failed disk is extremely difficult - I think the word used was insane! was it on smallnetbuilder... hmm... thanks for the info on how much wattage would be needed I did wonder.

When I start the build i'll be posting up some pics and a little walkthrough.

before I caught up on this thread I did get a little excited at the *cheap* 8 Port Megaraid cards knocking about on ebay until I fired a note of to LSI who confirmed the maximum raid size on those cards is 2tb. Doh!

 

[LuAr]

Hi,

I also have read numerous of forums in regards to build your own NAS box... But i did go for your setup (more or less)... and the overall cost is as follows:

Nas Part Price
1 SilverStone ST45SF 450W -- £66.21
2 Lian Li PC-Q08B -- £106.27
3 Zotac H55ITX-A-E WiFi -- £77.39
4 Intel Core i3-530 -- £72

======== ========
Total: £321.87

Obviously that is not including memory (2x2GB DDR3 10600) which happen i do have in my home treasury chest as well as HD (still need to decide on which option to go with)

There is still undecided option as of HDD speaks so any suggestions are more than welcome. Main candidates are:

WD RE4 1TB (~£85) family or Samsung F1R 1TB (~£55) as you can have them in reasonably price and they are created especially to work in Raid environment.

Also need to replace my old Cisco switch (still 100MB speed) for something new and at last 16 ports (any ideas)...

 

[squidgy]

Depends what you are after really..

Speed, or low operational noise, low power consumption. - Some go hand in hand these days. I'm not looking for breakneck speed, personally I'd prefer something quiet and low power. I would also suggest you look for discs with rotational vibration sensors..

Samsung F3s - I got the HD103 - Actually bought one of these to upgrade my sky box, before I realised it was incompatable doh!, ended up putting it in my HTPC instead.

or... Samsung Spinpoint HD204UI 2tb F4EG - eco green drive too.

My personal opinion on HDDs these days is that there isn't much seperating any of them. Just do some reading and avoid the dud models - such as those 1tb Seagate Barracudas with the dodgy firmware from a while back.

If you havent bought a mobo yet - hang on a little while longer for the H57 boards to come into market, with that case you can fit 6x drives in it and having a mobo with 6x sata ports it might be good. I've heard reports on that zotec mobo too - questionable reliability.... i'm personally getting an ASUS or Gigabyte mobo when I can find one that meets my needs, never ever had an issue with those - lol i remember my gigabyte board surviving a an athlon cpu that decided to burn itself out quite spectactularly... but thats an another story and i'm starting to ramble so i'll leave it there! Keep us updated with your build and how you get on - use this thread if you wish!

 

[squidgy]

expanding in what I said about mobos...

doing some more quick searching - there doesn't look to be a 6x sata raid mobo even in the pipeline in this form factor.. so choices are - change case and get a mini atx or settle for 4 ports... i'm looking at the Intel DH57JG now. settle for a 4 drive nas and see where the land lies when I want to add more drives...

 

[sammynl]

I was looking at using FREENAS but I believe people are having problems with NIC drivers with this board and not being very good at BSD or Linux I don't have the time or patience to go through the pain of troubleshooting that.

Why not try Ubuntu 10.10 it's not as hard as it may seem it's free and performs great. One thing: before installing it disconnect the array drives and install it with only the OS drive connected. Otherwise it wont boot.

With webmin installed you can do 95% of the administration from a webbased interface.

A quicklist:
• disconnect array disks
• install os
• sudo apt-get update / sudo apt-get upgrade + reboot
• install telnet (sudo apt-get install telnetd)
• connect array disks
• install webmin from cli, ignore errors during installation:

wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/universe/libm/libmd5-perl/libmd5-perl_2.03-1_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i libmd5-perl_2.03-1_all.deb
wget http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/webadmin/webmin_1.530_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i webmin_1.530_all.deb
sudo apt-get install perl libnet-ssleay-perl openssl libauthen-pam-perl libpam-runtime libio-pty-perl
sudo apt-get install -f

• install mdadm (sudo apt-get install mdadm)
• create array 256k chuncksize using webmin
• format array cls mkfs -t ext4 -m 1 /dev/md0
• create mnt/raidmount , read/write for everyone (webmin)
• mount md0 on mnt/raidmount (Webmin > Disk and Network Filesystems > Add Mount ext4)
• create folders in mnt/raidmount for mounting shares (incl. read/write etc.)
• install samba (webmin), modify default share permissions (read/write, guest access etc.)
• mount samba share's on folders in mnt/raidmount

That's it, feel free to ask if you run into problems.

 

[kendallp]

That's it, feel free to ask if you run into problems.

Sammy, do you have any recommendations of other helpful packages to install? Right now I've only got the ones mentioned in this post and a few others for HTPC (XBMC and Sabnzbd).


Thanks!
-Kendall