Questions about building a NAS

[beginner_]

Hi,

I can't decide wether to buy one of the shelf or built one on my own. Building one then adds of course a million options.

What I need it for:

• store media files (mainly 720 and 1080p)
• stream these files
• bittorrent

What speeds can I except using a Intel Atom board and gigabit ethernet?
Does it hold back throughput performance compared to a more powerful cpu?

What about freenas? An article from 2008 in the nas sections states that ubuntu server offers 2x performance. Is this still the case?
(the simpler the better)

OS drive performance, does it matter? Or just get cheapest one?
(don't have an old one lying around)

Throughput is quite important because i will need to unrar alot. Other option is a more beefer cpu (needing more power which means more noise).

These 2 components look nice although expensive:
Supermicro X7SPA-H
Chenbro ES34069

Ideas?

 

[00Roush]

I personally prefer to build my own. I just can't justify the price of the higher performance NAS boxes versus what I can build and configure on my own. With that said I do think the prebuilt NAS boxes have better interfaces for setup.

I have not yet tested an Atom setup so I can't say for certain where the performance would be. But based on the results from others I think 60-100 MB/sec would be possible with the Supermicro board. Overall though if you are looking for max performance a CPU with a little more power is recommended. The Core i3 would probably be my option.

My latest testing with FreeNAS shows it can provide similar performance to Ubuntu Server. At least with single drives. I have not tested how good RAID performance is.

OS drive performance shouldn't matter much.

00Roush

 

[thiggins]

You can get a good idea of what Atoms will do by looking at off-the-shelf NASes.

 

[bookmage]

buying a small nas is the easy way of getting up and running w/least amount of hassle. Your biggest worry would be buying a drive thats compatible and has no issues, and how much u want to spend for how many features you don't need. I run a small number of prebuilt NAS boxes that I picked up cheap and they were good for getting up and running w/minimal hassle. I also run an equal amount of custom/home built nas boxes that I have slowly customized to my needs and wants. Eventually I'll downgrade the prebuilt nas boxes to backup duty or for some sort of NFS storage for ESXI servers.

My audio server is running an Atom 330 mini-itx mobo and a dozen 2.5in 500GB drives in ubuntu Software RAID6 and it streams music pretty well across the GB network. My only limitations came from the 2GB memory and the lack of SATA ports. IIRC, it was ok for one orw two 1080p streams across the network, but anymore started causing buffering issues.
I've moved up to using dual core Core i3 and i5s w/HT for file servers since the power differential wasn't much over an atom.

In my unscientific testing, the new FreeNAS .7.1?2? offered performance closer to a ubuntu server using an 8 drive RAID5 array. I could stream 2-3 1080p vids w/o issues on using both setups, but felt limited by Freenas in features. However, it worked fine for an NFS setup for my esxi boxes. I'm thinking of using it on a smaller scale w/<8 drives for my esxi setup.
I'm still going to stick to ubuntu 10 for my 20 drive setup though.

 

[Kilm]

Yea if u say 1080p forget bout the atom, they have amazing tdp but will be too slow for hd especially if u intend to transcode, basically streaming 1080p to ur ps3 or xbox as a media extender.
I myself truing to decide between i3 and i7 as I'll be making a VOD nas up to 1080p60.
U can get i3 with built in video card for 120 bux. And the 1156 mobo is cheap unlike the 1336 platform.
And buy a good router, most consumer grade ones are bad. I have the net gear fvs318gs

For noise use panaflo, noctua fans they make the least noise. Water cooling is best if u can get a good silent pump mcp655. But pricy overall.
And seasonic psu or corsair (made by seasonic guts) virtually silent especially seasonic 80 gold, fan runs only at high temp and the fan is low noise, jap caps...
I hate noise