Hardware ideas for new NAS Server?

[Biscuit]

Well that is the odd part with ZFS, an old school hardware raid controller gets in the way. The filesystem is designed to know about disks, and so wants full access to them with nothing in the way.

So that saves you the cost of hardware raid, which you should then spend a bit of on ECC ram. I think you are still up on the deal, and you get stuff like copy on write snapshots and self healing.

http://arstechnica.com/information-t...n-filesystems/

There is logic to say that if you went with a proper raid controller with built in processing, you dont really need freeNAS. It also means that you can comfortably use it with any supported OS, even a basic linux OS, and have minimal frustrations.

I woudl really like to replace my storage system with one of these:
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asroc...d-sub-mini-itx

[b0redom]

The problem with hardware RAID over FreeNAS IMO is if your hardware RAID controller goes bang you need to replace it with the same model. With FreeNAS/ZFS you can just stick the disks in any other box and it will just work automagically.

I should add that I had a battery backed RAID PERC controller. I had a powercut, the battery ran out and I lost data. Not a likely situation, but a PITA non-the-less.
With that PERC controller, it also required a long period of time to actually build the RAID array in the 1st place.

YMMV, but I'd always stick to ZFS for home use.

[DanceswithUnix]

I woudl really like to replace my storage system with one of these:
http://www.scan.co.uk/products/asroc...d-sub-mini-itx

Those are a bonkers price though!

Thinking some more about this, the idle consumption of an Fx4300 isn't all that bad:

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...review-14.html



So a few BIOS tweaks to limit the maximum frequency and you could probably make quite a frugal & quiet machine with ECC support.

I think all the ASUS boards I have used have had ECC support, and you can get one with a 760G chipset (enough graphics grunt for a NAS) and 6 SATA ports quite cheap. That would leave a 2 port SATA board needing to be added in, which adds about £20.

[Biscuit]

Those are a bonkers price though!

Indeed, it was more of an ideal solution to the problem in a cost-is-no-issue approach

[DanceswithUnix]

Indeed, it was more of an ideal solution to the problem in a cost-is-no-issue approach

But if cost is no problem, then I would put a massive heatsink on a Xeon, slap some ECC memory on that, and it would still be cheaper than the Atom board and way more flexible.

Seeing as 8 hard drives is about 40W of power on their own, and even assuming aircon costs in a machine room doubling the electricity cost of a bigger but cheaper CPU, I never really understood those Atom boards being cost effective vs buying a bigger CPU and spending the difference on electricity.

[Nezbert]

I'm using one of the Intel Bay Trail motherboards for freeNAS. It's the dual core Gigabyte J1800.

There's no ECC and only two SATA ports, so I'm restricted to using a mirrored RAID pair of cheap Western Digital HDD's. I've got a matched pair of Kingston HyperX DDR3L (1.35v) sticks in it to give me plenty of RAM for ZFS.

I took a bit of a slamming on the freeNAS forums for not using ECC RAM but argued that my NAS is only for keeping media files on, so I'm not thaat concerned about data loss...

I ran it for about four months and then had a "bit flip", possibly caused by the RAM or possibly caused by myself cancelling a file transfer. I did a manual zpool scrub and it corrected 10.1MB of data and haven't had any problems since. I even set up a NAS Gmail account and it sends me daily updates to my Android phone to let me know that the file system's healthy.

The reason I went for this is that the whole setup draws 15W max and probably under 5W most of the time. The celeron processor is fanless and soldered onto the mainboard.

When I've got spare cash I might upgrade it to ECC (the SuperMicro boards seem highly regarded on freeNAS forums) and use the Bay Trail equipment to run a mini media PC in the bedroom, possibly running Lubuntu or Elementary OS when Freya comes out.

[neonplanet40]

Lol so many ideas. Thank you all for your help. I am still no better off. Ideally I don't want to spend anymore than 350 on hardware (Leaving 150 for a few disks). I have a copy of Windows 7 I can use. It might be overkill, but as I have it, it wouldn't cost anything.

I may just go for the newer windows home server (or is it still dire?) as it was easy to setup. I have no knowledge of raid at all.

On the hardware front - I will go for a mobo with 8 sata and work my way from there I guess.

[Bonebreaker777]

Keep us updated about your progress. If you are curious, can take few pics of my XPEnology ITX NAS as well. (For inspiration)

[neonplanet40]

Pics would be great please thanks!

[Bonebreaker777]

Pics would be great please thanks!

Sure thing, would do it tonight will have to entertain the missus with some Sims3 while the NAS will be down.

EDIT: http://jpegbay.com/gallery/003957548-.html#1

Apple added for size comparison. Temperatures are pretty low. Never exceeds 30°C, even the HDDs (25-26°C max reached temp by SMART). 2x HDD currently engaged. Space and ports for two more (1 x 3.5" bay and 1 x 5.25"). Underclocked to 1.6Ghz but it is still so much faster that my previous DS 212j. Also the NAS loves the 4GB RAM. 400MB usually used, rest for caching.

[neonplanet40]

Hi guys,

Holy Thread revival!

I put this off at the time, now it has come up again (my WHS server is coming apart - need to upgrade asap).

Can any recommend a hardware build? Software after.

Looking at case (Holding 6+ hard drives needed), mobo, cpu, ram (all ECC?), power supply, low end gpu for monitor output?

Thanks all

[neonplanet40]

So I having been reading around on Freenas forums etc it seems that it would be best to go with:

Supermicro Mobo
Intel CPu
ECC Ram (they say 16GB)

However, the above is expensive! And supermicro aren't sold a lot here without a crazy premium.

Ideally I had wanted to be able to get a cpu, ram, mobo and psu for about £250!

[DanceswithUnix]

Hence my graph from before, which I think still holds true now: idle power for an FX is the same as an i5 or Xeon.

Any AM3+ chip can use ECC ram, and all the ASUS boards I have tried support it. My current system uses ECC ram on an FX 8350, and yes it is really using it with scrubbing etc turned on.

£57 CPU http://www.ebuyer.com/409192-amd-fx-...-fd4300wmhkbox
£70 motheboard http://www.amazon.co.uk/M5A97-EVO-R2...dp/B008RPZ5H8/

and yes they say you need 16GB of ram, but are you really after the best possible performance? For home use I would have thought that 8GB would be plenty and that should set you back about £75

[shaithis]

I believe only the 9xx-based AM3+ boards support ECC.

[b0redom]

I'm running FreeNAS on a HP Microserver (dual core turion N36L) with 8GB non-ECC RAM. You don't need all that stuff for home use.

I managed to get a really good deal on a couple of TS140s, so my VMWare and FreeNAS box are both getting upgraded to that. I'll be running Plex and a few other bits and bobs in a jail on it though, so a bit more complex than just a plain NAS.

[Bluecube]

At the extreme end I'm thinking of getting a HP Z800 motherboard and slapping in a couple of Xeons and 24gb RAM along with ESXi. Just for fun...