DIY Server/NAS Options?

[Guest Peter the Greek]

I have a 5 year old QNAP 4 bay NAS that is starting to play up a little......and its been at capacity for 18 months.....I have to keep deleting stuff and thats with 2 external drives plugged into it as well. I think I fixed it this morning (multiple reboots, drive scans, and firmware upgrade etc)

 

Anyhow, its got me thinking about upgrade time.

 

Has anyone built a NAS with FreeNAS?

 

What about Windows 8, using that as a server - anyone do that?

 

Some context, we have 2 laptops, 1 PC, 2 tablets, and a Windows 8 phone (.....my work phone is a stupid blackberry).

 

We have a Dune Media Player and 2 xbox's. We use the Xbox in the living room mainly for iview and the Dune for streaming video and music off the NAS.

 

If it is possible and reliable, I like the idea of having a Windows 8 server as it'd be nice to have full internet functionality on the main TV....for example, we don't get SBS reception.....this was a massive problem during the world cup

 

I guess another option would be just getting a raid card and filling my PC with drives (its Windows 8)

 

Thoughts?

 

 

[Guest myrantz]

Has anyone built a NAS with FreeNAS?

Yup, using old N54Ls + FreeNAS, and refreshed the BIOS so that I can get 6 full speed ATA ports.

 

One thing you need to know with FreeNAS (version 8 and 9) is it's more of a enterprise software now, and domestic hardware may not run well.. e.g. they always recommend you use ECC memory, and the community will not help you at all if you hit troubles using non-ecc. If fact, if you use bad gear, the freeNas forum people will go pretty hard on you.

 

FreeNAS < v7 is designed to run on anything, if you prefer that, it's now called nas4free and is a separate development. (people confusing the old FreeNAS with the new FreeNAS is giving 'em grief ).

 

The HP N54L is around $220-$250, 16 GB of ECC memory is around $200-$250 (both at it's cheapest).. Second hand Intel dual or quad port card is around $100+ on ebay... So for about $420-500 you can get a low power, relatively quiet barebones machine that can outpace a $2k machine from 5 years back..

FreeNAS may require some technical knowledge to get it up and running to full speed. If you're not good with BSD/Linux, probably not a good idea to go there. But having said that, the web interface of FreeNAS + the excellent user docs is good enough for anybody to pick up the skills... if you take the time and effort, it's a pretty good investment.

 

e.g. I've set up FreeNAS with Plex plugin. And stream everything to a google chromecast dongle. It even has a MythTV plugin which work to an extent but the N54L hardware is too slow for transcoding (I may upgrade to the new HP Gen8 for more horsepower). 

 

If you need to encrypt your volumes for that little extra security, you need faster hardware than the N54L.

 

I guess another option would be just getting a raid card and filling my PC with drives (its Windows 8)

The biggest advantage of hardware raid card is you'd get high reads and writes (in theory), and more ports... (avoid fake raid cards as it's kindda pointless IMO). Also, note that hardware RAID cards can be a bit picky with the drives and may drop the disk if it thinks there is a problem.. 

In general for simplicity I prefer to use software raid and let the OS handle the volume.. Doing this is slower in theory, but if there are any hardware failures it's easier for me to replace.. (if you decide to get a hardware raid card it's a good idea to buy another one as spare/backup). FreeNAS is also less picky with harddrives allowing me to use any drives without issues (so far, touch wood).

 

Windows 8 isn't really a server software.. It'd probably still work though (but honestly I've never tried it)... You may want to consider Windows Server 2012 (or 2013?).. It's kindda PITA to use compared to FreeNAS as the configurations are all over the place, but TBH but it's more a bias/preference thing.

[Guest Peter the Greek]

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Thanks for that. Can FreeNAS work with a hardware raid?

 

I'll see how my current NAS goes, if it is dead when i get home tonight, I'll have to bang something cheap together quickly (probably just buy another 4 bay box from someone). If not I'll wait until the end of the year and build something that will last a long time.

 

I dug up an old quote for a server build (from 2012!), so its all a little out of date, but you get the idea:

 

Cable 6 x Norco 0.5M Mini-SAS(SFF-8087) to Mini-SAS(SFF-8087) Multilane SAS Cable

Cooling 3 x Noctua NF-F12-PWM Fan - 120x120x25, SS02 Bearing, 300-1500rpm,

Case Norco RPC-4224 Rackmount Server Chassis, No PSU - 4U Inc. 24x Hot-Swap

Case Norco 120mm Fan Wall Bracket

Power Supplies Corsair 850W Professional Series - ATX 12V v2.2, 120mm Fan, Modular Cables,

Motherboard Supermicro X9SCM-F Motherboard LGA1155, C204 PCH, 4xDDR3-1333, 2xPCICPUs

| Processor Intel Core i3 2120 Dual Core CPU (3.3GHz, 850-1100MHz GPU) - LGA1155,

Memory - RAM Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) PC3-10600 1333MHz DDR3 RAM - 9-9-9-27

Hard Drive Controller HighPoint RocketRAID 2760A RAID Controller - 24xSAS/SATA (via 6-Port Mini-

Cable Norco 1x 4-Pin Molex (Male) to 7x 4-Pin Molex (Female) Power Extension Cable

 

Lets say I got that updated to current gear. Would FreeNAS run effectively on that? or should I be looking at something else? I dont care if I have to pay for software for this sort of thing. I just want it to work and be reliable.......I've never touched Linux so I am a little concerned about this.

 

Edit: here are some of the current options http://www.techbuy.com.au/custom-pc.asp?srchCat=SYSTEMS_SERVERS

Edited August 12, 2014 by Peter the Greek

[Guest myrantz]

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Thanks for that. Can FreeNAS work with a hardware raid?

yup. Linky.. FreeNAS is really just BSD optimised for NAS, so in theory anything that runs in the BSD environment will run in FreeNAS. (note theory may not always reflect reality )

 

Have a read through the hardware recommendations linky to get the gear you want. And don't forget to look through their forums for the latest updates. The NewToFreeNas section is a good one to start.

 

Motherboard wise it's really best if you get one that works with ECC memory (JIC).. Next, determine the jails you want to run and then choose the best CPU (and amount of memory) to match. Additional RAM is always good, it'd just mean mean bigger cache for your RAID. And because of caching, if you do a lot of writes, you may want to consider adding a good UPS that will give battery backup in case of power loss (and long enough to allow for graceful shutdown).

 

One thing I'm not too sure about is this "Norco 1x 4-Pin Molex (Male) to 7x 4-Pin Molex (Female)".... When you first boot up the computer the HDD will draw a fair bit of current. I honestly don't know if this is going to be a problem or not as the NAS hardware I use sequentially start up the HDDs. (maybe this will be handled by the RocketRAID?)

 

I've never touched Linux so I am a little concerned about this.

If you have some old hardware lying around, try FreeNAS on it first (since it's for testing only reliability isn't really an issue)... If you don't have a spare machine just install it in a virtual machine and play with it...

Experiment all the features and see if you're happy with it and how everything goes (if you're in a VM you can simulate removing a HDD and plug in a new one and see how the recovery works).  Only proceed when you're confident with all the DIY.

Also, there are other NAS OS solutions (or non DIY NAS hardware) out there that's a bit more user friendly. And really, if you don't need the bells and whistles, Windows 8 will do just fine (keep it simple principle)... In fact, most people I know just plug a USB HDD to their ADSL router and have the router serve the content.

 

FWIW I'm using a N54L with 5x4TB el cheap HDDs for around 16TB of storage.. It's one tiny box that's lightweight enough for me to take it and run in case of fire (Yup I definitely have my priorities right!)... If you can, go small rather than big (esp for your first DIY NAS).

[CraigC]

I recently purchased a synology DS214+ for around $ 500,why would you bother building one.

[Guest myrantz]

Some prefer to diy their HiFi, some prefer to buy pre made. Why? For the same reasons I guess.

[Guest Peter the Greek]

I recently purchased a synology DS214+ for around $ 500,why would you bother building one.

 

2 bay v proposed 24......different kettle of fish. I already have a 4 bay one

Edited August 12, 2014 by Peter the Greek

[CraigC]

Oh what do you want to store 24 bays seems a lot of complexity

[Guest Peter the Greek]

I have around 600 blurays I'd like to keep permanently ripped, as opposed to being "selective" about it

 

....plus my photography hobby.....

[Guest myrantz]

I only have around 90 BDs (in ISOs).. And it's about < 3.5 TB.. So around 30 TB should be enough for 600 ISOs? (More if you convert to mkv).

 

They have 6TB domestic HDDs now, 6 of 'em spanned will be ~36 TB which should be more than enough (if you convert to mkv it'd use even more space)... for serving media you don't really need 24 ports as writes isn't really a bottleneck..

 

You can build 2 machines with 6 drives each and mirror the contents, rather than 1 machine with 24 drives (1 single point of failure).... Just a suggestion though...

[Guest Peter the Greek]

Two servers is a good idea.....I hadn't really considered that. I guess I'd still have my QNAP for redundancy.

 

What are your views on "Storage Spaces"?

 

good article here:

 

http://betanews.com/2014/01/15/windows-storage-spaces-and-refs-is-it-time-to-ditch-raid-for-good/

[Guest myrantz]

What are your views on "Storage Spaces"?

That sounds like what the Linux people have been doing for years.. sorta a "storage pool", or logical volume manager (LVM)... Looking at the article, storage spaces with Microsoft is kind of what FreeNAS is doing, and what I've been doing with my Linux boxes. 

Sorta like ZFS vs ReFS.. Similar idea, probably different implementations.

 

That's a pretty good article... TBH I agree very much with that author and think hardware raid is not the go for home use these days. (esp when write speed or encryption ain't that important)... 

 

If you're confident with Windows 8, probably a good idea to try that first, play around with it just to get a feel of it.. Once you know the ins and outs, and wanna go full production (all out), you can apply the same concepts with FreeNAS (or other solutions), or stick with Windows 8.

 

Find out how you're gonna serve/share the media too, the software you use may well limit the OS you can use. With DLNA and Plex, you can't stream ISO AFAIK.. (Plex will work if the server and the client software are on the same machine, but can't stream)

Caveat: I'm really doing this for fun in my spare time so infrastructure side of things I'm not always correct :lol:.. Just an opinion and not real advice. Hopefully people more knowledgeable in IT will chime in (I'm sure there must be a few here who are doing this for a living  ).

[Sir Rab of Everest]

FWIW, I didn't bother with FreeNAS, just installed Debian Linux on an HP N40L and run software raid (Raid 1). Avoided hardware raid (even though supported) to avoid its limitations.