Storage Solutions Budget DIY NAS

H

HKR

Recruit
Hello,

I am planning to get rid of my Buffalo link station and replace it with a small DIY nas. Built using a budget mobo+cpu stacked in a small cabinet.

I wanted some suggestions from you guys as to what would be the best combo to get hold off? I would need atleast 4-5 sata ports on the mobo to start off with leaving room for future expansion.

Currently i am looking to get atleast 2-3 of the WD green 4TB's and later add more as needed.
 
Are you planning on using freenas ?
Are you planning on using raid config ?

I was in similar doubt on building a DIY NAS and in the end, ended up buying an old server with hardware raid card ... it has 6 2 TB hdds in it now... total storade 10 TB with raid 5
 
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Budget is flexible but around 20-30k (without HDD) my main concern is that i dont really have much space to keep the cabinet in my house. It would have to be kept near my current cpu and that wouldnt look really nice so i need a good cabinet.

Keeping the nas elsewhere is not possible as any other spot in the house would have to be a wireless connection as there is no Lan cables there.

I really liked the fractal node 302 but cant find it here in India.

Yup i intend to use raid but mostly raid 0 as this is for movies & media storage only. So freenas is how i have decided to go uptill now unless someone give s me a better alternative.
 
Your budget is pretty good so I will give a few points

1. Stay as far away from Raid 0 as possible if its a NAS. Raid 0 is for performance only and not recommended for NAS. Say you have two 4 TB HDD in raid 0. You will get effective 4 TB storage with the chances that if one fails you lose all data.
Raid 1 you can lose one disk and still retain data. Recommended if you have only 2 disks.

I would recommend raid 5 or zfs for freenas. Min disks would be 3 and you can lose one disk and still retain data.

Don't go for speed as normal config is more than fast for streaming, storage.

2. Freenas needs loads of RAM. ECC if wanna be ultra secure of your data but normal ram is fine. Recommended 8 GB minimum for freenas or 1 gb or every TB or storage. so 10 TB storage would be 10 GB min ram.

3. Go for intel chipset as its more compatible with freenas and preferably with Intel NIC

4. Case I would go with one which as hot swap if within budget.

I would recommend to get a combo motherboard.. Somwthing like http://www.flipkart.com/biostar-nm7...oard&ref=24a24ac6-f2a1-47f5-a8a7-36dc2d7dfe50

Install loads of ram and it should serve you well.
 
ronnie_gogs said:
Your budget is pretty good so I will give a few points

1. Stay as far away from Raid 0 as possible if its a NAS. Raid 0 is for performance only and not recommended for NAS. Say you have two 4 TB HDD in raid 0. You will get effective 4 TB storage with the chances that if one fails you lose all data.
Raid 1 you can lose one disk and still retain data. Recommended if you have only 2 disks.


- I understand the risks and benifits of RAID, however as i said i want this to be storage array only with movies etc, nothing business use or critical data which i cannot risk loosing. I would really not like having 3 HDD and not being able to use 1 of it due to RAID.


I would recommend raid 5 or zfs for freenas. Min disks would be 3 and you can lose one disk and still retain data.
- I am planning to use freenas or zfs, however using ECC ram would throw my budget out of way, dont you think so?


4. Case I would go with one which as hot swap if within budget.
- I dont really care if its hotswappable or not as i wont be removing/adding disks that frequently. I can go with a normal case but as i said before i dont have a lot of room to keep the cabinet in my room near my current CPU and putting it in other room is not a option due to lack of LAN cables in other rooms.

I would recommend to get a combo motherboard.. Somwthing like http://www.flipkart.com/biostar-nm7...oard&ref=24a24ac6-f2a1-47f5-a8a7-36dc2d7dfe50
- I was already considering this mobo+cpu combo however this has only 4 sata ports and i had seen a ASrock mobo for about 5-6K which has 6sata 3.0Gbps ports so i opting to go for that one.

.
Click to expand...

I also have one more query, is it possible to use 1 of the external Sata3 I/O ports as internal using some kind of cable etc? This is for future provision incase more HDD need to be added.
 
Well if you dont want to use raid then dont turn raid on. just use a JBOD - just a bunch of disk like in a PC.

But forget freenas then as freenas need zfs for most features.

If you can find the asrock one get it much better quality than biostar. I dont live in India so I dont know the sources.

Get a mobo which has a pci-ex slot... Just add a sata expansion card and you can have more sata ports...
 
Cant we use freenas as an OS and use JBOD or any other raid config? Afaik Freenas does not need zfs compulsorily?
 
Guys i had a little query, If i attached a PCI/e Sata controller card and attach 2-3 HDD through the card does it mean those HDD need to be in RAID to be accessible? What i mean to ask is that connecting those HDD through the sata controller is no different then connecting them directly to the mobo right? I read somewhere that a Hardware Raid card causes problems with ZFS as ZFS wants direct access to HDD rather then through a hardware raid card?
 
ZFS is used for increased data integrity, and expects to know the status of the hard disks. With a hardware raid in between it has no way of knowing the hard disk status. So I would avoid using a hardware raid.
 
Is the necessary to setup the hdd in Raid if connected via sata controller??
Ranjith Sai said:
ZFS is used for increased data integrity, and expects to know the status of the hard disks. With a hardware raid in between it has no way of knowing the hard disk status. So I would avoid using a hardware raid.
Click to expand...
 
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A SATA controller card does not imply a RAID card. There are non-RAID SATA controller cards.

HKR said:
What i mean to ask is that connecting those HDD through the sata controller is no different then connecting them directly to the mobo right?
Click to expand...
Exactly.

Ran a quick google for SATA controller cards and came up with this link, do check if it suits you : http://blog.zorinaq.com/?e=10
 
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Say i dont care about data backup and setup raid0 and run out of sata ports on my mobo. If i get a non-raid sata controller card i can use it to add more HDD to my array?

One more query, say i want to have some sort of data redundency what would be the best way to go about without loosing out on HDD space. I read the ZFS needs only 1 HDD for backup?
 
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