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Vidaeus posted:I'm after a fairly basic fileserver or NAS setup. Not sure exactly what would be most suitable to my needs. I just need something to hold 2 hard drives and serve files as well as being able to download torrents on its own. Basically just needs to be able to serve 1080p video over gigabit comfortably and be configurable using a web interface via ethernet. Something cheap, reliable and low power usage. Hey all, so I have picked out the following for my NAS build. I chose the Celeron G1840 + Gigabyte MoBo combo over the recommended Asrock Q1900 purely because I couldn't find anywhere that stocks it in Australia. It would either be an international import (horrendously expensive shipping), or was on backorder with no ETA. So I have: CPU - Intel G1840 - $65 MoBo - Gigabyte GA-H81N - $109 RAM - GeIL 8GB x1 - $69 Case - Bitfenix prodigy - $105 Power supply - Silverstone 300W (couldn't get the seasonic 360w through the same supplier, is this one OK? Judging by the size, it should fit, right?) - $75 HDDs - WD red 2TB x 2 - $145 each Total = $713 AUD plus shipping Plan to install FreeNAS. How does that look? I can get a Pentium G3260 for $89 or a Pentium G3258 anniversary edition for $99, are either of those upgrades worth it?
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Jan 22, 2016 03:26
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caberham posted:One feature to remember is that the server motherboard has no onboard display. So you either buy an el-cheapo graphics card or do a headless install off a USB stick and remote login afterwards. Maybe even Serial In? Probably the best feature that board has that you don't find on normal consumer boards is the BMC. You can do everything over the network, in a web browser. I never plugged in a keyboard, mouse, installation media, or anything else to mine except an external drive whenever I backup the boot drive. You don't even have to push the power button, you can power it on remotely. The BMC isn't perfectly stable though and if it crashes then you do have to unplug the machine after shutting it down. Has happened twice in a year.
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Jan 22, 2016 03:35
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Vidaeus posted:Hey all, so I have picked out the following for my NAS build. I chose the Celeron G1840 + Gigabyte MoBo combo over the recommended Asrock Q1900 purely because I couldn't find anywhere that stocks it in Australia. It would either be an international import (horrendously expensive shipping), or was on backorder with no ETA. If you are going to bother, you might as well go for 2x4tb drives, you should find the best price point there, and it'll be easier to upgrade later on.
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Jan 22, 2016 04:25
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Vidaeus posted:RAM - GeIL 8GB x1 - $69 Don't think this stick supports ECC. I'd also go for a gold rated PSU, but I have no clue how much you value the data on the NAS.
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Jan 22, 2016 04:29
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Slowhanded posted:Don't think this stick supports ECC. I'd also go for a gold rated PSU, but I have no clue how much you value the data on the NAS. Gold-rated will have zero impact on the data security / reliability, but it will reduce the power consumption and would likely be worth it for that alone for a 24x7 box. The G3258 Anniversary has a slight premium due to it being overclockable, which I wouldn't mess with for a fileserver. Either the G1840 or the G3260 would be fine.
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Jan 22, 2016 05:13
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IOwnCalculus posted:Gold-rated will have zero impact on the data security / reliability, but it will reduce the power consumption and would likely be worth it for that alone for a 24x7 box. Thanks for that, any recommendations on the PSU? Needs to fit the tiny case obviously.
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Jan 22, 2016 05:27
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I've been under the impression that the money saved on your power bill over the difference between an 80 gold and say just an 80 is minuscule even if you ran it 24/7 for years. That said all of my computers have Seasonic 80 golds of various models.
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Jan 22, 2016 05:42
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Anyone here run a Dell T20 with xeon e3-1225 as a nas/plex/vm server? Sale on them now at dell.ca and I'm tempted but I would like to go the DIY route. Just can't decide between going low low power n3150/3700 or an i3/e3. Probably the latter because I'd like the cpu power and it would consume a lot less than the quoted TDP most of the time when idle. Come on e3-1225v5s already 
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Jan 22, 2016 18:56
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The primary concerns with cheap Xeon servers to date so far I've seen is that drive sleds / bays may not be straightforward with them and add to cost. I'm personally going down the path of using an external SAS connection and connecting an old SGI E3016 drive rack in to expand my storage instead of going with a huge Norco setup like so many people have because it'd be easier to migrate from a pizzabox + HBA than a huge all-in-one chassis.
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Jan 22, 2016 20:10
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I like that idea of keeping the storage separate actually. Hmm time to scour ebay for JBOD deals 
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Jan 22, 2016 20:24
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I use a Lenovo TS440 and it uses drive cages and trays. It certainly does add cost to buy trays a la carte. But drat is it nice.
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Jan 22, 2016 22:02
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8-bit Miniboss posted:I use a Lenovo TS440 and it uses drive cages and trays. It certainly does add cost to buy trays a la carte. But drat is it nice. Same here, and agreed. The TS440 definitely gets my recommendation. I bit on a SAS expander card and the miscellaneous cables and adapters to add more drives using an old ATX case as a cheap JBOD chassis. Trip report to follow once I've got it all set up.
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Jan 22, 2016 22:35
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The E3016 isn't bad if you don't need a lot of storage bandwidth because the backplane in them is limited to SAS2 speeds I believe it was. There's nothing quite that cheap if all you're looking for is a SAS expander basically. I'd like to try to push 900MBps+ if possible but that's probably a project for a day when I can justify buying several Tesla cards for a hobby project.
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Jan 22, 2016 23:45
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SamDabbers posted:Same here, and agreed. The TS440 definitely gets my recommendation. I've been super curious about doing something like this. How are you planning to manage the power to those drives?
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Jan 23, 2016 00:28
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G-Prime posted:I've been super curious about doing something like this. How are you planning to manage the power to those drives? I once read about someone who did a similar thing, but it was basically putting 2 power supplies together in 1 case, and using a relay switch to trigger the 2nd from the 1st. Hard drives are pretty simple in this scenario... if they don't have power when the system boots, they won't be detected. If they get power early, they'll spin up and wait to be detected. And depending on the OS, SATA drives should be PnP, so sequence of powering up is not that important.
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Jan 23, 2016 00:38
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I've seen http://www.add2psu.com/ as a solution to it, I was just curious if there were other alternatives I've missed.  I keep debating doing something like that to add a nice, big JBOD array to my current FreeNAS box, rather than doing a drive-by-drive resilver to expand.
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Jan 23, 2016 03:17
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G-Prime posted:I've been super curious about doing something like this. How are you planning to manage the power to those drives? I have a spare ATX power supply to go with the old case, and I'm going to hotwire it so I can use the toggle switch on the back of the PSU to control it. My TS440 runs 24/7 on an oversized UPS anyway, so I don't care if the drives just stay on too.
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Jan 23, 2016 17:19
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Pretty sure I figured out what I want for a NAS but want Goon Consensus™ to make sure I've got it right. I want a NAS set up mostly for music to be accessed from Windows, OSX, and a RuneAudio set up and storage for assets for personal projects. It seems as though a Synology 4 bay (DS414slim) with three, 2TB WD Reds in Raid 5. This should come out to around $600 USD. I was considering a Synology 2 bay with Raid 1 4TB drives, but this seems like a more optimal set up that allows for more easy upgrades in the future. I was also considering a full linux set up but that doesn't appear necessary.
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Jan 25, 2016 00:38
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Serenade posted:Pretty sure I figured out what I want for a NAS but want Goon Consensus™ to make sure I've got it right. I want a NAS set up mostly for music to be accessed from Windows, OSX, and a RuneAudio set up and storage for assets for personal projects. The slim is only for 2.5" drives. If its not doing any real work you can get away with one of the cheap J units.
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Jan 25, 2016 00:40
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The DS416j has quoted read speeds of around 15Mbps less than the DS414slim, but writes twice as quickly. It's also only about  more.
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Jan 25, 2016 00:55
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Don Lapre posted:The slim is only for 2.5" drives. That's exactly the sort of thing I'm double checking for. What about this one, (DS416j). EDIT: Thanks Ants posted:The DS416j has quoted read speeds of around 15Mbps less than the DS414slim, but writes twice as quickly. It's also only about Oh, well then good. DS416j it is.
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Jan 25, 2016 01:00
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I've ordered the second drive cage, cables, PSU, and a Dell PERC H310 HBA for my TS440. I'll flash the H310 to LSI IT mode, and should be good to go. So... the questions is: I'm running a RaidZ2 of 4x5TB Toshiba drives currently. That gives me ~9TB of usable space. Should I do a full backup of the ~4TB of stuff on this array, and build one out of 8x5TB drives, or should I just start another array/Pool? Pro's of option 1: I lose a lot less space. A RAIDZ2 on 8x5TB drives will give me 30TB usable. I'd also still only have a single Pool, which would make my new setup just work like the old one. Cons: Gotta do a backup, which is going to take a lot of time. I'll also be mixing different ages of drives. Pros of option 2: I can choose non-Toshiba drives, letting me buy what's on sale, possibly WD Reds. No need to backup the current array and restore. Cons: I lose another 2 drives worth of space, which is a drag. I could also expand the Pool by adding a VDEV, but I'm not sure that's a great idea. I'm new to the whole ZFS disc management system, so any advice is appreciated. I'm also not sure if I should swap the first array onto the HBA, or just leave it on the motherboard SATA ports as it came from the factory.
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Jan 25, 2016 01:20
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Serenade posted:Pretty sure I figured out what I want for a NAS but want Goon Consensus™ to make sure I've got it right. I want a NAS set up mostly for music to be accessed from Windows, OSX, and a RuneAudio set up and storage for assets for personal projects. You'd be better off getting the 4 bay and putting 2x4TB drives in RAID 1. You'll have the same redundancy, easier recovery if one fails, and when you want to upgrade you already have 4TB drives.
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Jan 25, 2016 03:52
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Skandranon posted:You'd be better off getting the 4 bay and putting 2x4TB drives in RAID 1. You'll have the same redundancy, easier recovery if one fails, and when you want to upgrade you already have 4TB drives. How easy would it be to swap from a two hard drive RAID 1 to a three+ hard drive RAID 5 set up? This would be my biggest storage by a large margin so there'd be nowhere to stage it.
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Jan 25, 2016 05:01
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Serenade posted:How easy would it be to swap from a two hard drive RAID 1 to a three+ hard drive RAID 5 set up? This would be my biggest storage by a large margin so there'd be nowhere to stage it. For basic RAID arrays, you'd have to move all the data off and recreate the array. If you want to avoid that, you'll need to look into one of the more advanced array types, like ZFS, or SnapRaid. However, no matter how hard, it's no harder if you have 2x4TB drives or 2x2TB drives. It's just that if you have 2TB drives, you will have to increase via 2TB drives, and they are already not the ideal $/GB. If you think you'll need more than 4TB space and just want to get 3x4TB to futureproof yourself for awhile, I would do it, it's worth the time saved.
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Jan 25, 2016 05:08
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Serenade posted:How easy would it be to swap from a two hard drive RAID 1 to a three+ hard drive RAID 5 set up? This would be my biggest storage by a large margin so there'd be nowhere to stage it. Synology allows you to do this using their SHR formatted volumes. You can start with 2 drives and then add more later without needing to reformat or move your data around.
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Jan 25, 2016 06:07
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sharkytm posted:I've ordered the second drive cage, cables, PSU, and a Dell PERC H310 HBA for my TS440. I'll flash the H310 to LSI IT mode, and should be good to go. My ZFS experience is professional on Solaris, but unless you absolutely need to be able to keep all your storage in a single pool, I'd say second pool is better than second vdev. Two pools means you can manage your two sets of disk indepentently. Two vdevs in a pool means that if one vdev fails for some reason, the entire pool goes offline. You can also end up with some performance weirdness if one vdev is slower than another, but I doubt that would be a big factor. It's hard to weigh in on the value of doing a backup/restore vs just expanding since I don't know your backup system or how much of a nuisance it would all be.
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Jan 25, 2016 07:23
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Zorak of Michigan posted:My ZFS experience is professional on Solaris, but unless you absolutely need to be able to keep all your storage in a single pool, I'd say second pool is better than second vdev. Two pools means you can manage your two sets of disk indepentently. Two vdevs in a pool means that if one vdev fails for some reason, the entire pool goes offline. You can also end up with some performance weirdness if one vdev is slower than another, but I doubt that would be a big factor. I work from home, and business is slow right now, so it's not too big of a PITA time-wise, but I'd have to backup to several drives and then I'd worry about a failure during config or restore. If I went with a second pool, wouldn't I lose 2 drives of space to RAIDZ2 again? I'd like to not buy 40TB of drives and only have ~20TB available. It would be much more preferable to have 30TB available... but less redundancy redundancy I guess... decisions decisions. I have done some reading on the VDEVs, and agree... no second vdev.
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Jan 25, 2016 21:04
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sharkytm posted:I work from home, and business is slow right now, so it's not too big of a PITA time-wise, but I'd have to backup to several drives and then I'd worry about a failure during config or restore. You have it right. Second pool means more storage lost to redundancy. If you're comfortable with the backup and restore, a whole new pool is definitely better. If you do an orderly export of the old pool and the new pool is all new disks, then your risk is pretty small. Even if one of the backup drives fails, you can just put the old disks back in and import the old pool. My own plan for end of the calendar year is an 8-disk RAIDZ3 of 8TB NAS drives (40TB usable). I plan to do RAIDZ3 because no backup strategy I can afford will cope with that volume of storage, so I'll be relying on snapshots and redundancy. If all else fails, I can always rip my disks again.
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Jan 25, 2016 22:58
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I use Crashplan and know it gets talked about here a lot. Has anyone tried Backblaze instead? I just read today that for restorations they'll now mail you a hard drive for a deposit and then refund the deposit when you return it...that seems pretty appealing. Looks like its cheaper than Crashplan... 
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Jan 26, 2016 18:20
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Thermopyle posted:I use Crashplan and know it gets talked about here a lot. I tried Backblaze once, but they actively make it hard to take advantage of that 'unlimited'. The client flat out refuses to work in Server versions of Windows, and will not back up attached storage or network drives. Sure, Crashplan has it's own issues when you creep into the multi-TB range, but at least they try to let you use that 'unlimited' moniker. Backblaze is pretty much flat out lying about theirs.
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Jan 26, 2016 18:25
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Zorak of Michigan posted:You have it right. Second pool means more storage lost to redundancy. If you're comfortable with the backup and restore, a whole new pool is definitely better. If you do an orderly export of the old pool and the new pool is all new disks, then your risk is pretty small. Even if one of the backup drives fails, you can just put the old disks back in and import the old pool. Thanks for the info. Best of luck with that massive array, RAIDZ3 sounds like your best option, aside from loving Tape backup.
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Jan 26, 2016 19:27
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Thermopyle posted:I use Crashplan and know it gets talked about here a lot. Personally though, I switched to SpiderOak a few years back when they were offering unlimited backup for $125/year (it's not a full-time thing, but a deal they habitually offer on World Backup Day), for a few reasons - partly that they actually do seem mainly focused on security (such as going out of their way, compared to the others, to make you use your own private keys), but also because there's a client for SpiderOak in FreeBSDs port/package repository - and it only requires linux compatability (so presumably it's available in your favorite linux distribution too), fontconfig and python, unlike other backup providers (if they even have n*x clients available first-party). Finally, something I've been meaning to look into the economics of, but haven't really had time to, is rsync.net which now supports native zfs send with snapshots and everything else you could want.
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Jan 26, 2016 21:35
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So, I'm exploring the possibility of setting up a NAS, with cost being a big factor in how it will be built, if it will be built at all. I'm imagining that I'll repurpose old hardware. I've got my old C2D system laying around unused. It's an e6750 @ 3.5ghz with 6GB DDR2 RAM, if I'm recalling correctly. The NAS isn't expected to be high performance, so I feel like that'd be a reasonable host. The system would use 3x new WD Red 2TB HDDs, along with two WD Green 2TBs I already have. That gives me 5 near-identical drives to play with. I'd like to be able to expand the NAS' storage a drive or two at a time in the future if need be, so I'm not entirely sure I'd want to use ZFS from what I've read. I'm currently researching/learning about btrfs as an alternative. The underlying system would probably be set up with a parity disc, so... e6750 @ 3.5ghz 6GB RAM 5x2TB HDDs - 1 Parity Disk - 4 Data Disks btrfs(?) Total storage should be 8TB. What do you think? It'd save me the cost of buying NAS hardware or a new computer setup, but it's been a while since I built/put together a system, so...I have no idea if it'd be viable to reuse that hardware.
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Jan 26, 2016 21:55
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PerrineClostermann posted:So, I'm exploring the possibility of setting up a NAS, with cost being a big factor in how it will be built, if it will be built at all. I ran my Unraid server with a very similar setup, and it worked great for a number of years. I recently switched to using SnapRaid, which has a similar idea, but more flexible. Either one will allow you to easily add new disks (assuming they are smaller than the largest you have), and even if you are upgrading your Parity drive(s), it can be done without destroying the array. Another nice thing about Unraid/SnapRaid is that, if your array DOES become broken, you only lose data on the drives that died. The remaining drives are still perfectly accessible drives all by themselves, and can be moved to another machine with no effort.
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Jan 26, 2016 22:06
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Skandranon posted:I ran my Unraid server with a very similar setup, and it worked great for a number of years. I recently switched to using SnapRaid, which has a similar idea, but more flexible. Either one will allow you to easily add new disks (assuming they are smaller than the largest you have), and even if you are upgrading your Parity drive(s), it can be done without destroying the array. Another nice thing about Unraid/SnapRaid is that, if your array DOES become broken, you only lose data on the drives that died. The remaining drives are still perfectly accessible drives all by themselves, and can be moved to another machine with no effort. I'll have to take a look at them. Do they allow you to replace drives with higher capacity ones in the future?
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Jan 26, 2016 22:19
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PerrineClostermann posted:I'll have to take a look at them. Do they allow you to replace drives with higher capacity ones in the future? Yep, that's what replacing your parity drive is. Your parity has to be as large or larger than all other drives. So if you have all 2tb drives, you first need to upgrade your parity to 4tb, and then you can add data 4tb drives that run alongside your 2tb drives. My current setup is a mix of 4tb and 3tb drives with 2 parity drives.
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Jan 26, 2016 22:23
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Skandranon posted:Yep, that's what replacing your parity drive is. Your parity has to be as large or larger than all other drives. So if you have all 2tb drives, you first need to upgrade your parity to 4tb, and then you can add data 4tb drives that run alongside your 2tb drives. My current setup is a mix of 4tb and 3tb drives with 2 parity drives. Is it just a RAID setup that protects against drive failure? Or does it have data integrity features like ZFS?
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Jan 26, 2016 22:27
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I can't comment on the latest builds of Unraid, but at the time I used it it was mainly a RAID setup against failure. However, SnapRaid does have some features that allow you to detect data changes, and possibly roll them back. This is because the parity mechanism in SnapRaid is scheduled, rather than live, so if you only update parity once per week, throughout that week you can revert (some) changes back to previous state. You can schedule parity updates as frequently as you'd like, mine runs once a day. This also has the benefit of not bottlenecking your copy operations on the parity calculation, which can get especially frustrating when you are trying to re-arrange files.
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Jan 26, 2016 22:32
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Skandranon posted:I tried Backblaze once, but they actively make it hard to take advantage of that 'unlimited'. The client flat out refuses to work in Server versions of Windows, and will not back up attached storage or network drives. Sure, Crashplan has it's own issues when you creep into the multi-TB range, but at least they try to let you use that 'unlimited' moniker. Backblaze is pretty much flat out lying about theirs.
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Jan 27, 2016 00:09
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