Putting together a networked backup server

[soundblastdj]

Hello,

I'm trying to put together a backup NAS for my father, who is a photographer/videographer.  He's currently got a Drobo 5N on his desk that he uses for storing his 10 TB+ and growing collection of photos and videos, an iMac with a 1 TB hard drive, a Mac Mini (not sure of the hard drive in there), and an assortment of other external hard drives that need to be backed up.  I built him a small NAS a few years back, which he has quickly outgrown and we need a better solution.  I need to find a scalable way to back up about 15 TB of files, which can be upgraded in the future by just throwing more hard drives at it.  We tried to buy a Drobo B800fs, which seemed like the perfect solution, but we couldn't find one that didn't already have hard drives in it (as we already had a collection of 6 TB hard drives).  Instead, we went with the Drobo B800i, as I had read somewhere that you should be able to use it as a NAS, and ignore the SAN features that it came with.  After messing with it for a few hours today, we have determined that the B800i is just not going to work as a replacement for his current system.

 

We are looking for recommendations for a backup server that can take a large number of hard drives.  I'm not afraid to build a system, but if that's your recommendation, I need to know where I can find a case that will take a large number of hard drives and an operating system that will allow us to just install hard drives and expand the array without having to erase all existing information and starting all over again.  This needs to be something that he doesn't have to mess around with too much.   If it runs out of space, he needs to be able to simply add hard drives without me having to be around to help him (I'll be going off to college shortly).  We don't need anything that is rack-mountable, this is just something that is going to sit in the back of his studio or in the bottom of a cabinet with his router. 

 

On that note, is anybody looking to buy a Drobo B800i? 

 

[TheGeeker]

A FreeNas Server

[45Drives]

Does your dad have any familiarity or experience using a NAS OS like FreeNAS or Rockstor (that's a newer OS that we just added to our line-up - you can read about it here).

 

Our Storinator Q30 might be a good fit. Its 30-drive slots would give him lots of room to grow into as he amasses more files. It is rack-mountable, but is compact enough to sit on a desk or shelf somewhere instead. (And it's whisper-quiet - we have one in our cubicle area. It sits about six feet away from me and I never hear it running).

 

We have many other video producers using this model, and are happy with it.

 

Anyway, don't want to get too sales-y on here or anything! Feel free to DM if you'd like more info

[soundblastdj]

A FreeNas Server

We are currently using a FreeNAS server, but it's not easy enough to add hard drives to it to get more space, and I would need some recommendations for hardware, particularly raid card and case capable of holding large numbers of hard drives that isn't going to cost more than the rest of the project.

 

 

Does your dad have any familiarity or experience using a NAS OS like FreeNAS or Rockstor (that's a newer OS that we just added to our line-up - you can read about it here).

 

Our Storinator Q30 might be a good fit. Its 30-drive slots would give him lots of room to grow into as he amasses more files. It is rack-mountable, but is compact enough to sit on a desk or shelf somewhere instead. (And it's whisper-quiet - we have one in our cubicle area. It sits about six feet away from me and I never hear it running).

 

We have many other video producers using this model, and are happy with it.

 

Anyway, don't want to get too sales-y on here or anything! Feel free to DM if you'd like more info

This seems very promising.  I'm going to have to do some looking and see if I can put something together and see if he has this in the budget.  One thing that I have never figured out how to do, though is create an array in FreeNAS that will allow me to add more hard drives without having to wipe out all existing data and making a new array.  Is this even an option or is this just not an option?

[Godlygamer23]

Moved to Storage Solutions.

[Blake]

A FreeNas Server

Buzzwords.

 

Seriously, does OP want to support this thing for the next 10/20 years? Answer is going to be no. maybe at first, he'll be fine with it, but this is family we are talking about. which leads me to:

 

 

Hello,

I'm trying to put together a backup NAS for my father, who is a photographer/videographer.  He's currently got a Drobo 5N on his desk that he uses for storing his 10 TB+ and growing collection of photos and videos, an iMac with a 1 TB hard drive, a Mac Mini (not sure of the hard drive in there), and an assortment of other external hard drives that need to be backed up.  I built him a small NAS a few years back, which he has quickly outgrown and we need a better solution. 

 

Easiest will be a Mac mini server, with some direct attached storage (Depends on the speed he is after, go Thunderbolt or USB). If he has any issues? Tell him to call someone that cares (i.e. apple care).

 

You could also look at the windows side, with storage spaces, however apple is pretty rubbish with SMB support.

 

Seeing as you have the technical knowledge to install FreeNAS, you should be able to install ESXi, then you could just thin provision the freenas disks, and tell it, that it has 128PB of space. and add disks as needed, but this is another one of thous things, esxi is an enterprise tool, and you should be getting paid to deal with it.

[TheGeeker]

Buzzwords.

 

Seriously, does OP want to support this thing for the next 10/20 years? Answer is going to be no. maybe at first, he'll be fine with it, but this is family we are talking about. which leads me to:

 

 

 

Easiest will be a Mac mini server, with some direct attached storage (Depends on the speed he is after, go Thunderbolt or USB). If he has any issues? Tell him to call someone that cares (i.e. apple care).

 

You could also look at the windows side, with storage spaces, however apple is pretty rubbish with SMB support.

 

Seeing as you have the technical knowledge to install FreeNAS, you should be able to install ESXi, then you could just thin provision the freenas disks, and tell it, that it has 128PB of space. and add disks as needed, but this is another one of thous things, esxi is an enterprise tool, and you should be getting paid to deal with it.

 

Its not too big of a deal. I manage mine and its been fine. No issues so far and it works great. I would use it for customizability but its certainly not the most "user friendly" 

[45Drives]

We are currently using a FreeNAS server, but it's not easy enough to add hard drives to it to get more space, and I would need some recommendations for hardware, particularly raid card and case capable of holding large numbers of hard drives that isn't going to cost more than the rest of the project.

 

 

This seems very promising.  I'm going to have to do some looking and see if I can put something together and see if he has this in the budget.  One thing that I have never figured out how to do, though is create an array in FreeNAS that will allow me to add more hard drives without having to wipe out all existing data and making a new array.  Is this even an option or is this just not an option?

 

Here's what Brett on our R&D team confirmed:

 

"You can add more capacity in FreeNAS but you technically can't add more disks to the pool you have to add VDEVs.

Depending on your initial pool configuration, if you made a 42 disk RAIDZ2 (1VDEV of 42 disks) to add more capacity to this pool, your new VDEV has to be the same size, therefore you would need to add 42 more disks, resulting in 2 VDEVs of 42 disks for a total of a 84 disk RAIDZ2.

However, if you arranged your drives so you had multiple smaller VDEVs, it would much easier to add more disks into the system. For example, instead of the 1 VDEV of 42 disks mentioned above, you have 6 VDEVs of 7 drives. Same amount of disks, just a different config, however this allows you to only have to add 7 more drives to extend your pool rather than  42 like the example above.

In the case of a 20-disk RAID 10 (stripe of mirrors) you have 10VDEVS of 2 disks. Therefore to add more drives you only need to add them in groups of 2.

The trick with adding space to your FreeNAS pool is to plan ahead. If you know you want add more disks down the road, arrange your pool in such a way you can add the proper amount space with ease."

 

Brett also weighed on the option to add additional drives after the fact on Rockstor, another NAS OS we offer:

"Btrfs RAID has the ability to add drives in on the fly and btrfs will even the distribution of data across the volume as disks are added dynamically. You do not need to follow the same limitations of FreeNAS and ZFS."

 

Let me know if you have any other questions