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16TB Storage Server parts list:

Nemockulous
By Nemockulous
in Storage Devices
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I'm building my parts list for a storage server that will end up as 16TB. The goal is to host media as well as system backups.
 

Budget: ~$2,000

Drives: 6, expandable to 10-12 a plus

Starting config: 6x 4TB OR 8x 3TB NAS drives in RAID 6 (total of 16TB usable) either:
-----HGST Deskstar (front runner because of 7200 RPM, unless someone can make a case otherwise)

-----WD Red

 

The goal is to create a system with FreeNAS, and allow it to stream media via PLEX. I'm not familiar enough with this market space to confidently choose the pieces I'll need to finish this build. I understand I'll want a RAID card, and 16GB RAM to drive the 16TB storage RAID, but beyond that I'm ignorant on what I actually need parts wise.
 

Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.

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Do you want rackvmoutable or standalone?

@captainwd and HDD recommendations?

 

Standalone. Don't have a rack.

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16TB is just a theoretical number.  I should have 24TB from my 8x 4TB in RAIDZ2 and I only have 19.9 due to ZFS overhead.  

 

You don't want a RAID card, you'll want an HBA.  A RAID card will prevent Freenas from doing its software RAID.  An HBA passes through all the drives as individual disks, meaning that Freenas can do its magic.

 

 

 

As for the case againt the HGST : They're just as good as the WD Reds. 

 

That being said, my Reds did 150MB/s as individual drives when I burned them in on my main PC (burn-in = making the drive suffer for a day or 2.  If it survives that, it should be good for years). 

As an 8-disk RAIDZ2 pool I have no idea how fast they are because my gigabit network is limiting the speed to 125MB/s when reading as well as writing.  So any performance benefit from 7200RPM over 5400 is non-existant unless you have the network speed to benefit from whatever data transfer speed your NAS can dish out.

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CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£177.95 @ Amazon UK) 


Motherboard: ASRock Z97 EXTREME6 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  (£134.94 @ Amazon UK) 

Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  (£31.71 @ Amazon UK) 









Total: £1267.83

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-10-09 20:12 BST+0100

 

 

 

Here she is not sure about raid cards as thats not my thing so yeah. Ask me is you don't understand anything.

 

 

 

 

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I'm building my parts list for a storage server that will end up as 16TB. The goal is to host media as well as system backups.

 

Budget: ~$2,000

Drives: 6, expandable to 10-12 a plus

Starting config: 6x 4TB OR 8x 3TB NAS drives in RAID 6 (total of 16TB usable) either:

-----HGST Deskstar (front runner because of 7200 RPM, unless someone can make a case otherwise)

-----WD Red

 

The goal is to create a system with FreeNAS, and allow it to stream media via PLEX. I'm not familiar enough with this market space to confidently choose the pieces I'll need to finish this build. I understand I'll want a RAID card, and 16GB RAM to drive the 16TB storage RAID, but beyond that I'm ignorant on what I actually need parts wise.

 

Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.

 

Why not just get Barracudas? I am running them in my 10 TB storage array with 5 2TB drives and has been fine for the last year or so

Pls Follow your own posts!      Chief Engineer for my School Studio, Own my own Home Studio also. I also do requests for Remixing songs too :D Storage Server: Mobo: Supermicro X8SIA-F Case: Some Supermicro 1U case Drives: 3x 2TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM drives, 1x 3TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM CPU: Intel Xeon X3430 2.4GHz Ram: 2x Kingston ECC 2GB sticks

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CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£177.95 @ Amazon UK) 
Motherboard: ASRock Z97 EXTREME6 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  (£134.94 @ Amazon UK) 
Memory: Crucial 8GB (1 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  (£31.71 @ Amazon UK) 
Total: £1267.83
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-10-09 20:12 BST+0100
 
 
 
Here she is not sure about raid cards as thats not my thing so yeah. Ask me is you don't understand anything.

 

 

I agree with the Define R5, Quiet, Lots of drive bays.

Pls Follow your own posts!      Chief Engineer for my School Studio, Own my own Home Studio also. I also do requests for Remixing songs too :D Storage Server: Mobo: Supermicro X8SIA-F Case: Some Supermicro 1U case Drives: 3x 2TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM drives, 1x 3TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM CPU: Intel Xeon X3430 2.4GHz Ram: 2x Kingston ECC 2GB sticks

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16TB is just a theoretical number.  I should have 24TB from my 8x 4TB in RAIDZ2 and I only have 19.9 due to ZFS overhead.  

 

You don't want a RAID card, you'll want an HBA.  A RAID card will prevent Freenas from doing its software RAID.  An HBA passes through all the drives as individual disks, meaning that Freenas can do its magic.

 

 

 

As for the case againt the HGST : They're just as good as the WD Reds. 

 

That being said, my Reds did 150MB/s as individual drives when I burned them in on my main PC (burn-in = making the drive suffer for a day or 2.  If it survives that, it should be good for years). 

As an 8-disk RAIDZ2 pool I have no idea how fast they are because my gigabit network is limiting the speed to 125MB/s when reading as well as writing.  So any performance benefit from 7200RPM over 5400 is non-existant unless you have the network speed to benefit from whatever data transfer speed your NAS can dish out.

 

HBA similar to this? : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118142

 

Yea, I understood there's overhead, makes sense. Can you explain the process behind a burn-in? is there specific software you use for this or? And I guess I didn't really register that the bottleneck will likely be the network adapter / overall network performance. I might, however, end up with equipment to facilitate faster than 1 gbps, I might have some older hardware from my cousin I can snag (he's a network admin) so it might be worth looking at options for a 10gig adaptor.

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CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£177.95 @ Amazon UK) 


Motherboard: ASRock Z97 EXTREME6 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  (£125.71 @ More Computers) 

Memory: Corsair Vengeance LP 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  (£135.66 @ More Computers) 

Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£125.28 @ Scan.co.uk) 

Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£125.28 @ Scan.co.uk) 

Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£125.28 @ Scan.co.uk) 

Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£125.28 @ Scan.co.uk) 

Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£125.28 @ Scan.co.uk) 

Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£125.28 @ Scan.co.uk) 

Case: Fractal Design Define R5 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case  (£77.99 @ CCL Computers) 


Total: £1357.28

Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available

Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-10-09 20:26 BST+0100

 

I had to add more ram to the parts list @beach_boy98 With ZFS you need 1GB of ram per TB and 8 GB of base ram

Pls Follow your own posts!      Chief Engineer for my School Studio, Own my own Home Studio also. I also do requests for Remixing songs too :D Storage Server: Mobo: Supermicro X8SIA-F Case: Some Supermicro 1U case Drives: 3x 2TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM drives, 1x 3TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM CPU: Intel Xeon X3430 2.4GHz Ram: 2x Kingston ECC 2GB sticks

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CPU: Intel Core i5-4690K 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor  (£177.95 @ Amazon UK) 
Motherboard: ASRock Z97 EXTREME6 ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  (£125.71 @ More Computers) 
Memory: Corsair Vengeance LP 32GB (4 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  (£135.66 @ More Computers) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£125.28 @ Scan.co.uk) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£125.28 @ Scan.co.uk) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£125.28 @ Scan.co.uk) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£125.28 @ Scan.co.uk) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£125.28 @ Scan.co.uk) 
Storage: Western Digital Red 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive  (£125.28 @ Scan.co.uk) 
Case: Fractal Design Define R5 (Black) ATX Mid Tower Case  (£77.99 @ CCL Computers) 
Total: £1357.28
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-10-09 20:26 BST+0100
 
I had to add more ram to the parts list @beach_boy98 With ZFS you need 1GB of ram per TB and 8 GB of base ram

 

Ah oh ok thanks for letting me know :)

 

 

 

 

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Why not just get Barracudas? I am running them in my 10 TB storage array with 5 2TB drives and has been fine for the last year or so

 

Simple. I've had nothing but bad experiences with seagates. Always get failed drives, whereas I've yet to get a failed WD drive.

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Simple. I've had nothing but bad experiences with seagates. Always get failed drives, whereas I've yet to get a failed WD drive.

 

Hmm, Alright. Makes sense :)

Pls Follow your own posts!      Chief Engineer for my School Studio, Own my own Home Studio also. I also do requests for Remixing songs too :D Storage Server: Mobo: Supermicro X8SIA-F Case: Some Supermicro 1U case Drives: 3x 2TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM drives, 1x 3TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM CPU: Intel Xeon X3430 2.4GHz Ram: 2x Kingston ECC 2GB sticks

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Ah oh ok thanks for letting me know :)

 

ZFS Eats ram for breakfast lunch and dinner lol

Pls Follow your own posts!      Chief Engineer for my School Studio, Own my own Home Studio also. I also do requests for Remixing songs too :D Storage Server: Mobo: Supermicro X8SIA-F Case: Some Supermicro 1U case Drives: 3x 2TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM drives, 1x 3TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM CPU: Intel Xeon X3430 2.4GHz Ram: 2x Kingston ECC 2GB sticks

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While it's true that Freenas eats RAM, I'm running 32.5TB (20.something usable) on 16GB and have had zero issues with that since the day I built it.  That being said, I do plan to add more RAM just to be on the safe side.

 

As for the list above, the i5-4690K is not exactly my choice.  There's no point in overclocking a NAS, so a K is just a waste of money really. 

 

Also, do consider going for a motherboard, RAM and a CPU that support ECC.  Whilst not that important for a gaming PC or an office PC, for a NAS that's running 24/7 the error correction can come in handy and improve stability.

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While it's true that Freenas eats RAM, I'm running 32.5TB (20.something usable) on 16GB and have had zero issues with that since the day I built it.  That being said, I do plan to add more RAM just to be on the safe side.

 

As for the list above, the i5-4690K is not exactly my choice.  There's no point in overclocking a NAS, so a K is just a waste of money really. 

 

Also, do consider going for a motherboard, RAM and a CPU that support ECC.  Whilst not that important for a gaming PC or an office PC, for a NAS that's running 24/7 the error correction can come in handy and improve stability.

 

 
 

ECC ram is NEVER worth it for a consumer. 99.99999999% of the time it won't matter. So no unless 500 dollars is worth .000001% of the time event's don't buy it.

 

 

I'm still unsure. This is one of those issues where it's difficult to get all the information straight because so many people are saying so many different things. 

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I'm still unsure. This is one of those issues where it's difficult to get all the information straight because so many people are saying so many different things. 

 

 

I run ECC ram in my servers/ Nas boxes and it isn't much more expensive mayber like $.50 per GB more expensive. But it isn't 100% necessary.

Pls Follow your own posts!      Chief Engineer for my School Studio, Own my own Home Studio also. I also do requests for Remixing songs too :D Storage Server: Mobo: Supermicro X8SIA-F Case: Some Supermicro 1U case Drives: 3x 2TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM drives, 1x 3TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM CPU: Intel Xeon X3430 2.4GHz Ram: 2x Kingston ECC 2GB sticks

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I run ECC ram in my servers/ Nas boxes and it isn't much more expensive mayber like $.50 per GB more expensive. But it isn't 100% necessary.

 

But you then must have compatible Mobo / CPU yes?

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But you then must have compatible Mobo / CPU yes?

 

Yep, One sec and I can whip you up a Parts list that can use ECC

Pls Follow your own posts!      Chief Engineer for my School Studio, Own my own Home Studio also. I also do requests for Remixing songs too :D Storage Server: Mobo: Supermicro X8SIA-F Case: Some Supermicro 1U case Drives: 3x 2TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM drives, 1x 3TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM CPU: Intel Xeon X3430 2.4GHz Ram: 2x Kingston ECC 2GB sticks

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But you then must have compatible Mobo / CPU yes?

 

http://pcpartpicker.com/p/xky8NG This includes ECC ram and all the hardware to support it I would use this if I didn't have a Rack-mounted Server

Pls Follow your own posts!      Chief Engineer for my School Studio, Own my own Home Studio also. I also do requests for Remixing songs too :D Storage Server: Mobo: Supermicro X8SIA-F Case: Some Supermicro 1U case Drives: 3x 2TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM drives, 1x 3TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM CPU: Intel Xeon X3430 2.4GHz Ram: 2x Kingston ECC 2GB sticks

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Is there a major reason for WD Red Pros vs regular Reds?

 

Pro's are 7300 RPM drives

Pls Follow your own posts!      Chief Engineer for my School Studio, Own my own Home Studio also. I also do requests for Remixing songs too :D Storage Server: Mobo: Supermicro X8SIA-F Case: Some Supermicro 1U case Drives: 3x 2TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM drives, 1x 3TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM CPU: Intel Xeon X3430 2.4GHz Ram: 2x Kingston ECC 2GB sticks

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~snip~

 

Hey there Nemockulous,
 
The guys gave you some really good recommendations and comments on what you are building. :)
Do have in mind that WD Red are designed for pools with up to 8 drives in them. They should work, but you might be better off going for WD Red Pro as they are designed and tuned for pools with up to 16 drives. They are more costly, but deliver more performance and should work safer in larger pools. Here's a link: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=KqmBUZ
Using ECC memory is a huge plus for safety but it indeed needs a motherboard and a CPU that support this.
I'd also make sure the case that you are using has enough space for all the drives and cables and still has enough room for good airflow.
Feel free to ask if you happen to have any additional questions or if there's something else that I can help with :)
 
Captain_WD.

If this helped you, like and choose it as best answer - you might help someone else with the same issue. ^_^
WDC Representative, http://www.wdc.com/ 

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Hey there Nemockulous,
 
The guys gave you some really good recommendations and comments on what you are building. :)
Do have in mind that WD Red are designed for pools with up to 8 drives in them. They should work, but you might be better off going for WD Red Pro as they are designed and tuned for pools with up to 16 drives. They are more costly, but deliver more performance and should work safer in larger pools. Here's a link: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=KqmBUZ
Using ECC memory is a huge plus for safety but it indeed needs a motherboard and a CPU that support this.
I'd also make sure the case that you are using has enough space for all the drives and cables and still has enough room for good airflow.
Feel free to ask if you happen to have any additional questions or if there's something else that I can help with :)
 
Captain_WD.

 

 

I'm not intending at this time to have a pool greater than 8 drives. I'm thinking an 8 drive pool will more than suffice what my needs are currently, and for a large time in the future. 

I appreciate all the comments thus far, and I'm digesting the information during my busy next few weeks. I'll post back what my plans are ultimately for the build to confirm what I'm planning is compatible, and will function well. 

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I'm building my parts list for a storage server that will end up as 16TB. The goal is to host media as well as system backups.

 

Budget: ~$2,000

Drives: 6, expandable to 10-12 a plus

Starting config: 6x 4TB OR 8x 3TB NAS drives in RAID 6 (total of 16TB usable) either:

-----HGST Deskstar (front runner because of 7200 RPM, unless someone can make a case otherwise)

-----WD Red

 

The goal is to create a system with FreeNAS, and allow it to stream media via PLEX. I'm not familiar enough with this market space to confidently choose the pieces I'll need to finish this build. I understand I'll want a RAID card, and 16GB RAM to drive the 16TB storage RAID, but beyond that I'm ignorant on what I actually need parts wise.

 

Thanks in advance for any advice you can offer.

How many users streaming media at one time? What quality of media will you be streaming, and will it be transcoded? If you don't have much of a media need, you can get away with a really inexpensive CPU, and put that money towards better storage.

 

Do you need 10 gigabit connections? How much storage do you estimate you'll need a few years from now? How many drive failures do you want to be able to withstand?

 

Do you want good value for your money, or do you want overkill?

 

I would recommend avoiding a dedicated HBA add-in card unless you are up for doing compatibility research -- it adds unknowns in terms of compatibility with motherboards. If you do, I'd recommend the LSI 9207-8i as a starting point, because it doesn't need any firmware flashing to be fully compatible with FreeNAS.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason and intellect has intended us to forgo their use, and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them. - Galileo Galilei
Build Logs: Tophat (in progress), DNAF | Useful Links: How To: Choosing Your Storage Devices and Configuration, Case Study: RAID Tolerance to Failure, Reducing Single Points of Failure in Redundant Storage , Why Choose an SSD?, ZFS From A to Z (Eric1024), Advanced RAID: Survival Rates, Flashing LSI RAID Cards (alpenwasser), SAN and Storage Networking

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