Phillips2010

Thanks for this. What OS do you use for your servers and what was the basis behind this? I agree noise is not a big concern. The fans from my current 4 raid enclosures is audiable but I have got use to them. And as you highlight from your 40db server, Enterprise doesn’t automatically mean loud. I am in a fully Apple environment and happy to use AFP but surprisingly have found SMB to be more reliable with my Mac Mini. I currently use Backblaze as my cloud backup which has 26TB backed up. It took a couple of months on my fibre connection to do the initial backup but incremental backups appear to happen no problem. If I was to build a second server for offsite backup I would do the initial backup onsite over the local network for exactly the issue you highlight. as you have pointed out building my own server to run unraid or another OS can be done and I will enjoy setting everything up. What would start to frustrate me is trying to debug for several hours if something did go wrong. But given the amount of data I want to store, backup and use is NAS viable.

I am happy to take the time to build and configure the system. I’d prefer to do this with a nice GUI, as while I can use a terminal anything beyond basic install and configuration will require some self help guides. Mixing and matching hard drive capacities is a key here. The drives I have work and while going forwards I will need more capacity, I want to continue to use the drives I’ve already invested in. I envision a mix of 10TB, 6TB and 4TB drives, phasing out the smaller drive sizes as drive size increases and data costs come down. The number of parity drives the system has is less important to me as long as parity is in place whether this be Raid5 or 6 or greater. Going forwards I am looking at having 5 storage pools but to maximise value I think it would make sense to have a massive array which is split by the OS

Thank you for the suggestions. And my mistake. Alpha, Beta and Gamma drives should have read Raid5. I am not that mad. I’ll take a look at Synology NAS as you are both suggesting this is the best route to go. still welcome additional comments. thank you. Ben

Hello, I am Ben, new to these forums and I am looking to upgrade my home server but looking for advice. My server is used as a samba file share for my iMac and MacBook Air as well as a Plex Media Server for the family. My current set up is a 2014 Mac Mini running macOS High Sierra. It has 4GB of RAM and a a 1.4GHz 5 processor. Through USB connection are storage drives: Alpha - RAID 5 enclosure with 4 x 6TB hard drive (18TB usable space) - day to day files and photo library Beta - RAID 5 enclosure with 4 x 6TB hard drive (18TB usable space) - archived files, used less often but still need to keep Gamma - RAID 5 enclosure with 4 x 4TB hard drive (12TB usable space) - Plex media Zaxira - WD MyBook with 2 x 3TB hard drives in Raid (6TB usable space) - TimeMachine backups for Mac Mini and other Macs on network This gives total usable space of 54TB of which I am utilising 31.5TB across all the drives. There are a mix of file sizes and types but the majority of space is used by large video files. My photos library is 800GB and there are also several Final Cut Projects. These drives are shared over gigabit internet through my local network. For my iMac which is my main computer which I work on from home I have a thunderbolt cable connected between the iMac and the Mac Mini. This enables me to connect to the Mac Mini directly and achieve write speeds of upto 250MB/s and read speeds of upto 350MB/s. The Mac Mini is backed up to the cloud with Backblaze personal account. I love this service as I get truly unlimited file backup for a fixed fee. The system works great except the Mac often has file permission issues and I have to go onto the Mac Mini to correct this to enable me to create folders, rename files or move files from my iMac or MacBook Air. I am also running out of physical space, USB points and wall power sockets to add additional raid enclosures when needed. What am I hoping to achieve? I would like to consolidate the hardware - ideally into a server rack. I am unsure on operating system - I am thinking UnRaid but that could be because I have seen it work successfully for LTT. It needs to resolve the file permission issue and have a primarily GUI interface - I can cope with the occasional coding. I have also had bad experiences with Windows storage pools so would like to avoid this. I want to be able to use a mix match of drive sizes and manufacturers. My plan is to reuse the 3.5" drives from this build and add some additional larger drives. The system needs the ability to add drives as time goes on without having to rebuild the array. The OS needs to be able to run the Plex Media Server. Either directly on the OS or in a VM. There needs to be an offsite backup solution. I realise Backblaze personal only works on macOS and Windows. Either an affordable cloud storage provider or looking to build a second backup server to put in the server room at work. Not sure if the Duplicati docker would be good in this scenario? (the initial backup would be done over the local network) Gigabit or ideally 10GbE. Keeping my thunderbolt direct link would be great if I could get it to work. How you can help? I ask the LTT community if you are able to advise on: The most suitable OS to use based on my needs above. Recommendations for hardware enclosures Recommendation on hardware components including processor and amount of memory I am happy to use ex-enterprise gear or self build depending on what you all believe is best. I thank you in advance for your contributions. If you need any further information on my plans please ask.