NeedlessBird

Thanks so much for the recommendations, my boss gave me the go ahead for Storage Spaces.

Hows the reliability and ease of setup?

I'll talk to my boss about it and see what he thinks. Just reading briefly tho it seems like it would work great for our purpose. Do you know what kind of data protection/redundancy Storage Spaced has? If we had a motheboard failure and needed to replace it, would we be able to rebuild the storage with Storage Spaces?

Cheap was the primary goal for this server

I'll attach a PCpartpicker list with the system specs. We are using an m.2 nvme SSD for the boot drive. I'd like to keep it as close to $100 USD as possible but if that's not possible whatever the cheapest you'd recommend works too. https://pcpartpicker.com/user/NeedlessFoal/saved/CRncYJ

So I work at a university bookstore and we are in the process of replacing our old network storage server with a new box. The box is already built but I was having issues with the RAID card we purchased for the build. Long story short I bricked the card trying to flash the IR firmware onto it. We're going to send this back to the vendor for a replacement but before we do I figured we should investigate some other solutions. We originally purchased this: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIADP08PP6440 as it supports RAID 1E (we have 3 2tb drivers for this server) and this fits our use case. Do any of you have recommendations for a hardware raid card? In another post I was told that the card we purchased wasn't great for RAID use. Should we just get another of the same card or should we get a refund and get a different raid controller. Many thanks in advance! ~Connor J. Edling, CpE

Nah, the hardware raid is a requirement. They're planning on using this server as is for probably 10 years (we're using consumer grade equiptment tho so who knows if that'll actually happen). Do you have any recommendations on hardware raid cards? The only requirements i have for it would be at least 3 SATA ports and support for RAID 1E

My boss wants hardware RAID. At this point I'm concerned that I may have bricked the card so we may need to RMA and get a replacement sent out. I preformed the Flash wipe using sas2flsh but i couldn't flash the new firmware because of UEFI incompatibility.

We are in the process of setting up a new NAS server at work and the LSI00192 (https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIADP08PP6440) card we purchased came with the IT firmware. I've finally found a machine here that has an EFI shell. I tried to flash but it complains about the NVDATA image not matching the Controller Device ID. This card is the 9212-4i4e card and the only firmware I could find was for the 9211-4i card. Does anyone know if I'm missing a step or where I could find the firmware for the 9212-4i4e varient? All the links I can find for the firmware are dead and as far as I can tell Broadcom doesn't have the files I need. Many thanks in advance! I'll attach a screen shot from the EFI shell for context.

Something similar to the Windows Update cache that LTT uses. I was thinking used stuff but for the proposal I'd like to stick with new hardware.

A lot of the machines we have in store are custom from a local company here in MT. The real big M.O. here is to get all of our machines for as cheap as possible (that sounds bad on the surface but we rarely have any hardware failures or general issues). We are on the university domain with our own dedicated IP range (our network is separate from the rest of the university but is routed through the data center on campus). I don't really think a HW raid controller is necessary as the file server is just hosting documents and files need throughout the book store. It would be nice to have so we can host the server as a cache for Windows. I'll look into a dedicated NAS box (even though that is much less fun). Thanks for your reply!!

I am the IT technician for my university's bookstore and after a recent security server upgrade we have three NAS grade 2Tb hard drives lying around. We are planning on replacing our current network storage solution (an archaic windows XP machine) with a more modern NAS style device. I'm putting together a proposal for my boss and I want t present him with three options. 1.) An ultra low cost (either Intel or AMD) option with software raid. 2.) A Medium cost machine (either Intel or AMD) option with either software raid or an LSI controller and 3.) A high cost option (again Intel or AMD is fine) using a hardware raid controller. From my preliminary research, machines using Intel Celerons work great as low cost NAS. I've put together a (very tentative) list here as a low cost option: PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant Type Item Price CPU Intel - Celeron G4900 3.1 GHz Dual-Core Processor $54.99 @ B&H Motherboard Asus - PRIME H310M-D Micro ATX LGA1151 Motherboard $64.14 @ B&H Memory G.Skill - Aegis 8 GB (1 x 8 GB) DDR4-2666 Memory $44.89 @ OutletPC Case Corsair - 200R ATX Mid Tower Case $65.99 @ Amazon Power Supply EVGA - SuperNOVA G3 550 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully-Modular ATX Power Supply $65.88 @ OutletPC Operating System Microsoft - Windows 10 Pro OEM 64-bit $114.39 @ OutletPC Other LSI Raid Controller $139.10 Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts Total (before mail-in rebates) $594.38 Mail-in rebates -$45.00 Total $549.38 Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-02-27 14:10 EST-0500 The LSI controller is just there so I don't loose the link. For the medium and high cost builds I'd also like to set it up as a cache server for windows updates. I still have to research the details on that, but what hardware is recommended for a cache server that also acts like a NAS. Our internal networking is only 100BASE so high performance is not super crucial. A big thing here at our bookstore is making out machines last well into end of life so reliability is key. Many of the machines we have in the store are well over 6 years old but still work great for production. In summary, what general hardware is recommended for a NAS server/cache server and what are good options for software. The only real requirement I've been given is we need to run some version of Windows (either 10 Pro or a Server edition). Thanks in advance everyone, I cant wait to see your recommendations!

Giveaways from everywhere!

I've been watching your videos for easily two years now. LTT has helped me not only build my own computers but also my time as a system integrator. Thanks you guys for all your hard work and excellent videos.

The micro sd card slot is easily my favorite feature.