Some Help With Components For Building Nas

[Scia]

Hi,

I recently thought about building a NAS.

I've been planing on using "freeNAS" os and 4-6 HDDs Raid 1.

Now I am not sure what kind of CPU / Mobo I should consider, since I tend to over do it :P

I know I need atleast 4gb of RAM ^^

 

Any idea on CPU / Mobo and Perhaps PSU  [Was thinking 400ish].

 

Any help was greatly appreciated!

TY

Scia

[Eric1024]

First of all, you shouldn't do raid 1 with 4-6 drives. Raid just mirrors your data across all drives so you'll only end up with one drive worth of space. Depending on the importance of your data and weather or not you have it backed up somewhere else, I would use some form of software raid with striping and single or dual parity (raid 5 or 6, or raid Z or Z2). OR you could do something weird like a JBOD array of 3 disks, with the entire array mirrored to another JBOD array of 3 disks if you want ridiculous fault tolerance. Anyway though onto the build.

 

I don't know your budget so I'm going to make this budget friendly but if you want to go crazy be my guest :P

 

CPU: For a nas, you're not going to need more than a dual core. If you want to go intel, just pick up a cheep Ivy Bridge Celeron G1610, or if you want to go AMD pick up a trinity A4 5300 APU, both for around 50$. Alternatively you could pick up something like a used AMD Athlon II x2 for 10$ or so on ebay.

 

Case: NZXT source 210. 8 drive cages, good build quality, atx mid-tower, available in black or white. and only 40$. Bam, no contest. (But really, it's just a suggestion, case is totally up to the buyer :P )

 

Mobo: Just grab anything cheep. Without exaggeration, the cheapest board you can find on newegg is probably your best bet unless there's a bunch of features that you want.

 

Ram: As with the mobo, just get a cheep 4gb stick of 1333 or 1600 ram.

 

PSU: Okay, I would definitely spend a little more money here, since it's going to be on 24/7. Look for a gold or platinum unit (if you plan on using this for more than a year or two, the extra you spend on a gold/platinum unit WILL save you money in the long run, especially if you live somewhere where electricity is expensive. I'm a bit paranoid when it comes to PSU's, but I'd get one of these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817151097

 

Hope that helps (: and I can go into more specifics/answer more questions if you want me to.

 

Also, the only reason I link to newegg is because I find it easy to shop/navigate there. If you find the part elsewhere for cheeper, by all means go for it.

[Tommy]

This is a thread I will be watching...

[Eric1024]

ZFS likes RAM. I heard 1GB per TB is recommended. So make sure to buy a lot of RAM.

Really? I actually didn't know that, that's interesting.

 

And do you mean 1GB per 1TB of actual raw drive space or 1GB per 1TB of formatted space (ie after removing overhead for raid parity/redundancy)

[Scia]

Thx for all your answers :)

 

@Eric:

I know my way around PSUs and that's actually one of the PSUs I have been looking at just not sure about the capacity to go for with a NAS.

 

I'm somewhat confused ^^ I though RAID 1 was 1 data -> 1 mirror so 4 drives give me 2 usable, or am I wrong here? [Have not been doing a lot of research ^^] Cause that will probably do. It's mainly for my Music / Movie database that I have

saved on my Linux and I was very sad if it went to hell ^^

 

As for the Case, I was thinking of something Fractalish, or the Xigmatec Gaia.

 

And thx for the CPU suggestion, I really wasn't sure if that would do or I'd have to buy some FX chip ^^

 

Now what Raid am I looking for when I'm trying to have 1/2 of my disks usable and the other half mirroring? ^^'

 

Mobo I'll find something with enough Sata ports for my needs guess there isn't much other stuff to look out for ^^'

 

And, as for the HDD I thought of WD reds. And, as far as I know there's some mobos that do not like 3TB+ drives, how do I know the Mobo will support em? Many boards somehow do not mention it on the shop / hp of the manufacturer ^^' Or is that software dependant?

 

And no worries about the newegg links, I'm from switzerland, so I'ma check my local suppliers anyways ;P

 

ty ^^

 

Scia

[Eric1024]

@Scia, Raid 1 will just mirror your data across as many drives as you give it. So even if you have 4-6 drives in raid 1, you will only have one drive worth of space but 3-5 drives worth of fault tolerance. 

 

I'm not terrible familiar with the raid options available within freeNAS as I've never used it but I assume it's similar to everything else, but maybe someone else could weigh in on this? There might be a way to do two or three pairs of mirrored disks and then put those virtual disks in JBOD so it looks like one virtual disk, and that would accomplish what you want. Or if that's not possible I'm sure you could just do 2 or 3 mirrored pairs and access them as separate disks.

 

And as far as >2TB drive compatibility, that's really a thing of the past. As long as it's a UEFI motherboard (basically any modern board) with a 64bit os, it will support >2TB drives (source on the uefi info http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Extensible_Firmware_Interface#Disk_device_compatibility)

 

Also, WD reds are a great option. The newegg reviews are stupid; the only reason the drives have bad reviews is that so many people have ordered reds that more people have gotten dead drives. (just because more drive shipped means more dead drives, and people with good drives rarely write reviews) I've got 4x3TB reds in raid 6 and they kick ass (had them for about 6 months or so I think). Just be sure to run some extensive drive health checks when you first get the drives (as with any drive).