New Sever for 2020

[THAFOOL]

So I currently have 16TB attached directly to my computer and am looking to remove theses and making a stand alone media storage sever with a RAID back up. Plan is to have an 8 drive setup. Looking for some help selecting CPU, Software, and what type of RAID I would need for data redundancy. Looking for some help with this.

[LIGISTX]

7 minutes ago, THAFOOL said:

So I currently have 16TB attached directly to my computer and am looking to remove theses and making a stand alone media storage sever with a RAID back up. Plan is to have an 8 drive setup. Looking for some help selecting CPU, Software, and what type of RAID I would need for data redundancy. Looking for some help with this.

RAID is a great tool, but, the first rule of RAID is; RAID IS NOT A BACKUP.

 

The second rule is, you guessed it; RAID IS NOT A BACKUP.

 

Now that thats out of the way, we can get rule 3; RAID IS NOT A BACKUP. lol, sorry, had too...

 

But ok, on a more serious note, what are the needs for this system? How many users, what sort of data, and how "involved" do you want it to be? I very much enjoy my freenas solution, but its not "the most simple" thing in the world. It runs on ZFS which is an extremely resilient filesystem that is used in the enterprise space, but ZFS is not easy to run. You need a solid amount of RAM to run it, and preferably it would be ECC. ECC is not strictly required, but depending on the use case, it could be a good idea.

 

Onto the level of redundancy, I run Z2, and most folk would likely suggest this. Z2 is equivalent to what RAID 6 would be in hardware, but Z2 is the software equivalent. Some run Z3, but I would highly advise against Z1 (RAID 5). Z1 (RAID 5) uses a single drive for redundancy, but due to the large size of drives which increase rebuild time, and large amounts of data we have these days, and the fact that harddrives are "relatively cheap", running Z1 doesn't make much sense. Statistically speaking, there is a non-trivial chance if you lose a single drive, while you are doing a rebuilt, another drive can die, or one of the other drives will read a data block wrong and that would cause whatever file it read wrong to be corrupted. This is why Z2 is more desirable, it just gives you another layer of protection.

 

All of this said, freenas may not be the right choice for you. I built my homelab/nas for about ~1700-2000 all in, but that included 10x4TB WD reds, which at the time were about 130 a piece. The hardware is all in my sig if you are curious. Unraid is a different approach, and you can even run such a machine on windows, or ubuntu, hell, ubuntu even supports ZFS out of the box now iirc.

 

There are many avenues you could take, I hope some of these ideas will help get you in the right direction. And as far as CPU goes, you don't need much at all. I have ~7 VM's running on my i3, 4 are ubuntu, 1 is freenas, 1 is Windows LTSC, and 1 is a VM for my battery backups automation stuff. And this machine can run all of those things, and do 2-3 plex transcodes at once from 1080 to 720, or 1 4k to 720. For my needs, since I am the only real user, that is more than sufficient. FreeNAS has 16 GB of RAM (which is the lowest I would recommend as ZFS will hate itself with less), 2 GB to the Windows VM, and an assorted amount to the ubuntu VM's depending what they are for.

 

Like I said, lots of info out there, many different ways to tackle this. My example is likely not what your after, but it gives you an idea of what is possible. Also, i3's do support ECC ram, which is very convenient. Ryzen does as well, but I don't think the server hardware support is quite up to where intel's is. Hopefully it will get there, because I would certainly switch to a mid tier Ryzen machine for my use case over a Xeon!

[THAFOOL]

To start I now understand RAID IS NOT A BACKUP. 

 

Thank you for the thought reply you have given me some ideas on what to run. For the use case I am looking to make this into a media storage server with 1 to 2 users on it. I am willing to put some effort into maintaining but do not want it to be a consistent problem. I am looking to put at least 32 GB of RAM if not 64 GB in. My plan is to have 6 8TB WD red drives in it with an NVME ssd for a boot drive. Any reccomendations on a NIC. I see you have a SAS Expander would I need one for my set up.

 

 

Here is the motherboard/CPU combo I am looking at.

https://www.newegg.com/asrock-rack-x470d4u-amd-ryzen-2nd-generation-series-processors/p/N82E16813140023

https://www.newegg.com/amd-ryzen-5-3600x/p/N82E16819113568

 

Thank  You.

[NelizMastr]

5 hours ago, THAFOOL said:

To start I now understand RAID IS NOT A BACKUP. 

 

Thank you for the thought reply you have given me some ideas on what to run. For the use case I am looking to make this into a media storage server with 1 to 2 users on it. I am willing to put some effort into maintaining but do not want it to be a consistent problem. I am looking to put at least 32 GB of RAM if not 64 GB in. My plan is to have 6 8TB WD red drives in it with an NVME ssd for a boot drive. Any reccomendations on a NIC. I see you have a SAS Expander would I need one for my set up.

 

 

Here is the motherboard/CPU combo I am looking at.

https://www.newegg.com/asrock-rack-x470d4u-amd-ryzen-2nd-generation-series-processors/p/N82E16813140023

https://www.newegg.com/amd-ryzen-5-3600x/p/N82E16819113568

 

Thank  You.

If you go the consumer components route, I wouldn't pick a 3rd gen Ryzen with a 400-series chipset without verifying the BIOS is Ryzen 3000 ready.

In terms of efficiency and raw power, if this is a NAS, you really don't need a hungry 3600X. Might as well go for a 2200G.

 

That board already has 2 gigabit LAN ports, which should be sufficient. It also has 6 SATA ports, which is just barely enough. Get a HBA like the LSI 9211-8i if you ever want more disks. Each SAS port handles 4 SATA disks.

[Jarsky]

FYI that board does have Ryzen 3000 support since Bios 3.10 according to this: https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=X470D4U#CPU

Only 6 of the SATA ports belong to the same controller for RAID, but assume you're going software so you'll have 8 SATA ports to work with. 

 

The board also has a built in graphics chip, so you don't need a G series SKU, but as NelizMastr pointed out, you may not need a CPU that powerful. 

Are you going to be running Plex/Emby and doing transcoding from the server? If so you might want to consider this article which talks about Transcoding ft. CPU Passmark score: https://support.plex.tv/articles/201774043-what-kind-of-cpu-do-i-need-for-my-server/

 

As for HBA/SAS Card, as long as whatever OS you run supports the SATA controller, then not necessary to go an HBA. 

HBA's are especially handy though in builds that are being virtualised as you can easily pass the controller to a VM and have it manage the drives. 

 

 

[THAFOOL]

Thank you all for the help.