Need help building storage server

[notJsons]

I've been a longtime viewer of LTT, up until now I've only built systems for friends and family mostly for gaming. I got this job almost a year ago and since then I've proven my tech experience and built 2 systems for the company.
My boss asked me today to try and find a solution for a backup system since the NAS they're using is getting old, we have about 13tb of use right now with files going back all the way to 2001.
I was thinking about cloud storage but that gets expensive very quickly, so for the past hour I've been trying to find parts online where we could upgrade our hardware and future proof the company a bit. Right now this is what I have:
Rack: 20U Open Rack

Chassis: 2U 8 Bay Chassis

System: i5, 8gb ram, 4x8tb Seastone drives

Switch: 28 port switch

 

Could anyone please give me advice on how not to screw this up, we need the 28 port switch as we have security cameras that use POE, and about 10 computers in the building, right now we have a 24 port that's almost filled up. I want to do raid 1 so I can have 16tb as a backup and 16tb usable but I'm not sure if that will be enough. We don't need anything crazy for speed, we just need something that will be reliable in case something messes up.

I'm not sure to go with a older xeon processor and motherboard or go with the configuration that I have, I'll throw the OS on an extra drive that we have laying around.

[Windows7ge]

I would opt for a Xeon processor and ECC memory, a motherboard that supports IPMI would also be nice.

 

Also RAID is NOT a backup. It is resiliency. Many things can go wrong that destroy a pool and RAID will not protect the data.

[notJsons]

25 minutes ago, Windows7ge said:

I would opt for a Xeon processor and ECC memory, a motherboard that supports IPMI would also be nice.

 

Also RAID is NOT a backup. It is resiliency. Many things can go wrong that destroy a pool and RAID will not protect the data.

I was thinking about going with Xeon and ECC, I'm not too familiar with servers yet so this is a big learning curve to me. How could I get away with having a backup just in case the main one fails? Could I go for 2 1u server's with 4 bays and have one be main storage and the other be backup? This would be running 24/7 and want this to last without any major complications for 5 years.

[Mihle]

Another option than raid that is in my yes safer for your data, is unRAID that use JBOD with parity, and use 2 parity disk's.

JBOD with parity allows you to mix different HDD sizes as long as the party drives are the biggest or same size as the biggest HDDs.

 

With 2 parity disk's 2 disk can fail and all data be safe.

Don't know much about raid 1 really, but in comparison to raid 5 and 6, if 1 disk more than the raid allows to die, dies, everything is lost. But with JBOD with parity, the data on those that is still alive is still fine because no data is striped.

 

It does not have any speed bonuses tho.

[Windows7ge]

1 hour ago, notJsons said:

I was thinking about going with Xeon and ECC, I'm not too familiar with servers yet so this is a big learning curve to me. How could I get away with having a backup just in case the main one fails? Could I go for 2 1u server's with 4 bays and have one be main storage and the other be backup? This would be running 24/7 and want this to last without any major complications for 5 years.

That's entirely dependent on your budget and how professional you want this to be. The old Synology could easily be used as the backup. Ideally you'd have a backup offsite as well but that can be something to worry about for another time.

[Blue4130]

7 hours ago, notJsons said:

 

Could anyone please give me advice on how not to screw this up,

Honestly, hire a professional. You sound like you are in over your head. If this is mission critical, don't touch it unless you are the paid I. T. Guy. 

[notJsons]

5 hours ago, Windows7ge said:

That's entirely dependent on your budget and how professional you want this to be. The old Synology could easily be used as the backup. Ideally you'd have a backup offsite as well but that can be something to worry about for another time.

 

6 hours ago, Mihle said:

Another option than raid that is in my yes safer for your data, is unRAID that use JBOD with parity, and use 2 parity disk's.

JBOD with parity allows you to mix different HDD sizes as long as the party drives are the biggest or same size as the biggest HDDs.

 

With 2 parity disk's 2 disk can fail and all data be safe.

Don't know much about raid 1 really, but in comparison to raid 5 and 6, if 1 disk more than the raid allows to die, dies, everything is lost. But with JBOD with parity, the data on those that is still alive is still fine because no data is striped.

 

It does not have any speed bonuses tho.

Okay so I've read more up on RAID, and yeah RAID 1 isn't the best. I could potentially do RAID 5 on a single server. I need to store about 14tb as of right now, I know cloud storage is good because it's not onsite and it handles everything for you but it's expensive in the long run. My budget is about $3,000 or less. Basically, I thought I knew how server storage works but I've been trying to get a grip on it all day today and I've just confused myself even more.

We aren't storing anything crazy, like medical files. We are a sign company that has customers designs that go back to 2001 and we don't want them to get lost since our current NAS is about 6 years old.

Could I just get some pointers on what NOT to do, or if I should just get a new Synology NAS with 3 or 4 8TB drives and call it a day?

[notJsons]

6 minutes ago, Blue4130 said:

Honestly, hire a professional. You sound like you are in over your head. If this is mission critical, don't touch it unless you are the paid I. T. Guy. 

It's nothing mission critical, just look at my last reply. I was probably just going overkill with my original posts, a new Synology NAS with some 8TB drives would probably work just fine. I just thought those things are crazy expensive and could probably do it cheaper by making my own.

[Windows7ge]

27 minutes ago, notJsons said:

 

Okay so I've read more up on RAID, and yeah RAID 1 isn't the best. I could potentially do RAID 5 on a single server. I need to store about 14tb as of right now, I know cloud storage is good because it's not onsite and it handles everything for you but it's expensive in the long run. My budget is about $3,000 or less. Basically, I thought I knew how server storage works but I've been trying to get a grip on it all day today and I've just confused myself even more.

We aren't storing anything crazy, like medical files. We are a sign company that has customers designs that go back to 2001 and we don't want them to get lost since our current NAS is about 6 years old.

Could I just get some pointers on what NOT to do, or if I should just get a new Synology NAS with 3 or 4 8TB drives and call it a day?

For an office deployment if you don't go for a Dell or HPE solution where much of the servicing and liability would be their responsibility my general rules of thumb are:

1. Don't use desktop parts (CPUs, motherboard, RAM, PSU, HDDs)
2. Don't use desktop software (Windows 10 home/pro)

[GDRRiley]

45 drives af15?

got 15 bays., can come pre set up with HDD.

 go read some https://www.servethehome.com/

they have got a bunch of good coverage of NAS.