NAS and Backup Solution

[annoyingmoments]

So we finally got plans how we are going to digitalize our VHS and fotos. We expect to get about 6TB of data, as we want the highest possible quality. Plus we have around 2TB of data on all of our devices plus already digital images and family videos on DVDs with again about 1TB of data. This gives a total of around 10 TB of storage needed currently.

 

The thing we plan is a NAS to acces all our data at home on every device and some files with user restriction. Then we also need a backup system, as we store backups on DVDs or external HDDs, which is not an option with growing data amounts.

 

As I am a completly noob regarding NAS and Backup solutions, I only know, that my budget is max 650 Euro and that prebuild NAS solutions for consumers are not enough and not redundant enough. I intend to built a NAS in something like Fractal designs Node 304, a cheap Core i3 and an ITX mainboard. It has to be "safe" and safe to turn off accidently, as I do not trust my parents that much in such things.... And as for power consumption, we woould like to shut it completly off, when not in use or at night.

 

Then again we need a backup solution which is only on if we make backups. It has to be redundant and failsafe, as we will store the same data as on the NAS and backups of our devices. I even would consider to make backups on HDDs in external cases and store them safely, so it is more important that we get a NAS. (e.g: I would make backups on two different drives at once and put them back in my "IT shelf", which means I buy will migrate our infrastructure slowly and step-by-step -> buying HDDs if one is at 95% capacity.)

 

So back to the NAS: What HDDs do I need, what cooling, what CPU (with iGPU), PSU, what software? Note that I am new to NAS and home servers, but do have quite some expereince with Ubuntu.

 

As I do not know that much about this topic, I wrote a little bit "weird". I would start building the NAS by the end of April and we intend to start the complete digitalization my rig first, and use some NAS drives already in it, as 120GB SSD+1TB HDD are not enough at all....

 

Thanky you in advance.

[KirbyTech]

I would say it is best to go with a bigger case because of drive dependability. You will want to run in a RAID 5 at least to protect your data, I suggest 3tb drives as I find the failure rate at 4tb and up is a bit higher. Go for the Rosewill RSV L4500 if you want a review on it look it up online or PM me for mine. It does lock so no one could get in at the power button. As for the power off when not in use. You can always set shutdown times. I would say make it 'sleep' and come out of sleep are you best bet. Trying to save power means you will want to figure out what an average load is going to be then find a minimum gold rated psu that is at its highest efficiency when at that load. 

 

Backing up really should be done to a serpeate computer not just to drives unless you wil be doing just a data backup once per file and keeping it offsite. For OS I would just go with Ubuntu with samba share as it is free and easy. Otherwise go with FreeNas it is good too. I am just not a fan of it personally. Picking parts I can not really say today because the prices will change by the time you plan to build it. Pretty much you are going to price it out the week you buy it. But that does not mean that you would not want to check out the parts before hand. Any i3 will work and motherboard too, you will want a good RAID card though that will eat up a good amount of your budget. 

[annoyingmoments]

9 minutes ago, KirbyTech said:

I would say it is best to go with a bigger case because of drive dependability. You will want to run in a RAID 5 at least to protect your data, I suggest 3tb drives as I find the failure rate at 4tb and up is a bit higher. Go for the Rosewill RSV L4500 if you want a review on it look it up online or PM me for mine. It does lock so no one could get in at the power button. As for the power off when not in use. You can always set shutdown times. I would say make it 'sleep' and come out of sleep are you best bet. Trying to save power means you will want to figure out what an average load is going to be then find a minimum gold rated psu that is at its highest efficiency when at that load. 

 

Backing up really should be done to a serpeate computer not just to drives unless you wil be doing just a data backup once per file and keeping it offsite. For OS I would just go with Ubuntu with samba share as it is free and easy. Otherwise go with FreeNas it is good too. I am just not a fan of it personally. Picking parts I can not really say today because the prices will change by the time you plan to build it. Pretty much you are going to price it out the week you buy it. But that does not mean that you would not want to check out the parts before hand. Any i3 will work and motherboard too, you will want a good RAID card though that will eat up a good amount of your budget. 

Any drives besides WD Red you can suggest?

[KirbyTech]

Just now, annoyingmoments said:

Any drives besides WD Red you can suggest?

Seagate enterprise drives are pretty good. I am ordering a bunch of 8 tb ones on Monday. Doing a massive roll out that I expect to last no issues for 5 plus years. 

[Mikensan]

Price out 20TB of usable storage and you'll eat a majority of your budget unfortunately. A compromise would be using something like Crashplan $60/year and only buying 10TB worth of disks. There's a deal right now for HGST 4TB desktar @ $99us. You'd need 8 of them to get two raid arrays with 10TB usable and only 1 drive fault tolerance. You'd be at $800us before tax.

[annoyingmoments]

Just now, Mikensan said:

Price out 20TB of usable storage and you'll eat a majority of your budget unfortunately. A compromise would be using something like Crashplan $60/year and only buying 10TB worth of disks. There's a deal right now for HGST 4TB desktar @ $99us. You'd need 8 of them to get two raid arrays with 10TB usable and only 1 drive fault tolerance. You'd be at $800us before tax.

Yeah, I just saw that WD Red Drives cost each about 120 € (~135 USD). I guess I will need some more months to afford a future proof solution....

My rig does have some free SATA ports and a lot of room for HDDs left. But somehow this sound like a worse solution. Or I go with step-by-step purchases as the digitalisation will progress and get two WD Reds for my rig in a RAID config, where we will manage the scanning, recording, etc. and afterwards get more Reds and put them in a NAS.

[Mikensan]

Nothing wrong with using your rig as a NAS - only problem is when you flip to a dedicated NAS is you will either have to buy a new set of drives anyway or format the ones you would have bought to put in your personal pc.

 

semi cheapest solution but I'm not sure about your market, is to buy a Dell R710 / IBM 3650 v2 used and if you go with freenas you could create a Raid 10 and slowly grow your zpool. I just bought an IBM 3650v2 for $240us - has two of the Xeon flavor version of the i7 920 and 32gb of ram. The drawback is these servers typically come in a 2.5" drive configuration so those drives tend to cost a little more per gb.

[Badazzz]

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/V4fdpg
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/V4fdpg/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor  ($96.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 Micro ATX AM3+ Motherboard  ($50.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($62.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Desktop HDD 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($114.99 @ Micro Center)
Storage: Seagate Desktop HDD 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($114.99 @ Micro Center)
Storage: Seagate Desktop HDD 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($114.99 @ Micro Center)
Case: Thermaltake VL80001W2Z ATX Mid Tower Case  ($22.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply  ($29.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $608.91
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-02-12 13:31 EST-0500

 

I chose these parts for these reasons:

 

CPU: I chose an AMD FX 6300 because even though the performance per core might not be as good as a core i3, if you have multiple people accessing the NAS at the same time (you said "we" in your post, so I see that as a likely scenario ) then you won't see a major slow down that you might see with a processor with less cores. However, a quad core or even a dual core would still be a good solution.

Motherboard: I really just picked out the cheapest motherboard with Sata III ports on it, not a big decision here. And I couldn't find any practical motherboards with 2 ethernet ports, so whatever.

Memory: I decided to go with 16gb of memory since a NAS is going to be a little demanding for memory, but 8gb would work just fine too, but it's only a 10-20 dollar difference so I found 16gb to be superior price-wise.

Storage: I went with 3 5900rpm seagate drives, since WD Reds would cost a lot more and would really hurt the budget (they aren't really practical for consumer use imo) and these aren't far from the reliability that WD Reds offer, but definitely are far from the price tag.

Case: I figured black was a good color for a NAS. I don't think anyone would want their NAS in a crazy gaming case lol. It also has everything we would need for this build.

Power Supply: I went with the 500w 80+ EVGA power supply since the build is estimated around 200w on PCPP, which is probably a high estimate, so 500w is more than enough, but 430w 80+ would also be a liable solution and you would save like 10-20 dollars.

Total: $608.91 or 541.54 Euro. Don't do a  RAID array because it will only protect from failing drives for so many years, however, take that extra money and invest it in cloud storage for your files I hope this helps.

[annoyingmoments]

22 hours ago, Badazzz said:

PCPartPicker part list: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/V4fdpg
Price breakdown by merchant: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/V4fdpg/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD FX-6300 3.5GHz 6-Core Processor  ($96.99 @ Amazon)
Motherboard: Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 Micro ATX AM3+ Motherboard  ($50.98 @ Newegg)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  ($62.99 @ Newegg)
Storage: Seagate Desktop HDD 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($114.99 @ Micro Center)
Storage: Seagate Desktop HDD 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($114.99 @ Micro Center)
Storage: Seagate Desktop HDD 4TB 3.5" 5900RPM Internal Hard Drive  ($114.99 @ Micro Center)
Case: Thermaltake VL80001W2Z ATX Mid Tower Case  ($22.99 @ Micro Center)
Power Supply: EVGA 500W 80+ Certified ATX Power Supply  ($29.99 @ NCIX US)
Total: $608.91
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-02-12 13:31 EST-0500

 

I chose these parts for these reasons:

 

CPU: I chose an AMD FX 6300 because even though the performance per core might not be as good as a core i3, if you have multiple people accessing the NAS at the same time (you said "we" in your post, so I see that as a likely scenario ) then you won't see a major slow down that you might see with a processor with less cores. However, a quad core or even a dual core would still be a good solution.

Motherboard: I really just picked out the cheapest motherboard with Sata III ports on it, not a big decision here. And I couldn't find any practical motherboards with 2 ethernet ports, so whatever.

Memory: I decided to go with 16gb of memory since a NAS is going to be a little demanding for memory, but 8gb would work just fine too, but it's only a 10-20 dollar difference so I found 16gb to be superior price-wise.

Storage: I went with 3 5900rpm seagate drives, since WD Reds would cost a lot more and would really hurt the budget (they aren't really practical for consumer use imo) and these aren't far from the reliability that WD Reds offer, but definitely are far from the price tag.

Case: I figured black was a good color for a NAS. I don't think anyone would want their NAS in a crazy gaming case lol. It also has everything we would need for this build.

Power Supply: I went with the 500w 80+ EVGA power supply since the build is estimated around 200w on PCPP, which is probably a high estimate, so 500w is more than enough, but 430w 80+ would also be a liable solution and you would save like 10-20 dollars.

Total: $608.91 or 541.54 Euro. Don't do a  RAID array because it will only protect from failing drives for so many years, however, take that extra money and invest it in cloud storage for your files I hope this helps.

Well a RAID array would give us an insurance, that we just have to change the drive and do not have to get our backups HDDs. I decided to make nackups on offside HDDs, which means, that we backup the data on two disks everytime and put them back in the shelf/protected enclosure.

And you are right, it is more than just one person, who will acces the NAS, but often not at the same time, so a less power consuming platform would be just right.

 

The price difference between a standard consumer HDD with 3-4 TB and a WD Red is not that much, so I will stick with them or Seagates NAS ST300VNxxx series.

As other users mentioned and I already read in the past, HDDs with >4 TB are quite often more common to fail, so the 3TB restriction. After reevaluate the amount of data and doing some maths, we will need 4000*10MB=40000MB=40GB of digitalised family images (I know 10 MB is a very big number!) And 100h of VHS which will equal for about 10GB per hour (or maybe less than 5?, depends on the codec), which leads us to 100*10GB=1000GB=1TB. Then we need to add our HDDs, notebooks, smartphones, tablets and pc´s. Our digital images and family movies on DVDs equals to around 40 discs with around 4.7 GB of data -> 40*4.7GB=188GB. For our other devices we take 3*notebooks with all together 1TB data, 2*PCs one of which is nearly never used with 500GB, one of them my rig with 120GB SSD+1TB HDD, 5*smartphones with each around 16GB flash storage and 3*tablets with 16GB flash storage.

 

If we add only the required NAS storage atm, we get 40GB+1000GB+188GB+1000TB(space for future data)-> ~2,3TB.

 

Backups will be put on the offside HDDs and DVDs or Blu-Rays. So there will be always two HDDs with the same data and always two discs with the same data. It will take a lot of effort, and in the long term cost us more, but it has to last. The topic "backup" is solved, even if more complicated than necessary.

 

The NAS is the only thing I have to plan. Will I have to add an boot drive into it? And for Thermaltake: I do not like this company that much after I had my first case by them for my build in the signature.

 

Thank you for your reply so far.

 

EDIT: Can I anyways get a RAID with say, 6TB, but with 3TB*2+3TB*2? So I would have logically two drives and each is cloned to its counterpart?

[Aekim]

Look into RAID 5 or RAID 6, so you have one or two drives which can fail.

Perhaps get an old Server and 3-4 drives, it should be in your budget. The ml10 v2 would be a cheap and easy solution but only has Spacey for 4 drives.

OS wise you can use freenas, openmediavault or unraid

 

[sybreeder]

Forget about RAID 5. Go with Raid 6 or RAID-Z2 if you'd like to use FreeNAS. In case of 4TB disk risk of array fail when you lose 1 drive is very high. 

BTW Freenas is great for there kind of storage. 

[annoyingmoments]

18 hours ago, Aekim said:

Look into RAID 5 or RAID 6, so you have one or two drives which can fail.

Perhaps get an old Server and 3-4 drives, it should be in your budget. The ml10 v2 would be a cheap and easy solution but only has Spacey for 4 drives.

OS wise you can use freenas, openmediavault or unraid

 

Wait there are prebuilt tower PC-like servers for less than 250 bucks with everything I need like a CPU, mainboard, controller etc. except for the HDDs? But where would I install the FreeNAS or something like that?

[annoyingmoments]

So I made some research, and I will go for a custom NAS. The main influence on this build  was a recent article on arstechnica

 

So I have the following hardware so far:

 

Intel Pentium G4400 LGA1151 2 cores @3.3GHz 54W TDP: 69,85 EUR

Fractal Design Node 304: 79,90 EUR

be quiet! Pure Power L8 @430W CM: 65,49 EUR

Gigabyte GA-H170N-WiFi LGA1151: 134,89 EUR

HyperX Fury HX421C14FBK2/8 2*4GB DDR4-RAM @2133MHz: 49,74 EUR

Samsung Evo 850 @120GB: 63,88 EUR

2x HGST Deskstar NAS 3TB @7200RPM: 125,98 EUR *2

 

OS to be FreeNAS or Ubuntu with implementations on the 120GB SSD.

 

The config would cost at this point and only summing up Amazon prices (other shops will be replace stuff if it is cheaper) 715.71 EUR with the biggest piece of the cake on the HDDs, which I think are worth it.

 

So far I would get those components and can not get my mind up, if I should go for a SanDisk SSD @120GB, go intead for 2 3TB WD REDs (WD and HGST are one company, but HGST seems to be more reliable) for each 122,86 EUR, which would be a no brainer tbh and I know the case could be cheaper but since three weeks I am a Fractal design fanboy so the plus in budget would be no problem. But the SATA cables could be a little tight between the PSU and the mainboard connectors. I always say, theres no difference in everyday usage of SSDs, but would think of Samsung to be the more reliable one. If there are cases which have a better layout for this build im open for it. I will add a n ATX build soon, as theres even more room for a better board and even more HDDs. But i would stick with the Pentium G4400. Or a very cheap socket 1155 processor.

 

The mainbaord is capable of RAID 0,1 and 5 configs and as far as I made my research, Raid 0 is not the thing I need. Data redundancy and safety is more important than high speed transfer rates.

 

EDIT: I would consider the Gigabyte GA-H170-HD3 LGA1151 @109 EUR and an ATX mid-tower case too. Define R5 again? The mainboard has six SATA ports and although DDR 4 is more expensive, I am all about future proofing.

Better pay once than twice[emoji6] .

Is it possible to add a third 3TB HDD without any problems or data loss in Raid 1 later?

 

[Aekim]

The ml10 v2 with extra ram would be about 200€ without drives. You'll never get cheaper if you want ecc ram (for new parts).

cheap nas  thats pretty much what I would recommend price/performance wise (haswell is much cheaper than the new stuff). typical you go with software raid so you only have to look for enough sata ports on the mainboard. alternate has some used mobo alternate outlet

with 2x wd reds 3tb you would be at 470-500€

 

consider an alternative os, too, because freenas recommend ecc ( there are some who say you can go without but I would go the safe way ).

Look for openmediavault, rockstor or unraid (starts at 60$ but worth it, linus made a few videos about it).

they all need only a usb stick so you could get away without a ssd ( perhaps for cache).

[annoyingmoments]

The ml10 v2 with extra ram would be about 200€ without drives. You'll never get cheaper if you want ecc ram (for new parts).

cheap nas  thats pretty much what I would recommend price/performance wise (haswell is much cheaper than the new stuff). typical you go with software raid so you only have to look for enough sata ports on the mainboard. alternate has some used mobo alternate outlet

with 2x wd reds 3tb you would be at 470-500€

 

consider an alternative os, too, because freenas recommend ecc ( there are some who say you can go without but I would go the safe way [emoji6] ).

Look for openmediavault, rockstor or unraid (starts at 60$ but worth it, linus made a few videos about it).

they all need only a usb stick so you could get away without a ssd ( perhaps for cache).

You are right about new stuff and going for Haswell. But is the Z97 board not overkill?

You are really saving me money[emoji1] by destroying my overkill plans

The HP one does only have a VGA output, which will make me need another monitor or PCIe card?

[Aekim]

you can go cheaper but for 20-25€ savings go with the z97 board^^ intel nic, 6 sata 3 ports and 3 years warranty. perhaps consider a stronger cpu (depends on your needs) but for a simple nas it's more than enough (one 1080p plex stream is ok, for more go with a pentium. passmark should be 2000 *  number of streams)

[Aekim]

try rockstor and unraid, these are the only OS I know which can add more drives to the raid/parity later.

3 hours ago, annoyingmoments said:

Is it possible to add a third 3TB HDD without any problems or data loss in Raid 1 later?

 

 

 

[annoyingmoments]

So some of you told me about the HP ML10 v2. I guess the older Haswell(?) Pentium should be enough and as for drives for the NAS I can get 4 HDDs and somehow use the 5.25 inch drive bays to mount a SSD in there for the OS. My main problem: Can I add an cheap GPU, so I have other outputs than VGA??? If not it is a no go for me, to get this thing.

 

I would pay 160 EUR for the HP ML10 v2 itself, around 250 EUR for 2x HGST Deskstar NAS 3TB drives and 60 EUR for a Samsung SSD and could even put a GPU with DVI or HDMI on top of it for 30 EUR. It would be before shipping 100 EUR less than the cheapest non-Skylake build, but I can upgrade later anyways.

 

The last question so far concerning the HP ML10 v2: Can I add another 4GB of ECC RAM?

 

There are two different self-build options:

 

Haswell NAS

• Intel Pentium G3260 @2*3.3GHz not available!!! -> Intel Pentium G3460 for 66.61 EUR (!?)
• be quiet! Pure Power L8 CM 430W Corsair CX430M: 55.55 EUR
• Crucial Ballistix Sport DIMM Kit 8GB DDR3-RAM: 32.36 EUR
• 2*HGST Deskstar NAS 3TB: 120.99 EUR each
• Samsung Evo 850 SSD @120GB  SanDisk SSD PLUS 120GB: 44.99 EUR
• ASRock Z97 Annivesary Edition: 81.49 EUR
• Bitfenix Shinobi OR NZXT Source 210 Bitfenix Nova 37.17 EUR

 

cheapest prices add up to 569.01 EUR + 100 EUR for shipping

 

Skylake NAS

• Intel Pentium G4400: 62.07 EUR
• be quiet! Pure Power L8 CM 430W Corsair CX430M: 55.55 EUR
• Kingston HyperX Fury DIMM Kit 8GB DDR4-RAM: 43.99 EUR
• 2x HGST Deskstar NAS 3TB: 120.99 EUR each
• Samsung Evo 850 SSD @120GB  SanDisk SSD PLUS 120GB: 44.99 EUR
• Gigabyte GA-H170-HD3 DDR4 version: 102.09 EUR
• NZXT Source 210 OR Bitfenix Shinobi Bitfenix Nova 37.17 EUR

 

cheapest prices add up to 611.04 EUR + 100 EUR for shipping

 

HP Proliant ML10 v2 with Pentium G3210

• HP Proliant ML10 v2: 156.99 EUR
• 2*HGST Deskstar NAS 3TB: 120.99 EUR each
• Palit GeForce GT710: 34.59 EUR
• SanDisk Plus SSD @120GB: 44.99 EUR

 

totals in 478.55 EUR w/o additional ECC RAM

 

Haswell NAS: ~669 EUR / EDIT: 560.15 EUR (free shipping via Amazon and a well known German online shop)

Skylake NAS: ~711 EUR / EDIT: 587.84 EUR (free shipping via Amazon and a well known German online shop)

HP ML10 v2 and additional hardware: ~580 EUR (optional 60 EUR for another 4GB of ECC RAM and with shipping max for 20 EUR) / EDIT: 478.55 EUR

 

Which build is more preferable? Where are the downsides? Sure I could go for the HP one, but will it last? And how is its upgradeabilty and compatibility?

 

EDIT_2:Ehm, guessing the price differences are not that high....... the HP heads slowly out of the race and the Haswell based one seems to lose too... There are cheaper base prices in other shops, but the shipping adds up to higher ones....

[Aekim]

The HP has ECC RAM, you can upgrade the CPU and the RAM ( look for used ).

Which OS do you want to get? And why do you need a GPU? I would get a 80+ gold PSU for better power consumption.

 

If you wanna go with Pentium the skylake build would be the best, haswell would be cheaper if you use a Celeron.

 

[annoyingmoments]

The HP has ECC RAM, you can upgrade the CPU and the RAM ( look for used ).

Which OS do you want to get? And why do you need a GPU? I would get a 80+ gold PSU for better power consumption.

 

If you wanna go with Pentium the skylake build would be the best, haswell would be cheaper if you use a Celeron.

 

Either Ubuntu with extensions or FreeNAS which is based on Debian anyways.

I need the GPU, so I have more than just a VGA output as I want to avoid running around with an older monitor in another room of the house. Btw LTT recently made a video about those low price point GPUs, I guess even about the GT710 as far as I remember....

And yes, a Celeron would be cheaper, but I want the best low price performance for the case, that for some reason more than 4 devices at once out of 20 devices in our house, will access the NAS. And 20 bucks more or less are worth a better CPU.

Although the HP seems to have all the upgradeability, the price point is not an argument anymore in the aftermath. Plus I have to add an additional piece of hardware with more drivers needed(the Palit GPU).

Furthermore I will exactly know what components I used exactly and it is also about the fun putting everything together and configure it.

Guess I will go for the Skylake one.

Thank you for your help.

P.S: OS and configuration questions might occur when I am there.[emoji1]

[annoyingmoments]

So I wanted to give an update on my NAS project. After reevaluating and doing some math, we decided to go with 2*4TB HGST drives plus one ssd for Ubuntu server. Later we would expand the NAS with another 2*4TB HGST drives.

 

We will use RAID 1 and the biggest change is that we will go with the HP Proliant ML10 v2 with the ECC RAM and Pentium CPU. There will also be an optional Nvidia GT710, as for more graphics outputs. My monitor does not have an VGA port.....

 

Because of the limitation on max 4 drives in the case, we will have to purchase a 2.5/3.5 to 5.25 bay mounting adapter if we decide to add the already mentioned 2 extra HGST drives.

 

I will order the HP in the next few days, the SSD too and maybe the GT710.

Maybe it is cheaper to get an DVI/VGA adapter?

 

The drives will be added next month.

Edited March 2, 2016 by annoyingmoments
Typed RAID 0 instead of 1....