i want to build a NAS for business use

[littlelegsone]

10 minutes ago, Aditya_V said:

For RAID 6 you definitely need a RAID CARD.

I recommend getting a Xeon E5-2620V3. For just a little bit more you will get a much more better performing CPU.

Also, note neither the processor nor the MoBo you have chosen has on-board graphics so you will have to buy some cheap used Graphics Card.

i wont be using a raid card as smart reporting does not work correctly with raid cards. and the gpu i already put in the parts list is overkill as it is 

[Aditya_V]

1 minute ago, littlelegsone said:

i wont be using a raid card as smart reporting does not work correctly with raid cards. and the gpu i already put in the parts list is overkill as it is 

You haven't listed any GPU in the list :-)

[littlelegsone]

Just now, Aditya_V said:

You haven't listed any GPU in the list :-)

my bad i meant cpu

[littlelegsone]

22 minutes ago, Aditya_V said:

For RAID 6 you definitely need a RAID CARD.

I recommend getting a Xeon E5-2620V3. This CPU is much more powerful than E5-2603v3.

Also, note neither the processor nor the MoBo you have chosen has on-board graphics so you will have to buy some cheap used Graphics Card.

i guess the cheapest shitty gpu will do?

 

[Aditya_V]

Just now, littlelegsone said:

i guess the cheapest shitty gpu will do?

 

Yeah, it will do the job. :-)

 

[TonyStark]

2 hours ago, littlelegsone said:

only found out about it from the video linus made the other day. it appears to give feedback on the health of the drives so if up to two fail you can just swap them out and it automaticly replaces data to the new drives 

Well, so does FreeNAS (i don't know if unraid is open source....FreeNAS is) regarding the health of the drives and the drive swap is one of the basic RAID principles when it comes to fault tolerance... SATA and SAS are both protocols that support hot-swapping.

[Neroxis]

I would strongly recommend a hardware firewall if you're going to be opening this up to the public web. If it's for a business there is a high chance that it is at least somewhat sensitive. If you're cautious enough to not trust a backup service then you should definitely invest in some home network protection. 

[littlelegsone]

15 hours ago, Neroxis said:

I would strongly recommend a hardware firewall if you're going to be opening this up to the public web. If it's for a business there is a high chance that it is at least somewhat sensitive. If you're cautious enough to not trust a backup service then you should definitely invest in some home network protection. 

hardware firewall? 

[Mikensan]

If FreeNAS sees a bad disk, you will see it in the console, when you log in at the top (regardless of what page you're on), in the alerts (button top right), and you will receive an email (if you configure the email settings, I use gmail).

You can also have SMART reports emailed to you as well (only if there's an issue, no news = good news).

 

For unRAID you'll need a decent sized SSD for "cache" for putting files on to the NAS. However reading files from unRAID is going to be only as fast as 1 drive. unRAID is better as a vault for data, or a backup of data. Linus' videos shows the virtual machines only running off of SSDs within unRAID. I personally don't recommend unRAID for daily use, just archive/backup.

 

I believe both unRAID and FreeNAS support ownCloud - which gives you an app on your phone as well as a website to access your data from. You will probably like that for your needs.

 

Instead of Raid6, I would suggest Raid10 so you can grow it later. Adding drives to a Raid 6 isn't possible. Adding more vdevs to a pool in freenas is fine, but the more parity the CPU has to calculate the more performance is going to take a hit. You do take a larger hit of usable data with Raid10 (50%) but you maintain speed, reliability, and future growth.

[littlelegsone]

6 minutes ago, Mikensan said:

If FreeNAS sees a bad disk, you will see it in the console, when you log in at the top (regardless of what page you're on), in the alerts (button top right), and you will receive an email (if you configure the email settings, I use gmail).

You can also have SMART reports emailed to you as well (only if there's an issue, no news = good news).

 

For unRAID you'll need a decent sized SSD for "cache" for putting files on to the NAS. However reading files from unRAID is going to be only as fast as 1 drive. unRAID is better as a vault for data, or a backup of data. Linus' videos shows the virtual machines only running off of SSDs within unRAID. I personally don't recommend unRAID for daily use, just archive/backup.

 

I believe both unRAID and FreeNAS support ownCloud - which gives you an app on your phone as well as a website to access your data from. You will probably like that for your needs.

 

Instead of Raid6, I would suggest Raid10 so you can grow it later. Adding drives to a Raid 6 isn't possible. Adding more vdevs to a pool in freenas is fine, but the more parity the CPU has to calculate the more performance is going to take a hit. You do take a larger hit of usable data with Raid10 (50%) but you maintain speed, reliability, and future growth.

my only thinking was that freenas requires more ram to function correctly and i can pick up a cheap 100ish gb ssd for cheap

[Mikensan]

3 minutes ago, littlelegsone said:

my only thinking was that freenas requires more ram to function correctly and i can pick up a cheap 100ish gb ssd for cheap

Needs more ram to perform better, it will run without a lot of ram. Rule of thumb is 1gb per TB after leaving 8gb base. I have 32TB and only 32GB of ram. Lot of people running <20TB and only 8GB of ram happily.

[littlelegsone]

1 minute ago, Mikensan said:

Needs more ram to perform better, it will run without a lot of ram. Rule of thumb is 1gb per TB after leaving 8gb base. I have 32TB and only 32GB of ram. Lot of people running <20TB and only 8GB of ram happily.

i also think ill be fine with raid 6 ill be using 5 5tb drives so it will take me a long time to fill up 15tb. by the time i do ill probably be ready to build a larger system anyways 

[dalekphalm]

On 2016-02-21 at 11:49 AM, Aditya_V said:

For RAID 6 you definitely need a RAID CARD.

I recommend getting a Xeon E5-2620V3. This CPU is much more powerful than E5-2603v3.

Also, note neither the processor nor the MoBo you have chosen has on-board graphics so you will have to buy some cheap used Graphics Card.

He intends on doing software RAID through UnRAID (Or possibly FreeNAS as an alternative). So a RAID card will be unnecessary - even undesirable, in this situation.

 

You are right about the graphics though - but a $30 piece of crap GPU will do fine.

[Neroxis]

9 hours ago, littlelegsone said:

hardware firewall? 

http://www.newegg.com/Firewalls-Security-Appliances/SubCategory/ID-529

Things like this. They encrypt your traffic and do a lot better of a job dealing with any soft of external threat. I tend to take quite a few precautions when it comes to data security. I assume someone in your position would as well. If it's for your business you could also potentially write it off on taxes. 

[dalekphalm]

8 minutes ago, Neroxis said:

http://www.newegg.com/Firewalls-Security-Appliances/SubCategory/ID-529

Things like this. They encrypt your traffic and do a lot better of a job dealing with any soft of external threat. I tend to take quite a few precautions when it comes to data security. I assume someone in your position would as well. If it's for your business you could also potentially write it off on taxes. 

Well hold on a second there - something like one of those Firewall appliances will only encrypt your traffic if you use it as a VPN server - something his current router may even already be capable of - or something that can be setup via the file server without the need for a separate appliance. He'd probably be better off starting off with the firewall already built into the router - or taking an old box and turning it into a pfSense firewall.

 

But it's up to the OP of course - if they're super paranoid, I suppose they can go the extra mile.

[littlelegsone]

13 hours ago, dalekphalm said:

Well hold on a second there - something like one of those Firewall appliances will only encrypt your traffic if you use it as a VPN server - something his current router may even already be capable of - or something that can be setup via the file server without the need for a separate appliance. He'd probably be better off starting off with the firewall already built into the router - or taking an old box and turning it into a pfSense firewall.

 

But it's up to the OP of course - if they're super paranoid, I suppose they can go the extra mile.

unfortunately only got a standard bt router supplied by the isp. if i'm using unraid cant i just route it through tunnel bear or something? the hardware firewalls seem expensive?

[dalekphalm]

35 minutes ago, littlelegsone said:

unfortunately only got a standard bt router supplied by the isp. if i'm using unraid cant i just route it through tunnel bear or something? the hardware firewalls seem expensive?

Tunnelbear can encrypt your traffic, at least in between you and them. This will offer some protection, certainly.

 

Although, for VPN traffic, I'm more thinking:

You're out at a client's house, and need access to the server files: You host a VPN Server on your NAS -> Connect to the VPN server while at the clients house -> You have secure access to the files on the NAS.

 

Personally, I don't think you need the hardware firewalls suggested.

[littlelegsone]

1 minute ago, dalekphalm said:

Tunnelbear can encrypt your traffic, at least in between you and them. This will offer some protection, certainly.

 

Although, for VPN traffic, I'm more thinking:

You're out at a client's house, and need access to the server files: You host a VPN Server on your NAS -> Connect to the VPN server while at the clients house -> You have secure access to the files on the NAS.

 

Personally, I don't think you need the hardware firewalls suggested.

so this would work over a cellular data connection? would i be able to host a vpn server at the same time as running unraid? how would i do this? 

 

sorry if these are really basic things this is my first time delving into networking  

[dalekphalm]

5 minutes ago, littlelegsone said:

so this would work over a cellular data connection? would i be able to host a vpn server at the same time as running unraid? how would i do this? 

 

sorry if these are really basic things this is my first time delving into networking  

Sure, you could do it over a cellular data connection. Literally any internet connection would work, client-side. We use a cellular data connection w/ a wifi hotspot to allow laptops to VPN connect into the office, for example.

 

As for the VPN server itself - depends on how you'd like to configure it. You'd basically use UnRAID to host a VM (OS of your choice, but probably Linux) which runs the VPN Server - the most popular choice is OpenVPN Server running on Linux. You could also host a Windows Server running PPTP, IPSec, or IKEv2 VPN server (IKEv2 is the most like OpenVPN, when it comes to security - both IKEv2 and OpenVPN are excellent secure choices).

 

You'll then want to give the VPN Server a static local IP Address, and port forward via your router, the VPN ports required, to the VPN Address.

 

Finally, to connect to the VPN connection, you would either use your WAN (Internet) IP Address as the VPN Server address (Assuming you have a Static IP Address from your ISP), or you would configure a Dynamic DNS service (Basically a client that constantly updates your DHCP IP Address) configured to a URL (Eg: littlelegsone.dyndns.org, or if you own a Domain Address, you can use that too). Most modern routers support Dynamic DNS out of the box, you just have to sign up for one of the various free services, configure an account, and then plug in all the details into the Dynamic DNS settings page in your Router. Specific instructions depend on the exact model.

[littlelegsone]

3 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Sure, you could do it over a cellular data connection. Literally any internet connection would work, client-side. We use a cellular data connection w/ a wifi hotspot to allow laptops to VPN connect into the office, for example.

 

As for the VPN server itself - depends on how you'd like to configure it. You'd basically use UnRAID to host a VM (OS of your choice, but probably Linux) which runs the VPN Server - the most popular choice is OpenVPN Server running on Linux. You could also host a Windows Server running PPTP, IPSec, or IKEv2 VPN server (IKEv2 is the most like OpenVPN, when it comes to security - both IKEv2 and OpenVPN are excellent secure choices).

 

You'll then want to give the VPN Server a static local IP Address, and port forward via your router, the VPN ports required, to the VPN Address.

 

Finally, to connect to the VPN connection, you would either use your WAN (Internet) IP Address as the VPN Server address (Assuming you have a Static IP Address from your ISP), or you would configure a Dynamic DNS service (Basically a client that constantly updates your DHCP IP Address) configured to a URL (Eg: littlelegsone.dyndns.org, or if you own a Domain Address, you can use that too). Most modern routers support Dynamic DNS out of the box, you just have to sign up for one of the various free services, configure an account, and then plug in all the details into the Dynamic DNS settings page in your Router. Specific instructions depend on the exact model.

wow this is more complex than i first thought  

[dalekphalm]

3 hours ago, littlelegsone said:

wow this is more complex than i first thought  

It certainly can be - but the resources and guides are out there to learn how to do it - if you have the motivation and desire to learn.

[Guest]

On 21/2/2016 at 10:51 PM, littlelegsone said:

http://uk.pcpartpicker.com/p/KWrK6h what do you guys think to this?

A terrible idea.

 

 

Look into the Netgear 300 or 500 series NAS units or better yet, HP and Dell small format tower servers.  The Netgears will include a 5 year next business day onsite warranty by default while HP and Dell bother offer up to 24hr 7 day 4hr response service packages. I know it might seem fun to build something yourself but this is not an enthusiast use case, this is a business environment where downtime will cost money.

 

The alternative to those I've listed above would be some of the stuff from QNAP. Onsite warranty support may or may not be availible depending on the region however setting up user accounts and remote access is much simpler.

 

For configuring remote access on QNAP/Netgear, you can simply have users access a webpage with login credentials as you can with the Dell/HP server running Server 2012 with user accounts. Generating that webpage is where you'll have an issue, depending on your router you may have support for 3rd party dynamic DNS providers like DYNDNS. What these services do is regularly report to DYN what your IP is. Then you can go to mywebpage.dyndns.org and that'll redirect back to your home IP, no matter if it's static or dynamic.

 

If you don't have dynamic DNS support, you can generate your own route and htaccess however it would be simpler to get a router that supports dynamic DNS.

 

EDIT: Atlernatively you can have a VPN server running either on the router or NAS so that clients can join the LAN remotely and then access the server as if it were local.