What would it take to host a storage server for personal use?

[KhakiHat]

I was interested in hosting a server, primarily for mass storage. What kind of hardware would I need? I'm not worried about cross a internet connection just for use on a home network. I'm very new to this field, any help would be greatly appreciated.

[Godlygamer23]

What is the server's primary use? Just storage?

[Streetguru]

31 minutes ago, KhakiHat said:

I was interested in hosting a server, primarily for mass storage. What kind of hardware would I need? I'm not worried about cross a internet connection just for use on a home network. I'm very new to this field, any help would be greatly appreciated.

Budget?

[KhakiHat]

27 minutes ago, Godlygamer23 said:

What is the server's primary use? Just storage?

Yes, just storage.

[KhakiHat]

1 minute ago, Streetguru said:

Budget?

Preferably under a $500 USD price tag.

[Streetguru]

1 minute ago, KhakiHat said:

Preferably under a $500 USD price tag.

Find a used PC with a ton of RAM and Sata then toss in hard drives for a freeNAS box

Level 1 Techs has a lot of info on FreeNAS and home servers.
 

 

 

[KhakiHat]

@Streetguru 

What would your personal opinion be of using a Linux based system? Though I would still like to know more about FreeNAS.

[Streetguru]

6 minutes ago, KhakiHat said:

@Streetguru 

What would your personal opinion be of using a Linux based system? Though I would still like to know more about FreeNAS.

FreeNAS is GNU/Linux based as far as I'm aware, it's basically what you want to use for your home storage server due to ZFS not requiring hardware RAID controllers, nor exactly requiring ECC memory. You can even run virtual machines or jails or whatever on it as well.

If you want a new system you can upgrade here's an AM4 build without hard drives, Motherboard has 8 Sata, PSU has 8 Sata. Maybe not the best PSU for 24/7 use but it'd be good enough for now I suppose.

You want about 1GB of RAM per 1TB of storage, preferably more RAM.
 

PCPartPicker part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/vs9PM8
Price breakdown by merchant: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/vs9PM8/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD - A8-9600 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($69.94 @ Newegg Marketplace)
Motherboard: Gigabyte - GA-AX370-Gaming ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: GeIL - EVO POTENZA 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory  ($129.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic - S12II 620W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($48.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $348.91
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-11-25 23:03 EST-0500

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeNAS
FreeNAS is a free and open-source network-attached storage (NAS) software based on FreeBSD and the OpenZFS file system

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/62d5o4/gnulinux_file_server_equivalent_of_freenas/

 

[Jarsky]

https://www.amazon.com/TS-431X-2G-USARM-based-Hardware-Encryption-1-7GHz-10GbE/dp/B06WP2K3LM

[Thorn57]

Do you have an old PC you could use?

[KhakiHat]

3 hours ago, Thorn57 said:

Do you have an old PC you could use?

I do not, but I planned on buying a system for this purpose already.

[KhakiHat]

19 hours ago, Streetguru said:

FreeNAS is GNU/Linux based as far as I'm aware, it's basically what you want to use for your home storage server due to ZFS not requiring hardware RAID controllers, nor exactly requiring ECC memory. You can even run virtual machines or jails or whatever on it as well.

If you want a new system you can upgrade here's an AM4 build without hard drives, Motherboard has 8 Sata, PSU has 8 Sata. Maybe not the best PSU for 24/7 use but it'd be good enough for now I suppose.

You want about 1GB of RAM per 1TB of storage, preferably more RAM.
 

PCPartPicker part list: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/vs9PM8
Price breakdown by merchant: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/vs9PM8/by_merchant/

CPU: AMD - A8-9600 3.1GHz Quad-Core Processor  ($69.94 @ Newegg Marketplace)
Motherboard: Gigabyte - GA-AX370-Gaming ATX AM4 Motherboard  ($99.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: GeIL - EVO POTENZA 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR4-2400 Memory  ($129.99 @ Newegg)
Power Supply: SeaSonic - S12II 620W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  ($48.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Total: $348.91
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2017-11-25 23:03 EST-0500

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FreeNAS
FreeNAS is a free and open-source network-attached storage (NAS) software based on FreeBSD and the OpenZFS file system

https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/62d5o4/gnulinux_file_server_equivalent_of_freenas/

 

I've heard you can also use a Raspberry Pi as a storage server for low power consumption. What would your opinion of that be?

[Streetguru]

4 hours ago, KhakiHat said:

I've heard you can also use a Raspberry Pi as a storage server for low power consumption. What would your opinion of that be?

That sounds like a horrible idea lol, how would you even hook up a lot of drives to it? Transferring seems like I'd be really slow.

Your server is only going to use as much power as it needs to.

[NelizMastr]

Honestly, you're better off just buying a NAS. If it's just basic file storage, why build a PC that will consume more power and wastes CPU cycles?

 

Something like this:

 

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA2F85D80940&cm_re=qnap_nas-_-22-107-533-_-Product

 

Add 2 4TB hard drives to start (like https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822179005) and you're set.

[Undergrid]

18 hours ago, KhakiHat said:

I've heard you can also use a Raspberry Pi as a storage server for low power consumption. What would your opinion of that be?

Don't.

 

Your choice of HDD connection is USB or... we'll that's it and the Pi only has USB2.  And, it only has 10/100 networking which isn't really a problem given the bandwidth from any disks, but it uses a USB to ethernet adapter internally which means your data gets copied from the HDD, through the PI and out to ethernet on the same USB connection (the SOC has a single USB connection and then there's a USB hub chip) effectively halving throughput.

 

Don't get me wrong, the Pi's are great devices when used for the right tasks, but this isn't one of the right tasks.

[Tiberiusisgame]

Synology DiskStation

$149 - https://www.amazon.com/Synology-DiskStation-3-5-Inches-1xGigabit-DS216J/dp/B01BNPT1EG/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1511806733&sr=8-3&keywords=disk+station

 

$220 2 x 4TB NAS hard drives https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-IronWolf-3-5-Inch-Internal-ST4000VN008/dp/B01LOOJBQY/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1511806767&sr=1-1-spons&keywords=4TB+NAS&psc=1

 

SUM = $369.

Your power consumption will be about 40Watts at peak, but the unit sleeps and then consumes a little more than a Pi under load, or just under 5Watts. I have the 4-bay model and I absolutely love it. Does everything I want, from streaming to and from the box to Windows and Mac TimeMachine backups. Also, simple and solid interface for configuration.

 

This is the only way to go.

[GDRRiley]

On 11/25/2017 at 8:06 PM, Streetguru said:

You want about 1GB of RAM per 1TB of storage, preferably more RAM.

How many times does this have to be said, THATS BS. you don't need 1gb of ram per TB.

[Tiberiusisgame]

1 minute ago, GDRRiley said:

How many times does this have to be said, THATS BS. you don't need 1gb of ram per TB.

Yeah, where did that logic come from? Some sort of FreeNAS caching requirement? I don't think any purpose-built NAS's would work if that requirement were real.

[Streetguru]

38 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

How many times does this have to be said, THATS BS. you don't need 1gb of ram per TB.

I mean I got it straight from Wendell of Level 1 Techs, he seems like a solid source.

 

35 minutes ago, Tiberiusisgame said:

Yeah, where did that logic come from? Some sort of FreeNAS caching requirement? I don't think any purpose-built NAS's would work if that requirement were real.

From what I understand for ZFS to work it's magic it needs a lot of RAM. Which is where that 1GB per 1TB of storage idea comes from.

[Tiberiusisgame]

2 minutes ago, Streetguru said:

I mean I got it straight from Wendell of Level 1 Techs, he seems like a solid source.

 

From what I understand for ZFS to work it's magic it needs a lot of RAM. Which is where that 1GB per 1TB of storage idea comes from.

Ah, now that could be the case for ZFS but that's just one filesystem.

[Streetguru]

1 minute ago, Tiberiusisgame said:

Ah, now that could be the case for ZFS but that's just one filesystem.

It's also the one everyone seems to recommend for ZFS.

There's also BTRFS, But that was still being worked on, dunno if it's ready for prime time now.
 

 

[GDRRiley]

2 hours ago, Streetguru said:

I mean I got it straight from Wendell of Level 1 Techs, he seems like a solid source.

he is but the devs of ZFS said you don't need that much

[Streetguru]

13 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

he is but the devs of ZFS said you don't need that much

Ah.
Ya just found this.

But isn't more RAM always nicer to have?
 

" he only time when more RAM might be needed is when you are turn on data deduplication. That causes 3 disk seeks for each DDT miss when writing to disk and tends to slow things down unless there is enough cache for the DDT to avoid extra disk seeks. The system will still work without more RAM. It is just that the deduplication code will slow down writes when enabled. That 1GB of RAM per 1TB data stored "rule" is nonsense though. The number is a function of multiple variables, not a constant. "
 

Makes me cry...
" P.S. I know ram is cheap "

[KhakiHat]

21 hours ago, Tiberiusisgame said:

Synology DiskStation

$149 - https://www.amazon.com/Synology-DiskStation-3-5-Inches-1xGigabit-DS216J/dp/B01BNPT1EG/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1511806733&sr=8-3&keywords=disk+station

 

$220 2 x 4TB NAS hard drives https://www.amazon.com/Seagate-IronWolf-3-5-Inch-Internal-ST4000VN008/dp/B01LOOJBQY/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1511806767&sr=1-1-spons&keywords=4TB+NAS&psc=1

 

SUM = $369.

Your power consumption will be about 40Watts at peak, but the unit sleeps and then consumes a little more than a Pi under load, or just under 5Watts. I have the 4-bay model and I absolutely love it. Does everything I want, from streaming to and from the box to Windows and Mac TimeMachine backups. Also, simple and solid interface for configuration.

 

This is the only way to go.

This options seem incredibly straight forward and to the point. 

[NelizMastr]

Just now, KhakiHat said:

This options seem incredibly straight forward and to the point. 

It is. A pre-built NAS is extremely simple to setup and manage, and can do a lot of different things.