Creating my Home NAS

[el16077]

So, it is time to built a NAS for my house and I am trying to understand what requirements will the system have!! So, considering the options of raid 5, raid 6, raid 10 and no raid at all, what do you think would be the requirements of a system in memory and cpu in each case?? 

[colebi wan kenobi]

In terms of CPU and Memory that really comes down to what you need the system to do just like anything else. For example my home NAS has an old 4 core AMD cpu and 4GB DDR3 memory. All it does is run a media server and basic storage for backups. And I have zero issues CPU and memory resource wise.

[el16077]

But do you have raid? My only concern comes down to raid and especially raid 5 (after writing this post I read that mobos don't support raid 6 without a raid controler). So, for a raid 5 would 2 cores and 4 gb ram for example be enough? Should the ram be ecc? What if I want it to be able to support some VM's? And, let's say I want to access it outside my home, does the requirements get higher or is it the same?

[Electronics Wizardy]

6 minutes ago, el16077 said:

But do you have raid? My only concern comes down to raid and especially raid 5 (after writing this post I read that mobos don't support raid 6 without a raid controler). So, for a raid 5 would 2 cores and 4 gb ram for example be enough? Should the ram be ecc? What if I want it to be able to support some VM's? And, let's say I want to access it outside my home, does the requirements get higher or is it the same?

How much storage do you need?

 

Don't use raid on motherboards, it sucks. Use software raid or  a hardware raid card.

 

Ram depends on what your using it for. Vms use a good amount of ram. 

 

Do you have a list of services you want to run?

 

If you want a simple solution id loook at a synology or qnap nas. There low power, easy to use, and have a nice interface.

[el16077]

8-12tb of storage (4tb disks probably) and I was talking about software raid, I just thought that even software raid to be raid 6 needed a raid controller (no?). For VM probably a typical linux machine for python coding or some other staff like that, not something very demanding.

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, el16077 said:

8-12tb of storage (4tb disks probably) and I was talking about software raid, I just thought that even software raid to be raid 6 needed a raid controller (no?). For VM probably a typical linux machine for python coding or some other staff like that, not something very demanding.

Id get bigger drives, 8tb is normally the sweetspot now. Normally cheaper per tb, lower power, more expansion room.

 

Do you want diy or a premade system?

 

Budget? 

 

How much do you care about power usage?

 

You can run raid 6 in software. Normally software raid is more flexable and can be much better at protecting data.

[el16077]

I am thinking of diy syste with the lowest budget possible. The main concern is tb/euro so I was thinking of raid 5 and maybe raid 6 in the future. That's why I was thinking of buying hardware capable for both. VM's is not really critical point, it would just be a nice feature if the price for it was really really low. I don't really care about power usage (ofcourse to be normal enough for my bill  )

[Electronics Wizardy]

9 minutes ago, el16077 said:

I am thinking of diy syste with the lowest budget possible. The main concern is tb/euro so I was thinking of raid 5 and maybe raid 6 in the future. That's why I was thinking of buying hardware capable for both. VM's is not really critical point, it would just be a nice feature if the price for it was really really low. I don't really care about power usage (ofcourse to be normal enough for my bill  )

got a number for budget?

 

Do you care about power? 

 

Id look into a sused server, something like a dell r510. 2u, holds 12 3.5 drives. Put your os of choice on there like unraid or proxmox. Or if you want lower power and desktop like get something like a pentium or a i3 and 8 or 16gb of ram, and a basic case and psu.

[el16077]

I leaning toward a desktop like to tell the truth. The 8-16 gb of ram instead of something like 4 is for the VM's? 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, el16077 said:

I leaning toward a desktop like to tell the truth. The 8-16 gb of ram instead of something like 4 is for the VM's? 

Yea, for just a nas, you really don't need much ram. Like 1gb is fine. Extra ram is used as a cache. 

 

For vms I budget about 1gb per vm for the guest os, and what ever ram the program needs running in the vm.

 

Id say 16gb is about as low as id go with a server running vms. you probably don't need much cpu so a 2200g or a i3 or pentium will be fine, and will be low power

[el16077]

Could I have an SSD for cache? 

[Electronics Wizardy]

27 minutes ago, el16077 said:

Could I have an SSD for cache? 

Depends on your filesystem and os, but normally yes

 

It might not help though. I probably suggest a seprate ssd for vms and storage.

[el16077]

When you say storage you mean the storage for the os right? Can't this be "part of the" data of the NAS?

[Salacious B Crum]

38 minutes ago, el16077 said:

Could I have an SSD for cache? 

Have you looked at unRAID I have my rig and its been great built from my pre-built i7 its been a blast runs fine with dockers and vm's if your just going for storage almost any cpu and ram will do, if planning on running something like plex go to passmark website and review cpu scores plex requires a bit of horsepower for multiple streams nice thing about unRAID is almost any disk combination will run i.e. different sizes, speeds and you only burn one disk for parity and all others are part of the storage array so if you had 4 4TB drive 3 would be storage instead of conventional RAID arrays that consume half of your storage capacity and can require more disks to achieve the end goal