Need advice for building an NAS for an office of 30+ PCs

[JesseStillwell]

Hello,

 

I am going to need to build a NAS for my office very soon. Currently we have an old Dell server that is about 9 years old and 2 of the drives have failed this year and can't be replaced due to the costs and availability.

 

I have an office of about 30+ computers. Most of them access many small PDF files frequently. The server is constantly getting new files downloaded to it daily (some of these files are <200MBs and occasionally we get some that are a few GB/s) as new jobs come in. There are usually multiple jobs being simultaneously downloaded to the file server on the daily. A few of our computers in the office occasionally run small CAD and small Revit files from the server.

 

I am wanting to build my own NAS to handle the file sharing using FreeNAS software. I am looking at 4-6TB of file storage in a Raid 5 for now with an option to expand in the next few years. I am not looking for 10Gbps speed either as my network and switches only support 1Gbps.

 

I am thinking about going with a Supermicro Micro X11SSM-F-O for the motherboard unless otherwise suggested. 

 

I am unsure of what CPU to get. I keep reading that the CPU isn't that important and that Pentiums or Celeron processors can handle everything fine.

 

I would like to go with 16GBs of ECC RAM, but if I go with a processor that doesn't support it I'd be okay with non-ECC.

 

For the drives I am thinking about going with the WD Ironwolfs.

 

Not sure what I should go with for the power supply. I won't go cheap on this, but I do have a good UPS that the NAS will be hooked to.

 

Thank you very much for taking the time to read and leave any advice.

[beavo451]

Mission critical hardware with a decent amount of users? Sounds like you need a vendor instead of a DIY box. 

 

ZFS arrays are not easily expanded.

 

WD makes the colored drives (red, blue, black, etc.) Ironwolf is Seagate.

[JesseStillwell]

25 minutes ago, beavo451 said:

Mission critical hardware with a decent amount of users? Sounds like you need a vendor instead of a DIY box. 

 

ZFS arrays are not easily expanded.

 

WD makes the colored drives (red, blue, black, etc.) Ironwolf is Seagate.

Yeah I could go with a vendor, but I'd rather take on the project and get more hardware power for less. Our system is very basic so we don't need a lot of features. Just Raid and weekly back up to an external drive.

 

Yep, meant Seagate lol. Couldn't remember off the top of my head.

[beavo451]

5 minutes ago, JesseStillwell said:

Yeah I could go with a vendor, but I'd rather take on the project and get more hardware power for less. Our system is very basic so we don't need a lot of features. Just Raid and weekly back up to an external drive.

 

Yep, meant Seagate lol. Couldn't remember off the top of my head.

Well for starters, FreeNAS does not use RAID. It uses ZFS and as I mentioned before, ZFS is not particularly "easy" to expand.

 

How do users access the files?

[JesseStillwell]

4 minutes ago, beavo451 said:

Well for starters, FreeNAS does not use RAID. It uses ZFS and as I mentioned before, ZFS is not particularly "easy" to expand.

 

How do users access the files?

Yeah that's true, I would use the equivelant of a RAID 5. I think it was called RAIDz1?

 

We just have a shared folder on the network with many sub folders separating jobs by region, state, etc...  These are construction jobs that come with many PDF plans. The users usually just access the files directly and don't copy anything to their PCs and then print the plans through a huge printer. All the users are connected to the network via LAN cables through the switch.

 

The server gets a lot of data written to it Daily. This is my only concern is how it will perform while writing and many users are trying to access small PDF files, Office files etc...

[beavo451]

Setting up a file sync program like owncloud or resilio sync on the NAS would work better. That way you aren't relying on the performance of the server and network. Users can still work on their project if the server is down. Also, many small files with multiple users on a hard drive array with parity calculations sounds abysmal.

[JesseStillwell]

10 minutes ago, beavo451 said:

Setting up a file sync program like owncloud or resilio sync on the NAS would work better. That way you aren't relying on the performance of the server and network. Users can still work on their project if the server is down. Also, many small files with multiple users on a hard drive array with parity calculations sounds abysmal.

That's a sound idea and I will look into that.

 

Yeah it's a bit of a mess, but the server I have now functions great with no speed issues. I'll try to get the specs of it listed on here, but it's nothing special. Just an old dell T800 or T100.

[unijab]

Do you use NFS or CIFS for your file sharing?

 

 

IMO

ZFS is easily expandable if you dont go crazy with how many disks you put in a vdev.

 

[JesseStillwell]

5 minutes ago, unijab said:

Do you use NFS or CIFS for your file sharing?

 

 

IMO

ZFS is easily expandable if you dont go crazy with how many disks you put in a vdev.

 

I'm quite sure it's NFS.

 

Yeah I was thinking about starting off with 3 drives.

 

My main question is regarding the CPU and RAM. I was thinking I could save a bit on a lower end cpu like a Intel Xeon E3-1220 and opting for a bit more RAM. What do you think?

 

[unijab]

When using ZFS.. maximum RAM is the best option.

[GDRRiley]

1 hour ago, unijab said:

When using ZFS.. maximum RAM is the best option.

No, 4 or 8gb should be fine with 16 being more than needed. 

 

To op:

maybe look at hp micro servers or if still want to build it go with 3 or 4tb NAS or Enterprise drives. 

for that board a G4600 or 4560. These do support ECC memory and like many older I-3s 

 

[Jarsky]

A Synology DS1817+ will fullfill the need. Be able to keep up just fine. 

It has room for 8 disks, is easily expandable, has 4 x 1gbE which you can put in a LAG (with a managed switch) or use for redundancy, and you can optionally use an expansion card for M.2 NVME caching. 

Easy management and supports all the protocols you could need. 

It's also supported by Vendor in case of any failure. 

 

Not as "fun", but personally I don't like playing around with mission critical servers..

Theres just no need for all that power for a 30 person file server, and you shouldn't have anything else running on your primary storage for an Office. 

We use QNAP & Synology devices for some of our customers smaller offices (up to 20-30 people). 

 

P.S I hope you have a backup of the data as well...

[dalekphalm]

11 hours ago, Jarsky said:

A Synology DS1817+ will fullfill the need. Be able to keep up just fine. 

It has room for 8 disks, is easily expandable, has 4 x 1gbE which you can put in a LAG (with a managed switch) or use for redundancy, and you can optionally use an expansion card for M.2 NVME caching. 

Easy management and supports all the protocols you could need. 

It's also supported by Vendor in case of any failure. 

 

Not as "fun", but personally I don't like playing around with mission critical servers..

Theres just no need for all that power for a 30 person file server, and you shouldn't have anything else running on your primary storage for an Office. 

We use QNAP & Synology devices for some of our customers smaller offices (up to 20-30 people). 

 

P.S I hope you have a backup of the data as well...

I second this suggestion. You'll have vendor warranty support (And their support is great - even for software configuration changes, etc).

[JesseStillwell]

Thank you everyone for your suggestions.

 

I have decided to build my own NAS. I could go with Synology or QNAP, but at that cost I could build something more powerful with all server/enterprise grade hardware with drives.

 

I'll start a new thread after the rig is finished and let you guys know what hardware is in the build and how it runs.

[dalekphalm]

56 minutes ago, JesseStillwell said:

Thank you everyone for your suggestions.

 

I have decided to build my own NAS. I could go with Synology or QNAP, but at that cost I could build something more powerful with all server/enterprise grade hardware with drives.

 

I'll start a new thread after the rig is finished and let you guys know what hardware is in the build and how it runs.

Good luck with the build. If you need hardware suggestions, etc, please let us know.

 

Hopefully you don't run into hardware issues, since dealing with the individual warranties could be a pain in the ass.

 

Ensure you get a proper backup system in place (As we all know, RAID is not a backup). I'd recommend daily (or hourly, if a lot of new files are pulled down throughout the day) incremental backups to either a second disk array or an external drive.

 

Then on top of that, do a full backup weekly to an external drive (buy 2 of them) and rotate offsite.

 

So you backup to "Week1-HDD", then you remove the drive from the office and store it at home, at the bosses house, or in a safety deposit box at a bank, etc. Then while that one is offsite, the next week you backup to "Week2-HDD", and after that backup is completed, you swap "Week1-HDD" with "Week2-HDD" and continue the cycle.

 

Bonus points if you build/buy a NAS off-site and just replicate the backups to the off-site NAS over the internet instead of doing the weekly external backups (though this of course increases your cost).

[JesseStillwell]

7 minutes ago, dalekphalm said:

Good luck with the build. If you need hardware suggestions, etc, please let us know.

 

Hopefully you don't run into hardware issues, since dealing with the individual warranties could be a pain in the ass.

 

Ensure you get a proper backup system in place (As we all know, RAID is not a backup). I'd recommend daily (or hourly, if a lot of new files are pulled down throughout the day) incremental backups to either a second disk array or an external drive.

 

Then on top of that, do a full backup weekly to an external drive (buy 2 of them) and rotate offsite.

 

So you backup to "Week1-HDD", then you remove the drive from the office and store it at home, at the bosses house, or in a safety deposit box at a bank, etc. Then while that one is offsite, the next week you backup to "Week2-HDD", and after that backup is completed, you swap "Week1-HDD" with "Week2-HDD" and continue the cycle.

 

Bonus points if you build/buy a NAS off-site and just replicate the backups to the off-site NAS over the internet instead of doing the weekly external backups (though this of course increases your cost).

Thanks for the advice, it's much appreciated.

 

I will be going with a Supermicro X11SSL-F-O coupled with either a Xeon E3 1220 or G4600. I will go with 16GB of 2400mhz ECC RAM that is supported by Supermicro. Seasonic 450W 80 Plus Gold PSU hooked to a UPS, 6 2TB drives in a raidz2 (RAID 6) set up with FreeNAS intalled on a small SSD.

 

I will do weekly back ups to 2 external drives and always have one offsite. I used to work as a tech when I was younger and we did a whole set up for the library where I lived. They never took their external drives offsite and when the library burned down, they lost everything.

 

I like the idea of doing offsite backups via the internet, but I can't keep the same old server running. It's too old and 2 drives have just gone on it. I will get the full specs tomorrow when I get back to my office, but the drives are some weird interface that can't be easily bought.

[dalekphalm]

35 minutes ago, JesseStillwell said:

Thanks for the advice, it's much appreciated.

 

I will be going with a Supermicro X11SSL-F-O coupled with either a Xeon E3 1220 or G4600. I will go with 16GB of 2400mhz ECC RAM that is supported by Supermicro. Seasonic 450W 80 Plus Gold PSU hooked to a UPS, 6 2TB drives in a raidz2 (RAID 6) set up with FreeNAS intalled on a small SSD.

I would recommend starting with 8GB of RAM instead of 16GB. 16GB is massive overkill for a FreeNAS build that is just acting as a file server. Otherwise I see no issues with your hardware choices.

 

Also remember to plug the HDD's directly into the motherboard (Or, if needed, an HBA). Do not use a RAID Card.

35 minutes ago, JesseStillwell said:

I will do weekly back ups to 2 external drives and always have one offsite.

Good strategy. I would suggest that on-top of that, you do hourly snapshots to the main array. Snapshots are basically FreeNAS's version of Windows Shadow Copy. It'll preserve file changes throughout the day, so if someone edits a file then accidentally deletes it, you'll have a better chance of recovering the most recent changes.

 

It doesn't take up a lot of extra storage, so to me it's usually always worth it.

35 minutes ago, JesseStillwell said:

I used to work as a tech when I was younger and we did a whole set up for the library where I lived. They never took their external drives offsite and when the library burned down, they lost everything.

As someone who works for a Library, that's so painful to read. Granted, we have an actual IT department, so we can save the librarians from stupid mistakes like that.

 

35 minutes ago, JesseStillwell said:

I like the idea of doing offsite backups via the internet, but I can't keep the same old server running. It's too old and 2 drives have just gone on it. I will get the full specs tomorrow when I get back to my office, but the drives are some weird interface that can't be easily bought.

If the drives are:

1. Old, and

2. Have a strange interface

 

They're almost certainly SCSI drives. If that's the case, they're essentially from the "IDE/PATA" era of technology. You wouldn't be able to find drives in large capacity even if you could find any at all.

 

Well, possible upgrade path in the future: Buy a 2-bay NAS with 2x 10TB or 15TB drives to use as an off-site backup target. For something like this, you can pretty much get really low end specs and still be okay.

 

But as long as you're doing the external HDD's and swap them off-site, there's no need to go the off-site NAS route. That's really just a quality-of-life upgrade to save you some work.