DIY NAS/Mediaserver

[Symyr]

Hey i'm trying to build a decent nas after basically just adding HDD's in an old desktop for years. In the past it wasn't an issue because it was just movies and shows but over the years i've been using it more and more as a bit of a backup server so i want some more peace of mind about my files.

What do i got?

2 4TB & 2 6TB drives, 1 4TB is basically full and the others are at 65% capacity. So that's 20TB that's close (relative but still ) to being full.

 

What's my idea so far?

I've been thinking of doing a freenas build because ZFS seems to be nice to make sure there is no data corruption, in a Z2 config. Using 6 x 10TB wd red drives for that in z2 and using 2 8GB usb sticks for booting in mirror. I know ecc isn't necessary but if it's not too much extra i would still use it and i think 16GB RAM would be enough for a storage / mediastreaming server (atm max users is 2 and i don't see that rising soon).

 

Using those 10TB drives would give me a fresh 40TB storage so double what i got atm and give me some reserve for the future + security for drivefailure. I would keep my current config and this new one running next to eachother for about half a year to make sure it's all ok and then take the 4 drives i currently have with 2 new 10TB drives in a new Z2 pool. It's my understanding that those 10TB drives would only be as big as the smallest drive in the pool so 4TB, i don't know if the size grows after i replace old the

 

What i want to achieve with this build: Enough space in my server to 1) add more disks in the future and 2) have space to spare on my drives, i'm fine with a servercase like a 2U up to a 4U, a webgui would be nice but i can do commandline too

And what i don't know is basically what kind of motherboard, cpu, ram would be best? Casesuggestions?

 

FYI i've looked at possible cases already and while seeming over the top this 4u servercase seems to be fine since it has 24 bays of which 12 would be used if the idea i described above comes into play. I know that i need cables and such because of the backplane so i was thinking using sas to sata and plug those 4 sata's straight into the motherboard and then for the rest of the connectors use a sas cable to a storage controller that can handle sas cables. I just looked at what looks like it should work but since i'm not sure if it does so i'm hoping people here can help me along.

 

Thanks for reading and i hope i'm somewhat on the ball here.

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

12 minutes ago, Symyr said:

sing 2 8GB usb sticks for booting in mirror

you dont' want to use usb to boot freenas any more

 

13 minutes ago, Symyr said:

g 6 x 10TB wd red drives for that in z2

Id personally get those 10tb externals to save a good amount

 

13 minutes ago, Symyr said:

FYI i've looked at possible cases already and while seeming over the top this 4u servercase seems to be fine since it has 24 bays of which 12 would be used if the idea i described above comes into play.

Id personally just get a used supermicro one. THey normally built much better than these cheap ones.

 

14 minutes ago, Symyr said:

o a storage controller that can handle s

id get a hba here for freenas, get something like a h200. that is way to expensive for a old part

 

Id just get a case with a sas expander for the backplane, so they you don't need another expander. Maybe just get a case with a used cpu and board built in.

 

Also remember to keep backups of this servers.

 

 

 

[Symyr]

10 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

you dont' want to use usb to boot freenas any more

 

Id personally get those 10tb externals to save a good amount

 

Id personally just get a used supermicro one. THey normally built much better than these cheap ones.

 

id get a hba here for freenas, get something like a h200. that is way to expensive for a old part

 

Id just get a case with a sas expander for the backplane, so they you don't need another expander. Maybe just get a case with a used cpu and board built in.

 

Also remember to keep backups of this servers.

 

 

 

- I still see alot of people recommending to use usb's for freenas because of the small amount of storage you need for the os and quick and easy replacement if a stick should fail though.

 

- Hmm had not thought about that, i thought there would be slow drives in the external enclosure but i guess you can't get slower then 5400rpm, i'll look into that thanks.

 

- i'm personally not a big fan of used servers since you never know what that hardware has gone through plus the one i showed is cheap because it's just a chassis, that's why i also asked if anyone had suggestions for motherboard, cpu & ram. I've actually seen that vendor talked about in a good way in several discussion forums so i think build quality is fine.

 

- So something like this then? Never worked with expansion cards like this so want to be sure before i do anything because i don't see an sff standard in that post.

 

- Looking into expander cards now and so they are basically the same thing as i linked above but just with more ports then?

 

- Having mobo & cpu built in would be easier yes but i do want to learn more about this stuff as you might have guessed by now i'm a bit out of my depth on serverhardware but again i want to learn. And just buying something with everything in it  wouldn't really teach me anything.

 

The personal pictures & movies and such are all backupped on the current setup (dare i call it a server?) and then an external drive atm, in time i hope to convince my brother to have a similar setup at his house so we can backup to eachothers server but that is waayy into the future not even on the horizon atm.

[paddy-stone]

12 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

you dont' want to use usb to boot freenas any more

Why? I must have missed something maybe... my backup server is still running freenas this way. Currently on 11.2-u4 or something IIRC.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 hours ago, paddy-stone said:

Why? I must have missed something maybe... my backup server is still running freenas this way. Currently on 11.2-u4 or something IIRC.

IN around freenas 11, they made it so that it doesn't run off ram, and makes a good amount of writes on the boot drives, this will kill most usb drives very fast as they have cheap flash.

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 hours ago, Symyr said:

I still see alot of people recommending to use usb's for freenas because of the small amount of storage you need for the os and quick and easy replacement if a stick should fail though.

Problem is dual failure, when one goes the extra stress in the restore may kill the second. Id just get a cheap ssd.

 

3 hours ago, Symyr said:

Hmm had not thought about that, i thought there would be slow drives in the external enclosure but i guess you can't get slower then 5400rpm, i'll look into that thanks.

RPM won't matter with an array like this, you will be network limited anways.

 

3 hours ago, Symyr said:

i'm personally not a big fan of used servers since you never know what that hardware has gone through plus the one i showed is cheap because it's just a chassis, that's why i also asked if anyone had suggestions for motherboard, cpu & ram. I've actually seen that vendor talked about in a good way in several discussion forums so i think build quality is fine.

Used hardware is normally pretty good. I don't see a risk, and haven't had any issues.

 

Id get something like this https://www.ebay.com/itm/SuperMicro-CSE-846-24-Bay-SAS2-BP-Server-w-X9DRi-F-2x-6-Core-E5-2620-2Ghz-Sleds/192950842364?hash=item2cecc433fc:g:PkoAAOSwXFldA9Al

 

Its a good case, and comes with a pretty good cpu + ram + mobo aswell.

3 hours ago, Symyr said:

 

- So something like this then? Never worked with expansion cards like this so want to be sure before i do anything because i don't see an sff standard in that post.

thats what id get.

 

3 hours ago, Symyr said:

Looking into expander cards now and so they are basically the same thing as i linked above but just with more ports then?

thats a sas expander, it only adds more drives, you need a hba like the one you listed above.

 

 

 

[paddy-stone]

5 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

IN around freenas 11, they made it so that it doesn't run off ram, and makes a good amount of writes on the boot drives, this will kill most usb drives very fast as they have cheap flash.

Ahh damn... I might have to re-do the server and put an older version back on then... I only have an HP microserver as my backup server (one that backs up my main server files), and the one benefit of that was the internal USB port for having the OS on. If I stuck with 11, it'd mean having to figure how to get an SSD in there for booting from, and IIRC the config isn't very forthcoming.... well shit! LOL

[Symyr]

On 6/30/2019 at 5:26 PM, Electronics Wizardy said:

Problem is dual failure, when one goes the extra stress in the restore may kill the second. Id just get a cheap ssd.

 

RPM won't matter with an array like this, you will be network limited anways.

 

Used hardware is normally pretty good. I don't see a risk, and haven't had any issues.

 

Id get something like this https://www.ebay.com/itm/SuperMicro-CSE-846-24-Bay-SAS2-BP-Server-w-X9DRi-F-2x-6-Core-E5-2620-2Ghz-Sleds/192950842364?hash=item2cecc433fc:g:PkoAAOSwXFldA9Al

 

Its a good case, and comes with a pretty good cpu + ram + mobo aswell.

thats what id get.

 

thats a sas expander, it only adds more drives, you need a hba like the one you listed above.

 

 

 

- Ah yeah that kinda makes sense, i still have a 120gb ssd lying around that worked fine for years so i can use that.

-Yeah figured i would be for the forseeable future, it just baffles me that external drives are cheaper i mean it should be the other away around considering they have an enclosure with connector ports, power & data cables, just can't understand why it's cheaper.

- Sadly that vendor doesn't seem to ship to my country (Belgium in the EU) so i'm gonna try and find something with the same specs that i can have delivered here. It does take away some of the fun of diy'ing the hardwarde and just leaves the configuration part.

- Did some reading and up till now i was under the assumption that you could just take an hba expander OR a sas expander but it seems i would need both for it to work.

 

I'll see what i can find and then let you know what i find in case i overlooked something, thanks for the help so far!

[Electronics Wizardy]

16 minutes ago, Symyr said:

- Did some reading and up till now i was under the assumption that you could just take an hba expander OR a sas expander but it seems i would need both for it to work.

think of it as the hba turns pcie to sas, and the sas expander splits the sas into many more ports. THe sas expander doesn't have any pcie its self.

 

 

[Symyr]

Gonna have to remember that, i mean it sounds logical now that you said it

 

 Also seems that the ebay seller doesn't send to belgium sadly. Been looking around on 2nd hand hardware in EU but it seems our market is not only older then what's on the US market but also more expensive. Sometimes there is appearantly a deal to be made but those usually get snatched up in a heartbeat and aren't as often as one would like.

 

So i think it's back to what i thought at the start of this project and try to build a sort of "prosumer" server instead of trying to find a prebuilt. If anything it will make me understand things better.

Now while looking around i've heard people buying old supermicro, dell, hp or whatever chassis but i think i read somewhere that some older backplanes don't support larger then 2TB drives so i would rather avoid that. I found that people use servercase or xcase both UK based firms who appearantly are trying to compete with supermicro and chenbro (guy from servercase actually said it in one of their own videos) at a lower price point. So yeah since it all starts with the box i looked at both those company's, 1 i linked a 4U before but i'll link it again. From servercase.uk they sell this logiccase for about 340 including taxes and then with xcase they sell their own made chassis for 323 with taxes. Why did i choose these? They seem affordable and overall reviews seem to be ok for them plus i saw them used by people in their own builds.

 

For the rest of the hardware, i'm not sure but i think an amd build would be ok.? Appearantly ryzen supports ecc, although it's unofficial. Not a 100% on how to proceed atm but let me know what you guys think and we'll go from there? Thanks for the help so far!

[AlexanderAckroyd]

What I have:

 

Lenovo ThinkCentre M73P Tiny Form Factor (bought cheap off eBay used

(i3 4130T 2.9Ghz, 4GB RAM, 500GB Internal HDD Gigabit Ethernet)

6TB Seagate External Drive

1TB Seagate External Drive

 

I'm running Openmedia vault (which is great and is lightweight, and the web UI is intuitive). I wanted FreeNAS but my system doesn't have enough RAM.

 

I cant run ethernet through my house, so I have Cat5e running into a switch that also runs my apple TV and PC, then running into a 2000AV Powerline adaptor with Gigabit ethernet running to my router.

 

I have found this is working really well so far, as my file transfer has been pretty consistent at 80-100MB/s.

 

[Symyr]

4 hours ago, AlexanderAckroyd said:

What I have:

 

Lenovo ThinkCentre M73P Tiny Form Factor (bought cheap off eBay used

(i3 4130T 2.9Ghz, 4GB RAM, 500GB Internal HDD Gigabit Ethernet)

6TB Seagate External Drive

1TB Seagate External Drive

 

I'm running Openmedia vault (which is great and is lightweight, and the web UI is intuitive). I wanted FreeNAS but my system doesn't have enough RAM.

 

I cant run ethernet through my house, so I have Cat5e running into a switch that also runs my apple TV and PC, then running into a 2000AV Powerline adaptor with Gigabit ethernet running to my router.

 

I have found this is working really well so far, as my file transfer has been pretty consistent at 80-100MB/s.

 

Yeah with the amount of drives i got/need that won't work for me but looks nice man. Haven't heard of openmedia vault yet, might check it out. Always nice to see new things.

 

I'm lucky enough that we got a crawlspace so i have cat5e running to a couple of rooms.

 

On a sidenote i actually found a refurb company in a country near me but i'm waiting for them to come back to me since on the site i only saw 12bay servers. And tbh if i want to only have 12 bays i might aswell use a normal desktop case and fill that up .

[AlexanderAckroyd]

8 hours ago, Symyr said:

Yeah with the amount of drives i got/need that won't work for me but looks nice man. Haven't heard of openmedia vault yet, might check it out. Always nice to see new things.

 

I'm lucky enough that we got a crawlspace so i have cat5e running to a couple of rooms.

 

On a sidenote i actually found a refurb company in a country near me but i'm waiting for them to come back to me since on the site i only saw 12bay servers. And tbh if i want to only have 12 bays i might aswell use a normal desktop case and fill that up .

Have you looked into a RAID enclosure like this one? I will be getting this when I next need to upgrade storage.

[Symyr]

9 hours ago, AlexanderAckroyd said:

Have you looked into a RAID enclosure like this one? I will be getting this when I next need to upgrade storage.

That still is a bit small, the enclosure i'm looking at is like electronics wizardy linked earlier. Seems like the EU 2nd hand market is a bit older and alot more expensive then the US market, but i'll know more once i get that response from the company, it is the weekend after all.

[Symyr]

So they got back to me and they got a refurbished HP ML350 G9 24 bay 4U server for 2 655 €, looks like what you linked @Electronics Wizardy. I took the options for caddy tray since it didn't say if they were included but it was only 12 so i would have to find more.

CPU: - 2x E5-2620v3 2,4Ghz, RAM: - 64 GB, 2 years of warranty

 

While waiting for them i also found another onlineshop that supposedly sells ZFS Ready servers, hardware looks up to snuff in my amateur opinion . Price isn't amateur though coming in at 2 882€ for the config that i took which was the following:

- Mobo: Supermicro X10DRi max. 1TB 6x PCIe 2x GbE IPMI 2.0 

- CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2603v4 15M / 6x 1.70GHz / 6T / 85W 

- RAM: 32 GB DDR4 ECC Reggistreerd Samsung Org. 

- No HDD because it will be cheaper to buy on my own.

- Controller: LSI 9300-8i HBA 8-poorts SAS / SATA 12GB / s PCIe (standard included)

- Chassis & power supply: Super CSE-846BE1C-R1K28B 4U 24x 3,5 "SAS / SATA 12 Gb / s hotswap (1 + 1) 1280W

- 3 years of warranty

[Electronics Wizardy]

6 hours ago, Symyr said:

So they got back to me and they got a refurbished HP ML350 G9 24 bay 4U server for 2 655 €, looks like what you linked @Electronics Wizardy. I took the options for caddy tray since it didn't say if they were included but it was only 12 so i would have to find more.

CPU: - 2x E5-2620v3 2,4Ghz, RAM: - 64 GB, 2 years of warranty

 

While waiting for them i also found another onlineshop that supposedly sells ZFS Ready servers, hardware looks up to snuff in my amateur opinion . Price isn't amateur though coming in at 2 882€ for the config that i took which was the following:

- Mobo: Supermicro X10DRi max. 1TB 6x PCIe 2x GbE IPMI 2.0 

- CPU: Intel Xeon E5-2603v4 15M / 6x 1.70GHz / 6T / 85W 

- RAM: 32 GB DDR4 ECC Reggistreerd Samsung Org. 

- No HDD because it will be cheaper to buy on my own.

- Controller: LSI 9300-8i HBA 8-poorts SAS / SATA 12GB / s PCIe (standard included)

- Chassis & power supply: Super CSE-846BE1C-R1K28B 4U 24x 3,5 "SAS / SATA 12 Gb / s hotswap (1 + 1) 1280W

- 3 years of warranty

Of those two, id get the hp as it has better specs and is cheaper. You can probaby go cheaper, id try to find a g8 if you can, but it will work fine if you got the money. 

 

Make sure to get trays so you can mount drives.

 

 

 

[Symyr]

On 7/10/2019 at 6:05 AM, Electronics Wizardy said:

Of those two, id get the hp as it has better specs and is cheaper. You can probaby go cheaper, id try to find a g8 if you can, but it will work fine if you got the money. 

 

Make sure to get trays so you can mount drives.

 

 

 

Yeah that's why i included the option for 12 trays since that was the max amount i could select with em but i'm thinking of asking if it's possible to get more. Havent found a G8 with 3,5" bays yet sadly. Seems the vast majority is all 2,5" bays. Think i'll just have to take the financial hit now and then i'll be good for a longer period i guess.

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 hours ago, Symyr said:

Yeah that's why i included the option for 12 trays since that was the max amount i could select with em but i'm thinking of asking if it's possible to get more. Havent found a G8 with 3,5" bays yet sadly. Seems the vast majority is all 2,5" bays. Think i'll just have to take the financial hit now and then i'll be good for a longer period i guess.

trays are normally cheaper on ebay, so i woudln't buy them from these folk unless its chepaer. 

 

You can also just get a 1u server, and external sas enclosures like an sa120 or md1200, and add more of them as needed.

[Symyr]

After thinking about it for awhile, i decided i can't justify spending that amount of money on it in my current situation.

 

So the plan that i'm forming now is using my old consumer hardware, taking the old busted cases from my brother and me and making 1 good case. Then install freenas on it, it will lack ecc but the i7 4770k is more then enough for what it will need to do and i got like 32gb of ddr3 ram that's still good lying around here. Gonna have to check how many sata connections it has but then at the end of the line i'll only have to buy a psu and look into what kind of expander cards i need.

 

Kinda sad that i can't go nerdy with an actual server but gotta stay realistic after all.