Looking for assistance with setting up NAS System

[Skitzafreak]

I am looking into creating a NAS for home and work use.  This is something I haven't done before, so I have a couple questions I was hoping to get answered on a few things I would like to have the system do, and what I would need in order to do that.

 

1) I'll ask my biggest question first, which concerns potential work use for the machine.  I work as a programmer and I'd like to (if possible) set up a VM on the NAS for me to use remotely as my work environment.  The goal would be to have the VM set up on the NAS, make it so I can access it both from home and while in the office.  The whole reason I'd want to do everything on a VM would be so that I can set up a script that every night creates a backup of the VM in case something goes wrong somewhere and things explode, to put it simply.  The question for this area I guess is, would the performance of this VM be determined by the CPU/RAM that are in the NAS, or the CPU/RAM of whatever I am connecting to the VM with?  Essentially trying to figure out whether I need to go out and get a new powerful and expensive CPU, or if i'd be able to do with something cheaper.

 

2) Does anyone have any good components to recommend for this? I'd like for the system to not be huge, so I'd like to put things together in a Mini ITX, or Micro ATX sized case.  I'd also like to if possible have it setup with hot-swappable bays for the NAS drives, 6-8 preferably.  At the moment kind of wandering in the dark on what sort of components I should be looking for.

 

3) Does anyone have any suggestions for someone setting up a NAS for the first time?  It's always nice to learn from your own mistakes, but also nice when you don't have to stick your hand in a fire to find out what can burn you lol

 

Thanks to anyone who offers me some help with this, I really appreciate it.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1. The performance of the vm is determined by what system the vm is running on, so the nas in this case. Most cheap nas boxes aren't great at running vms, so you will need a higerend nas or a diy nas if you want to run vms.

 

2. SIlverstone has some nice hotswap cases that are small.

 

Do you have a budget? Id probably go something like a 2400g or a 3600 here. 16 or 32gb of ram, small boot ssd, and 8+tb hdd with as many as you need.

[quinctilius]

https://www.serverbuilds.net/

 

This will give you some great build ideas on a budget. DIY NAS is the way to for what you want

 

Sounds like you'd want reasonable performance from the VM.  The performance is determined by the CPU on the server.  Agree with @Electronics Wizardy re RAM/SSD/HDD.  You might want to look into a Motherboard that supports ECC RAM (but I dont think this is 100% neccessary).  Using the builds on serverbuilds.net there are some good tips for saving money, e.g. get second hand dual Xeon systems built up, but a milti-core 3rd gen Ryzen 5+ should do the job.

 

OS wise, I can't recommend UnRaid enough.  Super easy to set up/maintain

[Skitzafreak]

Appreciate the suggestions

 

So it is good to know I do need a good CPU for the NAS if I was decent performance on the VM.

 

Is there a rule for how much RAM I should have for how large the storage on the VM is? 

[jacob_samd]

On 12/8/2019 at 2:30 AM, Skitzafreak said:

Appreciate the suggestions

 

So it is good to know I do need a good CPU for the NAS if I was decent performance on the VM.

 

Is there a rule for how much RAM I should have for how large the storage on the VM is? 

I would say if you haven’t already look into all of linus’ 2 gamers 1 cpu type videos. Those will benefit you greatly when it comes to the VM’s and what you need.

[Skitzafreak]

On 12/13/2019 at 8:13 PM, jacob_samd said:

I would say if you haven’t already look into all of linus’ 2 gamers 1 cpu type videos. Those will benefit you greatly when it comes to the VM’s and what you need.

Is there more than one video?  Because for 2 gamers 1 cpu I only really found one thing.  However I assume their attempts with the 7 gamers 1 machine thing work along the same lines?

 

And I had another question come to mind.  Watching the 2 gamers 1 cpu video, Linus mentioned having essentially a dummy GPU for UNRAID to use.  Even if I am not using UNRAID, will I need some sort of GPU/graphics component in the system?  Or will whatever graphics devices are in the machine I am accessing the VM with be used when I am accessing it?

 

Again, I have no plans of using a VM for gaming or anything, but I am wondering if I might want to include a low end GPU or maybe see if I should get a CPU with integrated graphics.  That could change the overall build since I'd need to make sure there is room for a GPU if I should be grabbing one.

[Salacious B Crum]

Here's my unRAID setup built around a pre-built I7 6700 it performs fantastic and I'm pushing it pretty hard its my plex media server, my homeassistant server and runs a dozen dockers:

 

 

 

[Skitzafreak]

So after hearing stuff from everyone here, and doing a bit more research myself, I through my idea for the build together on PCPartPicker:

PCPartPicker Part List

Type	Item	Price
CPU	AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 3.6 GHz 8-Core Processor	$419.00 @ Canada Computers
Motherboard	ASRock X570 Taichi ATX AM4 Motherboard	$368.95 @ Vuugo
Memory	Kingston HyperX Predator 32 GB (2 x 16 GB) DDR4-3600 Memory	$398.95 @ Amazon Canada
Storage	Western Digital Green 240 GB M.2-2280 Solid State Drive	$49.74 @ Vuugo
Storage	Samsung 860 Evo 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive	$169.50 @ Vuugo
Storage	Samsung 860 Evo 1 TB 2.5" Solid State Drive	$169.50 @ Vuugo
Storage	Seagate IronWolf NAS 10 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$340.99 @ Vuugo
Storage	Seagate IronWolf NAS 10 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$340.99 @ Vuugo
Storage	Seagate IronWolf NAS 10 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$340.99 @ Vuugo
Storage	Seagate IronWolf NAS 10 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive	$340.99 @ Vuugo
Case	Antec VSK4000E U3 ATX Mid Tower Case	$43.31 @ Vuugo
	Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts
	Total (before mail-in rebates)	$3032.91
	Mail-in rebates	-$50.00
	Total	$2982.91
	Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-12-20 08:59 EST-0500

I still haven't decided on a CPU Cooler or a PSU, but other than this is mostly what I think I'd be looking at for my setup.  Going to go through some thoughts on things and if anyone could give their own opinions on this that would be greatly appreciated.

 

I chose the Ryzen 7 3700X as my CPU because from the information I could find online, it does a better job than Intel CPUs that are at the same price point, and it is only slightly above the $400 budget I'd have for my CPU.  And the reason I paired it with the AsRock Taichi is because I like a lot of the features the motherboard provides, again without completely breaking the bank.

 

Only going to start with 32 GB of RAM, but I've kept it to only being 2 sticks, so that in the future if I want to upgrade to 64GB, that's an easy thing to do.

 

Now then, why this case? Simply put, it has a lot of great spaces for hard drives.  Internally, I can easily put the 4 HDDs and 2 SSDs that I have in the PCPartPicker List, and in the future I have the option to remove the 5.25" panels on the front of the case to install a hot-swap drive bay which will allow for me to add another 4 drives to the system.  This case basically has what I was looking for, but if anyone has a better suggestion feel free to throw it at me.

 

Now for the actually drive setup.  My thought process is to have UnRAID (or whatever I decide to use) installed on an M.2 drive.  Surprisingly, I can't seem to find small ones anymore.  I swear I remember seeing like 64GB M.2s years ago for like $150 lol.  After that, I have two 1TB SSDs for the cache, and 4 10TB drives for storage.

 

I don't know 100% if I need specifically NAS drives, but I've heard in some cases they are recommended.  But my god, they're expensive.

[Salacious B Crum]

3 hours ago, Skitzafreak said:

Now for the actually drive setup.  My thought process is to have UnRAID (or whatever I decide to use) installed on an M.2 drive. 

Thats a non-starter with unRAID as it must be on a usb as the unRAID license is tied to it unRAID boots from the usb into memory then it runs for the most part from the memory

[Skitzafreak]

1 hour ago, mrbilky said:

Thats a non-starter with unRAID as it must be on a usb as the unRAID license is tied to it unRAID boots from the usb into memory then it runs for the most part from the memory

I was unaware of that.  Thank you for letting me know.

[Salacious B Crum]

4 hours ago, Skitzafreak said:

I was unaware of that.  Thank you for letting me know.

To be clear this is not a bad thing at all just something you need to know, I have 2 unRAID servers and they are rock solid and serve me well