Hardware choices for nas+plex home server

[JimJimson]

Hi,

 

I'm looking at building a home server which is low power, quiet, and won't break the bank too crazily.

Currently I've been using The nas killer 4.0 guide as a general list of recommended parts and really like the look of the fractal design node 804 as the housing for my build.

I think I want to go down the route of used server hardware, as I like the idea of having ECC. With that in mind I've been eyeing the Supermicro X9SCL or similar as the motherboard, with a reasonably low power xeon (E3-1265L V2 for example).

With this I'd get 32GB ddr3 ecc and an SSD boot drive.
I have an old gtx 960 which I could repurpose for HW transcoding, if need be.

My main questions are surrounding storage though. I probably am looking at 5-6 2TB drives with single drive redundancy, but haven't really been able to determine the best way to do this. Should I be looking at Sata/SAS drives? Would it be beneficial to go for larger drives, e.g. 4TB?

 

I hope I've provided enough information

[WereCatf]

17 minutes ago, JimJimson said:

Would it be beneficial to go for larger drives, e.g. 4TB?

From a reliability-standpoint, yes. The fewer drives you have, the fewer devices you have that can suddenly die.

 

18 minutes ago, JimJimson said:

Should I be looking at Sata/SAS drives?

No point in going for SAS.

[JimJimson]

Quote

From a reliability-standpoint, yes. The fewer drives you have, the fewer devices you have that can suddenly die.

I plan on having 1 drive redundancy, am I right in thinking that using larger drives means that more space will be lost to parity?

[WereCatf]

3 hours ago, JimJimson said:

I plan on having 1 drive redundancy, am I right in thinking that using larger drives means that more space will be lost to parity?

No, the amount of parity stays the amount in comparison to the other drives, ie. parity-drive will have to be the same size or bigger as the other drives.

 

EDIT: Now that I re-read the question, I suppose I should clarify. In a RAID5, the parity-disk has to be the same size as the others or larger, but if you add more drives to the RAID, you can continue to use the same parity-disk as long as the new drives as the same size or smaller -- no additional space spent on parity. That said, if you want to swap out one or more of the drives to bigger ones, you need to swap the parity-disk for a bigger one as well.

[Dutch_Master]

5 hours ago, WereCatf said:

EDIT: Now that I re-read the question, I suppose I should clarify. In a RAID5, the parity-disk has to be the same size as the others or larger, but if you add more drives to the RAID, you can continue to use the same parity-disk as long as the new drives as the same size or smaller -- no additional space spent on parity. That said, if you want to swap out one or more of the drives to bigger ones, you need to swap the parity-disk for a bigger one as well.

Sorry, but RAID5 does NOT use "a" parity disk! It stripes the parity over all disks. Other, NON-RAID systems do use dedicated parity disks, but pure RAID does NOT.

[Jarsky]

13 hours ago, JimJimson said:

With that in mind I've been eyeing the Supermicro X9SCL

 

13 hours ago, JimJimson said:

I have an old gtx 960 which I could repurpose for HW transcoding, if need be.

 

Keep in mind that board doesn't have a PCIE X16 slot. You would need to either cut the back off a slot, or use some kind of riser card - assuming the board will support the dedicated graphics. 

 

13 hours ago, JimJimson said:

My main questions are surrounding storage though. I probably am looking at 5-6 2TB drives with single drive redundancy, but haven't really been able to determine the best way to do this. Should I be looking at Sata/SAS drives? Would it be beneficial to go for larger drives, e.g. 4TB?

 

Stick with SATA drives. Single drive redundancy would be fine risk for a Plex Server. 

But yes, go for 3 larger drives, rather than 6 small drives. Wether you can expand the array depends on what solution you use for building your array. 

 

13 hours ago, JimJimson said:

With this I'd get 32GB ddr3 ecc and an SSD boot drive.

You don't need 32GB of RAM unless you're using something like ZFS which can utilize the Ram for scrubbing/dedup and reserves for ARC cache. 

 

 

Talking about SSD's & Memory though, do consider that Plex loves to have its cache and transcoding on fast access storage. 

Personally my Plex has its appdata on a dedicated SSD, and its transcode path is a Ram Disk (temporary drive in RAM which is a native feature of UnRAID)

[JimJimson]

Quote

You don't need 32GB of RAM unless you're using something like ZFS which can utilize the Ram for scrubbing/dedup and reserves for ARC cache. 

That's exactly my plan, I'm going to be using RAID-Z to provide single drive redundancy, so should I be considering that much ram? I can always set up 16gb with 2x8 sticks and have room to expand.

 

It sounds like 3-5 4TB drives is the way to go though. Do I have to worry about storage limits? Previously I was looking at a Dell T110 and it can only handle 12TB

[Jarsky]

22 minutes ago, JimJimson said:

That's exactly my plan, I'm going to be using RAID-Z to provide single drive redundancy, so should I be considering that much ram? I can always set up 16gb with 2x8 sticks and have room to expand.

 

It sounds like 3-5 4TB drives is the way to go though. Do I have to worry about storage limits? Previously I was looking at a Dell T110 and it can only handle 12TB

So you're looking to do a RAIDZ1 setup? That much RAM would be pretty good if its in your budget.

FreeNAS will automatically allocate about ~12GB of that to ARC. The rest can be used for other functions like scrubbing, dedup, jails (such as Plex), etc...

 

You'd be better getting 3 x 8TB drives than 5 x 4TB drives, better $/TB. It also means that with 3 disks in a VDEV, you can later get another 3 x 8TB if you need to, and create a second VDEV and only have 6 disks. 

[JimJimson]

Quote

So you're looking to do a RAIDZ1 setup?

Yep, that's the plan.

3x8TB will sound like the way to go in that case.

 

A question about PSU's then: Is it worth going balls to the wall efficiency? Is there a benefit going above an 80+ gold rating when it comes to 24/7 operation?

[Jarsky]

19 hours ago, JimJimson said:

Yep, that's the plan.

3x8TB will sound like the way to go in that case.

 

A question about PSU's then: Is it worth going balls to the wall efficiency? Is there a benefit going above an 80+ gold rating when it comes to 24/7 operation?

 

No point. You'll never be in that 85%+ range for the advantage of the efficiency curve....same with gold as well. 

Just stick with whatever is most applicable from an 80+ bronze or higher.

 

My servers use 80+ Gold but only because I love Seasonic, and the cheapest units in the range I wanted were gold anyway. 

[Dravinian Broke]

As someone who has gone through this process can I make a suggestion.

 

What are you looking to pay for 5 x 4tb drives?  About $100 a pop x 5?  So about $500 for those drives?  For that you will get 16tb of capacity?

 

I asked a similar question in this forum, and the general consus was, for the money you are spending you could buy far larger drives, giving far more capacity, and providing an opportunity to upgrade in the future.

 

I know your case carries 10 drives? So not like you can't keep adding 4tb drives, but you have to consider both the power draw of that many drives and all the sata power cables you will need, and the sata data cables you will need and the sata ports you will need on your motherboard. 

 

Great having a case with 10 drives, but my NAS MB has 6 sata ports - because I wanted a cheap NAS and didn't want to buy a dedicated MB at a higher cost.  I think my power supply could cater for 9-12 sata power cables, if I have 3-4 leads carrying 3 sata power heads each (not sure my PSU came with that many leads to be honest) but then do you also need an expansion card for the MB to create more sata ports, I have 6, I have seen 8 on higher end boards, are there boards that have 10, are you going to buy one of those?

 

You can get a 14tb Enterprise drive for $325-$350 from Amazon.  So yes, a bit more expensive, but even if you buy 2 x 14tb, that is $650, so $150 extra, but what will it cost you in buying Sata data cables? Sata power cables? A MB that has 10 sata ports or an expansion card to provide more sata ports, and of course the extra power, day in day out to run that many drives...can you balance the cost and justify the initial outlay for larger drives?

 

Sure you will start with a capacity of 14tb instead of 16tb, but in 3 months add 1 more drive...just 1, and you will have 28tb of capacity.  You will only ever be able to reach 36tb capacity with 10 drives at 4tb a pop.  In 6 months, add one more drive, you will be at 42tb capacity, with just 4 drives.

 

Just a thought, it is something that I considered, but then forgot and was reminded about by people on this forum, so passing on that thought process.

[Dravinian Broke]

I see you are discussing 8tb, I think it changes the math a bit

 

$150-$200 for an 8tb drive, x 3, is still $500-$600 initial outlay.  But the data port/cables issue might not come up at that level.  I suppose you have to consider your use case and how much space you actually need.

 

I went the 14tb route, because I expect this NAS to be with me for awhile, and I suspect I will be continually adding stuff to the storage.

I filled 4tb in a week, so figured even if that slows down, I can still imagine 500gb and 1tb a week, so in 10 weeks, 5tb, in 20 weeks, 10tb.  It quickly adds up.