Need help building a media/storage server

[Churky]

Budget (including currency): Hoping to be below $2000

Country: Massachusetts, USA

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: 

I currently have 2 NAS drives, both are aging and both is not a solution I like. I have something call ProMedia 8 Drive that I have for almost 10 years. This is my backup detachable storage. It is a simple 8 drive cage with a really cheap hardware raid card, and connect to my main system via USB3 Type A. I turn this thing on once a month to do backup. A mirror sync of my main NAS drive. My main NAS is a Synology DS1815+. It worked well for me for a little while, but their support is basically non existence. Anything that breaks, I basically need to find the issue and resolve it myself. I might as well build a custom solution. The main thing I don't like the Synology is, if anything dies or breaks, their component is not something I can swap out and replace and back up running again. The custom OS restricts on software I can use or version of the software I can use. Such as Plex, or Tomcat, or simple JAVA. I am still running Tomcat 7 because there is no higher version supported. Tons of security holes in that.

 

What I am looking for is a new generic upgradable system, components are interchangeable easily and readily available. Main requirement is a good RAID that support at least 8 drive, more for expansion is preferable. I like to run RAID+5, hopefully I remember the raid level correctly. So for every 3 drive, I use 1 as redundancy. I don't really care about graphics card since majority of the time it is not plugged into a monitor, it will be VNC or SSH into. But I do want a reasonable graphics card for plex encoding. I want to use AMD CPU because I watched enough of Linus raving reviews that I am sold on it.

 

What I would be using it for is mainly as a plex server for my house, 4 people using in total, so somewhat low usage. A Tomcat server for the Java service application I run. Minecraft server for my kids to play in. And basically a system that contains all my home video and pictures. This amounts to about about 8TB worth of storage and will be growing maybe rapidly as I am taking more videos of my kids in sports.

 

I would love to hear recommendation for MB, RAID card, I am looking at the AMD Rayzn 5 3600 as CPU and GSkill Trident Z neo 2x32Gb, but not set on it. I do have an old school Antec Lan boy case and Rosewill 750 80 Gold Plus PSU, I also have a EVGA Nvidia 670 GTX, not sure if that is worth reusing, but if I can save a few bucks there that would be great. I am pretty set on using Seagate Exos 7E8 8TB, x8. Unless someone have a suggestion for same amount of volume and reliability for under $178 each.

 

Please help.

 

Thank you.

 

[Biomecanoid]

The hardware can be low powered as an intel atom you don't really need CPU power unless you want to do on the fly transcoding which i don't really like or suggest. You don't really need a raid card and Linux or FreeBSD can use sata ports with software raid.

 

I would suggest you use FreeNAS. I have build NAS appliances before for my own use and always used low powered atom boards so i can keep the device up 24/7 and don't worry about power consumption

[Electronics Wizardy]

How many tb do you need?

 

Do you want to be able to expand it easily?

 

13 minutes ago, Churky said:

Seagate Exos 7E8

Why those drives? Id get shucked externas personally, cheaper and anout the same relaliblity.

 

Id probably go 10400 or 10100 here, then you get a igpu so you don't have to use the gpu, and cheaper normally aswell. Then you can use quicksync on the cpu for encoding aswell, or the cpu alone should be fine for transcoding

 

 

[Churky]

49 minutes ago, Biomecanoid said:

The hardware can be low powered as an intel atom you don't really need CPU power unless you want to do on the fly transcoding which i don't really like or suggest. You don't really need a raid card and Linux or FreeBSD can use sata ports with software raid.

 

I would suggest you use FreeNAS. I have build NAS appliances before for my own use and always used low powered atom boards so i can keep the device up 24/7 and don't worry about power consumption

I have tried low power solution before and when it comes to transcoding converting from 4K to IPad to IPhone, even with 4 streams it is taxing on the system. power consumption is not my concern because I have solar and unless it is a rainy day, i have plenty to spare without selling back to the grid pennies to the dollar.

 

I am not familiar with FreeNAS, my main goal for future proofing if, if this machine sudden dies and I don't have time to troubleshoot it. I want to be able to pop the RAID card out, and pop it into another machine, or new machine, and off I go, uninterrupted. Would FreeNas allow me to do that?

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, Churky said:

I am not familiar with FreeNAS, my main goal for future proofing if, if this machine sudden dies and I don't have time to troubleshoot it. I want to be able to pop the RAID card out, and pop it into another machine, or new machine, and off I go, uninterrupted. Would FreeNas allow me to do that?

 

reenas is built around software raid, so you can access the drives in any system with zfs. Id probably stay away from a hardware raid card here.

[Churky]

53 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

How many tb do you need?

 

Do you want to be able to expand it easily?

 

Why those drives? Id get shucked externas personally, cheaper and anout the same relaliblity.

 

 

Just my personal home video and photos amounts to 8TB, total data storage is a bit more. I tend to upgrade by doubling the storage I have. So thats the reason for 8Tbx6 with 2 for fault tolerance. At the end I'll get approximate 44TB. Yes, I do want to expand it easily. The easier the better.

 

I went to the Exos vs the Ironwolf Nas, because there is a sale on Exos, otherwise I would have gone with Ironwolf. I prefer these dries since it is reviewed and rated reliable for NAS and Enterprise storage. I value low maintenance, long time between failure, and lower chance of data lost over a bit more spent.

[Churky]

3 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

reenas is built around software raid, so you can access the drives in any system with zfs. Id probably stay away from a hardware raid card here.

Does freenas perform well? Does this mean I rely on the MB's SATA ports? Would I just get a cheap controller card?

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 minutes ago, Churky said:

Does freenas perform well? Does this mean I rely on the MB's SATA ports? Would I just get a cheap controller card?

Yup, just use the ports on the board, I don't see a reason to use a raid card here.

 

What speeds do you need? Freenas will easily fill gig, 10g is pretty easily aswell

 

6 minutes ago, Churky said:

Just my personal home video and photos amounts to 8TB, total data storage is a bit more. I tend to upgrade by doubling the storage I have. So thats the reason for 8Tbx6 with 2 for fault tolerance. At the end I'll get approximate 44TB. Yes, I do want to expand it easily. The easier the better.

 

Id go unraid for easy expansion, freenas isn't good at expansion.

 

7 minutes ago, Churky said:

 

 

I went to the Exos vs the Ironwolf Nas, because there is a sale on Exos, otherwise I would have gone with Ironwolf. I prefer these dries since it is reviewed and rated reliable for NAS and Enterprise storage. I value low maintenance, long time between failure, and lower chance of data lost over a bit more spent.

Id go bigger drives, like 12 or 14tb drives. 

 

Those cheap exos drives often has issues with warranty support,.

 

Id really just get shucked externals, about the same faiure rates, and much cheaper.

[Biomecanoid]

19 minutes ago, Churky said:

I have tried low power solution before and when it comes to transcoding converting from 4K to IPad to IPhone, even with 4 streams it is taxing on the system. power consumption is not my concern because I have solar and unless it is a rainy day, i have plenty to spare without selling back to the grid pennies to the dollar.

 

I am not familiar with FreeNAS, my main goal for future proofing if, if this machine sudden dies and I don't have time to troubleshoot it. I want to be able to pop the RAID card out, and pop it into another machine, or new machine, and off I go, uninterrupted. Would FreeNas allow me to do that?

 

Transcoding on the fly is not an ideal scenario. why store a media format that your playback devices don't support and need transcoding to be played back. A NAS should be a simple/dumb way to store your media files that is available 24/7.

 

It makes more sense to store your content in a format supported by your playback devices and forget about transcoding.

If you are 100% sure you MUST have transcoding atom is not the way to go and you need a really powerful machine.

 

With FreeNAS you don't need a RAID card and the device is essentially a computer build from off the self components which means spare parts are readily available.

 

I have my movies in my tiny atom based NAS and they play through about the house on my Android box attached to the TV on my android phone and tablet. No need for transcoding.

 

Why do you need transcoding ?

 

 

 

[Churky]

38 minutes ago, Biomecanoid said:

Transcoding on the fly is not an ideal scenario. why store a media format that your playback devices don't support and need transcoding to be played back. A NAS should be a simple/dumb way to store your media files that is available 24/7.

 

It makes more sense to store your content in a format supported by your playback devices and forget about transcoding.

If you are 100% sure you MUST have transcoding atom is not the way to go and you need a really powerful machine.

 

With FreeNAS you don't need a RAID card and the device is essentially a computer build from off the self components which means spare parts are readily available.

 

I have my movies in my tiny atom based NAS and they play through about the house on my Android box attached to the TV on my android phone and tablet. No need for transcoding.

 

Why do you need transcoding ?

 

 

 

I usually stored my Videos in 4K format. I have a few TVs around the house, Living room, bedroom, Kitchen etc, all are 4K. I have three 4K monitors for work (work from home). Then there are few 1080P video devices such as my Iphone and tables, and the kid's TV. When I stream through plex, without putting transcoding on. The 1080P devices skips and plays like crap. Some of the older video that are in 1080P format, these devices plays fine. I run my plex currently on a dell optiplex with i7-6700T. But from what I am reading about freenas, you basically don't do anything on the machine itself, it basically a NAS without any program capability. While I like the simplicity, I think I have a different expectation.

[Biomecanoid]

40 minutes ago, Churky said:

I usually stored my Videos in 4K format. I have a few TVs around the house, Living room, bedroom, Kitchen etc, all are 4K. I have three 4K monitors for work (work from home). Then there are few 1080P video devices such as my Iphone and tables, and the kid's TV. When I stream through plex, without putting transcoding on. The 1080P devices skips and plays like crap. Some of the older video that are in 1080P format, these devices plays fine. I run my plex currently on a dell optiplex with i7-6700T. But from what I am reading about freenas, you basically don't do anything on the machine itself, it basically a NAS without any program capability. While I like the simplicity, I think I have a different expectation.

FreeNAS is the most powerful OS you can use. If you can't find a use for it probably need to rethink your situation because FreeNAS is more than fine for home use.

 

In my eyes the problem is your end devices that are not able to play your content. The easiest solution for you is to store or re-download the content you want to view on those devices in a supported format.  ( or maybe Transcode ONCE and store the output )

 

I keep my movies in a format that can play in all my devices thus my NAS is tiny like a modem and consumes like 20watts.

 

An android box costs like 50 to 100us and would play the high bitrate 4K content so you can "upgrade" your older TVs of course at a resolution your TV supports