Help! I wanna build a NAS.

[Hulxmash]

Holy crap. I don't even know where to begin. I am looking at building a new NAS box because my wife has started doing a video podcast and I want to have a lot of storage for her. I have figured out that I would like to use FreeNAS because I like the idea of the zfs file system and the snapshots that it provides. Now I also know that I want to start with a drive pool of 4 HDD's to start with and I would like to be able to expand another pool of 4 in the future if needed. But outside of that I get lost in all the options when I start looking at hardware. I have no size limitations as this is going to stashed in my storage room on a large shelf. I would prefer for it to be quiet but it doesn't need to be silent, and it will serve no other function (No plex server here) so I would like it to be low power. Would anyone have any recommendations? Am I crazy to build my own or should I find a prebuilt? I am so lost.  

[Electronics Wizardy]

How many tb do you need?

 

What network speeds do you need?

 

Do you have a budget in mind?

 

How much tweaking and configuring do you want to do? If you want it simple id go prebuilt.

 

Id probably go with a prebuilt with a tower case with lose of bays, maybe a ds380, get a low power cpu like a intel c3000 based system, and you get ecc support too.

 

Or if you want cheaper, get a full tower with lots of bays and a matx board.

[TargetDron3]

You don't need much horse power.  

You need to find a case or chassis to house the number of drives you think you need.  And then find a power supply with enough leads to run the 8+drives. So at least 400w for your 8 drives.  Then whatever you need to run the systemboard and cpu.  

I've been thinking of building a new system and asrock has a matx motherboard with Celeron on newegg for 60-70 bucks. Toss in 16gb ram and you are done. Load Truenas Core and you are good to go.  

What is your backup plan? 

[Hulxmash]

I'm not sure how much storage I want yet, I was thinking 8TB drives to start but I want to be able to scale up if I need in the future. I forgot to mention that I only have a gigabit network. Budget is pretty flexible but I was trying to keep it around $1500 CAD. I like tweaking and tuning but with a NAS I'd like to only have to do it once. Maybe once more if I expand the pool.

[Hulxmash]

backup plan has been hope and pray. And Raid 10.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Hulxmash said:

I'm not sure how much storage I want yet, I was thinking 8TB drives to start but I want to be able to scale up if I need in the future. I forgot to mention that I only have a gigabit network. Budget is pretty flexible but I was trying to keep it around $1500 CAD. I like tweaking and tuning but with a NAS I'd like to only have to do it once. Maybe once more if I expand the pool.

What is your backup plan?

 

Id probably go diy then, get a small tower, so with something like i3 10100 if you don't want ecc.

 

Lots of cases support 8+ drives, id probably get one of the define cases for looks + low noise.

 

Just now, Hulxmash said:

backup plan has been hope and pray.

Id probalby spend some of that budget on external hdds for backup then.

[Archer42]

17 minutes ago, Hulxmash said:

backup plan has been hope and pray.

Without backup you will loose everything at some point, inevitably.

IMO - spend less on the NAS itself and dedicate some part of your budget for some sort of backups.

 

In terms of hardware, assuming you skip ecc ram, it is pretty much any small board with soldered cpu (look at number of sata ports though), single small ram stick, some type of storage for os (small ssd?), a case (which is the most important part) with enough bays and some sort of cooling for this bays, and decent PSU (which needs to survive power spike on hdd spin up, which is significant for something like 8 hdd-s).

 

IMO - choose a good case with appropriate cooling, psu, hdd-s, dedicate some money for backup solution and spend the rest on minimally viable system which you can then upgrade as needed. You do not need fancy cpu, a lot of ram (assuming no zfs dedup) or anything. For gigabit only... i've been running simple NAS on old C2D E8500 with linux and it is more than enough.

[TheCoder2019]

@Hulxmash

 

My nas is a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB for around $130 CAD. It has support for WiFi 2.4 and 5GHz, and you can set it up in minutes with an external HDD or SSD via USB, set it up with Samba, and there! A $375 CAD NAS! The backups though... That's up to you

[Hulxmash]

I know I don't need much for a processor, but I have read repeatedly that ECC ram is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. I don't even know what the hell I'm looking for when it comes to boards that support ECC. Would that mean I would have to look at a server board? If I would I don't think I need it that bad.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Hulxmash said:

I know I don't need much for a processor, but I have read repeatedly that ECC ram is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED. I don't even know what the hell I'm looking for when it comes to boards that support ECC. Would that mean I would have to look at a server board? If I would I don't think I need it that bad.

Server boards are your best option. How about something like this https://www.amazon.com/Supermicro-A2SDi-4C-HLN4F-Motherboard-Intel-C3558/dp/B077BT1DRT

 

Lots of sata ports, ipmi, low power, and itx fits in cases like the ds380 easily.

[TargetDron3]

Truenas will use unused system ram as a zfs cache. 

RAID is NOT a backup.  Don't spend $1500CAD that can get trashed with one power surge.  

You need to be realistic about how much data you need to keep and start from there.

Creating RAID arrays in simple configs is a waste of time and resources.

If you need 8TB to start, just start with one 8TB drive (and a separate OS drive). Buy a second 8TB drive in a usb enclosure and use that as your backup. Create backup and unplug it. 

You can expand your pool as you need. 

[Hulxmash]

In truth I have no idea how much storage I need. I wanted the raid for the redundancy and little speed boost. I just want something that will be rock solid. I was looking at starting with a 16TB pool with 4X 8TB drives in raid 10. I would like to be able to expand that if I need. I would use this pool as backup for all the PC's in my house. In the event of a single drive failure I could replace it.

[Archer42]

One funny alternative to server boards when ecc support is desired are chinese lga2011/lga2011-3 boards.

They are cheap and use old server cpu-s with ecc support and whatnot.

Played around with that, would not necessarily say that it is a good idea, but definitely an option.

 

Also ECC is not really required. It is a good thing to have for any data storage, but faulty RAM is just one way to loose data, if you are going to use zfs it will detect data corruption for you, and as long as you have backup it is not really an issue. Just replace faulty ram and restore from backup.

 

  

2 minutes ago, Hulxmash said:

In truth I have no idea how much storage I need. I wanted the raid for the redundancy and little speed boost. I just want something that will be rock solid. I was looking at starting with a 16TB pool with 4X 8TB drives in raid 10. I would like to be able to expand that if I need. I would use this pool as backup for all the PC's in my house. In the event of a single drive failure I could replace it.

For raid10 you loose 50% of storage. The only thing you gain is availability.

Or you can just run 2 hdd-s in jbod and use 2 more to make backups. This configuration will cost you the same and will be safer.

[Hulxmash]

Point taken. external drive bay for backup and disconnect safer than power surge and pop all 4.

[TargetDron3]

3 minutes ago, Hulxmash said:

In truth I have no idea how much storage I need. I wanted the raid for the redundancy and little speed boost. I just want something that will be rock solid. I was looking at starting with a 16TB pool with 4X 8TB drives in raid 10. I would like to be able to expand that if I need. I would use this pool as backup for all the PC's in my house. In the event of a single drive failure I could replace it.

So what do you do when your RAID controller dies or gets corrupt? Power supply zaps the drives? What about chasing down a bad SATA cable? 

Bye bye data.  

RAID is not a backup. Can a mod make that a sticky at the top of this subforum?  

 

If you want prebuilt, look at Truenas Mini E and put drives in as needed. 

 

[Hulxmash]

Well, so I guess I don't need ECC. Raid is stupid. An external backup is not optional. So I should just buy the cheapest board/cpu combo I can find with adequate SATA ports, a good power supply and a case that can fit everything. 

44 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Server boards are your best option. How about something like this https://www.amazon.com/Supermicro-A2SDi-4C-HLN4F-Motherboard-Intel-C3558/dp/B077BT1DRT

 

Lots of sata ports, ipmi, low power, and itx fits in cases like the ds380 easily.

Thanks for this recommendation. It looks like a nice low power unit with lots of SATA availablitiy.

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 minutes ago, Hulxmash said:

Well, so I guess I don't need ECC. Raid is stupid. An external backup is not optional. So I should just buy the cheapest board/cpu combo I can find with adequate SATA ports, a good power supply and a case that can fit everything. 

Thanks for this recommendation. It looks like a nice low power unit with lots of SATA availablitiy.

ECC is nice to have to make it less likely to have corruption, and not that much more, so wy not go ecc.

 

Raid is nice to have a single large volume, but id problaby go 5 over 10 here as the speed won't matter and a 4 disk raid 5 isn't a high risk

[Archer42]

11 minutes ago, Hulxmash said:

Well, so I guess I don't need ECC. Raid is stupid. An external backup is not optional. So I should just buy the cheapest board/cpu combo I can find with adequate SATA ports, a good power supply and a case that can fit everything.

That would be minimal configuration, yes.

Also, if you have extra money and are willing to spend it on things which are just a convenience you can get both ECC and raid. Just be aware that it will not mean 100% safety and does not replace backup in any way. It just makes complete failure and need to recover from backup (which can be annoying) less likely.

 

I use raidz1 on 10*2TB hdd-s at home. It is not very "reliable", but enough to survive single hdd failure with minimal overhead. Backup is simple 16TB USB HDD. Not necessarily very safe way to store data, but one that feels appropriate for what is stored there.

 

You'll have to make decision what's appropriate for your data too and how much money you want to spend on keeping it safe...