Building a Home NAS / Server

[BlazeMike]

Hello!

 

I am planning on building a Nas / Server for my house. 

I do a lot of video editing, do lots of Project Work [ Word, Excel etc.] ,Love to create content and have a lot of media.

 

The thing is that lots of my data gets mixed up around the house, in the laptops, my PCs and finding them is quite hard when there are deadlines and lots of work to be done.

So I thought of the Idea of having a Nas / Server in my house to centralise all of that.

 

The Computers in my house:

 

1. Acer Laptop [Win xp]

2. Toshiba Laptop [Win 8]

3. Custom Built Home PC [win xp]

4. Compaq PC [Win 7]  [ultimate]

5. MY GAMING RIG!!!!  [Win 7]   [ Home Premium ]

 

Other Handheld devices:

1. The usual IPhone, Ipod, Ipad

2. Samsung Tab, S4

 

Clearly Lots of devices at home 5 computers, and 5 Handheld devices.

 

I do have experience with PCs but not with servers, I hear they are somewhat the same when building with consumer hardware.

Thats why I need your help. I did have a plan of how much storage like 2 TB just to get things going then later upgrade.

I dont know whether to go with a Atx board or a Mini Itx board.

If it was Itx i did see the Cooler Master Elite 120, i thought it had some potential as a server case.

The processor and the Mobo is where Im stuck.  For Ram i think 4 GB would be enough, and a 400w PSU.

For the OS Windows Home Server 2011 seems quite nice.

 

My budget would be around 150$, but its best to get it as cheap as possible.

Nothing Fancy just a normal home server.

 

I would like to know more about switches and add-in cards for Gigabit bit second [2 and 4]

I also would like to know more about Nas' and servers, and what can be acheived besides network storage.

If possible setup remote desktop control over the network.

 

Pls Follow up as soon as possible.

Thnx !

Blaze

[Vitalius]

I would help, but I'm only good at performance servers. 

I don't know what country you are from, but I recently bought two 4 core Xeons, a SuperMicro server board and 32GB of RAM off of Ebay used for $220. 

I know that all sounds like it's overpowered for your use case, but my point is that you can have a very good server for cheap if you are willing to buy off Ebay. Trusted sellers and their buyer's back guarantee helps. 

Just a thought. Server grade stuff tends to be treated well in life. Run 24/7, but in a climate controlled environment, so you can usually trust used stuff.

[BlazeMike]

I think 500$ is kind of overkill, and i changed it to 150$.

What would you suggest now that the budget is changed, and recommendations for parts?

I live in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.  [Currecncy: AED]

[Vitalius]

I think 500$ is kind of overkill, and i changed it to 150$.

What would you suggest now that the budget is changed, and recommendations for parts?

I live in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.  [Currecncy: AED]

I wouldn't know. Sorry. 

I have no idea what would be cheapest in your country/area, and I have no experience building WHS machines, so I don't know what is best. 

[julekule]

http://www.biostar.com.tw/app/en/mb/introduction.php?S_ID=688

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816115053

http://www.microcenter.com/product/399979/Builder_Series_CX430_430_Watt_ATX_12V_Power_Supply

this is a great start for a home server

[BlazeMike]

Thnx for the reply Jule!

 

Looks nice, I have a few questions though,

 

1. Do i need RAID, if so which RAID config?

2. Will this support Windows Home Server?

3. What type of RAM do i need to get?

 

thnx

[WoodenMarker]

 

Thnx for the reply Jule!

 

Looks nice, I have a few questions though,

 

1. Do i need RAID, if so which RAID config?

2. Will this support Windows Home Server?

3. What type of RAM do i need to get?

 

thnx

You need to quote a post or tag a member or else they won't get a notification you replied to them.

Do you just need data to be accessible over the network and internet or do you specifically need a dedicated server?

[BlazeMike]

Do you just need data to be accessible over the network and internet or do you specifically need a dedicated server?

 

 

I need data to be accessible in my home network by all the PCs and latops and other devices, as common storage and media box.

 

If possible i need this to work like a "Cloud". I do use dropbox.com but i am limited to it's servers and space. 

For eg: Just finished making an IMP PPT for school and i left it @ home in a rush.....  Can  use the school network or internet to access my data at home??

 

Basically these are my needs.

 

1) Common Storage for all of the computers @ home

2) If possible use it as a Cloud as mentioned

[julekule]

I need data to be accessible in my home network by all the PCs and latops and other devices, as common storage and media box.

 

If possible i need this to work like a "Cloud". I do use dropbox.com but i am limited to it's servers and space. 

For eg: Just finished making an IMP PPT for school and i left it @ home in a rush.....  Can  use the school network or internet to access my data at home??

 

Basically these are my needs.

 

1) Common Storage for all of the computers @ home

2) If possible use it as a Cloud as mentioned

you just need to try differant server software to see what fits you the best

you can try freenas. http://www.freenas.org

[Vitalius]

you just need to try differant server software to see what fits you the best

you can try freenas. http://www.freenas.org

I don't know how I missed this topic, but BlazeMike, FreeNAS can do that. It has a plugin called OwnCloud that makes it's resources available over the net. 

The problem with using FreeNAS is that if you are going to use it, and you want it's data protection capabilities, you need a strong system. You can make due with consumer parts, but you will be limiting yourself to just using it as data storage. There'll be little redundancy and you won't be able to use scrubs to protect from data corruption. 

Cheap and FreeNAS can go together, but it's certainly not recommended. 

Up to you. 

[WoodenMarker]

I need data to be accessible in my home network by all the PCs and latops and other devices, as common storage and media box.

 

If possible i need this to work like a "Cloud". I do use dropbox.com but i am limited to it's servers and space. 

For eg: Just finished making an IMP PPT for school and i left it @ home in a rush.....  Can  use the school network or internet to access my data at home??

 

Basically these are my needs.

 

1) Common Storage for all of the computers @ home

2) If possible use it as a Cloud as mentioned

Yes you can.

You could just use an existing system and share your files that way.

[BlazeMike]

Thnx for the replies,

 

Right now i know that it can be done. Are there any other OS ' for servers besides freebsds?

 

Or should i just go with FReeNAS, as it is quite popular, and has good support.

 

I'm not the best person @ linux and freebsd s  as it will be my first time working with servers.

[Vitalius]

Thnx for the replies,

 

Right now i know that it can be done. Are there any other OS ' for servers besides freebsds?

 

Or should i just go with FReeNAS, as it is quite popular, and has good support.

 

I'm not the best person @ linux and freebsd s  as it will be my first time working with servers.

Alternatives would be Debian (there's a guide on it by @MG2R). I can't think of any others aside from WHS (but that is $100 of your budget right there). 

I would personally, but I like it.

You don't need to be. If you are just using it strictly for storage, then you have a GUI to do everything in. You don't even need to touch the terminal (Command line Interface).

If you want to do more with it, you'll have to start learning some of the basics, but it has tons of guides and stuff, so that's up to you. 

[MG2R]

Thanks for tagging me in this, @Vitalius People that know

me a bit will already know what I'm about to say here, but here

goes...

 

I'd gof for a (relatively) cheap platform and Debian. Why?

Because it's cheap, works great and is pretty damn stable.

I read that you are new to Linux. Should you want to learn,

you can take a look at my Linux home server tutorial. It is

aimed at absolute beginners and should bring you up to

speed with the whole Linux thing pretty fast. @Shaqalac is

currently using it, AFAIK. Maybe he can share his experience

with it here?

 

If you're going to place all of your data in one place, as you

are planning, then I would highly advise you to go with a

RAID solution. You really don't want that single drive carrying

all you data dieing. You'll end up losing everything. There are

two main redundancy systems I can point you to at this time:

mdadm and ZFS.

 

The first is the thing I use, mdadm, which is a very simple and

performant multi-disk controller for Linux. It's the default multi-

disk controller in Debian. Advantages are it's low resource

usage, high performance and high stability. It lacks a bit on

flexibility but should be just fine for your use case. It is very

robust, up to the point where my RAID array   has survived

multiple OS reinstalls and even two full hardware upgrades.

On the downside is that any changes to the array take a long

time to be finalized. I use it everyday and I'm very happy with it.

 

The second thing I can point you to is ZFS. ZFS is purpose

built for handling huge arrays in a performant and redundant

way. It has a lot of very advanced features for both data

protection as well as performance increases. It is very flexible

and changing a drive pool configuration is much quicker to

do when compared to mdadm. The downside of this all is

twofold. The most direct disadvantage is resource usage. As

Vitalius already mentioned, ZFS needs decent hardware to

work as described above (highly performant). It basically eats

all the RAM you can throw at it. The second disadvantge is OS

support. At the moment, unless it has changed recently, ZFS on

Linux still isn't really ideal. There are some distributions it works

fine on, but AFAIK Debian isn't one of them. I know @alpenwasser

uses it on ArchLinux and he is quite happy with it. Maybe he can

elaborate a bit more on the topic.

 

If you feel more comfortable with Windows, I can point you

towards @looney's FlexRAID tutorial. It should help you get

your system set up in no time. Other then that, I'm pro-Linux

and I really advise to go with Linux for you server

 

For your personal cloud, I would go with Bittorrent Sync. I

use it myself and am a huge fan! It works great and is cross-

platform (even mobile is supported). Owncloud does work,

but I have had some bad experiences with it and haven't

used it since. Owncloud 5 has launched now, so things might

be better by now.

 

Sorry for the giant wall of text, but -in my eyes- it's better to

have too much rather than too little information. Should

anything be not entirely clear, feel free to ask!

[alpenwasser]

The second thing I can point you to is ZFS. ZFS is purpose

built for handling huge arrays in a performant and redundant

way. It has a lot of very advanced features for both data

protection as well as performance increases. It is very flexible

and changing a drive pool configuration is much quicker to

do when compared to mdadm. The downside of this all is

twofold. The most direct disadvantage is resource usage. As

Vitalius already mentioned, ZFS needs decent hardware to

work as described above (highly performant). It basically eats

all the RAM you can throw at it. The second disadvantge is OS

support. At the moment, unless it has changed recently, ZFS on

Linux still isn't really ideal. There are some distributions it works

fine on, but AFAIK Debian isn't one of them. I know @alpenwasser

uses it on ArchLinux and he is quite happy with it. Maybe he can

elaborate a bit more on the topic.

I have never used ZFS on Debian (or any Debian-based distro, such

as Ubuntu), but I have indeed read in several places that the Debian

family doesn't really play well with ZFS at this point (not sure

why).

However, ZFS on Linux itself is actually categorized as stable and

production-ready by its makers (has been for about a year now).

Among them is the Lawrence Livermoore National Laboratory, which

uses ZFS for some supercomputing stuff (I'm not quite sure if they're

the only developers, but they're definitely the most important one I

know of) and has it actively deployed.

As far as I'm aware, Arch is one of the distros which has ZFS running

pretty well. I've had it running for about 9 months now without issues.

As for Arch itself, the only issue I've had in the last few years with it

was the properietary Nvidia graphics driver (and that refused to run in

any distro I tried, not Arch's fault I think), otherwise it's been very solid

for me (been using it on a few machines for about three years now). It

can be a bit daunting for newcomers, but there are tons of good tutorials

about it out there (one of the advantages of it being an at least somewhat

popular distro), so it shouldn't actually be too hard if you're willing to do

a bit of research.

But as MG2R has said, ZFS does like to have a bit more resources

available. I have it running on a machine with 4GB or RAM and it works

fine, but that's about as low as I'd go, and I'd recommend 8 GB TBH.

Also, I would highly recommend ECC memory. Since that's an entire

essay in itself I'll spare you the details, but it's essential to being able

to make proper use of ZFS' data integrity protection features.

You don't need to get some super high-end build though, I recommend

having a look on eBay for some old server parts (LGA1366/LGA1155), there

are some good deals on those out there (it's how I got the parts for

our new server).

[Vitalius]

Just something Alpen and MG2R didn't mention, FreeNAS uses ZFS or UFS depending on which you choose. ZFS, as they mention, is very resource dependent which is why I mentioned that about FreeNAS.

If you want a GUI and ZFS, FreeNAS is the way to go. 

Off-topic: Great. MG2R started the coding line break thing. Maybe I should bother to do it as well. 

[MG2R]

Off-topic: Great. MG2R started the coding line break thing. Maybe I should bother to do it as well. 

For long texts, yes

[Shaqalac]

Thanks for tagging me in this, @Vitalius People that know

a bit will already know what I'm about to say here, but here

goes...

 

I'd gof for a (relatively) cheap platform and Debian. Why?

Because it's cheap, works great and is pretty damn stable.

I read that you are new to Linux. Should you want to learn,

you can take a look at my Linux home server tutorial. It is

aimed at absolute beginners and should bring you up to

speed with the whole Linux thing pretty fast. @Shaqalac is

currently using it, AFAIK. Maybe he can share his experience

with it here?

I can share as much as possible.

 

I'm completely new to everything that involves Linux, I've only used a laptop with Ubuntu for a couple of hours (general use) and that's pretty much it. So far I've only installed Debian, I did have some funny problems that I needed to solve, it's just a part of the learning curve, but I did saw a few similarities between Debian and OSX. My next step for the NAS build I'm doing is to flash my RAID controller (has nothing to do with Debian) and then I'm pretty much going to follow MG2R's guide, at least for the things/features I know I'll need.

 

If you have any questions about the guide or Debian in general during installation and set up, do not hesitate to throw them at MG2R. I asked a simple question about the installation part and he basically rewrote the whole section, so there's that.

 

I'm running Debian of off a 16 GB SanDisk USB drive, slight overkill storage wise but better safe than sorry.

 

What more is there to tell so far, not much I think.

[MG2R]

If you have any questions about the guide or Debian in general during installation and set up, do not hesitate to throw them at MG2R. I asked a simple question about the installation part and he basically rewrote the whole section, so there's that.

One does one's best :rolleyes:

[alpenwasser]

One does one's best :rolleyes:

... and sometimes a bit more.

[BlazeMike]

I think that upgrading the old Windows XP PC is the ideal solution for this budget.

 

Also thank you responses 

 

The PC is running 

 

an Intel Motherboard (Quite an old one don't know which one it is)

It has a Pentium Processor.

A 120gb HDD (Boot for XP and has its storage)

A very very old PSU (Doesn't have a brand that is easliy visible, but I think its a Seasonic)

 

These are things in the XP Home PC, What can be changed and can be done?

 

I think this should make things a bit easier with the budget.

 

I am willing to squeeze in a bit more a up the budget to $220. Hope it helps  

Blaze

[MG2R]

How many SATA ports do you have? If it has enough for

your needs, just put as many drives as you can afford or

need in the system.

 

Seeing that your budget is $220, I'm guessing you won't

be going with Windows? Have you decided on the software

platform already? (I'm assuming of course that you won't

be running XP)

 

I don't know specific prices in your area, but according to

newegg, you can just afford 2 Seagate Barracude 3TB

drives (ST3000DM001) with that budget. That would allow

you to create a RAID1 array to keep your data safe.