Complete server noob needing help with what I should be looking at.

[Michael.W]

Hey guys.
 

So first, the mission. Right now a mass storage server with at least 10tb and an off site backup of critical data at 1-2tb.

So on to the question pile.
 

1: I’m thinking of using unRaid but it’s hard some times to pin down exactly what it can and can not do. I know it can do offsite backups but does it do all or can I select specific folders to backup? I would also like the offsite server to be accessible from that side as it’s going to be at my brothers place and he can use it for backing up his stuff to. Perhaps you guys have better operating software suggestions?


2: So right now a friend gave me an HP DL320 G5 with Xeon 3060 and 4gb of ram. It has two drive sleds I was hoping to use that as the offsite machine.

He has a number of things I can take but I can’t take it all.

 

The main ones I am looking at are an HP ProLiant GL360 G7 with 2x Xeon 12C24T and an HP Storageworks MSA 2000.

 

3: Now if I’m right the MSA 2000 that’s just a drive expansion for the GL360 right? Effectively just like an external HD for a pc?

 

4: So if I am right about the one above, at what level does it connect and expand storage is it operating system software or bios? Basically will the expansion work using unRaid or do I need to have a single server with all the drives rather than this expansion deal?

 

5: And last question for now. The documents I have been able to understand on the MSA 2000 list a bunch of stuff on drive size and max capacity of the unit suggesting that the unit will not be able to accept drives over 1tb in size? Is this the case?

The DL320 I already have has a label stating 160gb on each drive sled, so would this unit kick a stink if I put in say two 2tb drives and raided them?

—————-

Thank you in advance guys, I build my own gaming computers and have even used a normal pc as a storage server but jumping into all of this makes me feel like I have been in the kiddy pool the whole time.

[xWeegix]

Unraid can do almost anything you'd want a smaller or home server to do with most of the functionality being hardware dependent. The nice thing about it is you just need the hardware and a USB stick to get it up and running with the free trial tied to the stick and time limited. Now given these servers are quite old and lacking a lot of modern features you'll have to look into what controllers are on them and see what those limitations are. The Intel 5520 chipset that goes with the GL360 actually does support most features you'd want in a modern server and the Smart Array P410i storage controller seem to support SAS and SATA2 with no published capacity limits. All in all just try it.. loads of capacity but not the fastest machine out there. TBH it's pretty overkill for a 10TB storage server nowadays.

[Michael.W]

On 11/22/2021 at 8:47 PM, xWeegix said:

Unraid can do almost anything you'd want a smaller or home server to do with most of the functionality being hardware dependent. The nice thing about it is you just need the hardware and a USB stick to get it up and running with the free trial tied to the stick and time limited. Now given these servers are quite old and lacking a lot of modern features you'll have to look into what controllers are on them and see what those limitations are. The Intel 5520 chipset that goes with the GL360 actually does support most features you'd want in a modern server and the Smart Array P410i storage controller seem to support SAS and SATA2 with no published capacity limits. All in all just try it.. loads of capacity but not the fastest machine out there. TBH it's pretty overkill for a 10TB storage server nowadays.

Thank you for the information. 

[Aragorn-]

That era of machine is likely to be pretty noisey and power hungry, and things can probably be done a better way depending on what exactly you have for locations.

 

EG, for an offsite backup of only 1-2TB, a standard SFF desktop PC would do the job just fine, pickup an old dell or HP machine for much cheapness, slot a drive or two in, and your sorted with a nice small quiet box that can go offsite somewhere, rather than a hulking great beast of a screaming server.

 

Ofcourse if offsite is a datacenter rather than your folks' basement, then that alters things a little.

[MG2R]

If it’s just a NAS that you need, simple storage with either NFS or SMB, grap yourself a SFF computer with efficient processor and a stick of RAM. Don’t need powerful hardware.

 

Put in enough drives to meet the storage that you need plus some extra for redundancy. Run something like ZFS or a similar redundant solution with checksumming. Either through a bare Linux Distri or through indeed unraid, openmediavault, freenas, or similar things. 
 

For the backups: I’m personally running an odroid HC2 with a 2.5 inch 2TB drive. The machine hosts a Borg backup repository. It is absolutely fantastic. Fully encrypted, and deduplicated. Allows me to put that thing wherever and have nightly snapshots without breaking the bank in storage needs