Questions About My First NAS Build

[Shadow10499]

I am currently about to order parts for my first NAS. The NAS is going to be four Seagate EXOS 14TB in RAID 10. Not sure if I need an SSD cache for it or not, as it will only have 2.5Gb of bandwidth max (my switch and router are 2.5Gb, as well as the PCs). Aside from randoms that should be close to saturated by my RAID 10 setup (I think). Please do correct me if I'm wrong about this. I was having trouble finding data on this topic, but I think this is correct based on the info I did find. Not sure if a SATA SSD cache or NVME cache is necessary, and if it would make any difference at all. 

 

This is all new to me. I have never had a NAS, only local storage of a 4TB SSD and 4TB HDD as a backup for my media. We just bought a house and went from 15Mb internet at my parents to 1Gb internet and 2.5Gb gear and we want a server for backups and to run Plex. It would be nice to be able to use it as a Steam cache down the line, but right now we have enough local storage on all devices to run our Steam libraries locally on our boot SSDs.

 

The main priority for me is saturating the 2.5Gb connection for large writes to the NAS, and to be able to stream multiple (at least 2) 4K streams at once over Plex. I'm not sure if I need any sort of cache, or if a simple RAID 10 will be sufficient. I'm not sure if I need to go full custom and build a NAS from scratch, or if something like a "prebuilt" WD My Cloud or Synology NAS would be fine. 

 

Feel free to call me dumb, I just want to learn exactly how this works and it's hard to skim Google for stuff like this. There are a lot of basic beginner guides, and a lot of hardcore niche stuff, but I haven't found many articles about RAID 10 speeds with and without an SSD cache.

 

Any help or reccomendations are appreciated. I realize some people may tell me this is probably over my head and I shouldn't be doing this since I don't know what I'm doing yet. We really do need a NAS for backups and as a media storage for Plex. I don't need it tomorrow, but very soon. Our media drive is 3/4 full and it's time to have a proper NAS instead of just sharing local storage across devices. I have to figure this all out one way or another. It would be nice to have some answers before I have to just order gear and figure it out through trial and error like with my first PC build. Thanks again!

[Bombastinator]

I’m not sure either. HDDS are really relatively slow though. A tiny sata ssd is super cheap though.  This is a question of less than $20.

[Aaron_T]

Some questions about your situation and needs:

1. Are you planning to just put HDDs into a prebuilt NAS box, or are you buying PC hardware to install other NAS/Server software on?
2. Depending on the above, what box are you buying, or what OS do you intend to install?
3. Is write performance most important to you?

4. If power goes out during a write, do you care if you lose data in that rare case, or do you want to guarantee no data loss?

[Shadow10499]

4 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

I’m not sure either. HDDS are really relatively slow though. A tiny sata ssd is super cheap though.  This is a question of less than $20.

Not exactly. Getting a prebuilt it's about 200 more to get one with M.2 for a cache, or a 6 bay with a SATA SSD cache. I would also want 2 in RAID for redundancy so I don't lose data if one dies while writing. The cost would probably be $100 for 2 Samsung 1TB NVME, and another $200-$300 for the enclosure price difference. Nas is gonna cost about $1100 with just hard drives so that's a solid 30% increase in cost. I don't know if it's worth it or not. I know hard drives are slower, but these are enterprise drives and in RAID 10 my understanding is I get the write speed of all 4 drives combined and the read speed of 2 of the drives combined. As well as redundancy on top. 

[Shadow10499]

8 minutes ago, Aaron_T said:

Some questions about your situation and needs:

1. Are you planning to just put HDDs into a prebuilt NAS box, or are you buying PC hardware to install other NAS/Server software on?
2. Depending on the above, what box are you buying, or what OS do you intend to install?
3. Is writing performance what's most important to you?

4. If power goes out during a write, do you care if you lose data in that rare case, or do you want to guarantee no data loss?

Prebuilt is my preference as I'm just getting into this. I do care about data loss while writing as we have some absolutely massive files that will take a long time to copy. Writing is definitely most important, but I want to be able to read fast enough for 2-3 4K streams. If I don't go prebuilt it'll probably be TrueNAS but I'm looking at Synology or WD My Cloud for prebuilt as both can do Plex out of the box with just a switch. 

 

Edit: prebuilt is also gonna save me a little bit of money as any decent PC with decent networking and power supply will cost a bit more to begin with than a prebuilt. I'm on the fence either way but I do like the idea of a simple OS 

[Shadow10499]

I will have the NAS on a UPS, but can't afford high wattage UPS for all the computers so if a PC went out while copying I'm not sure if that would affect the NAS or not

[Electronics Wizardy]

You will probably be fine with no cache here, so I'd skip the cache for now.

 

I'd go raid 5 here instead of 10 personally, gives you more usable space, and I don't find the extra speed to really matter for a home nas.

 

media streams are very low bandwidth(4k is mayb 100mbit max, so 3 streams is still only about 10% of a 2.5gbe link)

 

13 minutes ago, Shadow10499 said:

I will have the NAS on a UPS, but can't afford high wattage UPS for all the computers so if a PC went out while copying I'm not sure if that would affect the NAS or not

You can normally just restart a copy and your safe. THe existing data on the nas will be fine. But have backups just in case.

[Aaron_T]

Okay, some things to consider:

I love the Synology software, but getting hardware from them with anything faster than 1gb ethernet is expensive right now. Recommend looking at the Qnap 4 bay solutions as they have put 2.5gbe on lots of their consumer grade boxes. And I am fairly sure they support Plex.

4 drives will come real close to saturating 2.5gbe, so SSD caching won't do much for you if your use case is very large multi minute file transfers. small to medium size transfers with many users, then you'd get more use out of a SSD cache because you wouldn't have to wait in real time for disk seeks/head relocation.

Most modern NAS hardware can handle a few 4k data streams, but if you want your NAS box to do real time transcoding of the video streams, then you definitely want a strong CPU in your NAS box, newer quad core at least, probably 8gb of RAM, or better depending on your budget.

As you mentioned, a UPS is going to be your best defense against data loss when moving large files, but having a non-raid large drive as a backup of your NAS is always a good idea as well.

[Bombastinator]

1 hour ago, Shadow10499 said:

Not exactly. Getting a prebuilt it's about 200 more to get one with M.2 for a cache, or a 6 bay with a SATA SSD cache. I would also want 2 in RAID for redundancy so I don't lose data if one dies while writing. The cost would probably be $100 for 2 Samsung 1TB NVME, and another $200-$300 for the enclosure price difference. Nas is gonna cost about $1100 with just hard drives so that's a solid 30% increase in cost. I don't know if it's worth it or not. I know hard drives are slower, but these are enterprise drives and in RAID 10 my understanding is I get the write speed of all 4 drives combined and the read speed of 2 of the drives combined. As well as redundancy on top. 

200$?!  Is it a 4tb ssd or something?  Not just hell no.  Buy it without, add a $20 one later, and set it up yourself.  I had no idea.  it’ll take like half a hour so you get paid like a lawyer for half an hour.  

[Shadow10499]

58 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

200$?!  Is it a 4tb ssd or something?  Not just hell no.  Buy it without, add a $20 one later, and set it up yourself.  I had no idea.  it’ll take like half a hour so you get paid like a lawyer for half an hour.  

Getting a prebuilt nas with 2 extra slots for sata SSDs, or 2 extra slots for M.2 costs 200 to 300 more than a NAS that is just 4 slots with no room for any cache. It's not the drives that are expensive. It's the prebuilt nas unit that gets more expensive to accommodate the extra drives. 

 

Edit: buying a barebones NAS. Getting the drives separate. Drives will not be an issue. It's just the cost of the unit goes up to accommodate the extra drives. 

[Shadow10499]

2 minutes ago, Shadow10499 said:

Getting a prebuilt nas with 2 extra slots for sata SSDs, or 2 extra slots for M.2 costs 200 to 300 more than a bad that is just 4 slots with no room for any cache. It's not the drives that are expensive. It's the prebuilt nas unit that gets more expensive to accommodate the extra drives. 

To be clear I'm talking about a barebones prebuilt nas. Not one that comes with drives. I'll buy those separate and save a ton. But it's right about 300 to 400 for a nas with just the 4 slots. Cheapest 4 slot with 2 extra M.2 slots for cache costs 580. Cheapest 6 slot with the 2 extra slots for sata SSDs is 600. It'll cost me extra in the NAS box itself. The SSDs will be about 100 for the both of them. Not too worried about that part. Just the fact I have to pay more for the NAS itself to utilize them. I can still build a DIY and then this matters very little. But I wanted to get a prebuilt solution ideally. 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 hour ago, Shadow10499 said:

To be clear I'm talking about a barebones prebuilt nas. Not one that comes with drives. I'll buy those separate and save a ton. But it's right about 300 to 400 for a nas with just the 4 slots. Cheapest 4 slot with 2 extra M.2 slots for cache costs 580. Cheapest 6 slot with the 2 extra slots for sata SSDs is 600. It'll cost me extra in the NAS box itself. The SSDs will be about 100 for the both of them. Not too worried about that part. Just the fact I have to pay more for the NAS itself to utilize them. I can still build a DIY and then this matters very little. But I wanted to get a prebuilt solution ideally. 

I'd get a 4 bay and not worry about the cache. The network will be the limit almost all of the time, and the drive setup is way over kill for a few 4k streams.

 

I'd go raid 5 over 10 here if it was me too.