Building a Custom NAS

[Oxide_44]

Hi there, name is Oxide. This will be my first build log (and first post I guess), to this site so I thought i'd have a little intro line...and there it is.

 

As you people in the tech business know, sometimes free stuff just kind of falls into your lap and most of the time that is pretty cool. Other times, you end up getting things that you otherwise had no previous use for, but you can't just throw perfectly-good stuff away (and eBaying stuff isn't always an option when its really awesome stuff.)

 

So what do you do? You make a purpose for these things, or sometimes jury-rig useful things. This is what I am attempting to do.

 

A while back I was giving a server rack, just the rack. Its pretty old, and not terribly pretty...but its a server rack! Never had my own server before, and probably wouldn't for a while but since it was free I wasn't complaining. After a long while of just using the server cabinet....as a cabinet (still kinda do), I was given (given.) a server. It's a HP Proliant G5 DL360 with dual Xeon E5440 Quad-core processors, not new by any means, but still in perfect condition and able to run Windows Server 2012. (I also got a 24-port rackmount managed gigabit switch, but that's not as exciting). I finally had a server to go in this rack!

 

 

Now that I had a server and the beginings of a network, I put some thought into setting up a home network which led me to the conclusion of a NAS. Everybody needs storage, and although I have plenty on my rig for what I use it for, more is never a bad thing. I spent a long time researching rackmount NAS solutions (didn't HAVE to be rackmount I guess, but I wanted to use the server rack), and found that things like a Synology NAS was just waaay too rich for my blood (I've got very poor blood). I was really disappointed by this and thought I'd have to resort to just using a run-of-the-mill ~$150ish solution for regular home use, but then it hit me: Just Build One.

 

There are lots of homebrew NAS solutions, but I wanted something super-robust that I could configure in a certain way, and something I could change out of reconfigure whenever I wanted without ruining my data.

 

Goal:

 

Build a Rackmount NAS with consumer-grade parts

 

Problems;

 

#1: There is no such thing to my knowledge as a cosumer-grade backplane card for mulitple drive configs, so I'd have to make a series of RAID cards act as one big array, or as close as possible.

 

#2: Need a power solution for a big 'ol mess of drives all running at once.

 

#3: Need a mobo that can address A LOT of PCI-E. Just a whole ridiculous mess of it really.

 

Solutions;

 

Solution #1: Run Windows Sever 2012 on it. With Windows Server I could use Storage Spaces to make a bunch of RAID cards act a several giant drives, or pool them into one huge drive. (Yes, I know Linux thought of it first, and yes Windows stole the idea kinda. I'm not really a Linux guy, sorry.)

 

Solution #2: Although I could not find a PSU for a decent price point that had a SATA power connector for EVERY drive I'm using, I did find one that came close and has just as many molex connectors for adapters.

 

Solution #3: After a long search I found a motherboard...but its not what I expected...

 

The Parts/Rationale:

 

For the motherboard I went with an Asrock H81 BTC Pro. First off, this is in fact a bitcoin mining board and it was never intended to use as a NAS. Here is why I chose it, it IS a bitcoin mining board and meant to work long hours under a decent amount of load which means it will be realible enough to run 24/7 under a fairly light workload only being addressed as a storage server. Also, being a bitcoin board, it was designed to handle as many graphics cards as possible since mining is done with GPUs. Now this board was designed so that you would have to adapt the PCI-E x1 connectors to x16 with a special riser card that Asrock makes for this board. I won't be using PCI-E x16 ports though, as I can easily get RAID controllers that only use x1 connectors and I can fit A TON of cards in it this way.

 

 

For the processor I am using a Core i3. Not sure which i3 off the top of my head (I threw the box away already >_<). This processor is super-overkill for a NAS. I could have easily made this work quite well with a Celeron or a Pentium, but the processor came at a really decent price with the board on a combo-deal. I'm a sucker for dem deals.

 

For the PSU, honestly I just walked into the store, (just going to say "store", not going to buzz-market here. But I'm from the USA, so take the amount of brick-and-motar stores left in this country and I'm sure you can draw your own conclusions), and asked the guy to look up a PSU with the most SATA strings on it for a decent price-point. It ended up being a 750W Solid Gear Neutron. Never heard of Solid Gear before, I have no idea if it's any good. (meh.) 750W is also super-overkill for a NAS, its even pretty overkill for a decent gaming rig, but it has 8 SATA connectors, and 8 Molex connectors, which means with just a few adapters I'm looking at a total of 16 possible drives.

 

 

The boot drive is a 60GB Crucial M4. I didn't want the OS taking up any of my storage space, and this was the only SSD I had on me. It had to be an ssd so I can mount it anywhere in the case without having to waste a storage bay. This will also be upgraded at some point.

 

 

The drives are 500GB Hitachi Deskstar 7200rpm. I did not pick these, but 12 of them were given to me for FREE from a SAN that was no longer being used. Still working, and I can swap them as I get better drives to replace them.

 

 

I'm still deciding on a decent 4U server chassis and I'll probably order one this coming week. If anyone has any suggestions I'd welcome them.

 

 

[JAKEBAB]

Do u really want to rely your nas on some weird brand psu? other than that looks cool.

[Flyguygamer]

One molex can power 4 sata hard drives. so you can have 40 drives.

[AMICLG]

Nice little build also that switch looks soo lonely.

[Oxide_44]

Do u really want to rely your nas on some weird brand psu? other than that looks cool.

 

For the $50 I paid for it, I'll risk it. The PSU might crap out but I'm not really worried about it shorting the mobo. Been a long time since I've seen a PSU fail that catastrophically, even an off-brand one.

 

 

One molex can power 4 sata hard drives. so you can have 40 drives.

 

*facepalm* I saw 16, so I wrote 16. You're right lol

 

Nice little build also that switch looks soo lonely.

 

Yeah it really is, I'm planning to route all of my networking off that switch because it does have management firmware, but I have to drill some holes in some walls and get some longer CAT-5e cable to do it.

[Oxide_44]

*UPDATE*

 

So the case came in as well as a dual-NIC to connect to my other server and a few RAID cards to connect the drives.

Still need to add another drive cage so I can accommodate the last 4 drives, but I built the system and got it configured and networked and it is working flawlessly.

Compared to my server which is actually using server-grade parts and such, the NAS is much cooler and much quieter, which was to be expected with it not running with smaller parts and much more case room for airflow. I had to made some modifications to the case to fit properly in my rack, which just required removing the handles and the front locking door to the case, which I wasn't going to be using anyway.

 

 

In the future I'm going to swap out all the stock fans for more efficient after-market fans and ones that have fan headers instead of molex connectors (technically fan headers ARE molex connectors, but you know what I mean). The stock fans because of their connector types made kind of a mess with my cable management and its not as tidy or pretty as I'd like it to be...(feel free to bash me about that, I know its awful)...but it works and it works really well.

 

 

I chose to keep the 4-drive RAID configs as seperate drives instead of using Storage Spaces to combine it all into one huge volume because it would allow me a little more flexibility and make upgrading the drives easier in the future.

 

In Conclusion, while this won't be the most popular post in the build logs section because I didn't drop $5K in parts and water-cooling and junk (might post my own personal rig at one point which does have all that fancy jazz) it was a worthwhile experiment in making something that usually is out of reach of the average consumer a more affordable option with a lot of leg room. Interested in building your own custom NAS? This just might be the option for you.

 

 

(my network switch is still pretty empty...might have to build more things )

[Madmanchris1]

Nice Build.

Where do you keep your cabinet though? 

[gts250ftw]

how does the cabinet get fresh air when the door is closed?

i see vent holes on the back but is that enough?

[Oxide_44]

Nice Build.

Where do you keep your cabinet though? 

 

Right now next to my laundry room, closest to power and a wall. Wish I had a closet or something to put it in because I still can hear it when its running.

 

how does the cabinet get fresh air when the door is closed?

i see vent holes on the back but is that enough?

 

The entire back door is vented and there are vents on the side. There is also a large fan in the case, but I only really need to turn that on when everything in the rack is running. The main server only really runs when I need it for testing

[Raid]

"Solid Gear"? Well, it does sound better than "Deer". any chance of getting nudes of it?