setting up new NAS

[jchan94]

Hello LTT forums,

 

I'm setting up a NAS for my home and I'm wondering what direction I should go.

 

I mainly store photos + movies on my computer which I use for serving files to my android devices to watch movies.

I current use Raid 1 + online backup solution to backup my photos.

 

Here's the hardware

Board: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157417with 4gbs ram.

Raid card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118106

 

These are my two options.

 

1) ITX Atom board with a LSI LSI00301 in raid 5 using 5 drives using hardware raid.

 

2) ITX Atom board using FreeNAS.

 

Here are my concerns:

1) If the raid card fails.

 

2) Bottleneck with FreeNAS ram.

 

Let me know what you think! Please & thanks!

[anders_b]

4GB ram is proberly not enough for a freenas build and if you use a online backup on the nas i would not worry that much about the raid failing

[scottyseng]

Hello LTT forums,

 

I'm setting up a NAS for my home and I'm wondering what direction I should go.

 

I mainly store photos + movies on my computer which I use for serving files to my android devices to watch movies.

I current use Raid 1 + online backup solution to backup my photos.

 

Here's the hardware

Board: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157417with 4gbs ram.

Raid card: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118182&cm_re=lsi_raid-_-16-118-182-_-Product

 

These are my two options.

 

1) ITX Atom board with a LSI LSI00301 in raid 5 using 5 drives using hardware raid.

 

2) ITX Atom board using FreeNAS.

 

Here are my concerns:

1) If the raid card fails.

 

2) Bottleneck with FreeNAS ram.

 

Let me know what you think! Please & thanks!

 

I'm not sure that I follow. The card you linked to is a HBA card, which just gives you SAS ports as a HBA card. It is not a hardware RAID controller.

 

You might check out Rockstor (BTRFS format instead of ZFS). The requirements for it aren't as bad as ZFS. But yeah, ZFS will not be happy with 4GB of RAM.

 

For consumer use, I really doubt that HBA will die since they are rated for industrial use at high loads.

[jchan94]

I'm not sure that I follow. The card you linked to is a HBA card, which just gives you SAS ports as a HBA card. It is not a hardware RAID controller.

 

You might check out Rockstor (BTRFS format instead of ZFS). The requirements for it aren't as bad as ZFS. But yeah, ZFS will not be happy with 4GB of RAM.

 

For consumer use, I really doubt that HBA will die since they are rated for industrial use at high loads.

 

Oh my bad. This is a raid card, right? 

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118106 

[jchan94]

4GB ram is proberly not enough for a freenas build and if you use a online backup on the nas i would not worry that much about the raid failing

 

Then would you just say use a hardware raid card?

[Eniqmatic]

Couple of questions,

 

1. If you're only using 5 drives, why did you go with a RAID card?

2. Can you get more RAM and how much TB of space do you anticipate to have?

[ShadowCaptain]

SNIP

 

IMO just use software RAID, its generally safer and not needed if you are only running a couple of drives

[scottyseng]

Then would you just say use a hardware raid card?

 

It depends on what OS you are running. Hardware RAID only makes sense for larger array. I have a hardware RAID card, the LSI MegaRAID 9260-8i CV, which is overkill for my four 4TB drives, but I plan to move it over to a NAS with 10+ drives.

 

I would say use Rockstor (BTRFS) or use software RAID if you're running Windows. A decent hardware RAID card would run you $500 and up with a battery backup unit.

[jchan94]

IMO just use software RAID, its generally safer and not needed if you are only running a couple of drives

 

Thanks for the insight!

 

Couple of questions,

 

1. If you're only using 5 drives, why did you go with a RAID card?

2. Can you get more RAM and how much TB of space do you anticipate to have?

 

1) I previously used software raid in windows, and found that one of the drives was stuck "syncing" and some of the data was lost when one of the drives crashed.

 

2) Max ram on the board is 4GBS, and I anticipate to have a max of around 8TB of usable space for flexibility. 

[Eniqmatic]

For FreeNAS I would connect the drives directly to the board (which is what I was getting at above) however buy a small UPS in the event of a power blip, then you can configure FreeNAS what to do when on UPS power so it can safely shut-down before battery runs out. 

 

I wouldn't recommend software RAID for any other applications though, software RAID is generally asking for trouble and guaranteed to have a bad time with. FreeNAS is an exception.

[Eniqmatic]

Thanks for the insight!

 

 

1) I previously used software raid in windows, and found that one of the drives was stuck "syncing" and some of the data was lost when one of the drives crashed.

 

2) Max ram on the board is 4GBS, and I anticipate to have a max of around 8TB of usable space for flexibility. 

 

Once again, stay away from software RAID unless your 100% running FreeNAS. 

 

It says 4GB single channel SO-DIMM, doesn't that mean it will support 4gb per channel?

[jchan94]

For FreeNAS I would connect the drives directly to the board (which is what I was getting at above) however buy a small UPS in the event of a power blip, then you can configure FreeNAS what to do when on UPS power so it can safely shut-down before battery runs out. 

 

I wouldn't recommend software RAID for any other applications though, software RAID is generally asking for trouble and guaranteed to have a bad time with. FreeNAS is an exception.

 

Would you say that FreeNAS would run fine with 8TBs of usable space using raid 5 or 6 with the atom board + 4GBs of ram?

 

I'm not looking to pull too much from the NAS.

[jchan94]

Once again, stay away from software RAID unless your 100% running FreeNAS. 

 

It says 4GB single channel SO-DIMM, doesn't that mean it will support 4gb per channel?

 

Max supported ram is 4GB.

[scottyseng]

Would you say that FreeNAS would run fine with 8TBs of usable space using raid 5 or 6 with the atom board + 4GBs of ram?

 

I'm not looking to pull too much from the NAS.

 

I don't think it would. Usually FreeNAS wants 8GB of ECC RAM at the min. The requirements go up as you add more space.

[Eniqmatic]

I would avoid the board then if 4GB is max supported (although I would question that).

 

The processor will run fine for file serving, however if you want to be sure that the data remains corruption free and safe then 8GB is minimum recommended.

[Eniqmatic]

I've used this in the past and although they are $40 more you would be silly to choose the atom over this:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157467&cm_re=e3c224d2i-_-13-157-467-_-Product

 

You will need to buy a CPU which is a slight downside however buy a Pentium Anniversary which supports ECC RAM and all will be good.

[Eniqmatic]

I'm outside of US so you may get it cheaper somewhere else I'm not sure

[jchan94]

I've used this in the past and although they are $40 more you would be silly to choose the atom over this:

 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157467&cm_re=e3c224d2i-_-13-157-467-_-Product

 

You will need to buy a CPU which is a slight downside however buy a Pentium Anniversary which supports ECC RAM and all will be good.

 

Thanks for the suggestion! I'm actually looking at this system right now - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157419, but also considering yours as well.

 

The link you posted looks very promising, plus, I can upgrade the CPU in the future if I want to. If I went with the system you posted, I think I'd go with G3220 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116950as the professor 

 

what do you think?

[anders_b]

Then would you just say use a hardware raid card?

if the hardware raid card is cheapest use that if it is cheaper to get enough ram (8GB + 1GB per TB hdd space)  then do that

[Eniqmatic]

Thanks for the suggestion! I'm actually looking at this system right now - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157419, but also considering yours as well.

 

The link you posted looks very promising, plus, I can upgrade the CPU in the future if I want to. If I went with the system you posted, I think I'd go with G3220 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116950as the professor 

 

what do you think?

I've also used the top board but as it's double the price of the other one I didn't think you would consider it. The C2550 Avoton is a great little bit of kit plus brilliant for the 4 full size dimms you get are excellent, plus you get IPMI and 2 x GB NICS. The 8-core Avoton is similar in comparison to some of the i3's. However you could fit a Xeon in the C224 board if you decided to do more with it in the future

[jchan94]

I've also used the top board but as it's double the price of the other one I didn't think you would consider it. The C2550 Avoton is a great little bit of kit plus brilliant for the 4 full size dimms you get are excellent, plus you get IPMI and 2 x GB NICS. The 8-core Avoton is similar in comparison to some of the i3's. However you could fit a Xeon in the C224 board if you decided to do more with it in the future

 

Okay. So I know what I want in terms of storage + hardware specifications now.

 

I'm looking to get 2x 8GB ECC ram stick for now, for my 12TB of usable space. Probably getting 3x 6TB WD Red Drives and I'll set it to Raid 5.

 

How does that sound?

 

Here are some extra questions. What happens if I find that I want to expand the array?

 

Since it uses dual gb nics, I've never delt with link aggregation, but how would I set that up? 

[Eniqmatic]

Yeah that's a good starting point for RAM and the chosen for most people. Eventually you'll want to get some extra I.E 8GB for FreeNAS then 1GB per TB but honestly when you've got 16GB I think it's pretty much OK after that. 

 

You won't go RAID5, it will be called RAIDZ1 which is like RAID5 and as the name suggests it allows one drive to fail. You'll also have the option for RAIDZ2 and RAIDZ3 which I'm sure you can guess the functions of. Just choose you're level of redundancy and safety you want.

 

I'm assuming you want to expand the array with more drives do you mean? Or do you mean replace drives for bigger capacity?

 

Dual NIC's are super simple to setup in FreeNAS, there is a dedicated section of the configuration menu to set things like that up.

 

You can run Plex no problem, as well as other Plugin's/Jails.

[jchan94]

Yeah that's a good starting point for RAM and the chosen for most people. Eventually you'll want to get some extra I.E 8GB for FreeNAS then 1GB per TB but honestly when you've got 16GB I think it's pretty much OK after that. 

 

You won't go RAID5, it will be called RAIDZ1 which is like RAID5 and as the name suggests it allows one drive to fail. You'll also have the option for RAIDZ2 and RAIDZ3 which I'm sure you can guess the functions of. Just choose you're level of redundancy and safety you want.

 

I'm assuming you want to expand the array with more drives do you mean? Or do you mean replace drives for bigger capacity?

 

Dual NIC's are super simple to setup in FreeNAS, there is a dedicated section of the configuration menu to set things like that up.

 

You can run Plex no problem, as well as other Plugin's/Jails.

 

 

Awesome. This helps a lot. As far as plex goes, would I have to create a separate array for it? Or can it live within my current RaidZ1 array?

[Eniqmatic]

Awesome. This helps a lot. As far as plex goes, would I have to create a separate array for it? Or can it live within my current RaidZ1 array?

No everything can stay on the one array or you can create multiple pools if you desire. It's flexible!

 

Did you mean expand array with more drives or replacing old drives with higher capacity?

[jchan94]

No everything can stay on the one array or you can create multiple pools if you desire. It's flexible!

 

Did you mean expand array with more drives or replacing old drives with higher capacity?

 

Awesome.

 

I meant expand array with more drives.