Home NAS

[Sharp55]

Hi all,

 

I am preparing to build a home NAS but need a few suggestions with some of the hardware and ZFS/ECC.

 

I already have

-Old PC case

-PSU 

 

Plan to buy

-4 or 5x2t WD red NAS drives depending on raid 5 or 6, we need at least 6t of storage to begin with (Possible expansion in a few years)

-CPU Suggestions please

-MOBO suggestion please

-RAM Suggestions please, ECC???

 

Questions

How important is ZFS i only have a basic understanding of what it is.

How risky is it to have ZFS and non-ECC ram.

Anything else i should know?

 

Thanks

 

Sharp

[BlazeFace48]

The way I am doing it is doing the " old" xenon build then using pci sata ports to get sata 3.

This is not the best way fyi

[Aekim]

If you really want/need zfs you should go with ECC, however you can go far cheaper with an other OS and raid.

If I got it right zfs creates checksums in the RAM when it compares/wrights data and if you only have non ECC RAM you could get a wrong checksum and so wrong data(very simple)^^.

For a simple file Server go with openmediavault or amahi perhaps and an AMD a4-4000 combo

[alpenwasser]

As @Aekim said, for home use, ZFS isn't really needed. Something like openmediavault or amahi will do a very nice job. And I say that as somebody who uses ZFS and is happy with it.

However, ZFS is pretty sweet, so if you really do want to go that route, yes, I would recommend ECC memory.

It might be worth looking into used server-grade components on ebay. They should easily offer enough performance and often you can find some pretty good deals there. This is what I did in my server (dual-socket LGA1366 board, though single-socket will do just fine, see 'APOLLO' in signature link if you wish to have a look). If you do want to go that route, something from Supermicro, LGA1156/LGA1366 or newer should get the job done. Careful though: Some of those boards might not yet support HDDs larger than 2 TB, so you'd need a separate controller card for those drives (I did that in my build).

If you want to go with new components, there are lots of possibilities, depending on what the NAS should be able to do and on your budget. You could go with something like an Atom, which uses very little power and has easily enough horsepower for anything a typical NAS will get thrown at it, but those boards are not cheap, and sometimes hard to find. (example: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157475 )

Aside from that, a Pentium or an i3 might also get the job done, and some of them support ECC. you don't need lots of horsepower for this unless you also want to use the NAS for something else.

Maybe AMD also has something suitable, but I am admittedly not completely up to date on the current market situation, so that piece of advice should likely better come from somebody else.

 

Questions

How important is ZFS i only have a basic understanding of what it is.

As mentioned above, you don't need ZFS for a good home NAS. It has its upsides and drawbacks, as most other tools.

 

How risky is it to have ZFS and non-ECC ram.

If you ever find out, let me know.

Seriously though, I have tried to find this out for a long time, and even ZFS experts don't all seem to agree on it. Some say it might lead to a bit of file corruption, others say it could lead to complete loss of your pool.

In simplified terms, ZFS checksums your data and stores those checksums in the filesystem. When you read a block, its checksum is calculated and compared against the checksum which is stored on disk. If they don't match, ZFS will try to restore your data from parity (if you have parity).

Trouble is, if you have a bitflip in your RAM, the newly calculated checksum and the stored checksum might no longer match, despite the data being okay, and ZFS could then try to "fix" data which isn't broken, and actually damage it. If this happens on the filesystem metadata, I could imagine the filesystem itself being severely damaged. But as said, I haven't been able to find any information on this which I'd call "word from god", that's just my conclusion which I've drawn from what I've read over the years on the subject. So, grain of salt and all that.

Lastly, a side note about ECC RAM: Manufacturers like Supermicro provide lists of validated memory for their motherboards. Pick something from that list to be on the safe side. Other than that, it doesn't really matter much in my experience (it probably will even work with modules which aren't on that list, but I stuck to it, to be on the safe side). I run some Samsung ECC modules in my server, but Kingston, Hynix or any other decent brand should do the job too.

[Hlong]

I took the easy way out and bought a WD MyCloud...

[Sharp55]

Hi

Thank you for all your replies.

Taking a look at openmediavault as suggested.

 

I was originally thinking raid 5 but I have since read some articles saying that raid 5 is obsolete now?

 

Hardware wise, if we were to use openmediavault, would something like this do?
-Gigabyte H97M-D3H

-Intel Pentium G3260

 

Thanks

 

EDIT
-Can I install openmediavault to a USB stick or do i need to buy an SSD for the OS?

[Aekim]

Look into RAID 6 for better reliability(2 vs 1 Bad drive with RAID 5)

Celeron should be enough, do you only want to store data or things like dlna/apps, too?

Mainboard is OK i guess but I would go with an Intel LAN for better drivers.

SSD would be better but I think you can use a USB stick, too.