Low-Medium Server/NAS build

[FedericoIT]

Hi, i am planning to build a Server that supports about 40 TB of data maximum, although i will begin with 2TB+500GB+2TB using 2/3TB drives. I am thinking about using also a 250 GB hard drive as a boot device.

The server would be used to backup about 4-5 computers daily, store more than 500GB of photos and go pro videos and to store documents, movies, 1.5TB HD audio files and other files.

I would also run on it a Windows 7 VM and a VPN service to access to my LAN while i'm not at home. In the future i could also want to host a small web site.

 

Could you help me to find out a low cost configuration for my needs?

 

I can spend a maximum of 230€ (about 250$) for cpu, ram and mobo.

Can you suggest me also a cheap case?

 

All the drives are excluded from the budget.

I was thinking to start with a low cost upgradable configuration, to be able to expand it in the future.

I would love to raid at least some drives (the ones with photos and videos) but i think it would cost very much...

 

Do you have some suggestions on the OS? Linus suggests unRAID, but i've also herd well about FreeNAS.

 

Thank you in advance,

 

F.

[Oshino Shinobu]

You're not going to get much for $250. For 40TB and 5 PCs, plus W7 VM and VPN, I would be recommending something like a Xeon E3-1245 V3, 16GB of Crucial ECC RAM and a server board to support it. Just the CPU alone would take up more than your budget, though. 

[Cvdasfg]

Hi, i am planning to build a Server that supports about 40 TB of data maximum, although i will begin with 2TB+500GB+2TB using 2/3TB drives. I am thinking about using also a 250 GB hard drive as a boot device.

The server would be used to backup about 4-5 computers daily, store more than 500GB of photos and go pro videos and to store documents, movies, 1.5TB HD audio files and other files.

I would also run on it a Windows 7 VM and a VPN service to access to my LAN while i'm not at home. In the future i could also want to host a small web site.

 

Could you help me to find out a low cost configuration for my needs?

 

I can spend a maximum of 230€ (about 250$) for cpu, ram and mobo.

Can you suggest me also a cheap case?

 

All the drives are excluded from the budget.

I was thinking to start with a low cost upgradable configuration, to be able to expand it in the future.

I would love to raid at least some drives (the ones with photos and videos) but i think it would cost very much...

 

Do you have some suggestions on the OS? Linus suggests unRAID, but i've also herd well about FreeNAS.

 

Thank you in advance,

 

F.

no.

no you cant do that.

 

none of what you said besides MAYBE the file server will work at that price.

 

What you want is $2k especially if going with someone decent ( like freenas)

 

and believe me $2k would be pushing it.

[FedericoIT]

Wow... I would've never thought that it would cost so much... With  250€ what is the best build i can do?

I can spend other 100€ of upgrade for my birthday and 100€ of upgrade for christmas.

 

F.

[Cvdasfg]

Wow... I would've never thought that it would cost so much... With  250€ what is the best build i can do?

I can spend other 100€ of upgrade for my birthday and 100€ of upgrade for christmas.

 

F.

You can have a file server. thats it... even then itd be cheaper to buy a prebuilt. You wont get near anything you said besides file servers for the prices your talking. Servers are expensive. 

[Guest]

Wow... I would've never thought that it would cost so much... With  250€ what is the best build i can do?

I can spend other 100€ of upgrade for my birthday and 100€ of upgrade for christmas.

 

F.

 

With 250€ you can build exactly nothing. 

 

Drives alone will consume almost entire budget. Good server class motherboard will take more than your budget. A server CPU will consume more than you have. Hell, a decent tower CASE will run you 100€ alone. 

 

Forget about building a half-decent fileserver for 250€. It's not going to happen. For 250€ you'll be hard-pressed to find a decent readymade 4-bay NAS solution (without drives), not to mention a server able to support 40TB of data. 

 

LGA2011 Xeon at a minimum (E5-1620v3), workstation-class motherboard, AT LEAST 48 GB of ECC RAM for a 40TB ZFS array, additional HBA cards, case supporting good airflow (for >5TB drives) or a rack case supporting AT LEAST 20 drives if you're going to use 2 TB drives mostly... You won't build it for 1000€, much less for 250.

 

Your 250 will buy you something like Synology DS214. Without drives. 2-bay fileserver for home use. 

[Cvdasfg]

With 250€ you can build exactly nothing. 

 

Drives alone will consume almost entire budget. Good server class motherboard will take more than your budget. A server CPU will consume more than you have. Hell, a decent tower CASE will run you 100€ alone. 

 

Forget about building a half-decent fileserver for 250€. It's not going to happen. For 250€ you'll be hard-pressed to find a decent readymade 4-bay NAS solution (without drives), not to mention a server able to support 40TB of data. 

 

LGA2011 Xeon at a minimum (E5-1620v3), workstation-class motherboard, AT LEAST 48 GB of ECC RAM for a 40TB ZFS array, additional HBA cards, case supporting good airflow (for >5TB drives) or a rack case supporting AT LEAST 20 drives if you're going to use 2 TB drives mostly... You won't build it for 1000€, much less for 250.

 

Your 250 will buy you something like Synology DS214. Without drives. 2-bay fileserver for home use. 

^^ exactly my point

[FedericoIT]

Thanks for the answers. I hope to figure out how to do this.

F.

[Aekim]

Perhaps try to get sth used. I've got a xeon 1230 16gb and a b85 board with SSD for 250€. Your other option would be to look into older server stuff. 8cores with ddr2 ECC RAM are not that expensive either

[FedericoIT]

Hi, what do you think about this build only as a NAS?

 

http://it.pcpartpicker.com/p/8HykFT

 

 

EDIT: I would still update it in the next months with 32GB of ECC RAM, a Xeon CPU and better coolers.

 

F.

[Aekim]

I would get a cheaper mobo and a better rated psu for the money^^

Do you really need 4 LAN ports? Then get a used Intel card. Looks more trustworthy

[Mikensan]

I see it's answered, but depending on what you're comfortable with you could get cpu/board/chip for $250us and run NAS4Free and use umfs instead of ZFS. Unless you're looking for 10gbit performance over the wire via CIFS/Samba, then you don't need a fancy CPU.

 

Running virtual machines etc... would be out of the question. My FreeNAS box actually runs on a Celeron G1610 ($40 at the time) and I saturate my gigabit network via CIFS with no issues. I have a single linux vm running on a vbox jail, and it runs... ok... Windows would run like crap.

 

You either pay big money and have a very very small risk of losing your data, or go cheap and have a higher (but not certain) chance of losing your data. Which if you have 40tb of data, that would suck so bad if you lost it....

[Aekim]

Mikensan is right, if you change to nas4free or openmediavault you could get away without ECC RAM

[Jarsky]

Hi, what do you think about this build only as a NAS?

 

http://it.pcpartpicker.com/p/8HykFT

 

 

EDIT: I would still update it in the next months with 32GB of ECC RAM, a Xeon CPU and better coolers.

 

F.

 

Remove those 2 seperate 4GB chips, start with the 2x 4GB kit you got on there.

Remove the 4x LAN port card, the motherboard already has 2 x Gigabit ports - you aren't going to benefit from 4.

 

If you're confident that you can soon afford Xeon & 32GB of ECC memory - maybe just hold off?

You also need to include the price of an HBA card if you want to connect more drives.

 

Think you might be underestimating how much this is going to cost....40TB of 2/3TB drives isn't cheap....

[FedericoIT]

So, first of all thanks for the answers. I figured out a €280 build with an AMD CPU and 8 GB of DDR3 RAM.

As you suggested I will put a total of two gigabit Ethernet ports and I won't use freenas. What do you think about unRAID?

http://it.pcpartpicker.com/p/mbyxXL

Thank you in advance

F.

[Cvdasfg]

So, first of all thanks for the answers. I figured out a €280 build with an AMD CPU and 8 GB of DDR3 RAM.

As you suggested I will put a total of two gigabit Ethernet ports and I won't use freenas. What do you think about unRAID?

http://it.pcpartpicker.com/p/mbyxXL

Thank you in advance

F.

thanks for selecting me as best answer

 

Anyway as far as unraid goes I'd use that. I like it personally. Certainly not as complicated/intensive as freenas.

[dalekphalm]

Hi, what do you think about this build only as a NAS?

 

http://it.pcpartpicker.com/p/8HykFT

 

 

EDIT: I would still update it in the next months with 32GB of ECC RAM, a Xeon CPU and better coolers.

 

F.

That first build isn't too bad, but start off with just with 8GB kit - ram is easy to expand after the fact if you need more. Also, drop the NIC card... It's pointless, and a shitty one anyway.

 

So, first of all thanks for the answers. I figured out a €280 build with an AMD CPU and 8 GB of DDR3 RAM.

As you suggested I will put a total of two gigabit Ethernet ports and I won't use freenas. What do you think about unRAID?

http://it.pcpartpicker.com/p/mbyxXL

Thank you in advance

F.

This build is much different, and far cheaper and less powerful, and also offers far less of an upgrade path. It will certainly still work as a File Server, but getting some of the other things you wanted down the line is not likely. Your best upgrade will be an Athlon x4 or an A10 APU. Neither of which are particularly great.

 

Also why do you mention two Ethernet ports? First off, why would you need two? The Motherboard has 1x built in Gigabit Ethernet, which should be fine.

 

The only reason I could see getting a 2nd NIC is if you were doing VM's, and you wanted to avoid a bottleneck between the VM's and the file server - but since this server cannot handle very much in the way of VM's anyway, it's a moot point, I'd say.

 

You can still go with FreeNAS if you wanted - hell you don't even need to use ZFS specifically while using FreeNAS - UnRAID is a good alternative though. Each as their advantages - UnRAID is certainly the more user friendly option. Linus quite likes it, and they don't really want a big hassle with their file servers.