Cheap storage servers - for all prospective NAS builders.

[Guest]

Hey there. 

I know some of you might want to build a cheap storage server, maybe a NAS, maybe just a backup solution. And I get it, sometimes it's hard to come up with budget - when your rig is $1000, it might be hard to justify actually getting a storage server for $1500. However, there are some misconceptions about storage servers that need to be cleared up.

So, let's get to it:

1. Cheap storage servers

That's a requirement that is usually coupled with "high capacity". There's just one problem with that. High capacity cheap servers don't exist. 

 A single 2TB 5400 RPM WD Red is approx. $90 at PC Part Picker as for now, 3TB will run you $110, 4TB - $150. The cost increases with each terabyte, and with every drive. Need 8TB? That will be anything from $300 to $360. 60TB? That's $2250, and it's only drives. Of course, you can get consumer-grade drives for storage, in some cases it might even be a viable solution, for example if you don't care about the data and you just want to hook up a network drive so that all your movies are available via network. Still, you aren't saving that much - something along the lines of $15 per drive. 

That's just the beginning of course, my dear prospective builder. You only have drives. Now you need the rest. 

I won't get into specifics, because it all depends on use cases and your needs, but basically you're going to need a motherboard, a case, lots of RAM depending on the size of your array, a good PSU, good cooling solution to keep the drives nice and cool... You might actually also want a UPS to let you shut down your NAS in case of power loss (again, depends on your needs). 

Those costs aren't going to be much different than your typical PC. You won't need a GPU of course, because that thing can run headless, but if you need a server that handles a lot of data - you're gonna need to pay quite a lot for things like gigabytes of ECC RAM (1GB per 1TB of drives + 4-8TB overhead for ZFS), a motherboard supporting all the drives and/or HBA card, a PSU that will handle all your drives... And of course, the more you need, the higher the cost will be. 

Even Avoton-based solution isn't going to be THAT cheap. So unless your needs are totally small (as in, the performance of Atom 330 with DDR2 and two drives attached, powered by a PicoPSU totally satisfies you), you are not going to build anything cheaply. 

2. Power is not free. 

I get it, it might sound funny, but it's exactly what it is. Power is not free. So not only do you want to build a server, you will also want to reduce its footprint and energy costs associated with it. Keep in mind that it's going to draw power 24/7. A motherboard alone, with a low-power CPU (Avoton, older Atoms, Pentiums/Celerons), memory and a single drive will draw anything from 20 (Atom S1260) to 70W (Pentium G2x). I don't even want to get into specifics of how much a Xeon is going to draw under load. Add power consumption of a single drive times number of drives (3-6W each), then multiply by 24, then by 30. For small units the footprint is going to be insignificant (D525-based unit with 4 drives will rack ~40 kWh every month, A Xeon-based unit with 60TB of drives will rack a much bigger bill). 

This should also discourage a lot of people who would like to get an old LGA775 or S478-based machine, or an old server to use as a NAS. Power efficiency is key. If your old rig consumes 120W when idle, you're going to use 90 kWh per month. An old PowerEdge? That's at least a good 150 kWh a month.

3. So what can you do?

Simply - if you don't have a budget, consider the following options:

- Add additional drive(s) to your main rig. From that point you have several options, from simply making it available on your home network to virtualizing a NAS by using UnRaid or any other hypervisor. You can even virtualize FreeNAS if you want - it's going to be far cheaper than getting a separate machine just to host some of your files. That's essentially the cheapest option, as you're paying only for drives and UnRaid, if you decide to go that way. 

- If you need a separate machine and you don't have high/specific requirements - get a ready-made solution. There are companies like Synology, Qnap and many others, which manufacture various home and SMB-oriented devices. If you just want to get 4TB in drives and make them available in your home network, you don't need more than a Synology DS214se or a D-Link DNS-320L. Such a device can also serve additional purposes, as they often have some nice bells and whistles, like applications, FTP access, webserver, download box etc. Even if you need more than that, you can easily get a 4-bay or 8-bay ready-made solution (although here you'll have to spend more than that). You can even get cheaper 1-bay enclosures (Synology DS1xx) if your needs aren't great. 

- Host the files somewhere. Invest in a good backup plan (you should have off-site backup anyway, remember!) or rent a storage server somewhere. This might or might not be a viable solution, depending on your situation (bandwidth, amount of data you need to backup and so on). 

- Kinda unpopular, but some routers will allow you to simply attach USB devices. Attaching a standard USB enclosure might actually fulfill your needs (especially if you don't need a lot of space). You could also potentially go for USB 3.0 / e-SATA / Thunderbolt attached enclosures and plug them into one of your existing rigs. 

4. Conclusions

Network attached storage isn't really a cheap option and it's not really something that can be done on budget. There's no such thing as $200 NAS, $400 20TB storage solution, 500 GBP reliable backup solution with 12 TB of disk space and so on. A dedicated storage solution will easily cost close to a nice gaming rig or much more, and half-assing it is literally asking for data loss. 

5. Meta.

I wanted it to be a kind of a PSA for prospective NAS builders. I hope that someone will find it useful. I had a really good time writing it.

6. TL; DR:

Can you build a cheap NAS? No. 

[Unhelpful]

6 minutes ago, Rahnie said:

dear god this editor is shit. Disregard my post. Not letting me put anything below this box. Or letting me delete this box. Fuck this shit.

[FatPenguin]

If I recall, barnacules reviewed a synology nas about a week ago with 8 drive slots he had something like 34 TB but with the 2 drive redundancy he had about 24 left or something along those lines. 

[Mjvdk]

In all reality, if you aren't overly worried about the contents of the drives in the case of a drive failure, you could easily use a second hand pc with an extra drive or two. For example, ripping music from CDs or movies.  Yes, it will be similar to using your current pc but won't have to worry about keeping the gaming rig running.  

It isn't perfect as nothing cheap is but it will work.

Although, if all that you want is something basic like this, you might as well just buy a nas from somewhere like newegg

[Guest]

17 minutes ago, JoeyDM said:

20 minutes ago, Rahnie said:

dear god this editor is shit. Disregard my post. Not letting me put anything below this box. Or letting me delete this box. Fuck this shit.

Place your cursor in the top left corner of the box, then click on it and click delete.

13 minutes ago, FatPenguin said:

If I recall, barnacules reviewed a synology nas about a week ago with 8 drive slots he had something like 34 TB but with the 2 drive redundancy he had about 24 left or something along those lines. 

Yeah, the point I'm trying to make here is that it won't be cheap to buy. 8 drives x 4TB = $1200, and you have to add enclosure the NAS itself on top of that. Overall it's something along the lines of $2000. 

Most people know what they want, but there are some guys who think that they can build a NAS for something like $300 or $500, threads like these tend to pop up sometimes. That's why I decided to write this, to respond to all of them once and for all. 

16 minutes ago, Mjvdk said:

In all reality, if you aren't overly worried about the contents of the drives in the case of a drive failure, you could easily use a second hand pc with an extra drive or two. For example, ripping music from CDs or movies.  Yes, it will be similar to using your current pc but won't have to worry about keeping the gaming rig running.  

It isn't perfect as nothing cheap is but it will work.

Although, if all that you want is something basic like this, you might as well just buy a nas from somewhere like newegg

True. I have an Atom-based PC for tasks that don't need a lot of power/tasks I don't need to get done quickly. It's a perfect browsing machine, perfect CD-ripper or a completely silent webserver. But again, I built it because I had access to a cheap and good Atom motherboard and had everything else just lying around - RAM, PicoPSU, even a SFF case. I even have a 4-port KVM switch allowing me to utilize both PCs if needed. For someone with a tight budget, getting all the parts required to do this is going to be a problem, so it's best to actually add storage to the main rig. 

[scottyseng]

9 minutes ago, Rahnie said:

-snip- 

Just wanted to mention, in addition to power use, heat and noise are problems too (Even more so with older hardware). I have a NAS in my room with eight 4TB drives (Six Reds and Two Re drives) and it gets really hot in my room. With the stock fans in my supermicro chassis, it was pretty loud. I ended up buying 7 bequiet fans to place inside of the chassis instead of the stock server fans to quiet things down and keep a reasonable amount of airflow. Adding my main PC to the mix, my room stays fairly hot, to the point where I have to have the ceiling fan on usually (Which adds even more to the electricity bill).

I'm still saving up for more 4TB Re drives to fill up the server as well.

[FatPenguin]

16 minutes ago, Rahnie said:

 

Yeah, the point I'm trying to make here is that it won't be cheap to buy. 8 drives x 4TB = $1200, and you have to add enclosure the NAS itself on top of that. Overall it's something along the lines of $2000. 

Most people know what they want, but there are some guys who think that they can build a NAS for something like $300 or $500, threads like these tend to pop up sometimes. That's why I decided to write this, to respond to all of them once and for all. 

 

if I ever get a NAS I will start with something simple like a western digitial my cloud or something similar. and maybe move up to something with more storage. 

[Guest]

Just now, scottyseng said:

Just wanted to mention, in addition to power use, heat and noise are problems too. I have a NAS in my room with eight 4TB drives (Six Reds and Two Re drives) and it gets really hot in my room. With the stock fans in my supermicro chassis, it was pretty loud. I ended up buying 7 bequiet fans to place inside of the chassis instead of the stock server fans to quiet things down and keep a reasonable amount of airflow. Adding my main PC to the mix, my room stays fairly hot, to the point where I have to have the ceiling fan on usually (Which adds even more to the electricity bill).

I'm still saving up for more 4TB Re drives to fill up the server as well.

Yup, that's also a big issue. Honestly, even those small Synology and Qnap devices can be quite a pain in the neck with their small fans having to cool 2 drives in a very small and enclosed space. I can only imagine how bad it is with 8 platter drives, fans and everything else, especially when accessing data. 

I actually kinda admire people who decide to build their NAS systems in a Define R5 or one of the Nodes and keep them in the same room. I'd go crazy after a day.

[scottyseng]

3 minutes ago, Rahnie said:

Yup, that's also a big issue. Honestly, even those small Synology and Qnap devices can be quite a pain in the neck with their small fans having to cool 2 drives in a very small and enclosed space. I can only imagine how bad it is with 8 platter drives, fans and everything else, especially when accessing data. 

I actually kinda admire people who decide to build their NAS systems in a Define R5 or one of the Nodes and keep them in the same room. I'd go crazy after a day.

Oh, with the stock server fans, it got plenty loud (They were 80mm high RPM fans). It doesn't help that the Re drives run really hot (They're usually running at 50C under load / Reds are at 38C under full load). I can't wait to see how hot filling up all 24 bays with Re drives will be (The Reds will probably be moved to another chassis). The Re drives are quite loud too, I can usually hear them seeking for data across the room.

It's good for the winter though, sadly I live in Texas so my room is cooking at 81 - 83F room temp usually with both the NAS and my PC on.

[Whaler_99]

So let me through my two cents into this.

I think much of your post is valid, to a point. It is also heavily reliant on what NAS OS you are using and what you want it to do in the end.

So, something like FreeNAS with ZFS pools, although not "required" it is pretty much a given you want to run ECC memory. But even with standard memory, you will want a ton of it.

Moving onto the hardware RAID in a server, you need to match up all your drives in an array to properly use them. So, if you have one 3TB drive, yep, you going to need more 3TB drives. And an expensive RAID card...

I will then point out a solution like unRAID, which is designed to run with basic hardware and a mix of drive sizes and technology. You can actually do an unRAID server pretty cheaply and with old hardware and get a decent server with some data protection.

Now, what are you doing with it? If just hosting data for your LAN, then ya, you do not need anything very powerful. But, you also want to host Dockers, VM's, do transcoding for video playback? Then ya, you will need to throw some hardware at it so plan for the expense

Summarize - there are a LOT of NAS solutions out there to fit various needs. Figure out what your needs are first and do some research. Yep, they can cost a pretty penny but they can also be done pretty economically as well.

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Whaler_99 said:

-snip-

Thanks for your input - very informative indeed! 

I'm actually toying with an idea of making an even more comprehensive write up for Storage Solutions, because let's be honest, there's too many people asking for "$200 NAS, 4TB or more". I'm not saying it's impossible to do that. The drives will always be the biggest expense on the list, a small file server can run easily on a $200 Kabini system (most of which is actually a nice ITX case fitting 6 drives, Node 304 in this case - without it, it's all just $120) with Debian installed on it. Then it all depends on what sort of bells and whistles do you need and what kind of storage space do you want to achieve.

Also, I think that for some reason people are afraid (or simply aren't aware) of ready-made solutions which are IMHO best suitable for stuff like "need a NAS to host shows and movies for my HTPC" or "Need a NAS to backup my photos". 

[Whaler_99]

Yes, for us geeks and tinkerers the home built solutions can be amazing, powerfully and very customizable. But for your average joe out there that just needs a a basic nas, a QNAP or Synology unit can be hands down the best solution.

[Blake]

6 hours ago, Rahnie said:

Yup, that's also a big issue. Honestly, even those small Synology and Qnap devices can be quite a pain in the neck with their small fans having to cool 2 drives in a very small and enclosed space. I can only imagine how bad it is with 8 platter drives, fans and everything else, especially when accessing data. 

I actually kinda admire people who decide to build their NAS systems in a Define R5 or one of the Nodes and keep them in the same room. I'd go crazy after a day.

This is why the HP Microservers are really good, 1x120mm fan that's it. nice and quite ~60w @ full load, ~5w @ idle, including drives.

3 hours ago, Whaler_99 said:

also want to host Dockers, VM's, do transcoding for video playback? Then ya, you will need to throw some hardware at it so plan for the expense

Keep in mind that isn't what NAS' do, sure you can do it, but that's like me going into work and demanding we host our Domain controllers on the SAN, sure it's possible, but not really desired (and I like my job so i ain't going to recommend it). There is a reason we don't leave these decisions to software devs.

[F4S4K4N]

I more or less agree with this sentiment, but there are a lot of ways to cut these costs down. I think something a lot of people overlook is buying second hand enterprise gear. I say this so often that i almost sound like a second hand Dell salesman, but the PowerEdge 1950 Gen III and PowerVault MD1000 are in a perfect price / performance ratio right now.

 

I build setups with these two boxes all of the time for clients who have a low budget. I can usually get an 8 Core 32GB 1950 and an MD1000 for around $500. At this point it's just drive cost. Everyone has different taste in the drive area, but there are many reputable sellers who sell used Dell/HP/Whatever SAS drives the meet certain specs. Usually you can find drives with under 10K Hours and a warranty for around $30 a drive. The only real bottleneck here is that the MD1000 is limited to 3Gbps, but it can do multipathing witch helps a bit.

 

10K hours might seem like a lot to normal users, but i don't usually decommission drives until 40/50K hours at work. Most of them still work when they are decommissioned as well. A good enterprise drive will last a long time, and by 10K hours most of the bad ones have already failed.

[Penny5837]

On 2/1/2016 at 3:25 PM, FatPenguin said:

if I ever get a NAS I will start with something simple like a western digitial my cloud or something similar. and maybe move up to something with more storage. 

Don't get the WD cloud, I have the 3TB version, and it is slower than anything on my network, not to mention the UI is terrible, and isn't visible on your network by default. 

[Mackenzieboi1]

Don't Understand why you would want a NAS anyway unless you are really struggling for storage.

[maxtch]

I think when building a NAS you can cheap out on all components except hard drives. But by cheap out I don't mean buying substandard parts - I mean buy used. NAS have two requirements: ECC memory so your file won't get corrupted en route, and lots of hard drive to store them. NAS is not hard on processor in any way and for most of the people the onboard gigabit NIC from any recent enough motherboard will be good enough. Also if you can find a hardware RAID controller with cache RAM and BBU you won't usually need a SSD cache any more.

 

I have compiled a list of components that can be used to assemble a cheap NAS base unit (hard drives excluded) probably for within $200 with all used server-grade hardware:

• CPU: Intel Xeon X3330
• Motherboard: Asus P5BV-C
• RAM: 4x 2GB DDR2-667 ECC RAM
• RAID card: HP P410 with 512MB cache and BBU

However even three WD Blue 3TB (WD Blue and WD Green can be hacked to perform just like WD Red or WD Black despite a shorter guaranteed MTBF, so I am cheaping out here) will cost several times more than the base system. With a hardware RAID card you will want to make use of that RAID 5 (RAID 6, RAID 50 or RAID 60 if you have 4, 6 or 8 drives)as it provides both performance boost and redundancy.

[8uhbbhu8]

Right now im using my old pc and some random drives i had lying around for remote storage and backup but Im going to be upgrading to a dual xeon custom built server (rack as well :P) later on due to my storage uses which are quite random.

 

Finding most of the parts used, got a supermicro motherboard, heatsinks, AND Dual Xeon CPUs for around $100