Where to start with building a NAS

[Afranqui]

Hey guys, 

        I have decided to take the leap into building a home NAS, but I have no idea where to begin. Im not too worried about price this is only going to be around 8TB. Its more the simple things, do I need a raid card, what OS should I use, and how to even get it connected to my network to stream/store backups. I have been doing reading on the internet but nothing seems to help very much. If anyone also knows a good website that has a good build log/guide that would be much appreciated.

 

Thanks guys. 

[KirbyTech]

Can you give us an idea of what you current setup is? Also what kind of files you plan to store/ who will need access to them. 

[Afranqui]

I don't really have a fully laid out system for the NAS. I know that I am going ITX probably a couple wd drives. This will only be a NAS I don't plan on using anything else on this computer. As far as accessing it goes I want anyone who is on my home network to be able to access it. As far as file storage goes I would like to put all of my media on it so its not on my personal rig. 

[Van Weapon]

So one simple way to do this, build the new computer with the hard drives and whatever, but have a separate small SSD as the boot device, make it as small as you can find to reduce cost since you wont have any programs installed. Then set up the drives youre getting in the RAID config you want. This is done through BIOS, so you dont need a RAID controller. Finally youll need to have the computer connected to your home modem/router/switch so that it can be accessed by anyone else on the home network. Windows has fairly decent home networking built into it which I use personally for small files like word documents between my laptop and desktop, since you can directly save from one PC to the other's "Library" folders and the desktop. 

 

However, buying a windows license just for that is overkill, so you should get a linux OS. Dont ask me which one, i have no idea, someone else can expand on that part. 

 

What this means though is that if you want people to access this whenever they want it will always need to be switched on. 

[tt2468]

For us to pick you something out, we need to know your budget, and prefrence of brand, so we can pick you something you like.

[alpenwasser]

Well, fundamentally, building a NAS isn't much different from building a regular computer. It's less a question of "What do you need?", more a question of "How much money are you willing to spend on feature <x>?"

 

You don't need RAID (hardware or software), you don't need ECC RAM, you don't need to have a strong CPU, you don't need to have lots of RAM, you don't need to have an additional backup on another machine or an external drive etc. (although I'd say not having a backup is a horrible idea, at least of your important data  ).

 

BUT: Each of those offers an advantage under certain conditions. RAID is nice to increase uptime since you don't lose access to your data upon drive failure (without RAID, you'd need to restore from backup before you could access your stuff again).  ECC RAM is strongly recommended if you go with ZFS (be that FreeNAS or with ZFS on Linux), a strong CPU is nice if you want to run transcoding (Plex and similar), more RAM is nice if you run virtual machines or ZFS (and for ZFS there's also a higher minimum RAM recommendation). And of course, having a backup somewhere else will prevent you from going suicidal if the NAS goes *poof* and you lose your family photos. And so on and so forth.

 

None of those is strictly speaking needed. So before you can decide what to buy, you'll need to figure out which feature is how important to you, how much money you're willing and/or able to spend on it, then go from there.

 

As for NAS operating systems, there's a few choices: FreeNAS is popular, but it carries some non-trivial hardware requirements (or at least strong recommendations). Openmediavault is more frugal in that area, as a counterexample. Amahi would also be a possibility. Installing Linux or BSD and just setting up file shares would also be a way to go.

 

Either way, the basic process is the same as assembling a regular machine: Assess your needs, figure out budget, select components based on the given constraints, order, assemble, install, or something thereabouts.

Edited February 3, 2016 by alpenwasser

[Afranqui]

I guess my biggest point of confusion is just the software that I am going to use. There just seems to be so many different ways to access your NAS. Is one easier to work with for a first timer than another? I am not worried about the budget factor, I won't be needing stuff that is very expensive. I'm planning on an i3, some ram, about 8TB of storage, a small boot SSD, whatever decent PSU that Newegg has a promo on, and a case that has some room for expansion but is small. 

[beavo451]

FreeNAS or NAS4Free are ... free. Very good, but requires some tinkering and learning.

Unraid is another option, but is paid.

Windows Server is another paid option, but probably the least flexible. <- Probably not the right word for it, but Windows Server is not appropriate for use as a home NAS OS, IMHO.

Various flavors of Linux based server OS.

 

FreeNAS is probably the "easiest". It may be daunting, but there is lots of information out there. It doesn't require too beefy of a processor, but does require lots of RAM. I would say 16GBs is the minimum. For 8TB, you would need 6 2TB drives (can withstand 2 drive failures) or 3 4TB drives (can withstand 1 drive failure). You can also add an extra drive for a "hot spare". Basically, if the drive pool has a drive failure, it immediately switches to the hot spare and begins a rebuild.

 

Hardware considerations for FreeNAS:

Again, lots of RAM. The more the better. ECC is recommended, but not required. ECC is not just recommended for FreeNAS. It is recommended for all server usage.

Do not use RAID with FreeNAS! It uses ZFS which is basically software RAID, but better.

You want an efficient power supply and a processor that is sufficient for your needs, but not too powerful. NAS systems are usually on 24/7 and needs to be power efficient.

You do not need an SSD. You can use one for cache and logging (speeds up read and writes), but is not needed for home use. Plus a cache or log drive failure takes out the entire pool.

FreeNAS is run off of a USB drive. So, buy two of the same USB drive and the second one will be used for boot drive redundancy.

[TonyStark]

based on what Beavo said, I'd go with FreeNAS, I've helped another person here to build his family NAS, but it all depends on budget and usage ? do you plan to use it as a media sharing device, or you want to place files in it and be available all over the LAN ?

[wpirobotbuilder]

10 hours ago, Afranqui said:

do I need a raid card

You can get a lot of the functionality out of your motherboard's chipset, and a RAID card is another point of worry in your system -- will the motherboard even support it? That's a pretty common issue. It's really good for performance.

 

10 hours ago, Afranqui said:

what OS should I use

 

How easy do you want it to be to maintain? How much customizability do you want?

 

If all you need is a single network share for all your storage, then definitely go with the Linux route if you're familiar with the command line  -- Ubuntu will be just fine, and there are tutorials for setting up your server for backups and for Plex installations. It'll be cheap, with the exception of the storage, and CPU if you do tons of streaming. Maintenance is pretty easy.

 

If you want more customizability, like the ability to map storage directly as a disk device in Windows/Linux (iSCSI), I'd go with FreeNAS because it's built to do really cool things with storage and has a pretty GUI to do it through -- though it comes with tradeoffs, notably the aforementioned hardware recommendations, and a very hardline community to deal with if you need help. It's also less intuitive to maintain. You can do the same things in Ubuntu if you do enough research.

 

If you want maintenance to be super easy, Windows is the best option. It works with just about everything on the planet, but you are going to pay for the license.

10 hours ago, Afranqui said:

how to even get it connected to my network to stream/store backups

You'll just hook it up your modem like any other computer. Once you know its IP address, you can connect to your shares pretty easily -- see http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/create-shortcut-map-network-drive#1TC=windows-7&bodyContentPane

 

[alpenwasser]

To add to the above, if you want to get a bit of an impression of how the various NAS operating systems look and all that, Youtube is your friend:

 

 

 

 

For other NAS operating systems I've only found rather old videos. But you get the idea.

[leadeater]

11 hours ago, beavo451 said:

Windows Server is another paid option, but probably the least flexible.

 

How is Windows the least flexible? Nothing against other options or specially for it either but I don't see why you would rate it so badly in this respect. Low on user friendliness (no single web GUI) but due to the overwhelming support for Windows in both hardware and software it would be one of the most flexible. Mind you my interpretation of flexible in this case could just be different, if you can't easily configure it then it isn't flexible, only possible.

 

Either way I wouldn't recommend paying for a Windows license to use as a NAS unless there is some other dual purpose for it.

[maxtch]

About hardware you can get some used server-grade gear (they are rated for 24/7 operation with long service life and MTBF after all) and for software I really like a Linux-based stack. I am relatively savvy with Linux command line so I almost always start with a fresh, vanilla installation of Ubuntu Server.

[beavo451]

3 hours ago, leadeater said:

 

How is Windows the least flexible? Nothing against other options or specially for it either but I don't see why you would rate it so badly in this respect. Low on user friendliness (no single web GUI) but due to the overwhelming support for Windows in both hardware and software it would be one of the most flexible. Mind you my interpretation of flexible in this case could just be different, if you can't easily configure it then it isn't flexible, only possible.

 

Either way I wouldn't recommend paying for a Windows license to use as a NAS unless there is some other dual purpose for it.

 

You're right. "Flexible" wasn't the correct term. I believe that Windows Server is not appropriate for home NAS use.