Cheap-o NAS for a small business?

[harveylong26]

Hey.

I have just started work as the IT guy at a small company in my local area. I have knowledge on building NAS Towers but I need some help.

We need a NAS to store all our files on, for example spreadsheets, word documents, all the stock databases etc... We're currently working of network drives in windows 10 and its very unprofessional and messy.

Could somebody give me a PC part picker list for a small, yet cheap NAS?

Thank you.

 

- Harvey

[Oshino Shinobu]

What sort of size storage are you needing? Is Gigabit speeds okay, or are you going to be needing 10GbE equipment?

Also "cheap" is very subjective. Could you give a rough budget please?

[harveylong26]

Just now, Oshino Shinobu said:

What sort of size storage are you needing? Is Gigabit speeds okay, or are you going to be needing 10GbE equipment?

Also "cheap" is very subjective. Could you give a rough budget please?

Lets say around 4TB, Just to be on the safe side and also for ZFS. Gigabit speeds are okay are lets say under £400

[Oshino Shinobu]

22 minutes ago, harveylong26 said:

Lets say around 4TB, Just to be on the safe side and also for ZFS. Gigabit speeds are okay are lets say under £400

You're going to be hard pushed for that price. The drives alone (2x WD 4TB Red drives) are £260. While you could go for a single drive, I would definitely advise going for a RAID 1 array (ideally RAID 5, but that would require more drives) for redundancy. 

As a base, this would be my suggestion (excluding drives). For ZFS, you're going to be wanting a fair amount of RAM, and having ECC can help reduce the risk of data corruption in the event of flipped bits and other issues. 

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4170 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor  (£91.98 @ Ebuyer) 
Motherboard: ASRock E3C222D4U Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  (£117.60 @ More Computers) 
Memory: Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  (£88.73 @ Amazon UK) 
Case: Deepcool TESSERACT BF ATX Mid Tower Case  (£24.99 @ Ebuyer) 
Power Supply: Antec EarthWatts Green 380W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  (£42.60 @ Amazon UK) 
Total: £365.90
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-02-18 11:24 GMT+0000

[spellmanuk]

Just now, Oshino Shinobu said:

You're going to be hard pushed for that price. The drives alone (2x WD 4TB Red drives) are £260. While you could go for a single drive, I would definitely advise going for a RAID 0 array (ideally RAID 5, but that would require more drives) for redundancy. 

As a base, this would be my suggestion (excluding drives). For ZFS, you're going to be wanting a fair amount of RAM, and having ECC can help reduce the risk of data corruption in the event of flipped bits and other issues. 

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4170 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor  (£91.98 @ Ebuyer) 
Motherboard: ASRock E3C222D4U Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  (£117.60 @ More Computers) 
Memory: Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  (£88.73 @ Amazon UK) 
Case: Deepcool TESSERACT BF ATX Mid Tower Case  (£24.99 @ Ebuyer) 
Power Supply: Antec EarthWatts Green 380W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  (£42.60 @ Amazon UK) 
Total: £365.90
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-02-18 11:24 GMT+0000

i think he was saying 4tb total so £142 for 2tb reds 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-3-5-inch-Desktop-Hard-Drive/dp/B008JJLZ7G/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1455794911&sr=8-8&keywords=2tb

[harveylong26]

1 minute ago, Oshino Shinobu said:

You're going to be hard pushed for that price. The drives alone (2x WD 4TB Red drives) are £260. While you could go for a single drive, I would definitely advise going for a RAID 0 array (ideally RAID 5, but that would require more drives) for redundancy. 

As a base, this would be my suggestion (excluding drives). For ZFS, you're going to be wanting a fair amount of RAM, and having ECC can help reduce the risk of data corruption in the event of flipped bits and other issues. 

 

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i3-4170 3.7GHz Dual-Core Processor  (£91.98 @ Ebuyer) 
Motherboard: ASRock E3C222D4U Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard  (£117.60 @ More Computers) 
Memory: Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory  (£88.73 @ Amazon UK) 
Case: Deepcool TESSERACT BF ATX Mid Tower Case  (£24.99 @ Ebuyer) 
Power Supply: Antec EarthWatts Green 380W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply  (£42.60 @ Amazon UK) 
Total: £365.90
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2016-02-18 11:24 GMT+0000

Thank you so much man, this is a great help. Ill let my boss know and we can try and figure something out.

[Oshino Shinobu]

3 minutes ago, peej said:

i think he was saying 4tb total so £142 for 2tb reds 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Red-3-5-inch-Desktop-Hard-Drive/dp/B008JJLZ7G/ref=sr_1_8?ie=UTF8&qid=1455794911&sr=8-8&keywords=2tb

True, you could either go for a single 4TB or two 2TB drives (in a JBOD maybe, definitely not RAID 0). But even then, redundancy should be a fundamental part of a NAS, especially for a business. 

[spellmanuk]

Just now, Oshino Shinobu said:

True, you could either go for a single 4TB or two 2TB drives (in a JBOD maybe, definitely not RAID 0). But even then, redundancy should be a fundamental part of a NAS, especially for a business. 

yeah thats why i said 2x2tb one as primary one as back up

[Oshino Shinobu]

9 minutes ago, harveylong26 said:

Thank you so much man, this is a great help. Ill let my boss know and we can try and figure something out.

No problem. Just realised I said RAID 0, but I meant RAID 1 (mirroring). You could save some money by going for a single 4TB drive and backing it up onto external drives, rather than having two drives in RAID 1. 

My advice would be to go for drives designed for NAS operation (like WD Reds), especially if you're going to have multiple drives in a system, as 24/7 operation and vibrations from close proximity will kill desktop drives. 

Also, if you go for an OS like FreeNAS, you're going to need a small drive for the OS, as it will take up the entire drive, regardless of size. Maybe a small 32GB SSD for the OS.