First time building a NAS, need Tips

[Katylar]

Hi!

 

I'm thinking of building a NAS for my house, mostly to serve 2 purposes:

1. Make my files easily network-accessible for my desktop, my laptop, my tablet and my smartphone

2. Server as an easily expandable archive

 

Now, my work and hobbies require me to have a lot of space. So far, I've been surviving by simply transferring my files to external harddrives while keeping my bootdrive only for OS and applications (including games). This is a clunky solution at best.

 

Full disclosure: where I live, NAS's haven't really seen mainstream use yet. I'm sure there are some cutting-edge enthusiasts with them, or maybe an office or two with a modern NAS, but it's not as well-known or widely-deployed as most comments from the EU or North America has made me to believe. It could be a matter of late adoption, or simply a cultural thing (heck, we don't have TiVo here, it never caught on).

 

So I have never personally seen or used as NAS. So this is a shot in the dark.

 

My questions are:

1. I can just build a normal box (maybe an i3) and turn it into a NAS, right?

2. What RAID setup would be best? Assume that I have some money to spend... maybe USD700 for the Harddrives. I've heard RAID10?

3. What HDDs would you suggest? WD Blues or Reds?

4. So can I transfer all my content files (i.e. my multimedia, my documents, my photos, etc.) to the NAS and have no issues, right? How about installing and running applications from a NAS (bad idea, I imagine?)

 

The only person who will be using (regular load-wise) would be me, with those aforementioned devices. So what would be ideal?

 

 

 

[ShadowCaptain]

1 minute ago, Katylar said:

My questions are:

1. I can just build a normal box (maybe an i3) and turn it into a NAS, right?

2. What RAID setup would be best? Assume that I have some money to spend... maybe USD700 for the Harddrives. I've heard RAID10?

3. What HDDs would you suggest? WD Blues or Reds?

4. So can I transfer all my content files (i.e. my multimedia, my documents, my photos, etc.) to the NAS and have no issues, right? How about installing and running applications from a NAS (bad idea, I imagine?)

1) Yes, and either run FreeNAS or WIndows Server 
2) Raid 10, - say like 4x 4TB drives, so you have 8tb of data, which is striped and mirrored - you could then have a cloud or a second external drive to do periodic off site backups of the server (ie server is stolen / fire etc)
3) REDS 100% - red pros ideally

4) files, yes, programs yes, I even have steam games installed on my nas and its powered by a pentium

[Blaxow]

2 minutes ago, ShadowCaptain said:

1) Yes, and either run FreeNAS or WIndows Server 
2) Raid 10, - say like 4x 4TB drives, so you have 8tb of data, which is striped and mirrored - you could then have a cloud or a second external drive to do periodic off site backups of the server (ie server is stolen / fire etc)
3) REDS 100% - red pros ideally

4) files, yes, programs yes, I even have steam games installed on my nas and its powered by a pentium

Totally right. No point to add.

Ive done it with Windows server 2012.

[Aditya_V]

6 minutes ago, Katylar said:

My questions are:

1. I can just build a normal box (maybe an i3) and turn it into a NAS, right?

2. What RAID setup would be best? Assume that I have some money to spend... maybe USD700 for the Harddrives. I've heard RAID10?

3. What HDDs would you suggest? WD Blues or Reds?

4. So can I transfer all my content files (i.e. my multimedia, my documents, my photos, etc.) to the NAS and have no issues, right? How about installing and running applications from a NAS (bad idea, I imagine?)

1)Pretty much yes considering your the only user.

2)RAID 10 will be easily possible without the requirement of a RAID CARD.

3)WD reds they are meant & optimized for NAS.

4)Yes & you can install and run games as well as programs.

[ShadowCaptain]

Just now, Blaxow said:

Totally right. No point to add.

Ive done it with Windows server 2012.

Same but only because I got a free copy from work

[Katylar]

Thanks to everyone for replying.

 

So for software, is FreeNAS the best solution? Or are there better ones, except they're not free? My job allows me to pretty much cherry-pick software and buy them at a huge discount, so even the more expensive ones might be feasible for me.

[beavo451]

20 minutes ago, Katylar said:

Thanks to everyone for replying.

 

So for software, is FreeNAS the best solution? Or are there better ones, except they're not free? My job allows me to pretty much cherry-pick software and buy them at a huge discount, so even the more expensive ones might be feasible for me.

The "best" is highly subjective depending on use case. ZFS file system used in FreeNAS is not easily expanded to add more storage space.

 

Other options for you to look into

Windows Server

Unraid

NAS4Free 

Open media vault

Ubuntu server

All flavors of pre-built NAS devices.

 

File servers are relatively simple. You need to pick one that fits your use case.

[Katylar]

12 hours ago, beavo451 said:

The "best" is highly subjective depending on use case. ZFS file system used in FreeNAS is not easily expanded to add more storage space.

 

Other options for you to look into

Windows Server

Unraid

NAS4Free 

Open media vault

Ubuntu server

All flavors of pre-built NAS devices.

 

File servers are relatively simple. You need to pick one that fits your use case.

Hmm. I might use Ubuntu Server, then. Or would this leave me with non-NTFS drives?

 

12 hours ago, ShadowCaptain said:

1) Yes, and either run FreeNAS or WIndows Server 
2) Raid 10, - say like 4x 4TB drives, so you have 8tb of data, which is striped and mirrored - you could then have a cloud or a second external drive to do periodic off site backups of the server (ie server is stolen / fire etc)
3) REDS 100% - red pros ideally

4) files, yes, programs yes, I even have steam games installed on my nas and its powered by a pentium

May I know why REDs? I mean, I've read that they're NAS-optimized, but would they really be ideal since I plan to use the NAS as my game/application location as well and run from them? As far as I can see, the RPMs for the REDs are at 5000-5900.

 

 

 

[ShadowCaptain]

3 hours ago, Katylar said:

Hmm. I might use Ubuntu Server, then. Or would this leave me with non-NTFS drives?

 

May I know why REDs? I mean, I've read that they're NAS-optimized, but would they really be ideal since I plan to use the NAS as my game/application location as well and run from them? As far as I can see, the RPMs for the REDs are at 5000-5900.

 

 

Because the #1 priority of a file server is to store files safely, and reds are designed to withstand vibrations being placed close to other drives, and withstand 24.7 operation

Red Pros run at 7200 RPM - dont forget, if you are doing RAID 10 - then you are striping data across 2 drives theoretically doubling the performance of the slower drive anyway

Plus honestly game loading times (for 99%) of games are fine even on a slower drive, heck I run steam games off an old green drive just fine

 

Honestly, if you CAN, you should install all your games on SSD inside your main PC and only store lighter more casual games on your server

[Smite]

13 hours ago, Katylar said:

Hmm. I might use Ubuntu Server, then. Or would this leave me with non-NTFS drives?

You still get ntfs drives as this is how the nas will serve them up to windows as a share. Many people stuggle to get this when first diving into freenas. You have all the options laid out in front of you. each has its pros and cons. You are not asking for anything extream and all of them can do what you want. Bite the bullet and set one up. Before you go and commiting to data to it get a feel for it. If you don't like it change it. It is easier to do this is free first so linux/freenas/nas4free is a good choice. 

[beavo451]

16 hours ago, Katylar said:

Hmm. I might use Ubuntu Server, then. Or would this leave me with non-NTFS drives?

 

NTFS is a file system. A NAS/file server uses a service to enable access across a network to it. The actual formatting of the drives doesn't matter.

 

Example: FreeNAS formats the drives in ZFS. The CIFS server makes it accessible to Windows users as a share even though Windows cannot natively address ZFS.

[ibom]

wrt the WD RED and other NAS specific drives, I think the cost/benefit comparison between them and regular consumer drives is a lot closer than marketing would have us believe.  Check out https://www.backblaze.com/blog/how-long-do-disk-drives-last/

 

Everything is built pretty solidly these days, the risk of failure is small regardless. Depending on the capacity you're aiming for, the cost difference will be more or less significant. Small SSD for fast caching might make better use of your budget.

 

Also, I would explore JBOD options as an alternative to RAID. Are you still going to have another full backup option? RAID may be more trouble than it's worth. 

 

Maybe REDs and RAID are still the way to go?? I can't say either way, this is just what came up in my research since I'm doing a similar project.

[bobhays]

On 2/22/2016 at 9:00 AM, ShadowCaptain said:

1) Yes, and either run FreeNAS or WIndows Server 
2) Raid 10, - say like 4x 4TB drives, so you have 8tb of data, which is striped and mirrored - you could then have a cloud or a second external drive to do periodic off site backups of the server (ie server is stolen / fire etc)
3) REDS 100% - red pros ideally

4) files, yes, programs yes, I even have steam games installed on my nas and its powered by a pentium

I've been planning on doing this for a while and if I can install games on it that would be amazing. I have a few question for you if you don't mind. Can you install programs other than steam games, for example non steam games or photoshop etc. onto your nas.

 

For the steam game, if you install it onto your nas from one computer can you run the same game from another computer? This might require some configuration like after you install from computer 1, go to computer 2, click download/install and then point it to the same directory. That way it will recognize the files are already there and just make the connection. I know you might not already have this set up but if you could try that would be awesome.