Building a NAS: old server hardware, or consumer grade?

[splizza]

1. Budget & Location

I'm in Toronto, Ontario so I'll be looking for CAD Currency. I'm not looking to spend $1000 on the server as it isn't mission critical that I have 100% reliability. Just used as a repository for my code backups as well as music and other miscellaneous files. Although, that being said I don't mind spending a little if it'll be worth it.

2. Aim

My aim is to build a NAS server for my house. I am wondering if it's worth sourcing 'outdated' server hardware from Ebay, or a local freegeek,  etc. Or if it would be worth just going the consumer route and buying a prebuilt and adding the necessary components. 

 

Basically what I'm asking is, as a general guideline what should I keep an eye out for, and if it is in fact worth pursuing the server grade hardware what should I be looking for, and what kind of hardware should I be looking to put together. I know first, and foremost I'm going to need reliable hard drives. Other than that I'm not entirely sure. This may be the wrong area to post, but I figure it's a start. Thanks in advance for any help you guys are able to give me! -Splizza 

 

[Curufinwe_wins]

How many drives are you looking to hook up? That is imho the most important feature.

 

If 4 or less you can get away with damn near anything and I'd highly recommend just finding something that works (ideally with not a high power draw cpu.)

 

If you need 6 or more... Well IMHO this is the only motherboard/cpu I'd recommend.

 

http://www.amazon.com/ASRock-Rack-Mini-Motherboards-C2550D4I/dp/B00GG94YDS

 

Not that expensive, two intel nics, supports ECC, 4 dimm slots, 5 fan headers, 12!!!! sata ports, passively cooled cpu, IPMI (aka console access through lan).

 

 

Seriously the only thing this doesn't have is a toilet.

[splizza]

Hmm. I wasn't thinking anything more than three drives as I'm planning on running in raid 1 for data redundancy and protection.

[Curufinwe_wins]

Just now, splizza said:

Hmm. I wasn't thinking anything more than three drives as I'm planning on running in raid 1 for data redundancy and protection.

And what is the likelihood in the future you will want to expand again?

 

Anyways, yea. Find some random old ebay stuff then. The Node 304 is a phenomenal itx nas case with up to 6 drive support (unlike most "nas" marketed cases, it actually keeps the drives very cool while being quite quiet <20dBa.)

[splizza]

Honestly not very likely, but then again the saying "Never say never comes to mind". But I am entertaining the idea of hosting my personal webserver on the site as I'm a software engineering student and would like to host my portfolio somewhere. So that could very well be something to look towards. I've never actually gotten the chance to build my own system before, although I have tinkered. The highest-end system I've ever owned (my current one) is an ASUS ROG G551 running a 960m. So, this'll be my first foray into the hardware world.

[Huntsman]

Enterprise grade hardware is nice but expensive, especially when you don't need the reliability. You could repurpose an old PC for the job just fine. Something fairly recent with an i3 should do it.

 

You could install something like FreeNAS if you want ease of management. Linux if you are feeling adventurous xD.

 

Pre-made NAS are too expensive for the features it provides imo.

[Mark77]

Power consumption should be the guiding principle.  In the practical sense, this means getting a motherboard/CPU that has embedded graphics typically.  Discrete video cards burn electricity like crazy that's really not needed for a 'server'.

 

Your basic Sandy Bridge/Ivy/Haswell system, all-in, is going to consume around 30W + whatever load your hard drives place at idle (figure 6-8W/drive).  At 10 cents/kilowatt hour, figure about $1/Watt/year.

 

Keep this in mind before you pick up some prehistoric Xeon system that has high power draw, or even recycle parts from some old gaming rig.   An add-in "gaming" accelerator can easily double your idle consumption on a machine like that, for no good reason.  Even a cheapie PCI-E add-in Nvidia or AMD accelerator will cost you another 10-15W. 

 

$1000 should be enough of a budget.   I'd aim to find a board with Intel AMT that you can remotely out-of-band manage.  Q87 for LGA1150 is the chipset.  Or the Xeon "equivalent", but Q87 boards should be find-able for not that much money.  Yeah if you need a lot of PCI-E slots, then you'll probably have to go with the full-sized Supermicro X10SAE or X10SAT (or the update to that), but that's on the verge of blowing your budget.  I think with judicious use of eBay and used parts, you should easily be able to do it in the $1000 range with some drives. 

 

As far as drives go, I'm a giant fan of one of these:

 

About $100 from NCIX last one I ordered.  Makes everything nice and neat in your case.  Or you can order a special 'server' case, but I just re-used one of my old Enlights. 

[Curufinwe_wins]

3 minutes ago, Mark77 said:

snip

1000 canadian rupees.

 

Even 3 2TB drives will set you back 300 CAD right now, and those are for (imho poopy) seagate nas drives.

 

Realistically if you can find it effectively free, c2d is about as old as you will want to go (and is a better idea anyways than the c2q or other old quad cores for power consumption), and you can often find old-disused prebuilts with onboard video from that era (which won't be a big deal once you set it up).

[Mark77]

13 minutes ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

Even 3 2TB drives will set you back 300 CAD right now, and those are for (imho poopy) seagate nas drives.

https://www.amazon.ca/Toshiba-3-5-Inch-SATA3-Drive-DT01ACA200/

 

$89 a pop.  But I'd suggest a pair of 3Tb drives to start with.  At $130 a piece, that's $260.  No point in buying low-density 2Tb's these days.  4Tb's might not even be a bad upgrade, a pair of them, if a decent brand can be bought at a reasonable price.

 

Q87 mobo cost ~$110.

Haswell i3 ~= $125

8gb DDR3 DIMM ~= $35

 

Still leaves plenty for other stuff .  What else do you really need these days?  DVD drive?  Find one in the parts bin or buy one for $20.  SSD?  RAID-1 speeds up disk I/O nicely on Linux, but doesn't seem to be as 'necessary' as it is under the relatively more bloated Windows.

 

I personally use my (relatively similar) system with a dual channel Hauppauge HVR-2250 video capture card for mythtv because I have access to coax antennas for OTA video recording.  And virtualization with Virtualbox.  it also acts as a wireless access point with hostapd and an wireless card added through a PCI-E adapter board.

 

Easy to make it within the $1000 budget overall.  The Q87 setup could easily be substituted with a Sandy Bridge setup without much increase in power consumption.  Its when you go with hardware older than that when the power consumption really creeps up. 

 

edit:  if you're getting a board with AMT or IPMI, make sure the CPU you're selecting will "allow" that feature.  Intel has done some artificial crippling of their chips.

 

edit:  ideally get something that allows for virtualization, including vt-d.  Just makes life easier if ever you need like Cuda cores in a virtual machine. 

 

 

 

[paddy-stone]

I have an HP proliant gen 8 that is OK, 4 bays and power draw isn't too bad... just chuck some drives in and install freenas onto a USb drive... it has an internal USB slot for booting from. I don't know about where you'd get these in canada or I'd have a look for you.. but  here in the UK you can pick them up for approx £165 and then they have offers of £55 cashback promotion. So in all I got mine last month for £110 approx and just slotted some old drives in for now to test it out... then I'm going to purchase some WD reds 3TB to put in it, just 2 to start with in ZFS stripe as I don't need the redundancy as I backup to another storage anyway.

I eventually plan on getting into servers more and upgrading to a purpose build system, I can do that no problem as I like building systems, just can't justify the cost of that right now... anyway hope that might have helped with the hp proliant microserver gen 8, it runs a dual core celeron.. the offer is still on in the UK, but don't know whether you'd qualify or be able to deliver to canada, but link is here anyway  http://www.ebuyer.com/722189-hpe-proliant-gen8-g1610t-4gb-ram-microserver-819185-421

[splizza]

Thanks for all of the help guys! I'm gonna start seeing what I come up with. If you guys have any other bits you'd like to chip in, feel free! 

[Curufinwe_wins]

5 hours ago, Mark77 said:

snip

 

Fair enough though personally: 

1. I don't trust/use tobisha drives.

2. I don't recommend regular drives for NAS use unless you already have them.

 

Gold+ full modular psu:

High drive bay small case with good stock cooling / noise

quiet cpu cooler (even if it doesn't have to be super strong)

 

Ideally I'd recommend even smaller cases (I'm an itx nas guy myself), and yea I'd totally go for higher capacity drives, but OP mentioned 3 drives so I naturally assumed they would be 2TB (only gets more expensive with 3 3TB.)

 

Really this is just me, but I'd love to start at 16GB of ram. I think you also liked front hotswap enclosures, I just am not a huge fan.

 

I'm not saying 1000 dollars isn't enough, just saying it doesn't go as far as it seems (esp if you don't buy used).

[splizza]

yeah, sorry I didn't mention this in my post. But I'm not looking for the bleeding edge of products lol! I'm just a college kid who wants to get started, so I don't mind buying used. in fact, that's probably going to be my main source for hardware. and yes, I do know the risks of buying used.