Another fileserver question (raid card?)

[Psittac]

I have been bouncing around ideas for a while as to what I should do about a file server/NAS

 

My current idea is to take my 3570k and put it in a case that can hold more hdd's and have a gpu on it so it can still game if I ever have lan parties.

 

mobo ASrock z77 Extreme4 16gb ddr3

hdd's 2x HITACHI/HGST Ultrastar HUA723020ALA641 2TB 7200RPM 64MB Cache SATA III

some ssd for boot

corsair 750w psu (might put in a lower wattage psu I have)

 

So my question would be, first of all how does this sound for a server given that it's a 77w tdp

second, what qualities should I be looking at for a raid card? or just do onboard?

last, should I continue adding a drive or two of the same hdd?

 

Another thought, if I continue with my PoE video server, how should I run 1-2 WD purples.. raid card? stuff like that

 

Thanks for putting up with all of the random and repetitive questions

[leadeater]

1. Don't use onboard RAID

2. Before deciding on a RAID card first figure out what OS you'll be using, that will have a big impact on that choice

[Luc401]

You plan is almost what I did, took my old 3770k computer with a bunch of drive slots and threw in abunch of WD 3tb Red drives.

 

Im using on board raid on my sabertooth board with 4 drives in raid 5. For something small onboard is "good enough" but if you want to do it properly and reliably do a raid card to release the CPU from all the raid calculation.

 

My server with all the drives in their idle mode runs at around 50 watts no GPU no monitor which i consider really good. Id recommend not putting a GPU it in just to save power but keep it to throw in when ever needed.

[TopWargamer]

7 minutes ago, Psittac said:

I have been bouncing around ideas for a while as to what I should do about a file server/NAS

 

3 minutes ago, leadeater said:

2. Before deciding on a RAID card first figure out what OS you'll be using, that will have a big impact on that choice

On this note, I'm fairly new to the home server game, and I'm learning as I go along. For I'm using my home server PC for (NAS, mainly), FreeNAS seems like it will do the job fine for me. Do keep in mind I'm still waiting for my parts to come in, so I don't have any actual on hands experience yet, but FreeNAS seems very powerful. You'll need a lot of RAM though since it uses ZFS.

[Psittac]

well the thing is that I want to hold small lan parties once I get my basement finished.  I have a spare r9 380 laying around and if my plan's go correctly I'll end up with 3 competent gaming machines.  I like the idea of keeping the gpu out of the machine unless I need it, then plop it in.

 

So I guess that means that I will probably be running windows 10 on it.  I would go for freenas or the other free one, but I don't want to lose a potential gaming machine.

 

Since I'm running win what should I look for in a raid card?

[Psittac]

for filler story: I have a number of spare pc component's laying around and I plan on somewhat downgrading my x99 system for a z170.  That way the x99 can run at stock setting's and I can clock the beeeejeebus out of the z170 (x99 is currently a custom loop).  All I really need to end up with 3 machines is a mobo and cpu (oh and OS), a case upgrade is in the mail for what ever will end up my daily driver.

 

I may scrap these bold plans esp considering I would need two more monitor's, but if I buy it all one part at a time it might be doable.

[samiscool51]

1 hour ago, leadeater said:

1. Don't use onboard RAID

yea don't use one, you will have more problems with it the RAID setup

it's better to use a RAID card.

also they have more options and flexibility

[TopWargamer]

1 hour ago, Psittac said:

well the thing is that I want to hold small lan parties once I get my basement finished.  I have a spare r9 380 laying around and if my plan's go correctly I'll end up with 3 competent gaming machines.  I like the idea of keeping the gpu out of the machine unless I need it, then plop it in.

 

So I guess that means that I will probably be running windows 10 on it.  I would go for freenas or the other free one, but I don't want to lose a potential gaming machine.

 

Since I'm running win what should I look for in a raid card?

What you could do is run FreeNAS or similar NAS software on a virtual machine in Windows. I'm not sure how to set that up though, but it should work.

[leadeater]

2 hours ago, Psittac said:

well the thing is that I want to hold small lan parties once I get my basement finished.  I have a spare r9 380 laying around and if my plan's go correctly I'll end up with 3 competent gaming machines.  I like the idea of keeping the gpu out of the machine unless I need it, then plop it in.

 

So I guess that means that I will probably be running windows 10 on it.  I would go for freenas or the other free one, but I don't want to lose a potential gaming machine.

 

Since I'm running win what should I look for in a raid card?

In that case just use Windows Storage Spaces rather than RAID, use 2-way mirror configuration or if you want to use parity configuration for extra usable space you will need to use an SSD for a journal disk (write cache).

[Psittac]

10 hours ago, leadeater said:

In that case just use Windows Storage Spaces rather than RAID, use 2-way mirror configuration or if you want to use parity configuration for extra usable space you will need to use an SSD for a journal disk (write cache).

I'm running storage spaces now but I was worried that it would be tied to this machine, IE: if the cpu burned out I couldn't recover my data from another machine.  I don't know why I was thinking that, thought I heard it mentioned somewhere.

[Psittac]

11 hours ago, TopWargamer said:

What you could do is run FreeNAS or similar NAS software on a virtual machine in Windows. I'm not sure how to set that up though, but it should work.

I forgot about virtual machine's, I'll look into that, thank you

[leadeater]

6 hours ago, Psittac said:

I'm running storage spaces now but I was worried that it would be tied to this machine, IE: if the cpu burned out I couldn't recover my data from another machine.  I don't know why I was thinking that, thought I heard it mentioned somewhere.

Storage Spaces can be imported across different OS's, each disk has metadata information that Windows reads so it knows it was in a Storage Space configuration.

 

I have actually tested it too btw, done it a couple of times from Server 2012 R2 to Server 2016 TP4 and then again from Server 2016 TP4 to TP5 and finally to Server 2016 GA.

[Psittac]

So if my OS crashes I don't lose the data? I might just stick with that then, I am using storage spaces now however I was going to thin out what I have now and redo it all because I was worried about losing it all.  I've started backing up images of friends and family computers, both as a backup of anything they may have had saved before ruining the OS and after a fresh install so I don't have to spend a day updating and installing when I redo someone's computer.

[Mikensan]

I'd also second Storage Spaces. You don't want the headache of a RAID card if shit hits the fan. Onboard raid might as well be software raid with no hope of putting it back into the raid configuration.

 

You'd also want to buy a second RAID card if you did decide to go this route - if it dies you can't exactly pickup different raid card and load your settings (assuming you would've backed them up). Not to mention battery replacements aren't cheap.