New Server/NAS Build

[Inrix]

I'm planning on doing a new NAS/Server build in a month or two and wanted to see what your opinion's are on the hardware I'm planning on using...

 

Currently I'm planning on using the Gigabyte GA-AX370 For the motherboard as it has dual gigabit Ethernet (Ill also be using some PCI gigabit network cards too.

https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/MBDGBM34207/Gigabyte-GA-AX370-Gaming-K7-For-AMD-Ryzen-Socket-A?qr=pspy&ref=pricespy

I thought that going with a 1800X Cpu would be great as I plan to use this for more than just a NAS probably running some different servers on it and perhaps some media encoding and perhaps eventually a plex server.

https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/CPUAMD01800X/AMD-Ryzen-7-1800X-8-Cores-16-ThreadsUNLOCKED-up-to?qr=pspy&ref=pricespy

And as for the drives I intend to use a 120GB ssd for a boot drive and then 4 8TB WD Reds for storage...

https://www.pbtech.co.nz/product/HDDWD22800/WD-8TB-Red-NAS-HDD--35-SATA3-128M-Cache-Designed-a?qr=pspy&ref=pricespy

 

The plan is to run the REDS in Raid 10 For redundancy giving me around 16TB of storage with the capability to lose two drives...

Ill also grab 16-32GB of some high speed ddr4 ram for it aswel and probably a 500W Gold PSU, and a case with a large ammount of HDD slots...

 

What are your thoughts on this? Would it be better to go with smaller or different drives? I intend to run Server2016 on the box so I likely wont be using ZFS from FreeNAS for the file system....

 

If you have any suggestions for hardware please only use the PBTech website above...

[AnonymousGuy]

Just want to correct you that with Raid 10 you don't "truly" have 2 drives of redundancy.  If you lose both a drive and it's parity drive you're done.  Raid 6 would give you the ability to lose any 2 drives and still be OK.

 

What I did with my servers is split up having compute server with 8 cores and having a storage server.  I found that overall I wanted the storage server to be more "passive" where I wasn't risking fucking it up doing stuff like installing VM's and other shit.  

[Inrix]

Just now, AnonymousGuy said:

Just want to correct you that with Raid 10 you don't "truly" have 2 drives of redundancy.  If you lose both a drive and it's parity drive you're done.  Raid 6 would give you the ability to lose any 2 drives and still be OK.

 

What I did with my servers is split up having compute server with 8 cores and having a storage server.  I found that overall I wanted the storage server to be more "passive" where I wasn't risking fucking it up doing stuff like installing VM's and other shit.  

Mm true... But its much more expensive to split it to two machines and I already have another Server for single core compute with a 6700k, And wouldnt it be better to give the NAS PC alot of cores so that if im doing compression or Plex on it, it wont bottleneck

?

[AnonymousGuy]

Just now, Inrix said:

Mm true... But its much more expensive to split it to two machines and I already have another Server for single core compute with a 6700k, And wouldnt it be better to give the NAS PC alot of cores so that if im doing compression or Plex on it, it wont bottleneck

?

Just a suggestion, but could you "upgrade" the 6700k box with more drives and then do your Ryzen build as the Plex/Everything Else box using the NAS as a network drive?  Then your storage can just be dumb+isolated and have the Ryzen box do the heavy lifting as a separate machine.

[Inrix]

Just now, AnonymousGuy said:

Just a suggestion, but could you "upgrade" the 6700k box with more drives and then do your Ryzen build as the Plex/Everything Else box using the NAS as a network drive?  Then your storage can just be dumb+isolated and have the Ryzen box do the heavy lifting as a separate machine.

Yea except that 6700k Server runs most of my communities stuff so its gonna be heavily loaded all the time... If the 8Core NAS is only gonna be used passivly for the occasional server and perhaps Media Encoding/Plex is there really any benefit to separating it to another server? Especially if it meant giving it a MUCH less powerful cpu?

[AnonymousGuy]

Your original plan would still work, I wuold just consider moving all the workload on the 6700k over to the new Ryzen box and maybe downgrading the 6700k to something less powerful to recover $ since that box would just be "idling" as a file server.  Then you can get better average-utilization out of the Ryzen system too instead of it idling most of the time when you're not doing any encoding tasks.

 

To answer other question: no don't use smaller drives.  Use the biggest drives you can afford because more drives is more points of failure.  I *hate* having 24 drives and would much rather have 8 10TB drives. 

[Doramius]

For cost savings and wanting power, I usually go to places like servermonkey.com and spec out a system.  Just like @AnonymousGuy said, I'd keep them separate.  Makes a world of difference in computing power and overall efficiency.  On top of that, not too long ago my existing NAS ran to its supported capacity and couldn't upgrade further.  I purchased equipment that supported several times larger storage.  Loaded my new, larger drives in the new machine and copied the data over.  With minor downtime, I shutdown the old server, changed the port and recognition of the new server so all my devices connected to the network recognized the new NAS as the same map point, name, and network location.  

 

With less than 20 minutes downtime, nothing on my network knew anything different other than I had several more terabytes of data available.  And it didn't mess up my VMs or apps from my other server.  My Plex Server is NOT my NAS.  Made that mistake 2 times already.

[Inrix]

1 hour ago, Doramius said:

For cost savings and wanting power, I usually go to places like servermonkey.com and spec out a system.  Just like @AnonymousGuy said, I'd keep them separate.  Makes a world of difference in computing power and overall efficiency.  On top of that, not too long ago my existing NAS ran to its supported capacity and couldn't upgrade further.  I purchased equipment that supported several times larger storage.  Loaded my new, larger drives in the new machine and copied the data over.  With minor downtime, I shutdown the old server, changed the port and recognition of the new server so all my devices connected to the network recognized the new NAS as the same map point, name, and network location.  

 

With less than 20 minutes downtime, nothing on my network knew anything different other than I had several more terabytes of data available.  And it didn't mess up my VMs or apps from my other server.  My Plex Server is NOT my NAS.  Made that mistake 2 times already.

2 hours ago, AnonymousGuy said:

Your original plan would still work, I wuold just consider moving all the workload on the 6700k over to the new Ryzen box and maybe downgrading the 6700k to something less powerful to recover $ since that box would just be "idling" as a file server.  Then you can get better average-utilization out of the Ryzen system too instead of it idling most of the time when you're not doing any encoding tasks.

 

To answer other question: no don't use smaller drives.  Use the biggest drives you can afford because more drives is more points of failure.  I *hate* having 24 drives and would much rather have 8 10TB drives. 

 

What kinda CPU/Case or System would you recommend in replacement for the 1800X then for the nas? Im also not currently going rackmount as I want something that wont sound like a hurricane...

[Doramius]

Not all rackmounts sound like a jet turbine.  It depends on the number of fans required for cooling.  If you have 2 or more CPUs, it can definitely sound like you're standing on an Air Force flight deck. 

 

However, not all servers are rackmount.  I'm using a T5500 for my Plex and a T7500 for my VMs.  They are pretty amazing, and surprisingly quiet.