New File-Sharing RAID Server

[QuadaconV2]

Hi, I am in the market for components to create a custom built server suitable for close-to 24/7 operation:

I am looking to build a reliable file share server that will run Windows Server Essentials 2016. At this point, the server will need to be able to supply up to 20 users (although rarely simultaneously), and provide each client with varying levels of file access. Will one copy of Windows Server Essentials 2016 provide this? I am under the impression that no CALS or seperate licenses will need to be purchased on top of the OS? (My budget for this machine is flexible, but preferably, no more than $3000 would be spent on this project of mine)

I need to assure that my knowledge of components will serve me well, and that the server will work correctly, and that all components will be compatible and cost effective. I will be able to build the PC myself, but require validation that the configuration will work, and will last a large number of years. 

I was considering an Intel Xeon E3-1220V5 CPU on the S1150 Socket, since the server does not need to have an excess of compute power, and does not need to be overly expensive, I would assume this Quad core should be fine.

A motherboard that is available at my local store, that appears to be compatible with the above mentioned CPU is the Intel S1150 S1200SPSR Xeon Server Motherboard. I was planning on using around 4 Seagate 10K 2.5" drives in a RAID 10, using the embedded Intel RAID controller, will this be reliable?. Also, will this motherboard fit in a Micro ATX Case? If not, which type of case must be purchased to properly house this motherboard?

16GB of DDR4 2133Mhz ECC Unbuffered Server Memory will likely be used.

Around 4x Seagate 10K 2.5" Drives will preferably be used in a RAID 10, or 5, since read performance is more important than write performance.

Any Chassis that is suitable for the motherboard, and is below $200 will be fine.

A Power supply that is of fantastic quality is needed, a 650 Watt Corsair PSU would likely be used.

If there are enough PCI Lanes on the Motherboard/CPU, a Dual Gigabit Ethernet Networking card would also be preferable, unless the networking on the Motherboard would be sufficient and just as fast.

The Server will run 24/7, does not require a video card, and will be running in an air-conditioned office environment, it does not need to be rack-mountable, and does not need power redundancy, since the Server is not mission-critical (although 24/7 operation is preferable). 

Do you think this configuration will provide a stable platform for file-access, sharing and stability? 

Thank you for reading this thread, any thoughts, advice, warnings or comments on the build, as well as component suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[TRexFreak28]

Is there a special reason for Windows Server Essentials 2016 or a Microsoft system?
I would recommend considering something like FreeNAS to be more reliable and not as performance hungry as a full blown Windows would be.

Especially FreeNAS is really easy to deploy and monitor, so everyone would be able to replace a drive or create a new share.

As it goes to simple shares you might want something like an AD oder LDAP to manage you users, which is possible with FreeNAS - but not as convenient as a graphical setup - as Windows provides it - would be. BUT there is a simple way to manage users through FreeNAS wo/ AD oder LDAP.

In terms of Hardware I would recommend you to take a look at the FreeNAS docs if you think about using it.

(http://doc.freenas.org/11/freenas.html)

[leadeater]

25 minutes ago, QuadaconV2 said:

Will one copy of Windows Server Essentials 2016 provide this? I am under the impression that no CALS or seperate licenses will need to be purchased on top of the OS? (My budget for this machine is flexible, but preferably, no more than $3000 would be spent on this project of mine)

Yes that is correct, no CALs required for Essentials.

 

28 minutes ago, QuadaconV2 said:

I was planning on using around 4 Seagate 10K 2.5" drives in a RAID 10, using the embedded Intel RAID controller, will this be reliable?

You wont need 10K RPM disks for a general file server, they provide little performance gain for that use case. You want 10K RPM for database servers and VM hosts but now days you use SSD for that anyway. These disks are also rather expensive.

 

Do you need to use 2.5" disks? I would just use WD Reds or Seagate Ironwolf disks.

 

As for using the Intel onbaord RAID I'd say no use Windows Storage Spaces instead, use two-way mirror which on 4 disks is very similar to RAID 10.

 

35 minutes ago, QuadaconV2 said:

 Also, will this motherboard fit in a Micro ATX Case? If not, which type of case must be purchased to properly house this motherboard?

Should do, it is a micro ATX motherboard (uATX).

 

36 minutes ago, QuadaconV2 said:

Around 4x 256GB 850 pro SSD’s will preferably be used in a RAID 5, since read performance is more important than write performance.

What is this for? I thought you were going to use HDDs (see above). You can't use the 4 planned HDDs and 4 SSDs without buying an additional HBA since the motherboard only has 6 SATA ports.

 

There is little point going with SSDs since you'll be limited to network speeds which unless you drop significant mount of money in to 10GbE will be ~110MB/s.

[Anghammarad]

Look at this mobo: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157466

Then at this Case: https://www.inter-tech.de/en/products/ipc/storage-cases/sc-4100

 

For drives I would go for 24/7 drives, always have in mind 10k drives are quite noisy and need cooling. For better read performance raid 5 would be enough and you have more usable disk space. With the case mentioned above you also have hot swap cages. 

 

For this user access restrictions the workstations need to be setup to be member of the domain the server provides, or you need to create user ids for your coworkers to use to logon to the network shares. So it's maintenance time for this too. 

 

They won't RDP to that server or do they? 

 

As for using the SBE of windows Server... they get quite clogged. Haven't played much with the 2016, but the 2013 did go down in speed big time after half a year of use.

 

As PSU one from Seasonic will do for reliability. 

 

 

[QuadaconV2]

12 hours ago, Anghammarad said:

Look at this mobo: https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157466

Then at this Case: https://www.inter-tech.de/en/products/ipc/storage-cases/sc-4100

 

For drives I would go for 24/7 drives, always have in mind 10k drives are quite noisy and need cooling. For better read performance raid 5 would be enough and you have more usable disk space. With the case mentioned above you also have hot swap cages. 

 

For this user access restrictions the workstations need to be setup to be member of the domain the server provides, or you need to create user ids for your coworkers to use to logon to the network shares. So it's maintenance time for this too. 

 

They won't RDP to that server or do they? 

 

As for using the SBE of windows Server... they get quite clogged. Haven't played much with the 2016, but the 2013 did go down in speed big time after half a year of use.

 

As PSU one from Seasonic will do for reliability. 

 

 

Thank you for your reply. I don't like the idea of a Mini ITX Build as it is quite fiddly to get everything installed correctly... Although it is a great idea.

You really think WD Red drives would be fast enough? I really need this server to be quick when it comes to file access, would a single SSD provide better performance than 24/7 drives in a RAID 5 or 10?

I was planning on using Windows Server essentials to create accounts that clients will connect and login to to access their allocated folders, there will be no remote desktop use, just access from within the network.

 

I might use Server Essentials 2012 R2, will this provide the functionality I need?

 

Thanks

[QuadaconV2]

13 hours ago, leadeater said:

What is this for? I thought you were going to use HDDs (see above). You can't use the 4 planned HDDs and 4 SSDs without buying an additional HBA since the motherboard only has 6 SATA ports.

 

There is little point going with SSDs since you'll be limited to network speeds which unless you drop significant mount of money in to 10GbE will be ~110MB/s.

Sorry, I tried to edit my original post. I will not use SSD's in a RAID, I will either use multiple Hard Disks in a RAID 5 or 10, or a single SSD with no RAID, which will provide the fastest data access? I will also sort out backups, either way, as I know that RAID is not a replacement for backups

[leadeater]

2 minutes ago, QuadaconV2 said:

I might use Server Essentials 2012 R2, will this provide the functionality I need?

Go with 2016 it's actually more light weight for this edition and will be supported for longer.

 

3 minutes ago, QuadaconV2 said:

You really think WD Red drives would be fast enough? I really need this server to be quick when it comes to file access, would a single SSD provide better performance than 24/7 drives in a RAID 5 or 10?

Unless you are doing some special kind of intensive task WD Reds will be plenty fast. How much storage space do you actually need?

[QuadaconV2]

13 hours ago, TRexFreak28 said:

I would recommend considering something like FreeNAS to be more reliable and not as performance hungry as a full blown Windows would be.

I would be happy to try another Server OS, although I will not be the one maintaining the Server, so although I will be able to set it up, I fear it will be too hard to manage for someone who is used to a Windows interface. As well as this, all of the clients will be Windows based (Windows 10 Pro) and I fear that they will not work as well with another OS? Or am I wrong? 

[QuadaconV2]

3 minutes ago, leadeater said:

How much storage space do you actually need?

I would absolutely need at least 400 GB, but 1-2TB would be great, you know, for future proofing and for the ability for the system admin (not actually me) to store extra files as they require.

[leadeater]

Just now, QuadaconV2 said:

I would absolutely need at least 400 GB, but 1-2TB would be great, you know, for future proofing and for the ability for the system admin (not actually me) to store extra files as they require.

In that case yes SSDs will be cheap enough to use, even two in a mirror.

[QuadaconV2]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

In that case yes SSDs will be cheap enough to use, even two in a mirror.

The mirror will duplicate data across two drives for redundancy, correct? Won't this slow it down? Would I be better off performing backups? If not, will the Windows mirroring tools suffice?

[leadeater]

6 minutes ago, QuadaconV2 said:

The mirror will duplicate data across two drives for redundancy, correct? Won't this slow it down? Would I be better off performing backups? If not, will the Windows mirroring tools suffice?

Mirroring won't slow it down, it just won't also add any performance either.

 

You'll want two dedicated disks in a mirror for the OS and that will need to be done using the onboard motherboard RAID then another two (or more disks) for the data which could be done using Storage Spaces or onboard RAID.

 

Generally speaking onboard RAID is fine for RAID 1 but should never be used for RAID 5/6.

[QuadaconV2]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Mirroring won't slot it down, it just won't also add any performance either.

 

You'll want two dedicated disks in a mirror for the OS and that will need to be done using the onboard motherboard RAID then another two (or more disks) for the data which could be done using Storage Spaces or onboard RAID.

 

Generally speaking onboard RAID 1 is fine but should never be used for RAID 5/6.

Could I just put 2 500GB SSD's in a RAID 1? (Total of 500GB usable space)? In this case, I'd forget about the RAID 5, and just mirror two SSD's, since read performance is more important than write performance for me anyway.

[leadeater]

Also larger SSDs are better than multiple smaller SSDs when it comes to reliability and certain kinds of I/O load.

[leadeater]

2 minutes ago, QuadaconV2 said:

Could I just put 2 500GB SSD's in a RAID 1? (Total of 500GB usable space)? In this case, I'd forget about the RAID 5, and just mirror two SSD's, since read performance is more important than write performance for me anyway.

Yes that will work fine, I personally like separating OS and Data away from each other but that's not a fixed rule or anything and the servers we have are in the 10's of TB so makes more sense than for something this small.

[QuadaconV2]

4 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Yes that will work fine, I personally like separating OS and Data away from each other but that's not a fixed rule or anything and the servers we have are in the 10's of TB so makes more sense than for something this small.

Right... Good point, I forgot about the OS... Can I install the OS on a 120GB SSD, and then RAID 1 two other drives, separately? or would this not work so well..? Also, can I easily select the seperate drive as the share folder destination within Windows Server? Thank you for all your help so far by the way, it is greatly appreciated.

[leadeater]

39 minutes ago, QuadaconV2 said:

Right... Good point, I forgot about the OS... Can I install the OS on a 120GB SSD, and then RAID 1 two other drives, separately? or would this not work so well..? Also, can I easily select the seperate drive as the share folder destination within Windows Server? Thank you for all your help so far by the way, it is greatly appreciated.

Sure can.

 

When you create shares you share a folder so yes you can have the shares on the dedicated RAID 1 mirror.

[Electronics Wizardy]

What are the clients Doing? VMs? database?

 

Id really just look at a premade box like a synology if you not managing it. If something goes wrong in your homemade box the next guy has to find the problem, rma that part and wait for it, unlike othercompanies that have onsite service. And if your in a enviroment where downtime = money lost it will pay for itsself.

 

What network speeds? If you not running vms or databases and on a gigconnection, a ssd is probably overkill and id just get a few 7k2 drives. Gig is the limiting factor in NAS's not your drives in most cases. 

 

 

[nickmacwiz]

A little over 3 months ago I decided to move from a QNAP TVS-871T with the expansion bay to a NEW custom build NAS, and like the OP here I considered going with Windows Server 2016 Standard. My needs were extremely simple. First, the system needs to be a file server (simple enough) second it needed to be a PLEX Media server which was capable of transcoding, and I also wanted to use the DVR function in PLEX to get rid of Comcast's Crappy Cable boxes. Like I said, Simple. After much research, i decided to start by looking at UnRAID and after completing the install on my newly build server and getting things setup I wasn't extremely happy with all of the performance, however, I did like that the system overhead from the OS was low. Then after further research decided to try FreeNAS (which is what I am currently running on this system and now on the backup that was built a month ago). 

 

FreeNAS has allowed me to setup the file server the way I want and I am able to achieve full Gigabit transfer speeds and the PLEX media server runs without the slightest hiccup. I strongly recommend that you try FreeNAS as it will make things easier and use less of your system's precious resources.  I also decided to add a VM for a web server but that only runs part time. 

 

Now I am running 2 FreeNAS servers one as a backup and both have RAID configurations the primary running Intel i7-6800K CPU, Seagate Ironwolf 6x 8TB drives and 2 x 2TB SSDs as cache and 96GB of DDR4 RAM for added performance (overkill). Both units run flawlessly.

 

All of this said, I recommend that you consider FreeNAS and reconsider your drive choice.

[QuadaconV2]

21 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What are the clients Doing? VMs? database?

 

Id really just look at a premade box like a synology if you not managing it. If something goes wrong in your homemade box the next guy has to find the problem, rma that part and wait for it, unlike othercompanies that have onsite service. And if your in a enviroment where downtime = money lost it will pay for itsself.

 

What network speeds? If you not running vms or databases and on a gigconnection, a ssd is probably overkill and id just get a few 7k2 drives. Gig is the limiting factor in NAS's not your drives in most cases. 

 

 

Thank you for your reply.

The clients will simply be accessing documents, spreadsheets and databases from the server. Some large files no larger than 200MB will occasionally be accessed. The server must support offline syncing for some clients, and in the future, hopefully we can get the server to provide out of network access to some folders.

 

The person managing the system is very skilled and will have no problem troubleshooting. This said, if a component did fail, we would have to allow for overseas shipping and the like. Spare parts can be made available on site though.

 

All Clients and the server will run at Gigabit speeds, over a cabled network. The server ports will likely be bridged for 2Gigabit theoretical link to the switch, (I know that all clients will still have access to gigabit.)

 

 

[QuadaconV2]

10 hours ago, nickmacwiz said:

I recommend that you consider FreeNAS

Thank you for your reply, Will windows 10 Pro clients seamlessly connect and even sync offline with FreeNAS? 

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, QuadaconV2 said:

The server must support offline syncing for some clients,

Do that with offlime files in windows.

 

no use for ssds then . Your running a very low iops workload. Just get a few hdds and your good. This system is overkill above.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, QuadaconV2 said:

Thank you for your reply, Will windows 10 Pro clients seamlessly connect and even sync offline with FreeNAS? 

Yep, offline syncing is in the client, not the server. Samba works very well here.