Help with NAS Server Ideas

[Oli1549]

Hello,

 

I was looking for some help on making myself a local NAS server setup with a fairly good read and write speeds at a fairly low cost.

I would probably go for a 1-gigabit network switch.

As for the actual NAS, i would be looking at getting something like this: https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/RS815+

But for me at this stage, this is far too expensive... Are there any other options for under £150 or $200 as it goes for NAS servers?

 

Thanks.

[3rrant]

3 minutes ago, Oli1549 said:

Hello,

 

I was looking for some help on making myself a local NAS server setup with a fairly good read and write speeds at a fairly low cost.

I would probably go for a 1-gigabit network switch.

As for the actual NAS, i would be looking at getting something like this: https://www.synology.com/en-us/products/RS815+

But for me at this stage, this is far too expensive... Are there any other options for under £150 or $200 as it goes for NAS servers?

 

Thanks.

Take the "old and used hardware" route?

[Oli1549]

11 minutes ago, ErrantNyles said:

Take the "old and used hardware" route?

Yea I think this is the only route going by the price of things, but how do I know what will do what I want, be a reasonable price. I am fairly new to server stuff but have been fiddling with computers for years. Do you have any suggestions as far as hardware goes? 

 

Thanks for the reply. 

[Timothy11]

1 minute ago, Oli1549 said:

Yea I think this is the only route going by the price of things, but how do I know what will do what I want, be a reasonable price. I am fairly new to server stuff but have been fiddling with computers for years. Do you have any suggestions as far as hardware goes? 

 

Thanks for the reply. 

An old i5 should work well, you will probably want at least 4GB of RAM.

You can then use a Linux distro for the os if you can find one that you like, but I like using the free windows server hyper-v 2016 as this includes the latest windows storage spaces as well as the hyper-v server. This makes it easy to manage software raid and server installs for things like Plex.

[3rrant]

4 minutes ago, Oli1549 said:

Yea I think this is the only route going by the price of things, but how do I know what will do what I want, be a reasonable price. I am fairly new to server stuff but have been fiddling with computers for years. Do you have any suggestions as far as hardware goes? 

 

Thanks for the reply. 

I'm actually re-using an old Q9550 machine for a home server these days as well, just need to set it up.

 

Look at this in particular: 

 

 

And a bit of research on unRAID for example. Basically: whatever is X86 and supports VT-X/VT-D technology (like.. everything? from Intel) and has at very least 2 cores, is good to go.

 

What you might also want to look after is this playlist of Linus and unraid project (a great choice for a home server OS): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXOaCkbt4lI&list=PLNGhLHCnEAmQxQAr95AH6Y_Aw-xi-RmG7

 

 

[ProjectBox153]

I use an old Core 2 Duo E7200. It was free and I get around 120MB/s reads and writes, so I can vouch for old hardware. 

[NelizMastr]

35 minutes ago, ErrantNyles said:

And a bit of research on unRAID for example. Basically: whatever is X86 and supports VT-X/VT-D technology (like.. everything? from Intel) and has at very least 2 cores, is good to go.

I would advise against UnRAID, back when Linus did his videos on it, UnRAID was free to use to some extent, this is no longer the case. With an abundance of open source solutions that can do the same, and in this case, probably a Windows license, there is no need to waste any budget on software  just my two cents.

 

Opt for something somewhat power efficient, like a Pentium or i3 from the sandy bridge era, slap about 4gigs of RAM in there, and you'll honestly have enough horsepower for just storage and some added services too. Sharing files can be done by using file sharing in Windows or by installing Xpenology or Freenas as an operating system, or even Ubuntu for that matter, with Samba installed.

[3rrant]

1 minute ago, NelizMastr said:

I would advise against UnRAID, back when Linus did his videos on it, UnRAID was free to use to some extent, this is no longer the case. With an abundance of open source solutions that can do the same, and in this case, probably a Windows license, there is no need to waste any budget on software  just my two cents.

 

Opt for something somewhat power efficient, like a Pentium or i3 from the sandy bridge era, slap about 4gigs of RAM in there, and you'll honestly have enough horsepower for just storage and some added services too. Sharing files can be done by using file sharing in Windows or by installing Xpenology or Freenas as an operating system, or even Ubuntu for that matter, with Samba installed.

It's not free, but it's highly reliable, flexible and even very simple to use. Surely, there are alternatives, but if it's the first time "into the nas/home media server" you can use this with it's free trial, which they still give.

[Oli1549]

Ok. So in terms of hardware I’m looking at i3 and a minimum of 4gb ram, my next issue is that what hardware do you buy? Make of server? Do I buy a barebone server and buy parts separately? I have no idea about the construction of a server but have a good knowledge on the construction of a standard pc, I pressume there isn’t much difference all in all? 

 

I live in the uk and when I look at eBay for any hotswap cases as I saw in one of linuses videos, I could not find any cases at all. any recommendations if I had to buy a new case? 

[ProjectBox153]

15 minutes ago, Oli1549 said:

Ok. So in terms of hardware I’m looking at i3 and a minimum of 4gb ram, my next issue is that what hardware do you buy? Make of server? Do I buy a barebone server and buy parts separately? I have no idea about the construction of a server but have a good knowledge on the construction of a standard pc, I pressume there isn’t much difference all in all? 

 

I live in the uk and when I look at eBay for any hotswap cases as I saw in one of linuses videos, I could not find any cases at all. any recommendations if I had to buy a new case? 

You can use a standard computer as a server. I’m running a 9 year old machine 24/7. 

[Oli1549]

8 minutes ago, Jamiec1130 said:

You can use a standard computer as a server. I’m running a 9 year old machine 24/7. 

Oh ok, so a i5 4460k on a standard computer with 8gb of ram would be fine?

[Oli1549]

1 hour ago, NelizMastr said:

I would advise against UnRAID, back when Linus did his videos on it, UnRAID was free to use to some extent, this is no longer the case. With an abundance of open source solutions that can do the same, and in this case, probably a Windows license, there is no need to waste any budget on software  just my two cents.

 

Opt for something somewhat power efficient, like a Pentium or i3 from the sandy bridge era, slap about 4gigs of RAM in there, and you'll honestly have enough horsepower for just storage and some added services too. Sharing files can be done by using file sharing in Windows or by installing Xpenology or Freenas as an operating system, or even Ubuntu for that matter, with Samba installed.

For the storage would the best solution for which read and write speeds be having 2-4 drives striped? What’s your opinions on fast speeds, lower cost as possible, and having a backup. 

[NelizMastr]

2 minutes ago, Oli1549 said:

For the storage would the best solution for which read and write speeds be having 2-4 drives striped? What’s your opinions on fast speeds, lower cost as possible, and having a backup. 

A word of warning, a single Gigabit ethernet link can only handle up to 1000/8=125MB/s of transfer, in the most ideal situation. A typical 7200RPM drive already does this. The only field where you'll see an improvement is in IOPS, but not in throughput. You'd have to do link aggregation with a 2nd NIC for that server AND client side.

 

Edit:

 

Back-up wise, there is none in RAID. Redundancy is not a back-up. Use a separare external HDD for that.

[Oli1549]

6 minutes ago, NelizMastr said:

A word of warning, a single Gigabit ethernet link can only handle up to 1000/8=125MB/s of transfer, in the most ideal situation. A typical 7200RPM drive already does this. The only field where you'll see an improvement is in IOPS, but not in throughput. You'd have to do link aggregation with a 2nd NIC for that server AND client side.

 

Edit:

 

Back-up wise, there is none in RAID. Redundancy is not a back-up. Use a separare external HDD for that.

Oh ok, but upgrading to a 10gigabit switch I pressume still would not make it faster due to bottlenecking in the cable? Or is that just my interpretation.

 

on a standard gigabit connection would I be correct in saying if I was moving a 50gb file to the server, it would take approximately;

 

50/0.125=400 seconds

=6.7 minutes? 

[NelizMastr]

5 minutes ago, Oli1549 said:

Oh ok, but upgrading to a 10gigabit switch I pressume still would not make it faster due to bottlenecking in the cable? Or is that just my interpretation.

 

on a standard gigabit connection would I be correct in saying if I was moving a 50gb file to the server, it would take approximately;

 

50/0.125=400 seconds

=6.7 minutes? 

The switch, NICs and cables all need to be 10G compliant, yes, and that math checks out. 

[Oli1549]

1 minute ago, NelizMastr said:

The switch, NICs and cables all need to be 10G compliant, yes, and that math checks out. 

cat6a support supports 10g?

NIC is network Is interface card right? 

As for a 10g switch I’ve realised they are extremely expensive, is there anything between 1g and 10g? 

[Oli1549]

3 hours ago, ErrantNyles said:

I'm actually re-using an old Q9550 machine for a home server these days as well, just need to set it up.

 

Look at this in particular: 

 

 

And a bit of research on unRAID for example. Basically: whatever is X86 and supports VT-X/VT-D technology (like.. everything? from Intel) and has at very least 2 cores, is good to go.

 

What you might also want to look after is this playlist of Linus and unraid project (a great choice for a home server OS): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXOaCkbt4lI&list=PLNGhLHCnEAmQxQAr95AH6Y_Aw-xi-RmG7

 

 

From what’s ive seen on unraid, would I be right insayibg, if I had 3 hard drives, one would act as a redundancy so if one fails you replace it and it fixes it? Then I’d have 2 fir storage? 

 

Does unraid have a actual desktop or is it command prompt? 

[NelizMastr]

1 hour ago, Oli1549 said:

1.cat6a support supports 10g?

2.NIC is network Is interface card right? 

3.As for a 10g switch I’ve realised they are extremely expensive, is there anything between 1g and 10g? 

1. Yes

2. Yes

3. Nope, combining multiple gigabit links is possible, though, but they have to be end-to-end, so from PC to server/NAS or at least from both to their interconnect like a switch, which also needs to support this.

[Oli1549]

Spoiler

 

f

[Oli1549]

21 minutes ago, NelizMastr said:

1. Yes

2. Yes

3. Nope, combining multiple gigabit links is possible, though, but they have to be end-to-end, so from PC to server/NAS or at least from both to their interconnect like a switch, which also needs to support this.

So To get speeds of 125*3 I’d need 3 gigabit switches, and 3 network cards on the pc receiving and the pc sending? Seems like a lot of faffing..

[NelizMastr]

1 minute ago, Oli1549 said:

So To get speeds of 125*3 I’d need 3 gigabit switches, and 3 network cards on the pc receiving and the pc sending? Seems like a lot of faffing..

Not quite. You need 3 LAN ports on server and client, and one gigabit switch with A. sufficient ports and B. manageability that allows you to set link aggregation/trunking. 

 

Long story short, don't bother. You're not going to get SSD like performance from harddisks over the network.

[Oli1549]

4 minutes ago, NelizMastr said:

Not quite. You need 3 LAN ports on server and client, and one gigabit switch with A. sufficient ports and B. manageability that allows you to set link aggregation/trunking. 

 

Long story short, don't bother. You're not going to get SSD like performance from harddisks over the network.

So, this somewhat affordable 10Gb Switch i have found: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B076P9CTSD?tag=ps-uk-netgear-02-21&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&th=1

 

Would i simply need:

• A 10Gb Network Card on the Sending PC
• A 10Gb Network Card on the Recieving Server
• A 10Gb Network Switch
• 10Gb Compatible Cables(cat 6a)

Plug it all in and would get speeds as fast as the server drives would write? of course after that it is then to discuss which is better in the way of drive setups, but i reckon Unraid would do the trick? Does unraid stripe the drives or how does that work? is there a choice? 

 

Thanks for the help up until now i appreciate all the help.

 

[NelizMastr]

1 minute ago, Oli1549 said:

So, this somewhat affordable 10Gb Switch i have found: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B076P9CTSD?tag=ps-uk-netgear-02-21&m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&th=1

 

Would i simply need:

• A 10Gb Network Card on the Sending PC
• A 10Gb Network Card on the Recieving Server
• A 10Gb Network Switch
• 10Gb Compatible Cables(cat 6a)

Plug it all in and would get speeds as fast as the server drives would write? of course after that it is then to discuss which is better in the way of drive setups, but i reckon Unraid would do the trick? Does unraid stripe the drives or how does that work? is there a choice? 

 

Thanks for the help up until now i appreciate all the help.

 

Yup that list checks out. Only ports 9 & 10 are 10Gbe, though. So you'd have to put the NAS/server on 9 and the PC on 10 or vice versa and use the 1Gbe ports for other traffic. 

 

No idea on how UnRAID handles drives, I don't use UnRAID personally. You'll have to define how to setup your drives either way. Striping will give you performance boost at the cost of redudancy, since one drive failure corrupts all data on the volume. Mirroring will half the capacity and write performance with the gain of redundancy and doubled read performance. Then there's RAID1+0 aka RAID10 which combines the two with a 2x write multiplier and 4x read and 2 drive failure tolerance.

 

RAID5 also exists, which uses a parity disk to keep track of which drive contains which data, causing a write penalty but significant read gains, 1 drive fault tolerance by default and increased capacity over RAID10.

[Oli1549]

20 minutes ago, NelizMastr said:

Yup that list checks out. Only ports 9 & 10 are 10Gbe, though. So you'd have to put the NAS/server on 9 and the PC on 10 or vice versa and use the 1Gbe ports for other traffic. 

 

No idea on how UnRAID handles drives, I don't use UnRAID personally. You'll have to define how to setup your drives either way. Striping will give you performance boost at the cost of redudancy, since one drive failure corrupts all data on the volume. Mirroring will half the capacity and write performance with the gain of redundancy and doubled read performance. Then there's RAID1+0 aka RAID10 which combines the two with a 2x write multiplier and 4x read and 2 drive failure tolerance.

 

RAID5 also exists, which uses a parity disk to keep track of which drive contains which data, causing a write penalty but significant read gains, 1 drive fault tolerance by default and increased capacity over RAID10.

Snap, Didnt realise it only had 2 ports. 

 

is making a raid easy? 

if i bought 2 or 3 drives to start with how hard is it to create them? i believe possibly using a system with 1 drive for the allocating, then x amount of drives with the data on, then if one of them breaks, the main drive will replace the data?.. i believe this was a option. and i was also told that the 2 drives could be striped? so 2x data speeds? Im really clueless about this part so be nice in the ways of words abbreviations etc! 

 

 

[NelizMastr]

Just now, Oli1549 said:

1. is making a raid easy? 

2. if i bought 2 or 3 drives to start with how hard is it to create them? i believe possibly using a system with 1 drive for the allocating, then x amount of drives with the data on, then if one of them breaks, the main drive will replace the data?..

3. i was also told that the 2 drives could be striped? so 2x data speeds?

 

 

1. Depends on the software. Linux has LVM that handles RAID, in Windows, the disk management console handles this. These are both software RAIDs of course. In hardware RAID land, you have to access the RAID controller's BIOS to set the volumes.

 

2. This sounds like RAID5. 1 parity disk and a minimum of 2 data disks. One data disk dies, and a new drive can take its place, resyncing the data. With software RAID, you will need to add the new drive manually, though, before it can be used for the rebuild.

 

3. Yes, striping is RAID0. You double the speed of the drive and also the extra capacity. Once one drive fails, though, all data is lost.