Building a NAS, Budget: $300

[Hulkbert]

I'm thinking of building a NAS with a $300 budget. I'm not sure what os and hardware to put on it if all I want is to steam movies and store backups on that machine.(I'd rather not scour through craigslist for parts) Also, not sure how useful or possible it is, but if I could run pfsense or a squid cache on it, that would be cool to do.

[79wjd]

Does that $300 include the drives and how much storage do you need? Because that could be a big problem.

[Hulkbert]

1 minute ago, djdwosk97 said:

Does that $300 include the drives and how much storage do you need? Because that could be a big problem.

If I could get everything for $300, that would be great. However I think I'll be spending $100 on drives (in addition to the $300 for hardware) for now as I only need 2TB.

[paddy-stone]

Your best bet with that budget is to try for used servers, you can get some good deals for approx $200 or so for a dual 6 core xeon with hyperthreading, usually come with a load of ram and are ready to go except for drives.. they can be noisy and are pretty large though, so bear that in mind.

[edit] forgot to mention that they suck the energy fast though, so if you wanted an always on server that's good on energy, then that's not for you then.

[Catsrules]

3 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

Your best bet with that budget is to try for used servers, you can get some good deals for approx $200 or so for a dual 6 core xeon with hyperthreading, usually come with a load of ram and are ready to go except for drives.. they can be noisy and are pretty large though, so bear that in mind.

[edit] forgot to mention that they suck the energy fast though, so if you wanted an always on server that's good on energy, then that's not for you then.

Just to add a little more, for Used servers or Workstations stick with something with a CPU that was made within the last 5 years so we are talking released in 2012. Look at Intel Ark to help you figure out when it was released. For example

https://ark.intel.com/products/64621/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-1620-10M-Cache-3_60-GHz-0_0-GTs-Intel-QPI

 

This Xeon was Launched in quarter 1 of 2012.

 

Also if you buy a server with drive bays make sure you take a look the drive bay sizes, 3.5" or 2.5", I usually stick with 3.5" because the drives are cheaper. Also take a look at how many drive caddies come with the server, often they only come with 1 or 2 caddies. Usually caddies are around $10-15 for an empty one.

If you want to do some "light" reading here are some nice overviews of buying homelab servers.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/wiki/buyingguide

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/wiki/hardware/muffinsguide
https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/wiki/hardware

 

[Hulkbert]

1 hour ago, paddy-stone said:

Your best bet with that budget is to try for used servers, you can get some good deals for approx $200 or so for a dual 6 core xeon with hyperthreading, usually come with a load of ram and are ready to go except for drives.. they can be noisy and are pretty large though, so bear that in mind.

[edit] forgot to mention that they suck the energy fast though, so if you wanted an always on server that's good on energy, then that's not for you then.

Alright, while I'd rather something small and quiet, I'll check it out. Is ebay a good place to get hardware?

[Hulkbert]

2 hours ago, Catsrules said:

Just to add a little more, for Used servers or Workstations stick with something with a CPU that was made within the last 5 years so we are talking released in 2012. Look at Intel Ark to help you figure out when it was released. For example

https://ark.intel.com/products/64621/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-1620-10M-Cache-3_60-GHz-0_0-GTs-Intel-QPI

 

This Xeon was Launched in quarter 1 of 2012.

 

Also if you buy a server with drive bays make sure you take a look the drive bay sizes, 3.5" or 2.5", I usually stick with 3.5" because the drives are cheaper. Also take a look at how many drive caddies come with the server, often they only come with 1 or 2 caddies. Usually caddies are around $10-15 for an empty one.

If you want to do some "light" reading here are some nice overviews of buying homelab servers.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/wiki/buyingguide

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/wiki/hardware/muffinsguide
https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/wiki/hardware

 

So, would you say this is a good starting point?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/302498918096

[paddy-stone]

11 hours ago, Hulkbert said:

So, would you say this is a good starting point?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/302498918096

Maybe similar, depends on your needs, if you just want it for NAS duties for like freenas and a plex plugin, and a few VMs then yes that should be fine. Would be better with newer though for power consumption... also bear in mind that the one you have looked at there only comes with a few drive sleds, so will need more for your drives.

 

This one https://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-PowerEdge-R710-LFF-2-X-X5570-8-CORE-48GB-RAM-PERC6i-NO-iDRAC6-1PSU-2TRAYS/322350612491?_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIM.MBE%26ao%3D2%26asc%3D49566%26meid%3D5d1d8fc2a71848828a49f02471b23bbc%26pid%3D100623%26rk%3D4%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D302498918096&_trksid=p2047675.c100623.m-1

 

has 16 logical cores with turbo upto 3.3 IIRC, it only has one PSU, so no backup PSU and no iDRAC (dells remote access controller), so you'd need to hook up a monitor for configuring the bare metal server, if you have an OS installed though, you can usually configure them remotely. For example ESXi once installed can be configured remotely very easily... same with other hypervisors, and same with OS's that would run on those hypervisors like freenas for example.

Again doesn't come with many drive sleds, they rarely do, so budget for those also, You can usually get a few for around $5-10.

I'm not advocating for the one I linked BTW, just using it as an example... would be best to read all the fineprint for the listings to know what you're getting exactly, and if not sure what something is, come back and ask.

[Hulkbert]

On 12/15/2017 at 8:04 AM, paddy-stone said:

would be best to read all the fineprint for the listings to know what you're getting exactly, and if not sure what something is, come back and ask.

So, I have found these two servers and I'm not sure which one is better.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/292354770445

https://www.ebay.com/itm/182188850907

Also, for storage I'm not sure if it is better to have two 2TB SATA HDD(raid1) and one 500GB SATA HDD or two 3TB SATA HDD(Raid 1) and upgrade the raid card to this. (I'm not sure if this is the right raid card if I want to replace the perc6i)

[paddy-stone]

Either of those SHOULD be able to do what you want with it, with the x5500 being better for logical cores as it has hyper-threading, so giving you 16 Vs the 8 actual cores on the other server.

That being said, I have no actual experience with those ones, so please do some reading up on them too, so that you are clear what you are getting for your money. Servers take a while to boot for instance, so bear that in mind if you wanted to switch them off to save power when not in use.... and if leaving them on (as you should), then bear in mind your power usage will be quite a bit more too... and they are fairly noisy.

Personally I would've opted for a micro-server instead, they have fewer drive bays but ATM it looks like you don't plan to fill them anyway. And unless running an expandable storage OS, that means you may have to re-do the server when you want to expand.

[Hulkbert]

2 hours ago, paddy-stone said:

Either of those SHOULD be able to do what you want with it, with the x5500 being better for logical cores as it has hyper-threading, so giving you 16 Vs the 8 actual cores on the other server.

That being said, I have no actual experience with those ones, so please do some reading up on them too, so that you are clear what you are getting for your money. Servers take a while to boot for instance, so bear that in mind if you wanted to switch them off to save power when not in use.... and if leaving them on (as you should), then bear in mind your power usage will be quite a bit more too... and they are fairly noisy.

Personally I would've opted for a micro-server instead, they have fewer drive bays but ATM it looks like you don't plan to fill them anyway. And unless running an expandable storage OS, that means you may have to re-do the server when you want to expand.

Alright, thanks.