Small business redundant NAS in blackouty situation

[Tadgh]

Hey all,

 

Never actually handled a server before (at least, not an important one) and between my various options for I'm getting a little overwhelmed and could do with some advice.

 

I plan on building a NAS for a small business, it will primarily store video and our current storage needs aren't huge but footage has to be accessible from the network and data integrity is a big concern. I plan on buying 3x 2TB drives, 2 to put into a RAID 1 array, and 1 to fit to another PC in a different building to back up data nightly. Ideally I'm doing all this from within FreeNAS either with an older prebuilt machine or a small new build. The main problems I can't quite wrap my head around right now are:

1) The business is located in a premises which experiences short lived blackouts anywhere from once a week to three times a day, always between 9-5. I'm considering a hardware RAID card with a battery, or perhaps a full battery backup for the server as a remedy to this - but I really don't understand how hardware RAID cards operate when compared to, say, a software RAID with ZFS, and definitely wouldn't be sure what I'd be looking for if I were to purchase one. Consequently I'm sure how to protect against RAID write holes when the power outs inevitably come.. What would you recommend?

 

2) If I choose to go with a software RAID, especially with ZFS, there's a lot of conflicting information over the use of ECC or non-ECC RAM. I understand the concept behind ECC RAM but I've never used it and amn't entirely convinced if it's going to be worthwhile for this workload. At the moment no more than 3 people would be working on the server at once and so it's not an incredibly strenuous job, even if the RAID array adds to the load. We also will be upgrading the server later on down the line and could switch to ECC RAM when cashflow is a little less tight. Is ECC RAM that important to start with? 

 

3) The boss really likes shiny new things, and although I'm convinced that a pre-built machine off of eBay with some new hard drives fitted to it would do a fine job maybe even with a battery backup or battery-fitted hardware RAID card in order to keep things peachy I've been planning on building a little box in a BitFenix Nova with an FX-4300 a lil powersupply 8GBs of RAM and a mobo with enough SATA ports and RAM ports to provide easy upgrades in the future (presuming that we're not using ECC RAM here) - am I missing anything here? While the budget is kinda set at "beneath 400 euro please" there is flexibility and if there's anything I should be ensuring to save trouble down the line I'd happily invest now.

 

Thanks yall!! 

 

Edit: Sorry yall, wasn't very clear: The blackouts are going to go away in a short/medium time and convincing boss to fix the problem/buy a UPS unfortunately isn't feasible rn. Protection against write holes would be very useful in case the problem comes back farther down the line or for mere days of operation where it may continue to be an issue while the server is operational

 

[zak rooley]

So I got no help for the server side of stuff but for the blackouts have you considered a UPS this would allow you to keep power to the server for an amount of time whist the power is out and hopefully back up before its out of power ?

[manikyath]

if blackouts are a problem, tell the boss man that a good quality UPS for critical equipment isnt just luxury, its necessity.

 

once you have a UPS that can bridge the blackouts, you can hook up whatever your heart desires, and you wont have any issues.

[Tadgh]

2 minutes ago, zak rooley said:

So I got no help for the server side of stuff but for the blackouts have you considered a UPS this would allow you to keep power to the server for an amount of time whist the power is out and hopefully back up before its out of power ?

 

2 minutes ago, manikyath said:

if blackouts are a problem, tell the boss man that a good quality UPS for critical equipment isnt just luxury, its necessity.

 

once you have a UPS that can bridge the blackouts, you can hook up whatever your heart desires, and you wont have any issues.

You're definitely both right, but we know what's causing the powerouts (it's a weird situation including very old breakers a family home and a weird necessity pulling 48amps from the wall) and within a month or two it's going to stop happening - so while you're 100% correct it's consistently hard to convince anyone to spend money and time A) Replacing the switchboard or B) Buying a UPS | when the problem will go away without any further outlays ;-;

 

edit: sorry, to clarify - I more want some protection against Write-Holes incase the problem spontaneously comes back or for a very short term solution (less than weeks, likely)

[manikyath]

4 minutes ago, Tadgh said:

 

You're definitely both right, but we know what's causing the powerouts (it's a weird situation including very old breakers a family home and a weird necessity pulling 48amps from the wall) and within a month or two it's going to stop happening - so while you're 100% correct it's consistently hard to convince anyone to spend money and time A) Replacing the switchboard or B) Buying a UPS | when the problem will go away without any further outlays ;-;

 

edit: sorry, to clarify - I more want some protection against Write-Holes incase the problem spontaneously comes back or for a very short term solution (less than weeks, likely)

get a UPS either way. seriously. the office i work at *may* have a 1 second blackout once a year. but when it happens, it saves our butts bigtime.

 

past that, a good quality UPS also conditions the power, making your equipment last longer, and avoid potential "odd behavior" because stuff is only just within spec (power grids are a dirty, dirty place.)

[Tadgh]

Just now, manikyath said:

get a UPS either way. seriously. the office i work at *may* have a 1 second blackout once a year. but when it happens, it saves our butts bigtime.

 

past that, a good quality UPS also conditions the power, making your equipment last longer, and avoid potential "odd behavior" because stuff is only just within spec (power grids are a dirty, dirty place.)

okay honestly I hadn't thought about it this way - mixture of extreme tired and this all happening very quickly rn but that's exactly the kinda clarity that saves many butts thanks for the advice ^-^ will be shopping for a UPS then. I suppose that really helps protect against unexpected shutdowns too.

[fulminemizzega]

2 minutes ago, manikyath said:

get a UPS either way. seriously. the office i work at *may* have a 1 second blackout once a year. but when it happens, it saves our butts bigtime.

 

past that, a good quality UPS also conditions the power, making your equipment last longer, and avoid potential "odd behavior" because stuff is only just within spec (power grids are a dirty, dirty place.)

How much does noise affect a switching regulator power supply?

[manikyath]

1 minute ago, fulminemizzega said:

How much does noise affect a switching regulator power supply?

depends on the quality of power supply..

 

and seeing how much "a specific type of display" is dying at a specific client of ours specificly after they moved...

quite a lot, if you buy junk 

[leadeater]

35 minutes ago, Tadgh said:

The business is located in a premises which experiences short lived blackouts anywhere from once a week to three times a day, always between 9-5. I'm considering a hardware RAID card with a battery, or perhaps a full battery backup for the server as a remedy to this - but I really don't understand how hardware RAID cards operate when compared to, say, a software RAID with ZFS, and definitely wouldn't be sure what I'd be looking for if I were to purchase one. Consequently I'm sure how to protect against RAID write holes when the power outs inevitably come.. What would you recommend?

You don't use a RAID card with FreeNAS/ZFS, it must be an HBA. ZFS takes care of data integrity for you.

 

35 minutes ago, Tadgh said:

If I choose to go with a software RAID, especially with ZFS, there's a lot of conflicting information over the use of ECC or non-ECC RAM. I understand the concept behind ECC RAM but I've never used it and amn't entirely convinced if it's going to be worthwhile for this workload. At the moment no more than 3 people would be working on the server at once and so it's not an incredibly strenuous job, even if the RAID array adds to the load. We also will be upgrading the server later on down the line and could switch to ECC RAM when cashflow is a little less tight. Is ECC RAM that important to start with? 

ECC vs Non-ECC isn't actually that huge of a deal since there is limited scope in how ZFS works for memory errors to cause a problem, however if you go with ECC make sure its Registered ECC not Unbuffered as that doesn't actually give that much protection. The issue with that is the low cost Pentiums that support ECC do not support Registered.

 

35 minutes ago, Tadgh said:

The boss really likes shiny new things, and although I'm convinced that a pre-built machine off of eBay with some new hard drives fitted to it would do a fine job maybe even with a battery backup or battery-fitted hardware RAID card in order to keep things peachy I've been planning on building a little box in a BitFenix Nova with an FX-4300 a lil powersupply 8GBs of RAM and a mobo with enough SATA ports and RAM ports to provide easy upgrades in the future (presuming that we're not using ECC RAM here) - am I missing anything here? While the budget is kinda set at "beneath 400 euro please" there is flexibility and if there's anything I should be ensuring to save trouble down the line I'd happily invest now.

Stay away from FX CPUs with FreeNAS, heard about many issues with systems that use those.

 

Honestly though for a business I would recommend a pre-built NAS from QNAP with an extended 4 or 5 year warranty.

[manikyath]

8 minutes ago, leadeater said:

 

Honestly though for a business I would recommend a pre-built NAS from QNAP with an extended 4 or 5 year warranty.

a client of ours with quite.. "excessive" data needs has been kept on life support by synology rackmount NASes most of their history

 

hopefully coming week they'll finally be running on some "petabyte-scale" infrastructure in an actual datacenter, instead of a dank basement

[fulminemizzega]

23 minutes ago, Tadgh said:

okay honestly I hadn't thought about it this way - mixture of extreme tired and this all happening very quickly rn but that's exactly the kinda clarity that saves many butts thanks for the advice ^-^ will be shopping for a UPS then. I suppose that really helps protect against unexpected shutdowns too.

Back to your question, the lowest price I can find on amazon for a 3tb hdd is 60€, that means you have 220€ left for everything else. What can you buy with 220€?

Definitely no RAID card and no UPS. I really don't know if at this point you should build a NAS or instead just wait until you can have a bigger budget (and also less electrical issues?). You are asking about a NAS, this is what I think. FreeNAS recommends using intel, so everything here applies for intel.

Choose: if you want to upgrade to ECC ram later on, you will have to spend more money right now, but you would get a "server" motherboard right now.

Looking at your usercase, you don't need it, but if you can afford it, go for it. If you start reading on freenas forums about ECC/no ECC you will go crazy and start buying triple redundant power supplies. If you want to dig deeper on the subject, http://jrs-s.net/2015/02/03/will-zfs-and-non-ecc-ram-kill-your-data/ and also https://blog.codinghorror.com/to-ecc-or-not-to-ecc/ read the linked papers for some actual data.

At this point you should be able to find on average how many errors you will have with your ram, per year. I expect your lights will go out more often.

If you decide against ECC, then you can look for the cheapest motherboard + cpu combination you can find, look for an intel pentium: https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/hardware-recommendations-guide.12/

Now, be careful, don't go too cheap on the motherboard, check at least the if it has 1gb ethernet.

If you go for future ECC support, then try to buy a supermicro motherboard, there's a nice IPMI controller onboard.

Buy 8gb of ram, find the cheapest case, you just need one fan for your 2 disks. Buy a brand power supply, don't go too cheap because that will reduce your hardware's life span. I think that is all 

 

When your lights will go out, you may lose data only when writing to the NAS, if you time the power outage just right you might be able to lose a small portion of the video file you are writing, it will not corrupt the whole file (thanks to how ZFS works).

If you find a used server for around 220€ that you can use, it could be a good idea, I can't recommend anything at this moment.

Since your budget is so tight, why don't you keep waiting and just use an external drive bay to plug and unplug hdds, maybe use file sharing on Windows? It is ugly, you will have to make redundant copies by yourself, but it's way cheaper. Later on you will be able to spend more money on a NAS that will be more useful in the long run, think about it: if you could spend about 500€ on everything except hdds (let's stick to 8gb ecc ram and i3 cpu), you would have a system that will last you years, you will be able to keep adding drives until you have no bays space in your case. Make some projections, try to estimate how fast you are going to fill those HDDs. If you write 10gb a day, 3tb will last you less than a year.

Don't rush your decision