making a "server/NAS" thing???

[joedigiorno]

aloha, amigos.

I've been a viewer of LTT videos for a while now, and I just now decided to join the Forums because a project of mine has grown to be too much for my intellect. I'm on a high school FIRST robotics team, and for the past 12 years the team has never had many issues with using cloud services like Google Drive and things like External HDDs for saving our multitude of data. Cheap, simple and easy. This year we've decided that we want to have something more streamlined, so that all of our files can be under one place at one time. First, we tried Google Drive, which proved to be useful for our general documents, images and videos, but items such as Robot Code and Solidworks files refuse to cooperate when they're bouncing around Drive (the whole Solidworks thing is most infuriating to me, as it seems that only my assemblies that I draw up myself are the ones that end up going corrupt.) Thinking back to the LTT video on the Gaming PC/NAS hybrid, I gladly accepted the task of building a "server" or like a "NAS" (I'm not too sure what I should really be calling it at this point) for all of our data, but little did I know that my computer knowledge didn't spread as far as I thought it did. 

Our current concept is to buy an old Xeon workstation off eBay, similar to the one i own personally, filling it up with something like that Silverstone FS305 (the HDD hot swap caddy thing that was featured in the same video), slapping an old router on it, and putting it out as a Network-shared-computer thingy that they have in Windows. But, with a provided budget of only $350-$400, and with no knowledge on establishing a storage unit of this breed, I don't know.

My question is, and I hope my stupidity doesn't affect you all too much, is A. will the strategy applied in the video work, and B. if not, what steps am I missing from my idea? Are there better ways??

we dont need an instant solution, but one thought out well enough where we dont have to keep purchasing parts for it every so often. Money is a key factor in this situation.

any level of help would be more than appreciated.

Thanks guys!

-joe

[Radium_Angel]

13 minutes ago, joedigiorno said:

aloha, amigos.

I've been a viewer of LTT videos for a while now, and I just now decided to join the Forums because a project of mine has grown to be too much for my intellect. I'm on a high school FIRST robotics team, and for the past 12 years the team has never had many issues with using cloud services like Google Drive and things like External HDDs for saving our multitude of data. Cheap, simple and easy. This year we've decided that we want to have something more streamlined, so that all of our files can be under one place at one time. First, we tried Google Drive, which proved to be useful for our general documents, images and videos, but items such as Robot Code and Solidworks files refuse to cooperate when they're bouncing around Drive (the whole Solidworks thing is most infuriating to me, as it seems that only my assemblies that I draw up myself are the ones that end up going corrupt.) Thinking back to the LTT video on the Gaming PC/NAS hybrid, I gladly accepted the task of building a "server" or like a "NAS" (I'm not too sure what I should really be calling it at this point) for all of our data, but little did I know that my computer knowledge didn't spread as far as I thought it did. 

Our current concept is to buy an old Xeon workstation off eBay, similar to the one i own personally, filling it up with something like that Silverstone FS305 (the HDD hot swap caddy thing that was featured in the same video), slapping an old router on it, and putting it out as a Network-shared-computer thingy that they have in Windows. But, with a provided budget of only $350-$400, and with no knowledge on establishing a storage unit of this breed, I don't know.

My question is, and I hope my stupidity doesn't affect you all too much, is A. will the strategy applied in the video work, and B. if not, what steps am I missing from my idea? Are there better ways??

we dont need an instant solution, but one thought out well enough where we dont have to keep purchasing parts for it every so often. Money is a key factor in this situation.

any level of help would be more than appreciated.

Thanks guys!

-joe

A server is just what you need.

An old Dell PowerEdge 2900 are given away for free (seriously, I got mine that way), hold tons of hard drives, ram for those is super dirt cheap, as are the SAS drives, and if you don't mind the electric bill for it all, are rock solid worry free.

 

Run the whole thing in RAID, throw on a cheap LTO tape drive for data backup, and Bob's your uncle.

 

Incidentally, I have this exact same setup (which is why I pitch it) with ~4 TB of hard drive space in a RAID 5 array.

[AbsoluteFool]

8 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

A server is just what you need.

An old Dell PowerEdge 2900 are given away for free (seriously, I got mine that way), hold tons of hard drives, ram for those is super dirt cheap, as are the SAS drives, and if you don't mind the electric bill for it all, are rock solid worry free.

 

Run the whole thing in RAID, throw on a cheap LTO tape drive for data backup, and Bob's your uncle.

 

Incidentally, I have this exact same setup (which is why I pitch it) with ~4 TB of hard drive space in a RAID 5 array.

The problem with the PE2900 servies is that they are from the early 2003? They don't accept larger than 2TB drives and they, well.. Swallows your power. 

 

Honestly i'd take a diffrent step personally. 

1. Get my hands on a decommisioned supermicro chassis 24Bay (Perhaps check with a local computer store or known IT service provider.) They might be able to give you one for free.
2. Or get a IBM x3something M3 or higer. (You can get quite a few drives in these. + they are alot more power friendly than the PE2900 series

[joedigiorno]

6 minutes ago, Radium_Angel said:

A server is just what you need.

An old Dell PowerEdge 2900 are given away for free (seriously, I got mine that way), hold tons of hard drives, ram for those is super dirt cheap, as are the SAS drives, and if you don't mind the electric bill for it all, are rock solid worry free.

 

Run the whole thing in RAID, throw on a cheap LTO tape drive for data backup, and Bob's your uncle.

 

Incidentally, I have this exact same setup (which is why I pitch it) with ~4 TB of hard drive space in a RAID 5 array.

i'm not too sure about how our school would feel if we had that beefy SOB running 24/7, but as long as we can, in theory, throw a workstation gpu in the thing, be able to CAD on it, and still have the server itself active, it'll work for me. does Linus' guide from that video still apply to the instructions or will I have to whip up something different?

[Razor Blade]

11 minutes ago, joedigiorno said:

i'm not too sure about how our school would feel if we had that beefy SOB running 24/7, but as long as we can, in theory, throw a workstation gpu in the thing, be able to CAD on it, and still have the server itself active, it'll work for me. does Linus' guide from that video still apply to the instructions or will I have to whip up something different?

IMO unless you're planning to rack mount the server I wouldn't get a rack mount server. I think you had the right idea in getting a workstation. Don't worry too much about drive capacity with older Dell servers as a replacement Raid card will resolve that issue.

[joedigiorno]

rack mounting is the last thing I want to look into, the school might see it as too excessive and ask us to remove it.

do I need any special software for NAS software where I can run Windows 10 in tandem? or will Windows 10 be the only thing I need?

I've built my fair share of computers but NAS is a whole new field to me.

[Razor Blade]

5 minutes ago, joedigiorno said:

rack mounting is the last thing I want to look into, the school might see it as too excessive and ask us to remove it.

do I need any special software for NAS software where I can run Windows 10 in tandem? or will Windows 10 be the only thing I need?

I've built my fair share of computers but NAS is a whole new field to me.

You can get NAS operating systems free. You also have the option to run a hypervisor OS if you want to run multiple operating systems on the same server. To me it seems like maybe you're looking for something like an iSCSI share? It is a network drive that sits as if it is a native drive on Windows. You can put files in it and access it from multiple machines.

[joedigiorno]

this is my first time working with all this networking and server stuff, so i have 0 clue as to how to proceed with any of this.

also, highly doubt i can grab any kind of freebie like i did with my own workstation, it was hard enough to find laying in the trash pile at an old university.

it sounds like iscsi drives are good, but are they costly for, say, 4TB worth or storage?

[Razor Blade]

9 minutes ago, joedigiorno said:

this is my first time working with all this networking and server stuff, so i have 0 clue as to how to proceed with any of this.

also, highly doubt i can grab any kind of freebie like i did with my own workstation, it was hard enough to find laying in the trash pile at an old university.

it sounds like iscsi drives are good, but are they costly for, say, 4TB worth or storage?

iSCSI isn't a physical drive. It is a share that sits on your network. If you're knowledge is limited the worst thing you could do is go on ebay and bid on a bunch of hardware you may not even need. What are the specs on your current workstation?

 

First you need to nail down the operating system and any software you want to run. Then you can pick the hardware you'll need. TBH a dedicated server might be overkill for what you want right now if all you're wanting to do is share a drive with the other people. You can certainly grow into one as your needs dictate. But for now you could potentially upgrade the storage in your workstation and use that. If you already have windows 10 and you want to use your workstation as an iSCSI target you could use something like StarWind (https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-virtual-san-free)

 

 

[joedigiorno]

my current home workstation is a Dell Precision T7500, with a Xeon X5570 CPU and 6x2GB sticks of some low clock speed DDR3 (though it should be noted that my pc has room for a second Xeon and 6 more slots if i throw in its "riser."

it has a big enough belly for four 3.5 HDDs, and we almost bought an identical model for the team, but they were claiming that it was too big and heavy (wait till i show them a PowerEdge off eBay, lmao)

so essentially, you're saying im gonna be needing a workstation, some hard drives that'll fit in it, and use it for...iSCSI?

(as of right now, our current model for a "server" that we've been playing around with is some 11 year old Core 2 Duo machine that was trash picked from our school. 2GB of RAM, and it barely even runs Windows 10.

[Razor Blade]

Pretty much... I have only messed around with FreeNAS software right now so if you went with that you would just need something with 8GB RAM and a way to pass the hard drives directly to FreeNAS. which really just means hooking them up to the motherboard like you would any other computer or using an HBA.

 

Like I said I wouldn't spend money on hardware just yet if you can help it... Get familiar with the software first on hardware you already have. Is your copy of Windows 10 Pro? Enterprise? Home? Education? As long as you have Pro, Enterprise, or Education you have access to hyper-V which is Microsoft's VM software (get it here https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/hyper-v-on-windows/quick-start/enable-hyper-v). You can make a FreeNAS VM to play around with all of it's features to see if it is right for your needs.

 

Get FreeNAS here http://www.freenas.org/download-freenas-release/

[joedigiorno]

our current "test bench" duo has an unregistered version of Windows on it that we whipped up with a boot drive. i doubt that our current system will even run freenas in its current state, as if i tried anything more than google chrome it might start coughing up blood.

hell, the thing doesn't even have thermal paste on the heatsink, its that jerry-rigged.

ill give freenas a shot on it nonetheless, and if that works, then we can just get a more powerful pc, slap some hard drives in it, run it, and we're good to go?

i dont know, something tells me that the bench we have might not fare too well, and the only other option i see that might prove actual proper results is plugging the hard drive into my own station and seeing what happens

[Razor Blade]

Freenas is more happy with 8GB of ram. I wouldn't take down your current...um...server quite yet though. Especially as there is no guarantee FreeNAS will run on it.

[joedigiorno]

seeing that my options are limited enough, I'm going to activate its copy of windows and throw freenas on it just to give it a shot. if it refuses to run, ill throw the hard drive into my own pc and see how it runs then. if all goes well, then...um...we get a cheap poweredge? or a workstation with enough power?

[AbsoluteFool]

FreeNAS is quite easy to learn. 

 

8 hours ago, joedigiorno said:

seeing that my options are limited enough, I'm going to activate its copy of windows and throw freenas on it just to give it a shot. if it refuses to run, ill throw the hard drive into my own pc and see how it runs then. if all goes well, then...um...we get a cheap poweredge? or a workstation with enough power?

PE will normally not give FreeNAS direct access to the drives. Going this route i'd look into a workstation and just transform it into a NAS. More power friendly and will tackle larger drives.

 

Remember the FreeNAS is it's own OS, you don't want to run Windows on there first. (My apoligise if i missunderstood you.)

[joedigiorno]

so I can't exactly have a Windows/NAS hybrid? it's just one or the other?

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 hour ago, joedigiorno said:

so I can't exactly have a Windows/NAS hybrid? it's just one or the other?

you can run a nas on windows if you want, just share the folder where you want people to store stuff. windows server does have more options here though.

[joedigiorno]

for Windows Server, do I still need to set up any wacky virtualization stuff? freenas? 

a friend told me today to use Hamachi to send files back and forth from our server and our computers, but now things are only getting more confusing as I go.

[AbsoluteFool]

34 minutes ago, joedigiorno said:

for Windows Server, do I still need to set up any wacky virtualization stuff? freenas? 

a friend told me today to use Hamachi to send files back and forth from our server and our computers, but now things are only getting more confusing as I go.

Well both Windows and like FreeNAS are own OSes. You cannot run both of them at once without putting one of them in a VM. But here is a few examples.

 

1. Install Windows, activate nettwork share. (Will only require you to have a single system.)
2. Install Windows, and load FreeNAS in a VM
3. Install FreeNAS, and load Windows in a VM

These are your options. Also i see no reason why you cannot use a nettwork share in Windows, instead of pulling up a new system in a VM just for storage.

Will be alot easier to just make a dedicated arry for the storage.

[Razor Blade]

4 hours ago, joedigiorno said:

for Windows Server, do I still need to set up any wacky virtualization stuff? freenas? 

a friend told me today to use Hamachi to send files back and forth from our server and our computers, but now things are only getting more confusing as I go.

Unless you can get windows server really cheap, using windows 10 pro and the starwind SAN software I linked above would be a MUCH cheaper option.

 

If you want to run VMs in windows like I said pro, education, and enterprise can run hyper-V

[joedigiorno]

sounds like network sharing is the way to go, and if there's any complications with it, the team can always try to run FreeNAS in a VM.

I'll just go Pro because it can be had for some quite cheap prices, and my head mentor will appreciate that

[Pyramiden]

Since you are building this for education purposes, do you have access to Microsoft Imagine?
https://imagine.microsoft.com
As a student I can get free copies of almost every piece of Microsoft software, all the way from Visio to Windows Server Datacenter.

I personally run Windows Server Essentials 2016, since it does not require licenses for the computers connecting to the server. If you can get it for free as well then I would really consider that. Maybe it is worth it to contact your school IT department or even Microsoft directly.

Since you will not need almost any processing power for running NAS software you might also consider using a HP Microserver Gen7 (this one might be too slow, though), Gen8 (best option) or Gen10. They use a lot less power than old Xeon systems, and you might be able to pick one up for cheap. Since you will not need that much storage those 4 bays are plenty, and you could pick up a HP P410 RAID controller for almost nothing on Ebay to get a bit of redundancy going (or just use Windows Storage Spaces).