Creating a Custom Nas

[Shadowarez]

Hi everybody I Finally Got Tax Refund Back so i decided to Revamp my Nas. First off i had a Qnap Ts209 Pro did the job for a few years. But i need more power for what im planning and wanna take advantage of my 100mb Fiber Network here. Iv compiled a list for my Build.

1.case, Corsair Air 540
2.Psu, Corsair AX860i
3.Mobo, Asus H87M-Plus
4.Mem, 32gb Corsair Vengence 1600mhz
5.Cpu, Intel i7 4770K (Haswell)
6.ssd, Samsung 840Pro 128gb (os drive)
7.hdds, 4 wd 3TB Red Nas Drives
8.Asus Pce-AC66 (wifi)

I know this overkill for a Nas but i want to make sure iv got the power and memory for some dedicated servers and streaming plus im overhauling my entire Network. Ill be running win server 2012 and linux once i collect the drivers for all hardware.

 

[choucove]

If you are planning to run a server OS, and run linux or virtual machines, then why not actually invest in a server which is built specifically for this task? The components you are selecting are good, that's not the problem, but you are building a race car to do the work of a semi-truck. For the cost of what you are looking at doing, you can buy a nice ProLiant server, which has enterprise-class hardware, full support for Server 2012, and a true RAID controller instead of just some basic onboard controller.

What all are you planning to do with this system? Are you just looking at a storage device with media streaming capabilities? Or are you wanting to actually use it as a server for running applications or even virtual machines? I guess I'm a little confused from your original post because it starts off sounding like a storage device but then sounds like you want to do much more with it.

 

[Shadowarez]

Sorry bout that was in hurry at work typing it all out.home now well im building it for storage all round house,and streaming to all ps3 and wireless hd tvs in here, plus hosting a local lan party on weekends, i looked into a evga SR-X but from what iv heard its a horror story heart attack waiting to happen just to make it boot,and show all ram you put in. Ill only have about 12 ppl on server for the lan and theyd all be within 50 ft of server. As for storage i will use raid 1 or 5 once i get enough demand, just wanted to know if parts iv chosen would be decent enough, plus i chose i7 4770k for overclocking down road.

 

[choucove]

For storage, if you want performance (and importantly, protection for all that data) then you want to have a dedicated RAID controller. Many times I've seen onboard software SATA RAID controllers fail and its not pretty. Some of your hardware selections are way over the top for what you need, and I'd say you would be better off cutting some of it back (such as 16 GB of RAM and perhaps a 4670K processor) and invest in a decent hardware RAID controller. Also, while the WD Red drive work great in NAS for simple file storage and sharing, they aren't performance drives by any means. If you are wanting to stream to multiple connections, and want continuous responsive performance, I'd suggest going with WD Black or even WD RE4 hard drives for your storage. Better quality and overall performance for the type of connections you are looking at. And finally, when you do look into RAID, I would not recommend RAID 5. There are HUGE articles throughout the internet discussing the advantages and disadvantages of RAID 5, but if you're looking for recoverability, performance, and simplicity stick with either RAID 1 or RAID 10 for the best performance. Yes, this does mean that you will lose some capacity by using RAID 10 over RAID 5, but you will also gain greater performance and fault tolerance, and it is less system resource intensive as RAID 5.

 

[Shadowarez]

Thank you for the quick reply and great suggestions.