First build NAS

[zippy2023]

I've built many rigs before, mostly windows boxes although I've set up fedora servers for my work as well. I'd put my level of linux expertise at below mediocre.

My friend asked me to help her with storage for her photography business and at most two pc's will need to access the data but for the most part it will be single pc connection. I have settled on Openfiler over the other NAS OS alternatives and I feel like the following parts will satisfy those needs.

mobo:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813153212

ram:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820148191

case:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811148001

hard drives: (x4)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148681

power supply:
http://www.amazon.com/picoPSU-150-XT-102W-Adapter-Cyncronix-Rating/dp/B00316TM22

pci bracket:
http://www.mini-box.com/s.nl/it.A/id.438/.f

power supply cover:
http://www.mountainmods.com/mountain-mods-acrylic-power-supply-cover-plate-p-428.html

Total with shipping is just under $700.00

Does anything look completely unworkable? I'm not looking for replacement suggestions or comments like, "don't do it that way use a hardware controller" or "it would be so much faster if", just yes or no will this function. Once that is answered I can consider other issues. Keep in mind this isn't going to be streaming 720p and what have you, just serving photography files to lightroom which will be backed up offsite.

 

[GhislainG]

Your links don't work. Could you identify each part?

 

[zippy2023]

Your links don't work. Could you identify each part?

Not sure how i fracked that up the first time but i edited and tested the links, should work now.


Just in case here are verbose headers:

JetWay JNF99FL-525-LF Intel Atom D525 (1.8GHz, Dual-Core) Mini ITX Motherboard/CPU Combo

Crucial 4GB (2 x 2GB) 204-Pin DDR3 SO-DIMM DDR3 1066 (PC3 8500) Dual Channel Kit Laptop Memory Model CT2KIT25664BC1067

Seagate Barracuda Green ST2000DL003 2TB 5900 RPM SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

LOGISYS Computer CS888CL Transparent Clear Acrylic ATX Mid Tower Computer Case Pre-Assembled

picoPSU-150-XT + 102W Adapter Power Kit Cyncronix

 

[GhislainG]

As long as you're sure that you can fit the mini ITX motherboard in that ATX case, then it should be fine. I don't understand why you're not using a standard ATX PSU as it would be much easier and as efficient.

 

[zippy2023]

As long as you're sure that you can fit the mini ITX motherboard in that ATX case, then it should be fine. I don't understand why you're not using a standard ATX PSU as it would be much easier and as efficient.

Ah, thank you on the case I should double check that.

As for the standard atx psu do you know of any around 100W? There weren't any popping out on searches except for others doing builds like these and claiming that its much better to get a noiseless low watt psu.

"It's important to match the capacity of a power supply to the power needs of the computer. The energy efficiency of power supplies drops significantly at low loads. Efficiency generally peaks at about 50–75% load. " Source below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power_supply_unit_%28computer%29

So it sounds like using a 300W certified psu in a case where the system might use 25-75W is a bad idea as far as effeciency.

 

[cadder]

1. PSU priority is getting a good brand that will last, since you are probably running it 24/7.

2. I bought a 2TB drive recently and after studying the feedback ratings of various brands I picked a Samsung. (Generally I prefer WD.)

3. How are you configuring the drives? Are you going with a form of RAID?

 

[zippy2023]

1. I steered towards the picopsu brand for the reason that people seem to have good results with it on 24/7 machines of this nature. If anyone has alternatives or bad reviews that I haven't run into with picopsu I would appreciate any info.

2. I had a hard time settling on drives. It seems any option has people reporting high failure rates when buying multiple drives, like buying 20 and having 8 fail. The only thing I've seen that seems to reduce failure is getting enterprise class drives but those seem to be twice the cost. I finally settled on babying this along for the first month and rma'ing any failed drives along the way. The upsetting part is people are reporting that newegg charges for the shipping on rma so that savings might go out the window with bad enough luck.

3. Software raid5 from the OS. I'm unfamiliar with tweaking the settings on the drives but I recall people saying that you can increase performance with a few simple things.

 

[GhislainG]

You don't necessarily need a 100W PSU. As long as you get a quality ATX PSU like the SPARKLE 80+ GREEN 250 R-SPI250EP, then it will be efficient and it fits an ATX case properly. This PSU would be at least 80% efficient between 50 watts and 200 watts. Even if it only was 70% efficient at 25 watts, that isn't significant. A 250W 80+ PSU probably is more efficient than the picoPSU-150-XT which isn't rated.

 

[cadder]

2. I had a hard time settling on drives. It seems any option has people reporting high failure rates when buying multiple drives, like buying 20 and having 8 fail.

ALL drives can fail. I read the feedback on newegg and pick the drive that I feel most comfortable with, and then make sure everything is backed up. Even though the last 14 or so drives that I've bought were WD, when I researched 2TB drives I decided to buy a Samsung for that.

The funny thing is that you can read the feedback for drive brand X and someone will say that they bought one and it failed, and they were going back to drive brand Y because those never failed. Then you read the feedback for drive brand Y and someone will say almost the exact same thing, and that they are going back to drive brand X because those never failed.

I'm unfamiliar with tweaking the settings on the drives but I recall people saying that you can increase performance with a few simple things.

I'm not sure why you would need to increase performance of the drives themselves. Running software RAID on an Atom will probably be the limiting factor anyway.

 

[singemagique]

All your components should work together, but at $68 for the PSU I would look at this:

Corsair CX430 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139026

If you want an ITX case with room for drives and the ability to fit an ATX PSU, this is one of the best in my opinion:

Lian Li PC-Q08 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112265

Even if it only was 70% efficient at 25 watts, that isn't significant. A 250W 80+ PSU probably is more efficient than the picoPSU-150-XT which isn't rated.

I completely agree.

 

[nordlead]

You don't necessarily need a 100W PSU. As long as you get a quality ATX PSU like the SPARKLE 80+ GREEN 250 R-SPI250EP, then it will be efficient and it fits an ATX case properly. This PSU would be at least 80% efficient between 50 watts and 200 watts. Even if it only was 70% efficient at 25 watts, that isn't significant. A 250W 80+ PSU probably is more efficient than the picoPSU-150-XT which isn't rated.

The Pico PSU is like 98% efficient because the majority of the power is passed through at 100% efficiency (12v in 12v out). However, the overall efficiency depends on the AC/DC converter used (unless you are actually hooking up to a DC supply like in a car) It is a great little PSU, but the only downside is you are going to need a lot of splitters since it has like 2 sata connectors.

@OP
As for the inital build it is very much like my file server than serves HD content so it would work for what you want to do. Mine is actually mounted in an old ATX Full Tower from the early 90's with a 250W PSU stripped from an old dell office computer. I've measured the at wall power usage and it draws ~30W at idle despite the PSU not being 80+ certified. It's ugly but it does its job. A few comments though.

You don't need 4GB RAM, you only need 1GB (which is what I'm using). I'd buy whatever is the cheapest thing you can find.

Gigabyte has a D525 board for $100 with 4 sata connectors and a IDE connector. You can support 4 disks plus an 8GB CF to IDE for the OS disk. It doesn't support hardware raid 5 though. If you need more disks in the future it has a single PCIe x16 slot. This is the board I'm using.

You should have an OS drive, so you can have all the data and OS/programs separate. If something happens to the OS it will make recovery easier. You can use anything cheap that has at least 2GB of space (my Ubuntu server and programs take 1.83GB), but I'd get something that has at least 8GB of space. If you have a 2GB USB stick laying around you could even use that.

For harddrives the only ones I'd stay away form are the Western Digital Caviar Green drives. I have them and they will kill themselves in linux unless you do something about it. My solution was to write a script that monitored the drives and if they weren't accessed I'd use hdparm -Y to put them to sleep.

Also, personally I wouldn't RAID 5. Mostly because you already have offsite backup and I don't trust RAID 5 to make it through a rebuild of a 6TB array. There is a decent chance of a second disk failure or a read error. Also, odds are you are going to buy 4 identical HDDs at the same time from the same source, meaning they could all fail really close together. If you do build a RAID 5, I suggest buying drives from different manufacturers/models that are all the same speed and capacity to reduce the risk of multiple disk failure in a short time-span. If, however, you are worried about business downtime you may want to consider RAID 1+0 with 6 disks. A bit more expensive, but more reliable than RAID 5 since up to 3 drives could fail and you only have to rebuild 2TB at a time instead of 6.

EDIT: if you care about power efficiency, a 1W difference would save me $1.37/year with a 24/7 system at my current average rate. I live in NY (not the city) where electricity is expensive ($0.156/kWh). It is a lot easier to save money by having the system turn itself off at night and automatically power itself on in the morning. Even if it is off for only 8hr/day that would lead to a 33% reduction in energy use.

 

[cadder]

You should have an OS drive, so you can have all the data and OS/programs separate. If something happens to the OS it will make recovery easier. You can use anything cheap that has at least 2GB of space (my Ubuntu server and programs take 1.83GB), but I'd get something that has at least 8GB of space. If you have a 2GB USB stick laying around you could even use that.

Being a photography business, they might have some spare CF cards laying around. I've seen IDE adapters that plug into a mobo then you plug in your CF card and it functions like a mini-SSD for the OS. I've been tempted to try something like that for our Linux server.

I don't trust RAID 5 to make it through a rebuild of a 6TB array.

meaning they could all fail really close together

I've thought about this quite a bit myself and I wonder if rebuilding an array is the proper strategy. I would think that if you buy 4 drives and build an array, if one of the drives fails then you immediately build another new array from brand new drives. If you bought one new drive and were able to rebuild the array, then you would still be running 3 drives that might be near the end of their lifespan. I think the first time you detect an issue with the RAID you transition to new hardware as quickly as possible.

We have a simple Linux server in our office. Its drive recently failed and it took us a couple of days to get a new drive installed and restore our data to it. I'm thinking about building a new server to replace it, and I'm thinking about a strategy to get back up and running as fast as possible if this one has a failure. Worst case I have even thought about building 2 identical servers, copy the OS and configuration from one to the other, have it sitting on the shelf ready to go. The first time one has a problem, plug the other one in its place, restore our data, and go.

 

[nordlead]

Being a photography business, they might have some spare CF cards laying around. I've seen IDE adapters that plug into a mobo then you plug in your CF card and it functions like a mini-SSD for the OS. I've been tempted to try something like that for our Linux server.

Yea, I sorta suggested that in my post. I have this]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822998003]this adapter setup[/url] for my file/backup server and it works great. I've never benchmarked it, but I do know it doesn't take much power and it was cheaper than any SSD available.

 

[zippy2023]

Thanks for all the good info in this thread. I chose the ram because it was under $30 and I don't think there were many options let alone cheaper ones for going lower, ram is cheap i guess.

After looking at FreeNAS again I've become a convert, I don't think many people are still using openfiler anymore so I'd rather use something that more people are likely to be discussing.

I liked this video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5S8ixAR4Opo

Most of the boards I've looked at had an onboard usb and I was planning on using a spare 8gb flash drive. I have a few of them so I figured it would be good to clone it in case of catastrophe so I can just plug in the clone if there are any OS issues. I hope that is a good idea.

 

[zippy2023]

A flood in the east has shut down hard drive manufacturing causing a spike in hdd prices, what was once $80 for 2TB is now much more :/

In the mean time, I built a NAS out of spare parts to get my friend comfortable using it before pulling the trigger on the full blown solution, FreeNAS has been very satisfying (I did try openfiler as well and went immediately back to FN). The apple laptop and the windows workstation both manipulate data with ease and operate at decent speeds.

I do like the idea of raid 10 that someone suggested earlier, right now the 'practice' nas has a single 1tb drive so no raid is necessary and there are no plans to operate this box for more than a month. I believe we'll plan on purchasing 2tb or 3tb drives in pairs and striping future pairs in the mix for raid 10.

If the needs ever arises for more than 6TB of space I think port multiplying raid 50 will be the plan. I did come across a nice port multiplier for ~$200 that will allow for raid 10 (w/spare) or 50 that others have had success with in 24/7 situation.
http://www.datoptic.com/esata-hardware-raid-controller-spm394.html

All in all I'm quite impressed with the number of options out there.

 

[zippy2023]

I am still very pleased with the performance and no downtime of a hastily put together rig, it is working well. Recently I've been looking at more options than just atom setups for the eventual replacement, here is a celeron dual core setup that should be both quiet and affordable.

380W certified psu (price was excellent)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371033

lga 1155 with usb 3.0
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813121503

4g ram (cheap)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231396

sandy bridge dual core celeron
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116409

quiet proc fan
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835207009

quiet case fan
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16835185056

8gb ssd
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139427

I believe the total here is on par with the atom setup I listed $286 before shipping (although no case or storage hdds, these have already been purchased)

 

[FireWire2]

... I did come across a nice port multiplier for ~$200 that will allow for raid 10 (w/spare) or 50 that others have had success with in 24/7 situation.
http://www.datoptic.com/esata-hardware-raid-controller-spm394.html

All in all I'm quite impressed with the number of options out there.

If you use this hardware raid controller use it as RAID5, for more reliable then set as RAID5+HS

It fast the very reliable - here is the video of SPM394 behaves when a DRIVE remove from the existing raid.

http://vimeo.com/29501754

 

[thtguy]

I would not use Green drives for a constantly running storage device. Spend the extra and use Enterprise class SATAs they have a greater Mean time for failure. They are designed to run all the time

 

[FireWire2]

LOL.. That is what the HDD manufacture wants you to believe... The extra you are mention is more double the cost

Example: Seagate enterprise 2tb is $429.00, where Desktop Green @ $119.00. That is a chunk of change

Just to prove my point. Here 20x WD green HDD in the NAS I built for my client. It runs over 2 years
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/265641-32-40tb-server-performance-issue