Building a NAS from scratch – for use with backups and media storage

[Oliver Joseph Ash]

I have a MacBook Air, which has a 128GB SSD. Currently, I backup my Air to an external hard drive with Time Machine. However, I have several Aperture photo libraries on my hardware as well, which also need to be backed up to a separate physical drive. Enter NAS.

I am considering building my own NAS. I need to be able to store media, backup my Air, and also backup my media. I’m not very good with hardware (better with software) so I would like advice on this. I’m not too bothered about size, but I am bothered about power consumption. Some of the NASs on the market run at below 20 watts. Is this achievable with a custom built NAS?

What setup do you suggest for backing up my Air (presumably with Time Machine), storing media, and backing up that media (presumably not with Time Machine)? I have in mind a small HDD for backing up my Air (~128GB), and then from there on, a RAID 1 setup – to begin with, perhaps 2x 1TB HDD. This is where my media (photos, music, etc.) would go, and I think I’m right in saying that RAID 1 will mirror this, so if one physical drive fails, I don’t lose any data.

To throw another spanner into the works, in the future I may be looking to run my own web server. I understand that this will require a different kind of OS. If I wanted to have the NAS described above and an Apache web server, what setup would I need then? This is the least important question I have, and would prefer an optimal setup for the above over this.

 

[JaimieV]

It's tricky to build a NAS below 20W without custom hardware, but something like an HP Microserver hovers around the 32W level with one disk in (~5W per additional 3.5" disk). You may do better with an Atom mobo and a selfbuild, but it'll cost a fair bit more.

Use Time Machine, definitely, for the internal disk - I backup all my Macs to the FreeNAS that way.
Use Aperture's library handling to keep a NAS library up to date as well as the local one.

You can add a webserver to the FreeNAS using jails, if you like.

 

[Oliver Joseph Ash]

It's tricky to build a NAS below 20W without custom hardware, but something like an HP Microserver hovers around the 32W level with one disk in (~5W per additional 3.5" disk). You may do better with an Atom mobo and a selfbuild, but it'll cost a fair bit more.

Use Time Machine, definitely, for the internal disk - I backup all my Macs to the FreeNAS that way.
Use Aperture's library handling to keep a NAS library up to date as well as the local one.

You can add a webserver to the FreeNAS using jails, if you like.

I guess I am looking for a balance between price, power consumption, and speed.

What do you think to my proposed backup solution? One HDD for Time Machine backups, and then from there onwards, RAID setups for media storage. Will FreeNAS allow me to do it that way? Can you think of any better ways of storing media and backing it up, alongside my Mac backups?

Thanks for your swift reply!

 

[joeschmuck]

FreeNAS will allow you to have a mixture of RAIDZ and single drives and it's very easy to do. As for having a raid for media over having a single drive for time machine, I can't answer if that is a sound decision.

Creating a machine that does this and consumes 20 watts or about that, naw, I don't think so. My system while idle pulled just under 40 watts but runs at ~60 watts while in use. If you need speed, a little more CPU power will help out. Ensure you have at least 8GB RAM, more RAM = Better Performance. I wish I had 16GB or RAM but my MB doesn't support it. Also don't skimp on the power supply, a cheap power supply can cause all kinds of problems and you will be looking at other components because they fail but it's really just poor power.

 

[JaimieV]

Yes, your suggestion for TM going on a single disk (or stripe set), while real storage is RAIDZ'ed will work fine. Easily done within the GUI.

But always remember that RAID is not backup, and you still need to have somewhere for your media storage to be backed up to if you care about losing it.

 

[BobCochran]

I think you are on the right track here. You want to get the most performance out of the box. So the box does multiple things: NAS, a web server, and it wouldn't hurt to also do some other things -- things that will occur to you over time as opportunity knocks. In other words, you correctly see that your needs will grow over time. In general, if you have a business interest in the data and see a payback from it, then storage becomes worth the investment. If that is your situation then like Joeschmuck says, you would do better to have quality hardware and a lot of memory.

With all that said, maybe I ought to put a Kill-A-Watt meter on my server just to see how much power it is really drawing. It will be interesting to profile the power usage over time.

Bob

 

[Oliver Joseph Ash]

I’ve nailed it down to this hardware for price and efficiency: http://pcpartpicker.com/uk/p/mlFA

I could get a cheaper CPU. However, I’m not sure what cache I need. Does CPU cache matter for my needs? I can save money by getting a 1.5MB cache instead of 3MB. Will any of this bottleneck I/O speeds to the hard drives? I’ve put together a cheaper build with a lower performance CPU: http://pcpartpicker.com/uk/p/mlMG

 

[joeschmuck]

I’ve nailed it down to this hardware for price and efficiency: http://pcpartpicker.com/uk/p/mlFA

I could get a cheaper CPU. However, I’m not sure what cache I need. Does CPU cache matter for my needs? I can save money by getting a 1.5MB cache instead of 3MB. Will any of this bottleneck I/O speeds to the hard drives? I’ve put together a cheaper build with a lower performance CPU: http://pcpartpicker.com/uk/p/mlMG

I have a few comments for you:

1) Great job of the power supply, this is a very good one.

2) CPU choice is great too, 35W will help out a lot. But most boxed CPUs from Intel do not com with a CPU fan these days so you need to find out if you need to buy a separate fan or not. Ensure you have a good CPU fan that is compatible with your case.

3) Your RAM is only 4GB total, you need to bump this up to 8GB minimum but since your MB can handle 16GB you should seriously look at buying that amount (RAM is cheap) as that will give you the best performance for your money. It doesn't need to be the fastest RAM, just the amount is going to give you a huge benefit plus if you are using onboard video then that takes away from your 4GB RAM and leaves you with less. Also when you do purchase two more drives or just larger drives, you have enough RAM to support them properly. And let me add this last bit of information, you wouldn't need the 2GB of swap space on each hard drive thus making drive replacement very easy due to failure (or you just pulling one), and it frees up all your drive for your storage.

4) You should investigate the LAN controller on the MB, is it also Intel? If so then you will have a fire breathing machine.

 

[Oliver Joseph Ash]

I have a few comments for you:

1) Great job of the power supply, this is a very good one.

2) CPU choice is great too, 35W will help out a lot. But most boxed CPUs from Intel do not com with a CPU fan these days so you need to find out if you need to buy a separate fan or not. Ensure you have a good CPU fan that is compatible with your case.

3) Your RAM is only 4GB total, you need to bump this up to 8GB minimum but since your MB can handle 16GB you should seriously look at buying that amount (RAM is cheap) as that will give you the best performance for your money. It doesn't need to be the fastest RAM, just the amount is going to give you a huge benefit plus if you are using onboard video then that takes away from your 4GB RAM and leaves you with less. Also when you do purchase two more drives or just larger drives, you have enough RAM to support them properly. And let me add this last bit of information, you wouldn't need the 2GB of swap space on each hard drive thus making drive replacement very easy due to failure (or you just pulling one), and it frees up all your drive for your storage.

4) You should investigate the LAN controller on the MB, is it also Intel? If so then you will have a fire breathing machine.

Thanks for your feedback!

1) Do you think I should opt for the Pentium (first link) over the Celeron? It’s more money, but has a bigger cache and slightly better clock speed – I’m just not sure if I need that extra power for my needs, which are pretty basic. Both of the CPUs come with a fan!

2) Are you saying that, with 4GB of RAM, FreeNAS will require 2GB of swap space on each hard drive, and opting for 8GB will avoid this? I went for 4GB because my needs are pretty basic (1/1.5TB RAID 1), and I’m trying to save on power consumption.

3) What do you mean about the LAN controller?

 

[Oliver Joseph Ash]

4) You should investigate the LAN controller on the MB, is it also Intel? If so then you will have a fire breathing machine.

"Supports one PCI Express LAN 10/100/1000 Fast Ethernet by Realtek 8111E."

 

[joeschmuck]

"Supports one PCI Express LAN 10/100/1000 Fast Ethernet by Realtek 8111E."

You should do a search on this forum for that NIC but I have a Realtek and it works fine but some versions will not pass the entire 1Gbit throughput but they come close. Someone else might be able to chime in here. If you have a PCI slot on that MB you could add an Intel NIC later if you like, cost is about $20.00 US from what I've seen.

 

[Oliver Joseph Ash]

You should do a search on this forum for that NIC but I have a Realtek and it works fine but some versions will not pass the entire 1Gbit throughput but they come close. Someone else might be able to chime in here. If you have a PCI slot on that MB you could add an Intel NIC later if you like, cost is about $20.00 US from what I've seen.

Cool! Thanks. I think I’ll be inserting a PCI-E Wireless Card anyway.

 

[JaimieV]

... if you're going to be connecting the NAS to the network by wireless, you don't need a fast machine! The wifi will be the rate limiting step.

 

[joeschmuck]

... if you're going to be connecting the NAS to the network by wireless, you don't need a fast machine! The wifi will be the rate limiting step.

I agree, wireless will be slowing things down considerably. You can get away with a nice small Atom based system if you want.

 

[Saeed A Siddiki]

this is coming from a NEWBEE but here is a config i find working very well so far - only 2 months old - still figureing out PHYSICAL HARD Drves vs teh FREENAS allocation of

Corsair Obsidian Series Black 650D Mid Tower Computer Case (CC650DW-1)
MSI Z68A-G43 (G3)- LGA1155 Intel Z68 Express Chipset ATX Desktop Motherboard Core i7/i5/i3 SATA300/600 DDR3 USB3.0 CrossFireX 7.1CH Audio
Syba SD-SATA-4P Serial ATA150 4x Ports RAID Controller Card with SIL3114 Chipset - Retail x 2
Crucial Ballistix Sport 16GB kit (8GBx2) DDR3-1600 1.5V 240-Pin UDIMM BLS2CP8G3D1609DS1S00
Cooler Master Silent Pro Gold (SPG) 1200 Watts Modular Power Supply
Syba SY-CAB40007 Molex 4 Pin to 2x 15 Pin SATA Power Cable (5.5 Inches) x 4
SilverStone CFP52B 5.25-Inch to 3.5-Inch Bay Converter with Hot-Swappable Function (Black)
Silverstone Tek Four-in-One SATA Power Connectors with Power Stabilizing Capacitors (CP06)
Intel Core i3-2120 Dual-Core Processor 3.3 GHz 3 MB Cache LGA 1155 - BX80623I32120


The hard drives are the regular run of the mill in these capacities - green drives and one WD Blue Drive:

4 X 1TB * = *4
3X 2TB*= *6
2X 3TB *= *6
1X * 750GB = *750 GB *

working mainly around AFP and Mac household

 

[ProtoSD]

Cool! Thanks. I think I’ll be inserting a PCI-E Wireless Card anyway.

That will be kind of pointless since FreeNAS doesn't support wireless NICs.

 

[cyberjock]

Come on Saeed. 5 or 6 threads for the same question? I lost count you had so many...