Hello,
data storage at my home is a mess and I decided I need a big storage, HDD failure proof solution. Since I like to tinker with PC hardware I decided to build a NAS myself. I guess you've heard that story a thousand times before...
So first of all here's what I need, what I do, what kind of data I have:
My guess the only thing with which I could cut down the price a bit is using a less powerful CPU with a similar board, but in the end that will not make that much of a difference because the two HDDs, the two (soon another two) RAM modules, the case and the PSU make up a huge amount of the end price, too. I thought about maybe an Atom-based CPU-soldered-to-Mainboard server, but how bad is the performance drop of an Atom C26itwas? compared to Xeon E3 12xx v3? I guess in some use cases it's quite massive, isn't it? No fun in the long run, right? Since I can imagine myself using the hardware for something else in a few years, maybe.
Then there's another minor issue I initally had with my setup: it being Haswell. Compared to Ivy Bridge there doesn't seem to be that much advantages, well, except when the CPU is doing less. Oh well the chipset is supposed to consume less power. The difference in the end price is about 60€ (Intel Xeon E3-1230 v2 + Supermicro X9SCM-F). In the end I don't really care, so I chose the newer option. But any thought on that?
Now what's up with Opterons or Athlons even?
Really, what's going on there? I tried hard to put together a system based on AMD because of cost, but it was much more difficult to do that and I gave up. It was harder to get information about the chipsets and CPUs, the options available in retail are fewer and I would probably have ended up with a desktop grade mainboard. Why is it so much harder to assemble an AMD based system? Ready made 19"-systems for a few thousand bucks, that's not a problem to get, but if you want a single CPU small office type server with AMD I somehow always ended up with "high-performance" desktop hardware. But if someone has a good enough alternative based on AMD technology, please share! To be honest I pretty much decided on Xeon now, but out of curiosity I still want to know what's going on with AMD.
Oh, then one last question: One of the Seagate hard drives I want to use for the NAS is still full, and all my backup space is already full, too (I know that's bad, but you have to understand that most of the stuff on my backup isn't really backup worthy, it just sits there because I had no other space for it to go! Hence the NAS build.) Now I have some less than 3TB harddrive which is empty laying around somewhere for sure. So my idea to get this data off that last 3TB drive in order to add it to the RAIDZ2 in the end is to create the vdev with the other empty 3TB harddrives and with an old 750GB-1TB drive as the sixth drive. Then copy the data from the not-empty 3TB Seagte to the RAIDZ2 and then replace the sixth low capacity temp drive with that same Seagate drive and thus expand the RAIDZ2 to its full capacity. Would that work out well? How long can I expect for the refurbishing(?) to take? Is there any difference between a mint 6x3TB RAIDZ2 and one that was expanded from 6x1TB to 6x3TB? I guess from all what I've heard about ZFS there absolutely shouldn't be.
data storage at my home is a mess and I decided I need a big storage, HDD failure proof solution. Since I like to tinker with PC hardware I decided to build a NAS myself. I guess you've heard that story a thousand times before...
So first of all here's what I need, what I do, what kind of data I have:
- My data is mostly ~80% huge media files, average file size 1-16 GB
- Then there's a 30k file music library, average file size about 20-40MB
- Apart from that it's just the usual clutter of personal files, downloaded software, documents, cat images, ...
- I don't really need high performance reads and writes, although substantially less than desktop file performance would be quite a downer
- Oh, I intend to use encryption at the NAS level, I thought about using iSCSI and encrypt on my desktop via Truecrypt, which would have the benefit that the the server hardware and home network will never see any plaintext, but I ultimately plan on using the NAS as a media server, too, and my desktop CPU has no AES(-NI) support and I really want to thin my desktop down as much as possible and make it quiet after the NAS built. So encryption has to be handeld by the NAS.
- 2x 3TB Western Digital Red (new), 2x 3TB Western Digital Red (already bought them, now collecting dust), 2x 3TB Seagate Barracuda (already owned these for some time) - I've chosen the 3TB WD Reds because 3TB have the best value for money at the moment, I already own two 3TB drives, which limit the RAIDZ2 anyway and I really don't want to buy 6 over-priced 4TB drives at once. WD Red because IMHO the supposed extra reliablity and 24/7 capability is worth the money. 12TB or whatver I get out of them with RAIDZ2 is enough.
- Intel Xeon E3-1230 v3 (4x3.3GHz, AES-NI, HT,...) - I figured because of the HyperThreading and the fact that the price difference to the 1220 isn't that huge anyway. The 8 threads might get handy if I decide to repurpose the server after some years or make use of some of the FreeNAS extra packages. More GHz? I don't really think I need that, do I?
- Supermicro X10SLH-F - the bestprice finder site somehow narrowed it down to this board
- 2x Kingston ValueRAM Elpida DIMM 8GB, DDR3L-1600, CL11, ECC (KVR16LE11/8EF) - I'm probably going to buy another pair a few weeks later once the system is running and I have fresh cash, also they are low voltage, the mainboard supports that... good idea? difference in price is not worth mentioning
- be quiet! Straight Power E9 400W ATX 2.4 - it says it supports Haswell power saving modes, woohoo! uh, do I need that?
- Fractal Design Define R4 Black Pearl - no I didn't get the idea to buy Fractal Design from this forum, I promise... ;)
My guess the only thing with which I could cut down the price a bit is using a less powerful CPU with a similar board, but in the end that will not make that much of a difference because the two HDDs, the two (soon another two) RAM modules, the case and the PSU make up a huge amount of the end price, too. I thought about maybe an Atom-based CPU-soldered-to-Mainboard server, but how bad is the performance drop of an Atom C26itwas? compared to Xeon E3 12xx v3? I guess in some use cases it's quite massive, isn't it? No fun in the long run, right? Since I can imagine myself using the hardware for something else in a few years, maybe.
Then there's another minor issue I initally had with my setup: it being Haswell. Compared to Ivy Bridge there doesn't seem to be that much advantages, well, except when the CPU is doing less. Oh well the chipset is supposed to consume less power. The difference in the end price is about 60€ (Intel Xeon E3-1230 v2 + Supermicro X9SCM-F). In the end I don't really care, so I chose the newer option. But any thought on that?
Now what's up with Opterons or Athlons even?
Really, what's going on there? I tried hard to put together a system based on AMD because of cost, but it was much more difficult to do that and I gave up. It was harder to get information about the chipsets and CPUs, the options available in retail are fewer and I would probably have ended up with a desktop grade mainboard. Why is it so much harder to assemble an AMD based system? Ready made 19"-systems for a few thousand bucks, that's not a problem to get, but if you want a single CPU small office type server with AMD I somehow always ended up with "high-performance" desktop hardware. But if someone has a good enough alternative based on AMD technology, please share! To be honest I pretty much decided on Xeon now, but out of curiosity I still want to know what's going on with AMD.
Oh, then one last question: One of the Seagate hard drives I want to use for the NAS is still full, and all my backup space is already full, too (I know that's bad, but you have to understand that most of the stuff on my backup isn't really backup worthy, it just sits there because I had no other space for it to go! Hence the NAS build.) Now I have some less than 3TB harddrive which is empty laying around somewhere for sure. So my idea to get this data off that last 3TB drive in order to add it to the RAIDZ2 in the end is to create the vdev with the other empty 3TB harddrives and with an old 750GB-1TB drive as the sixth drive. Then copy the data from the not-empty 3TB Seagte to the RAIDZ2 and then replace the sixth low capacity temp drive with that same Seagate drive and thus expand the RAIDZ2 to its full capacity. Would that work out well? How long can I expect for the refurbishing(?) to take? Is there any difference between a mint 6x3TB RAIDZ2 and one that was expanded from 6x1TB to 6x3TB? I guess from all what I've heard about ZFS there absolutely shouldn't be.