Hey guys,
I've been jumping around this site and a few others trying to piece together a NAS that will run well with FreeNAS. I think I am zeroing in on a solution but have some questions and am looking for any improvements you might spot.
First my NAS use:
I use this is my personal recording studio to backup and store and work on files from applications such as Logic in real time. I also have a portion of my NAS dedicated for my family storage and backup. At any given time there might be up to 3 users on at once. My current NAS is 8 bays. It was in Raid 10 but changed it to a JBOD because I needed more storage. I am wanting to go back to Raid 10 the JBOD was just a temp solution.
Space is an issue for me - I'd rather have a tall tower than a rackmount unit. I had been shopping for a rackmount 16 or 24 bay. It's hard to overlook how cheap some of them are on ebay like this one:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/SuperMicro-...767325?hash=item56840f10dd:g:LcQAAOSwoudW8zbO
I don't have the horizontal space for the case however. So I've been looking into some tower mods. My thought is to go with a E-ATX case like the CM Storm Stryker starting with 2 of these case mods to add 24 drive bays.
I thought about 3.5" vs 2.5" drives and after some reading I'm not really seeing the downsides to 2.5" drives that you used to see. The failure rates seem to have evened out and if I can get more drives in less space that's gold for me. Assuming I can keep them all cool. Having said that I have also read the 2.5" drives put off less heat.
This case solution would give me 24 bays with the easy ability to go to 36 if I ever needed.
So now the hardware:
For HDD's I'm looking at WD Scorpio Black 320gb drives which seem to go for about $20 a drive
I have 48gb of hynix ecc ddr3 RAM that I will utilize in this build.
For CPU I'm planning on going with the 1366 chipset the bang for the buck is great and I have a bunch laying around. I have 2 matching x5520's that I think will do the job.
For the motherboard I plan on going supermicro:
SUPERMICRO MBD-X8DAH+-F-O
SuperMicro Motherboard X8DTI-F
SuperMicro X8DTE
Most likely one of the three above.
For HBA's I thought about the IBM 1015's.
So here are the questions/discussions I am after:
-So what should or could I do differently?
-2.5" vs 3.5" for NAS - Pro and Cons
-If I can buy a NAS like this off ebay does it make sense to ditch the case and use the mobo and HBA cards? As well as CPU's and cabling. It seems like adding it up just the HBA's in that machine and MOBO come to $250. Is it foolish to do such a thing or not a bad idea to save on expenses?
-Would such HBA's as the AOC-SASLP-MV8 work with FreeNAS?
-Any additional guidance and input is greatly appreciated. This is the first NAS I've built but been in IT for a while just trying to plan this out the best I can before investing.
Thanks,
Kevin
I've been jumping around this site and a few others trying to piece together a NAS that will run well with FreeNAS. I think I am zeroing in on a solution but have some questions and am looking for any improvements you might spot.
First my NAS use:
I use this is my personal recording studio to backup and store and work on files from applications such as Logic in real time. I also have a portion of my NAS dedicated for my family storage and backup. At any given time there might be up to 3 users on at once. My current NAS is 8 bays. It was in Raid 10 but changed it to a JBOD because I needed more storage. I am wanting to go back to Raid 10 the JBOD was just a temp solution.
Space is an issue for me - I'd rather have a tall tower than a rackmount unit. I had been shopping for a rackmount 16 or 24 bay. It's hard to overlook how cheap some of them are on ebay like this one:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/SuperMicro-...767325?hash=item56840f10dd:g:LcQAAOSwoudW8zbO
I don't have the horizontal space for the case however. So I've been looking into some tower mods. My thought is to go with a E-ATX case like the CM Storm Stryker starting with 2 of these case mods to add 24 drive bays.
I thought about 3.5" vs 2.5" drives and after some reading I'm not really seeing the downsides to 2.5" drives that you used to see. The failure rates seem to have evened out and if I can get more drives in less space that's gold for me. Assuming I can keep them all cool. Having said that I have also read the 2.5" drives put off less heat.
This case solution would give me 24 bays with the easy ability to go to 36 if I ever needed.
So now the hardware:
For HDD's I'm looking at WD Scorpio Black 320gb drives which seem to go for about $20 a drive
I have 48gb of hynix ecc ddr3 RAM that I will utilize in this build.
For CPU I'm planning on going with the 1366 chipset the bang for the buck is great and I have a bunch laying around. I have 2 matching x5520's that I think will do the job.
For the motherboard I plan on going supermicro:
SUPERMICRO MBD-X8DAH+-F-O
SuperMicro Motherboard X8DTI-F
SuperMicro X8DTE
Most likely one of the three above.
For HBA's I thought about the IBM 1015's.
So here are the questions/discussions I am after:
-So what should or could I do differently?
-2.5" vs 3.5" for NAS - Pro and Cons
-If I can buy a NAS like this off ebay does it make sense to ditch the case and use the mobo and HBA cards? As well as CPU's and cabling. It seems like adding it up just the HBA's in that machine and MOBO come to $250. Is it foolish to do such a thing or not a bad idea to save on expenses?
-Would such HBA's as the AOC-SASLP-MV8 work with FreeNAS?
-Any additional guidance and input is greatly appreciated. This is the first NAS I've built but been in IT for a while just trying to plan this out the best I can before investing.
Thanks,
Kevin