Upgrade of home NAS

[adamthekiwi]

Hi folks,

First up, my apologies if this is being posted in the wrong forum - wasn't sure if it was better here or Help & Support/Hardware...

So, many years ago (before FreeNAS was forked) I set up a small home NAS. At the time, there was less information around, my choices were constrained too and my research wasn't as good as it could have been (I found out some stuff after committing); the end result was a small NAS with some pretty serious compromises (an Atom board, only 4GB of non-ECC memory...) but I've been putting off upgrading it for a variety of reasons. Still, it has served my purposes (a small home NAS) very well and has remained un-upgraded and working without intervention since about 2012. For info, I'm in the UK.

The time for an upgrade has come, though, so that's what I'm planning on doing. Originally, I was planning to retire the current hardware to be a back-up, but I think I'm going to use the guts of the old box as a media PC instead. I'm quite taken with the idea of having a second, cheaper box as a backup server, though, so I'm planning on grabbing some cheap components, scavenging the SAS controller, PSU and possibly the drives, putting them in a cheap case somewhere out of the way, probably in the loft, and using Wake-on-LAN to bring it up once a week and take a backup, then go back to sleep. Does that seem like a reasonable plan?

Main server - will be always on, so looking for low power and low-to-no noise:
- Supermicro X10SLL-F
- Intel Pentium G3220 - I don't need anything other than storage (ZFS) at the moment, may look to upgrade to Xeon in the future
- Seasonic SS-360GP 360W - not fixed on this, so definitely open to suggestions
- Crucial CT2KIT102472BD160B 16GB (2x 8GB) Memory Kit
- storage - TBC
I'll be reusing the current chassis, a Silverstone Sugo SG02, with 2 4x2.5" hot-swap enclosure in the 5.25 bays - currently populated with 4 1TB HDDs, considering moving to SSDs (although I need to do some budget negotiations for that).

Backup server - cheap and cheerful, only used for backups, will be out of earshot and using WoL, so power and noise not so critical:
- a cheap, possibly second hand LGA 1150 motherboard - I realise that this bring a host of issues, but I'm hoping that as performance is not critical, it will suffice
- Intel Pentium G3220
- storage either scavenged from the current NAS or a fairly cheap set of 3.5" SATA drives

Budget has a degree of flexibility, but what I've specified above is close to the limit (that's about £1000) - although, as I mentioned there is some room for negotiation. The most critical data on the system is photos - that has already been backed up to blu ray recently.

Any comments welcomed. Any advice on how to run the backups also welcomed.

Adam...

 

[BigDave]

I'll be reusing the current chassis, a Silverstone Sugo SG02, with 2 4x2.5" hot-swap enclosure in the 5.25 bays - currently populated with 4 1TB HDDs

How have you managed to keep 4 hard drives cool in that case? The specs I looked at mentions only two internal 3.5 bays and a single 80mm fan
Silverstone case at Newegg

Every thing else looks and sounds good.

 

[Linkman]

How have you managed to keep 4 hard drives cool in that case? The specs I looked at mentions only two internal 3.5 bays and a single 80mm fan
Silverstone case at Newegg

If I'm reading the OP correctly, they are 2.5" drives, in 4x2.5" hot-swap enclosures in the 5.25 bays. No clue on the cooling :)

 

[danb35]

We don't see a lot of systems with 2.5" drives, probably because they tend to be more expensive in $/TB. I'm thinking the power supply might be a little light, but otherwise your choices look reasonable.

 

[BigDave]

If I'm reading the OP correctly, they are 2.5" drives, in 4x2.5" hot-swap enclosures in the 5.25 bays. No clue on the cooling :)

Thanks for pointing that out @Linkman

You are right of course. I'm going to blame the lack of sufficient levels of caffeine this morning :D
I read 1TB and just did not think 2.5 inch spinning rust

 

[adamthekiwi]

Hi BigDave,

As LinkMan says, 2.5" drives in 4x2.5" enclosures - my solution: stock fans removed, single 120mm fan bodged into place with a temp probe. Almost never needs to run...

 

[adamthekiwi]

@danb35: yeah, I can see that - but, for me, the lower power and temperature made it worthwhile, and the additional bonus of hot-swap sealed the deal. This (the 'main' NAS) is a small box that sits out in the open in the home office. It also not a box with massive throughput and I play around with things like FreeNAS (and a secondary backup server) more because I'm interested than out-and-out need.

Having said all of that, I'm totally open to being told it's a really stupid choice. I think the compromises in terms of cost - and, I guess, reliability, although they've served me very well - are worth it, but I'm happy to hear that I'm wrong, and why.

 

[danb35]

I'm totally open to being told it's a really stupid choice.

You aren't going to hear that from me; $/TB isn't always the most important factor, and I don't know of any other reason they'd necessarily be a bad choice.

 

[adamthekiwi]

Any comments on the backup server plan?