Home Server/NAS

[mushi_mushi]

In the last couple of months ive been debating setting up a home server that would store most of my data making it available to the computers on the network without having it being scattered all over the place. Right now I have lumps of data that im sharing on the network, but ideally I would like it all to be in one place as well as having some sort of a backup available should things fail. Basically I want a media server and be able to stream music/movies to different spots around the house. The problem is I dont want to spend too much money.

There's lots of possible solutions for something like this but im not sure which one would suite me best. Im want to know what some of you guys use, what your setup is like and a ballpark of how much it costs. Ideally I want to have 6-8TB with some sort of redundancy. Ive considered some of the following options and each have their pros and cons.

Synology Nas (4 bay unit)
+ no tinkering, as close to plug and play as its going to get
+ nice web gui/ tons of features (not sure if I would use them in read life)
+ supports different raid configurations
- costs $500, could buy lots of hd space for that

FreeNAS
+ hardware basically free
- involves configuration/some knowledge of bsd/commands

Windows Home Server
+ would work well with existing windows pc's
- doesnt support true raid
- costs money
- would require building a new pc

For the short run im thinking about picking up a couple of hard drive enclosures to house 2x2tb hard drives and attatch that to the network. Takes care of central storage but not redundancy. Im also checking out some other devices but would like to hear about your input/setup.

[ABandit]

I recommend getting a 2 Bay NAS from DLink.
Has several RAID options. You can pick one up for ~$150.
In my opinion that's one of the better solutions.
Since hdd are so cheap nowaday, just grab 2 large sata drives, pop them in. Now you have two network storage accessible within the network.

I have daily schedule backup running on my pc, backing onto this box. Installed the bittorren application for torrent download, have most of my movie, music, and photos accessed from my PS3.

Hope this helps.

[Grogador]

Originally posted by mushi_mushi
FreeNAS
+ hardware basically free
- involves configuration/some knowledge of bsd/commands
[/B]

No unix commands needed, it's all web interface and works fine on any commodity mobo and SATA card and SATA port multipliers you can find.

http://www.grogdor.com/pics/tech/3u.jpg

Otherwise I recommend a Netgear ReadyNAS but it ain't cheap.

[eblend]

For you the windows home server setup sounds like a good idea. The 4 bay NAS is nice, but it's only 4 bays, once they are full the thing is once again useless.

This is what I use at home:

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219033&cm_re=20_bay-_-11-219-033-_-Product

Buy that for $350, spend another couple hundred on a cheap mobo/cpu (nothing exteme needed for what you are doing) and toss it in there. Using home server you can set it up to do replication of stuff you really care about (not raid 1, but same idea), and allows you to simply add more hdds as you need them. Ofcourse, you will need 20 sata ports, which is pretty hard to come by. I am not running home server at home, rather I have a 24 port SATA raid card (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816151027&Tpk=1280ml), but that is way more then you want to spend.

[takkyu]

Originally posted by eblend
For you the windows home server setup sounds like a good idea. The 4 bay NAS is nice, but it's only 4 bays, once they are full the thing is once again useless.

This is what I use at home:

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219033&cm_re=20_bay-_-11-219-033-_-Product

Buy that for $350, spend another couple hundred on a cheap mobo/cpu (nothing exteme needed for what you are doing) and toss it in there. Using home server you can set it up to do replication of stuff you really care about (not raid 1, but same idea), and allows you to simply add more hdds as you need them. Ofcourse, you will need 20 sata ports, which is pretty hard to come by. I am not running home server at home, rather I have a 24 port SATA raid card (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816151027&Tpk=1280ml), but that is way more then you want to spend.

I hate you...

must not spend money, must not spend money, must not spend money.... argh

[Zero102]

FreeNAS gets my vote from the list you provided.


Here is what I run at home (if it helps to share)
AMD Phenom X4 9650 processor
Biostar cheap-as-hell motherboard with 6 SATA ports
4GB of RAM
5x 1TB SATA drives
1x 1.5TB SATA drive
4x500GB IDE drives

This box runs CentOS 5

On this machine I then run PS3 Media Server to allow for media sharing, Apache as a web server (so I can use torrentflux for remote torrent admin) and SMB/NFS to share files on my network.

I have the 5 1TB drives and a 1TB partition in a RAID 5, then 3 of the 500GB drives and 500GB on the 1.5TB drive in a second RAID 5, then I LVM those 2 RAID 5's together for a combined 6.5TB of storage.
I use one of the 500GB disks for the OS (no swap space since it never gets over ~1GB of RAM used anyways) in a 20GB partition, then the other ~480GB is used for nightly backups of crucial data from the LVM.

I back up my personal files, other system backups and directory listings of my TV show archive and music archive (since it is all easily replaceable as long as I know what to look for).

At least once a month I bring in an external 500GB drive and back up the same data to it as what goes on the 480GB partition, this disk is stored outside of my house, and the backup is encrypted.

This way I can lose any 1 drive and not lose any easily replaceable data, or as much as 3 drives before I lose anything I cannot replace.

Once I set it up the maintenance is basically 0, just add files over SMB/NFS and let it do it's thing.

[Alterac]

I want to add OpenFiler to the List of operating systems, im running that right now with 4x 1TB drives and its rock solid.

[mushi_mushi]

Originally posted by ABandit
I recommend getting a 2 Bay NAS from DLink.


The only problem with that is that those dlink nas's are relatively small, I will outgrow two bays quickly, and and only raid 1/jbob support.


Originally posted by Grogador


No unix commands needed, it's all web interface and works fine on any commodity mobo and SATA card and SATA port multipliers you can find.

Otherwise I recommend a Netgear ReadyNAS but it ain't cheap.

Ive watched some tutorials that go through the whole thing, it doesnt seem to bad. The thing attracting me to this is I dont need to purchase anything extra, grab a shitty p4, some hard drives and your ready to go. The older readynas nv+ can be had for <400 but its only 4bays and not as fast as the newer units.


Originally posted by eblend
For you the windows home server setup sounds like a good idea. The 4 bay NAS is nice, but it's only 4 bays, once they are full the thing is once again useless.

This is what I use at home:

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219033&amp;cm_re=20_bay-_-11-219-033-_-Product

Buy that for $350, spend another couple hundred on a cheap mobo/cpu (nothing exteme needed for what you are doing) and toss it in there. Using home server you can set it up to do replication of stuff you really care about (not raid 1, but same idea), and allows you to simply add more hdds as you need them. Ofcourse, you will need 20 sata ports, which is pretty hard to come by. I am not running home server at home, rather I have a 24 port SATA raid card (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816151027&amp;Tpk=1280ml), but that is way more then you want to spend.

Your setup is hardcore, I would like to have something like that but im not prepared to shell out that kind of money. I had a look at a similar enclosure, and while by itself its not that expensive when you begin to factor in the raid card, mobo, cpu, ram etc it quickly adds up. Thanks for all your input guys. Still havnt ruled anything out but thinking about the freenas setup because it will cost vastly less than the other solutions.

[SmAcKpOo]

I run both a Dlink-323 and a FreeNAS setup.

Which ever variety of NAS you choose won't essentially matter as they are both functionally the same.

However, the DLINK-323 NAS costs roughly 350-400$ with the HDD's and the FreeNAS box cost me under 80$ for the actual hardware, minus the HDD's off ebay.

I use the DLINK-323 as my main NAS mainly because of power consumption and when I am not streaming to my PS3 or writing data the HDD turn off. The FreeNAS box uses a little more power then the tiny DLINK-323

[SmAcKpOo]

Hey Grogador, what case it that?

[mushi_mushi]

Originally posted by Alterac
I want to add OpenFiler to the List of operating systems, im running that right now with 4x 1TB drives and its rock solid.

I briefly checkout out OpenFiler but still not really sure how it differs from freenas, what advantages/drawbacks it has. Guess i'll do a bit more reading on that.


Originally posted by Zero102
FreeNAS gets my vote from the list you provided.


Here is what I run at home (if it helps to share)
AMD Phenom X4 9650 processor
Biostar cheap-as-hell motherboard with 6 SATA ports
4GB of RAM
5x 1TB SATA drives
1x 1.5TB SATA drive
4x500GB IDE drives

This box runs CentOS 5


I have the 5 1TB drives and a 1TB partition in a RAID 5, then 3 of the 500GB drives and 500GB on the 1.5TB drive in a second RAID 5, then I LVM those 2 RAID 5's together for a combined 6.5TB of storage.
I use one of the 500GB disks for the OS (no swap space since it never gets over ~1GB of RAM used anyways) in a 20GB partition, then the other ~480GB is used for nightly backups of crucial data from the LVM.



Is there a big advantage with using decent hardware, I dont have a semi-decent rig to use for the server but could get my hands on a p4.

I also read something about the zfs file system and how it might be super to raid. I cant remember all the details but its something im going to look into. Otherwise I would consider raid 5/10. Seems like a good setup. It would be nice to have a solution that could resize on the fly with the addition of new hard drives, but I dont think thats possible with raid, have to create a new volume, but its not a deal breaker.

[hampstor]

Based on what you've said: FreeNAS (especially since you said hardware is basically free).

I went with WHS because I didn't have to pay for the OS :D

What's running in my home:

dual xeon 3.6ghz
4 gb of RAM (got another 4GB i'll put in when the new WHS comes out)
8 x 500gb drives (on a a 3ware 9550sx-8) -> RAID5 + hotspare + removable backup that I keep at my parents house.

A few months ago I was talking to one of my buddies at memx and we configured an inexpensive server for FreeNAS / WHS based around these components:

CHASSIS: http://usa.chenbro.com/corporatesite/products_detail.php?sku=79

Motherboard (Dual Core Atom CPU!):
http://www.supermicro.com/products/motherboard/ATOM/ICH9/X7SPA.cfm?typ=H

[Xtrema]

You'll need a very good PS if you are going beyond 6 drives setup.

For some reason I can never get FreeNAS/Openfiler stable enough on my old Intel motherboard combo that I went back to Windows based hardware RAID solution.

I current run 4x1.5T in RAID5. Probably won't need upgrades for a while.....

[ExtraSlow]

Dlink has a four bay NAS, the DNS- 343, I think. I'm pretty sure it does Raid 0, 1, 5 and JBOD.

With RAID 5 and 4x 2TB Seagate green from memex, that's under $800 for 6 TB of redundant storage.
Not bad, and pretty easy to use. Goes without saying that you don't need to buy all four drives right away either if you are short of cash or not sure about your future needs. Could get started with 2x2TB or something.

I'm rocking the DNS 323 with 2x 1.5TB, but my storage needs are pretty minor.

[Zero102]

Originally posted by mushi_mushi

Is there a big advantage with using decent hardware, I dont have a semi-decent rig to use for the server but could get my hands on a p4.

I also read something about the zfs file system and how it might be super to raid. I cant remember all the details but its something im going to look into. Otherwise I would consider raid 5/10. Seems like a good setup. It would be nice to have a solution that could resize on the fly with the addition of new hard drives, but I dont think thats possible with raid, have to create a new volume, but its not a deal breaker.

I used to have a P4 2.4GHz with 1GB of ram and just the 4 500GB disks as my fileserver. It only had a 100MBit ethernet card in it but I could saturate it any time, and it did very well with transcoding media, although it did stutter and stall on 1080p content (720p was fine).

If you want 1GB ethernet then make sure you have a board with either onboard ethernet or PCI-e slots to add a gigabit ethernet card, PCI generally won't cut it.

If you have a processor which supports the newer MMX instruction set you should have no problem streaming video with a P4, although it would be nice if the clock rate was 3.0GHz or higher for transcoding high bit-rate or high-def video when necessary.

On my P4 the server load would climb to ~0.85 when transcoding 720p video and 1.2 when transcoding 1080p (and stuttering). On my AMD it now sits at 0.2 when transcoding 1080p and basically 0 when doing anything else. Again, my P4 was an OLD one, newer P4's may be easily capable of transcoding 1080p without stuttering, I cannot say for sure.

ZFS is great but it is not a direct replacement for RAID. Also, ZFS is new and the tools for it are not as good as they can be (and IIRC you can't add drives to a volume yet). I use Ext3 for the filesystem on my LVM.

The nice thing about my setup is that it was cheap. I got a free case, a free 450W power supply (scavenged from discarded hardware), I bought all of my drives on sale and I got the motherboard/cpu for $106 (combined), and only paid $75 for the RAM thanks to some good newegg sales.

[mushi_mushi]

Originally posted by eblend
For you the windows home server setup sounds like a good idea. The 4 bay NAS is nice, but it's only 4 bays, once they are full the thing is once again useless.

This is what I use at home:

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219033&amp;cm_re=20_bay-_-11-219-033-_-Product

Buy that for $350, spend another couple hundred on a cheap mobo/cpu (nothing exteme needed for what you are doing) and toss it in there. Using home server you can set it up to do replication of stuff you really care about (not raid 1, but same idea), and allows you to simply add more hdds as you need them. Ofcourse, you will need 20 sata ports, which is pretty hard to come by. I am not running home server at home, rather I have a 24 port SATA raid card (http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816151027&amp;Tpk=1280ml), but that is way more then you want to spend.

After browsing different alternatives this seems very tempting. It surly wouldnt be cheap but considering what you get when you pay 500 for a 4 bay nas this seems very appealing. I do have an older amd system based on the 780g platform with a low power cpu. I might upgrade it in a few months and it would work nicely with something like whs. I looked at the raid card you posted and that scared me, until I thought about it for a sec and realized whs doesnt need something like that. So it would be the case/cost of hard drives to set it up.

The thing I like about the case is its future proof. Four bays is insufficient, I dont have alot of data right now, but if I start downloading things it picks up quick. Four drive bays might be enough for one year, but then you keep adding on. This isnt something im doing next week but I know as my storage requirements grow ill need something like this down the line.

Im pretty much decided thanks to your guy's input. Ive ruled out purchasing a nas box as they get super expensive if you want more than 4 bays. Im still strongly considering freenas as well as the WHS route provided I dont have to spend an arm and a leg getting it setup. I would like to keep things under 500 (not including the hard drives). The case itself is ~300, ive got some parts I might be able to use for guts. So provided I dont need to spend more than a few hundred dollars on things I havnt yet considered it might be a very good fit.

[eblend]

for the mobo/cpu/ram you don't need much at all, some old crap will do the trick, really you just need lots of sata ports if your going whs or any other software raid solution. I went hardcore for exact reason that I can grow my raid anytime. With hardware raid card you are able to expand your raid set and add more hdds, something not available with software raid (for windows at least). You can always make anothe disk group but i like one mega disk group with all my disks. With 20x2TB drives in raid 6 I can get close to 35TB of space out of this box, with nothing to invest othen then more hdds. So my initial purchase price of about 2k will last me...god, for 10 years if not more haha, currently have a 7TB raid set and only using 3TB of that

[Grogador]

Originally posted by SmAcKpOo
Hey Grogador, what case it that?

Not sure, got it ages ago offa eBay for $100 shipped :D You can get much nicer 3U cases that'll hold 16 drives nowadays...


Originally posted by mushi_mushi
Ive watched some tutorials that go through the whole thing, it doesnt seem to bad. The thing attracting me to this is I dont need to purchase anything extra, grab a shitty p4, some hard drives and your ready to go. The older readynas nv+ can be had for &lt;400 but its only 4bays and not as fast as the newer units.

Exactly, hardware is cheap! My whole hardcore-looking setup cost $300 (ongoing HD addiction not included):
- $100 (shipped) case offa eBay
- $100 3ware 9500S 12-port SATA RAID card; it's kinda old now, PCI-X and only SATA 1.5 but still serves just fine
- $100 dual Xeon setup; got a 2U Rackable server with Intel SE7501WV2 server board, dual Xeon 2.66GHz/533MHz, 2GB DDR2100 ECC, two U320 15k 36GB mirrored system drives

The ReadyNAS units are expensive and slow, I was kinda tipsy when I replied the first time :D Disregard!

[UndrgroundRider]

Don't waste your money on a hardware raid card. Even data centres don't waste their money on them anymore. Locking into a proprietary technology will leave you utterly stranded if that card ever shits itself.

FreeNAS is easy and lightweight. The only downside is that it runs FreeBSD, which limits you a little bit. Under linux you have much more flexibility, which may or may not be important to you.

Openfiler is a Linux based NAS distro. It seems to be much more bloated than FreeNAS, but you get the benefit of running Linux. For driver and feature support this is the way to go.

Windows Home Server might be a good choice if you want simple support for media extenders. Under Linux and FreeBSD it can be somewhat of a challenge to get your Xbox 360/PS3 working with an open source UPnP media servers. Although I hear this has changed in the past year or so. I run a WDTV Live, so I can't offer much advice in that particular respect.

I wouldn't bother with ZFS. It's not well tested or supported on any OS except Solaris. For what you're doing it's overkill. ZFS is mainly reserved for data centres and dorks running Solaris in their basement (like me).

In terms of the D-Link DNS-3*3 units, despite the higher upfront cost they might save you money in the long run. Keeping a dedicated server running 24/7 will increase you electrical bill. The D-Link units on the other hand are great for low power consumption. Unfortunately they're also very slow and you lose a ton of flexibility. These do use Linux software raid behind the scenes so you have the option of simply relocating the drives into a Linux server down the road.

As you can see there are dozens of choices. They all work, some better than others in different areas. You have to match your needs with the right solution. IMO, Openfiler would be a great way to go.

Since everyone is measuring e-penises this is what I run at home:

Front:
http://www.supermicro.com/a_images/products/Chassis/4U/SC847-R1400B_spec.jpg

Back:
http://www.supermicro.com/a_images/products/Chassis/4U/SC847-R1400B_rear.jpg

For this setup I run Linux and software raid6, lvm2, and xfs. This box houses boot drives that I export over my 4x DDR InfiniBand network. My desktops boot over the Infiniband network using SRP (SCSI RDMA Protocol). I run IPoIB for CIFS shares on my desktops, and normal gigabit ethernet for everything else.

My data server has two arrays, one array of solid state drives and one array of rotational drives. Throughput for the solid state array is over 1GB/sec random access read and write. The rotational media array nets just over 700MB/sec of sequential read throughput. (With a different configuration I could boost this to well over 2GB/sec of throughput, but that would be totally impractical for normal use and only serve to boost benchmark scores.)

[GoChris]

UNRAID

http://lime-technology.com

Cliff notes: non-striped, single parity drive protection, can use a MIX of ANY SIZE drives. Currently supports up to ~20 drives.

I have an Unraid box currently at 7TB. Includes a mix of 1.5TB, 750gb, and 500gb drives.

[GoChris]

Also, you can get a Coolermaster 590 case, and add 2 more 4-in-3 bays ($20 each), plus case for $65, $105 total gives you space for 12 drives very nicely with 3x120mm fans in front.

[SmAcKpOo]

Any of you guys have experience with Raid Level Migrations?

I am looking at an 8port card and initially I only want to run RAID5 with 4 1.5TB drives. How hard would it be to migrate my array to add 4 more drives in the future let say, 6stripe 2 mirror?

[mushi_mushi]

Originally posted by UndrgroundRider
Don't waste your money on a hardware raid card. Even data centres don't waste their money on them anymore. Locking into a proprietary technology will leave you utterly stranded if that card ever shits itself.

FreeNAS is easy and lightweight. The only downside is that it runs FreeBSD, which limits you a little bit. Under linux you have much more flexibility, which may or may not be important to you.

Openfiler is a Linux based NAS distro. It seems to be much more bloated than FreeNAS, but you get the benefit of running Linux. For driver and feature support this is the way to go.

Windows Home Server might be a good choice if you want simple support for media extenders. Under Linux and FreeBSD it can be somewhat of a challenge to get your Xbox 360/PS3 working with an open source UPnP media servers. Although I hear this has changed in the past year or so. I run a WDTV Live, so I can't offer much advice in that particular respect.

I wouldn't bother with ZFS. It's not well tested or supported on any OS except Solaris. For what you're doing it's overkill. ZFS is mainly reserved for data centres and dorks running Solaris in their basement (like me).

In terms of the D-Link DNS-3*3 units, despite the higher upfront cost they might save you money in the long run. Keeping a dedicated server running 24/7 will increase you electrical bill. The D-Link units on the other hand are great for low power consumption. Unfortunately they're also very slow and you lose a ton of flexibility. These do use Linux software raid behind the scenes so you have the option of simply relocating the drives into a Linux server down the road.

As you can see there are dozens of choices. They all work, some better than others in different areas. You have to match your needs with the right solution. IMO, Openfiler would be a great way to go.



There seems to be lots of choices out there which is a good thing. Hardware raid like you said is too expensive. With freenas ive been able to find lots of information about the software, ive come across people who seem to like openfiler better but theres alot less info about the product. If I go either of the raid options ill probably end up going raid 5 or 6. The thing that potentially scares me is multiple hard drives fail within at once/within a short period of time you loose all your data.

I could care less about the backup features of whs, but I like the idea of knowing that if a drive fails there is a copy of it on the network, no parity means it doesnt have to rebuild and it uses ntfs so you could plunk it in your windows machine and it would read it. On the other hand the way whs works is kind of like a raid 1 machine and it wastes lots of space.Nice setup by the way, must of cost a shinny penny.


Originally posted by GoChris
UNRAID

http://lime-technology.com

Cliff notes: non-striped, single parity drive protection, can use a MIX of ANY SIZE drives. Currently supports up to ~20 drives.

I have an Unraid box currently at 7TB. Includes a mix of 1.5TB, 750gb, and 500gb drives.

I havnt really thought about unraid. I read that as far as write speeds it performance wasnt that good and I overlooked it. It does seem to have some nice features. I like the fact that if multiple drives fail you only loose the data on those drives and not the whole volume. It also appears to resize the volume with added space which is another feature that I was looking for although I could live without it. Looking at flexraid also as they seem to be similar.

For now i'll throw in a few tb in my desktop, that should be good for a few months. I think sooner or later ill bite the bullet and get that norco case. Its probably a bit overkill, but for what you get it seems to be a bargain.

[GoChris]

Yes the write speed on unraid hasn't been great, however it's been much improved in the last couple versions. Especially if you have your drives on the pci-e bus, not pci.

Also, you can have a "cache" drive. So I can write to the unraid as fast as my gbit network allows me basically. It goes to the cache drive. Then on a schedule (every night by default) it moves those files to the protected raid.

The norco case looks great, but if you aren't going more than 12 drives, get the coolermaster 590 + 2 more 4-in-3 bays. That's what I did, 1/3 the cost for 50% drive capacity.

You can try unraid for free in a 3 drive setup.

[benyl]

Originally posted by GoChris

Also, you can have a &quot;cache&quot; drive. So I can write to the unraid as fast as my gbit network allows me basically. It goes to the cache drive. Then on a schedule (every night by default) it moves those files to the protected raid.


I need this for WHS.

Sometimes transfers slow to a crawl where I bet I could handwrite the bits out faster than the data is moving!

[mushi_mushi]

Originally posted by GoChris
Yes the write speed on unraid hasn't been great, however it's been much improved in the last couple versions. Especially if you have your drives on the pci-e bus, not pci.

Also, you can have a &quot;cache&quot; drive. So I can write to the unraid as fast as my gbit network allows me basically. It goes to the cache drive. Then on a schedule (every night by default) it moves those files to the protected raid.

The norco case looks great, but if you aren't going more than 12 drives, get the coolermaster 590 + 2 more 4-in-3 bays. That's what I did, 1/3 the cost for 50% drive capacity.

You can try unraid for free in a 3 drive setup.

Wow the cache drive thing you mentioned seems like it would be another feature that would be nice to have. Im definatly not running more than 8 drives to begin with. Something like 8tb of useable space would be good for a while. I'll have a look at that case, I just like the idea of future proofing, wouldnt make much sense to spend 100 for a case and than buy another one in a few years. What kind of cpu/mobo do you have in your unraid server.

[mushi_mushi]

Originally posted by benyl


I need this for WHS.

Sometimes transfers slow to a crawl where I bet I could handwrite the bits out faster than the data is moving!

I dont know very much about unraid but ive read that some people use it in conjunction with whs as the software runs with both linux/windows. That way you still can use whs for backups, but unraid doesnt eat as much space if you have a large media collection.

Ive heard of similar issues with whs. I think it might be a driver issue or maybe a software update is needed. Transfer speeds from my understanding shouldnt be too bad on a whs although there are alot of variables involved.

[GoChris]

Originally posted by mushi_mushi


Wow the cache drive thing you mentioned seems like it would be another feature that would be nice to have. Im definatly not running more than 8 drives to begin with. Something like 8tb of useable space would be good for a while. I'll have a look at that case, I just like the idea of future proofing, wouldnt make much sense to spend 100 for a case and than buy another one in a few years. What kind of cpu/mobo do you have in your unraid server.

Ya, I debated getting the norco case, but I think if I need that much space, I'll just build a 2nd unraid case. No matter what solution I used, having a 20 drive system would be a possibly long time for a parity build/check. Too many eggs in one basket.

I am just using a P4 for my unraid, 4gb ram. Nothing fancy but I might upgrade, not because it needs more cpu, it doesn't, but just to use a mobo that has more sata slots and uses less power.

[UndrgroundRider]

With unraid and most other proprietary raid levels that allow combining multiple drive sizes, you'll find that they're DIRT slow. This is just the nature of how such a system works.

If the ability to use different sized drives is really an important factor then it might be worth considering. But keep in mind, Linux software raid can reshape (raid1 to raid5, raid 5 to raid 6), grow or shrink array sizes.

[mushi_mushi]

Originally posted by UndrgroundRider
With unraid and most other proprietary raid levels that allow combining multiple drive sizes, you'll find that they're DIRT slow. This is just the nature of how such a system works.

If the ability to use different sized drives is really an important factor then it might be worth considering. But keep in mind, Linux software raid can reshape (raid1 to raid5, raid 5 to raid 6), grow or shrink array sizes.

I will be using all new drives, so initially they will be all the same size. Supposedly write speeds have increased with the recent releases. Write speed to me isnt critical, of course faster would be better but im more so concerned with data redundancy/backup while utilizing maximum space for storage. No matter what happens I want my data to be available, weather its a failing hard drive(s) or OS problem I want to minimize chances of data loss.

They all seem like good options depending on what your needs are. I would want a solution that works out of the box that doesnt require to much tweaking, just want this thing to work. Still looking at freenas, openfiler, unraid and whs and see how they compare. I have a pretty good idea but just want to make sure that when im starting the build/software install that I have chosen the right solution based on my needs. WHS v 2/vail is coming out soon as well, not quite sure what it will offer to extend the functionality of whats already there.

[GoChris]

Originally posted by UndrgroundRider
With unraid and most other proprietary raid levels that allow combining multiple drive sizes, you'll find that they're DIRT slow. This is just the nature of how such a system works.

If the ability to use different sized drives is really an important factor then it might be worth considering. But keep in mind, Linux software raid can reshape (raid1 to raid5, raid 5 to raid 6), grow or shrink array sizes.

I think dirt slow is relative. My unraid, for streaming my movies, is more than capable, I get about 45MB/s read on my shitty gbit home network. Can't complain. I'm not saying it's the greatest solution, cause I'm not sure what the OP wants to store on it, speed might be a big factor, in which case then yes, unraid is likely too slow.

[taemo]

can anyone recommend me the cheapest/versatile NAS server I could create?

I have a little experience with raid NAS servers..but ideally my goal is to have a redundant 2TB+ NAS for under $500

my current *media server* is a dell latitude d501 with Win 2003 server, 1TB and 320GB usb drives.
a dell latitude d500 with ubuntu server.

I was looking at the d-link dns-323 with 2x2TB raid1
Slightly over my budget but a dns-343 with 4x1TB raid5

I also have an old pc (a7n8x-deluxe amd xp2100+, 2GB, 9700pro) with dying psu that I could re-use but not sure if I need to buy a raid controller card for it then install freeNAS.
I'm planning to decom the 2 old laptops and virtualise both servers on a dell 1501 laptop..so ideally a NAS would be perfect to go along.. but I'm fine with running a small server box again running win 2003 server and raid5

[ExtraSlow]

I have the DNS-323 with 2x1.5TB WD Caviar Green running RAID 1 and I'm really happy with it. If you think you need more than 2 TB of storage, get the DNS-343, start with two drives only, and you'll be expandable.

Regardless of which NAS you buy, note that per GB, the 2 TB drives are cheaper than 1 TB. Currently you can get the 2TB WD Caviar Green from MemEx for $120, which is a great deal on the perfect drive for a NAS, since it's lower power and quieter.

[SmAcKpOo]

I am currently running a NAS-323 with 2x 1.5TB seagates and love it. The NAS-323 is a really cheap NAS alternative with decent performance.

I am currently building a Windows NAS/File server box. I picked up a Highpoint RocketRaid 2320 8 port hardware raid card and bought 4x 1.5TB seagates and will run a 4.5TB raid 5 array that can be migrated to something larger if I need it. Since I am a Linux noob and I am unsure how to share Linux partitions to a Windows machine or run transcoding software on a Linux distribution a Windows FS serves me fine.

The reason why I am upgrading is because the NAS-323 has a little trouble streaming large 720p and 1080p HD content, the performance even gets worse if you try to transcode H.264 content.

UndergroundRider has the bigged e-peen in terms of his NAS. Your equipment is crazy!

[taemo]

selling your nas-323? ;)

disappointed with the poor performance with streaming though...how many computers do you have accessing it?
where's your nas located in respect to your router and pc?
5400 or 7200 rpm?

[SmAcKpOo]

Giving the NAS-323 to a friend, traded it for a 150GB WD Raptor.

The NAS has 2x 7200RPM seagate drives connected to a gigabit switch. My router is only used as a gateway as everything else goes through my gigabit switch. I stream to my Xbox using PS3 media server.

Usually I only have 1 device requesting the stream at a time. The issue isn't with the network, devices or computers, it rests with the actually processing power of the NAS device.