[thethirdnut]

I plan to add a whole new vdev - the raidz2 array of drives - at a time when expansion is required. Will be starting with 10 x 2TB in a raidz2 so ~14TiB / usable space.

When getting close to expand I'll likely slowly accumulate whatever X TB drives are good at the moment, build a new vdedv (another raidz2) and add them to the existing zpool. Also, if I decide to retire the 2TB drives at that point I'd make a separate zpool and then copy stuff over, kill old zpool.

---

Around Dec 2011 noticed md5sum's for xferred files from cache drive to mdadm raid5 array were not matching. Did a memtest and lit up red like an Xmas tree - bad RAM. Everything looked OK at that point. One of the drives in the raid5 failed in June 2012. Replaced it and mdadm / raid5 array looked OK. Did a reboot and all of a sudden 'bad superblock' on the ext4...couldn't be reapaired. Lost approx 100 movies, but did have an older backup.

Moral of that story is that I believe the bad RAM and/or the failing disk soured the filesystem and when the raid array rebuilt it completely hosed it. ZFS would likely have saved my ass in this case since it has the extra layer of protection and a scrub could have likely fixed some or all of the damage at that point...most RAID solutions wouldn't.

PS: I'm now sufficiently paranoid to keep a backup as well...should be protected against anything except house burning down - for now at least.

[BLKMGK]

Presently I keep one or two spare drives around. One in case I want to expand and another in case I see a bad drive - knock on wood it's been at least a year since a drive died and I spin 17+ of them currently. I expand most often by swapping out a smaller drive for a larger one and rebuilding the data onto that drive - I have access to the data during that time as I recall. Smaller drives often move from one machine to another or to other projects. I've found that marking the date I put them into "service" on the casing helps me keep track of the age. Just a nice to have really. I've learned not to buy drives unless I've got no spare or REALLY need them, the prices inevitably fall enough that any "deal" isn't by the time I actually use the darned drive!

Not detected any rot nor have I had a hardware failure take out any data yet to date. I've been doing this a good long time too, my first array was IDE with no drive larger than 500gigs lol. I may try hash checking my MKV and ISO just to see over time and satisfy my curiosity. My system does a parity check once a month and unless I've had a system reboot due to a power failure it never finds errors. A bad reboot results in a parity check every time whether I like it or not and I have the option of allowing repairs if I wish. Backing up all of my stuff would be pretty tough I'm afraid as it's well over 10TB these days...

Anyway, I think the differences can be seen pretty easily here. Anything "bought" is going to have a lower level of protection than either of these systems IMO and the hardware will almost certainly be poorer than a well chosen built system as well. A friend of mine had not one but TWO Drobo burn up on him - losing data - before he switched away, it was a real horror story. These little boxes that hold maybe 6 drives and can't cool or expand really seem like a waste to me <shrug>

[thethirdnut]

These little boxes that hold maybe 6 drives and can't cool or expand really seem like a waste to me <shrug>

Agreed on overpriced, and lack of flexibility for off-the-shelf solutions...roll your own FTW. God forbid if Apple ever got into the NAS business!

[BLKMGK]

Well there is the Apple Xserve stuff and I think theirExpress can handle a drive ;-)

[RaggSokk3n]

1. If I build my own would this be ok hardware?

1 Chieftec SNT-2131SATA - drivebay SNT-2131 SATA 599,00
1 COOLER MASTER BIG TOWER COSMOS II BLACK RC-1200-KKN1 2 519,00
1 FRACTAL DESIGN TESLA R2 650W 5010644189 FD-PSU-TS2B-650W 829,00
1 GIGABYTE GA-H77-D3H H77 S-1155 ATX IVY GA-H77-D3H 699,00
1 INTEL CORE I3 3220T 2.80GHZ 3MB S-1155 IVY BX80637I33220T 929,00
1 KINGSTON 4GB 1600MHZ DDR3 CL9 HYPERX BLU (1X4GB) KHX1600C9D3B1/4G 169,00
1 LYCOM RAID5 SATA II 4-PORT PCI ST-124 499,00
2 LYCOM SATA PE-103 2-CH PCI-E PE-103 199,00 398,00
16 SEAGATE BARRACUDA 3TB 7200RPM SATA/600 64MB ST3000DM001 16 784,00
Edit: might only go for 4 hard drives and expand when it starts filling up due to the hdd prices falling and capacity increasing.
(prices in NoKr)

2. If I should change something; what and why?
3.could I get a short list of the most popular "nas" operational systems (whs, unraid etc) and their pros and cons?

[No1451]

The ones I know of are:

Nappit + Open Indiana - ZFS
ZFSGuru - ZFS
NAS4Free - ZFS
FlexRAID - Basic Pooling/Snapshot RAID
Linux + MDADM - Software RAID, lots of options
Greyhole - Basic Pooling
unRAID - Pooling/Fault tolerance

What I can think of quickly, there are benefits and drawbacks to all options presented. unRAID/FlexRAID are paid options, the rest are to the best of my knowledge, free. If you want ease of expansion something like FlexRAID/unRAID are both good options. I would say in terms of buy-in cost to increase drive space, those two will likely be your cheapest options.

If serving up ultra HD content is your thing, something like hardware RAID or ZFS may be a better fit. Usage patterns will have a pronounced effect on which system is a best fit. If power savings are important to you, simple pooling like that offered by flex/unraid will be better. If you want guaranteed fast access to all your content ZFS will likely work slightly better for you(think multiple HD streams that happen to occupy the same disk, I'm not sure if unRAID has any facilities in place to handle this, I know from my experience with it that this was a major part of my decision to ditch FlexRAID).

In terms of capabilities they are all mostly matched, they can all do very similar jobs and with a bit of know-how you can make your media server very extensible.

Edit: Consider replacing your sata add-in cards with something like this. It will cost a bit more but far better performance and less headaches. I have never had anything but bad experiences with cheap sata add-in cards(not to mention support outside of Windows is flaky at best). These are a bit dated, but you can find them on a good deal for around $110CAD(no idea of exchange) and will find support under Linux, Windows, FreeBSD and Solaris. Note that 1 of these cards can accomodate x8 harddrives. Each of the 8087 ports expands into 4 separate sata connections.

[thethirdnut]

@No1451 - just a note.

I had the SASUC8I's; which uses the LSI 1068 chipset; on my shopping list at an earlier point as well, however, according to multiple sources the chipset on that card does not - and allegedly won't - have >2TB drive support.

http://kb.lsi.com/KnowledgebaseArticle16399.aspx

The IBM M1015 uses the LSI SAS2008 chipset and doesn't have this issue. That model is equivalent to this LSI model: http://www.lsi.com/channel/products/stor...11-8i.aspx

If you find info pointing otherwise pls let me know.

[No1451]

Yeah good point, there is the newer model to replace it, which would be the better buy since he has larger drives. I received a 3TB drive back from an RMA on a 2TB drive, it lists as 2.2TB for capacity.

Noting that, still go for a *real* HBA, rather than a cheap model. Your machine and your sanity in the future will thank you

[RaggSokk3n]

from what I've read today, unraid does not support torrents, so that takes unraid out of the equation... How is whs? could I get a hdd pool there too? (without going jbod)
For me a server without torrent support is next to useless.

[Harro]

from what I've read today, unraid does not support torrents, so that takes unraid out of the equation... How is whs? could I get a hdd pool there too? (without going jbod)
For me a server without torrent support is next to useless.

Transmission is listed in the Unraid plugins. Should be what you are looking for.

[RaggSokk3n]

from what I've read today, unraid does not support torrents, so that takes unraid out of the equation... How is whs? could I get a hdd pool there too? (without going jbod)
For me a server without torrent support is next to useless.

Transmission is listed in the Unraid plugins. Should be what you are looking for.

Thanks, I'll try it on my old server later today
(installed unraid to try it)

[RaggSokk3n]

ASUS P8Z77-V Z77 S-1155 ATX IVY
COOLER MASTER SILENT PRO HYBRID 850W
CORSAIR 16GB DDR3 VENGEANCE LP PC3-12800 1600MHZ CL9 (4X4GB)
INTEL CORE I3 3220T 2.80GHZ 3MB S-1155 IVY
LIAN LI PC-V2120B FULLTOWER BLACK
NOCTUA NH-D14 S-1155/1156/1366/AM3
SEAGATE BARRACUDA 3TB 7200RPM SATA/600 64MB *8

How does this look for WS2012? And does it pack enough power?
Low wattage, low noise and low heat.

---

from what I've read today, unraid does not support torrents, so that takes unraid out of the equation... How is whs? could I get a hdd pool there too? (without going jbod)
For me a server without torrent support is next to useless.

Transmission is listed in the Unraid plugins. Should be what you are looking for.

Not compatible with 4,7-> from what i read...

[smitopher]

I'm running Windows Server 2012 Essentials on a HP ProLiant ML110 G7 server I bought from newegg. It has a Intel Core i3 2120 3.3GHz, 10 GB of ram and 10 TB of storage (boots from a 256 gb drive, 2 3TB Seagates and 1 4TB Hatachi). I have been pleased with it.

Your proposed HW looks reasonable as far as the CPU, RAM and Disks go. I'd consider a small boot drive and dedicate all 8 drives to a storage space. WS2012 storage spaces are easy to set up and very flexible but you can not boot from them.

[RaggSokk3n]

I'm running Windows Server 2012 Essentials on a HP ProLiant ML110 G7 server I bought from newegg. It has a Intel Core i3 2120 3.3GHz, 10 GB of ram and 10 TB of storage (boots from a 256 gb drive, 2 3TB Seagates and 1 4TB Hatachi). I have been pleased with it.

Your proposed HW looks reasonable as far as the CPU, RAM and Disks go. I'd consider a small boot drive and dedicate all 8 drives to a storage space. WS2012 storage spaces are easy to set up and very flexible but you can not boot from them.

Ok som separate boot drive, ssd or hdd? will a 320gb Wd black 2,5 do the trick?

[smitopher]

I'm running Windows Server 2012 Essentials on a HP ProLiant ML110 G7 server I bought from newegg. It has a Intel Core i3 2120 3.3GHz, 10 GB of ram and 10 TB of storage (boots from a 256 gb drive, 2 3TB Seagates and 1 4TB Hatachi). I have been pleased with it.

Your proposed HW looks reasonable as far as the CPU, RAM and Disks go. I'd consider a small boot drive and dedicate all 8 drives to a storage space. WS2012 storage spaces are easy to set up and very flexible but you can not boot from them.

Ok som separate boot drive, ssd or hdd? will a 320gb Wd black 2,5 do the trick?

Yup. Microsquash recommends the minimum is 60 GB and all shared storage should not be on the boot/OS drive. A 120 GB SSD is plenty big and makes the software portion of the boot fast... but... My server POST takes 5 times longer than the OS boot. I leave my server running 24/7 so not really too big an issue. I really do not miss having a SSD boot drive. My boot drive was part of the newegg "bundle" and I actually have it partitioned into 2 boot drives. One with Windows Home Server 2011 (60 GB) and the second partition for the rest booting Windows Server 2012 Essentials.