Hello,
Some interesting threads on here, I've read a few which touch on my topic but none I could see that outright answered it....
So, I'm looking to build my own NAS for XBMC, I'm pretty much set on FreeNAS as the OS....
Obviously as a NAS I'd like it to be as low power as possible so I can keep it on 24/7, or maybe have it sleep, I'm not sure that's a whole other question...
I was looking at the Sempron 145 as the CPU which seems to offer a nice low power draw while still being cheap to buy...
I would want it to run SAB, Sickbeard, CouchPotato and Headphones and I wonder how well they'd run on that sort of system? - I've only ever ran them on my desktop before
Other information:
Not considered the RAID setup yet but I would probably choose JBOD...
Based on the price of RAM lately I'd get 4 or 8GB
Running a mixture of HDD's approx 6
3x 2TB, 2x3TB and a 1.5TB
I run UnRaid on a 3Ghz 2Gig of RAM old Dell Optiplex and have the SAB, SickBeard, CouchPotato plugins and mysql and have no issues myself, I think you will be ok.
I have lots of clients from ATV1, pi, Neuroslink and iPads.
I am not sure about FreeNas but UnRaid will power down drives not in use to save power.
I have 3X 2TB drives 1 parity and 2 data so 4 TB protected data.
If you're in the UK it's pretty hard to beat the HP Microserver, the latest version - N54L - can be had for as little as
£90 after the £100 cashback offer. It can easily accommodate 5 drives, 6 if you also use the external e-SATA (re-route it internally).
Drop in 8GB - or even 16GB - of RAM and you're good to go with FreeNAS booting off a 2GB USB memory stick.
Not sure I'd advise running a JBOD configuration, but obviously if you have all your data securely backed up elsewhere recovering from a disk failure is just an inconvenience. I'd at least suggest RAID-Z1, but you really want all your disks to be of the same capacity when running RAID.
Why not a HP Microserver
Check here!
Can take 6 drives easily, low powered, internal usb port for a FreeNas USB stick.. mine with 4 drives runs around 40-50Watts, very small footprint!
Edit: beaten by a millisecond!
Thanks for the responses, I did look at the Microserver, when I originally looked I thought it was only a 4 bay but 5 makes it more plausible...
It does say in the specs list that it's max memory 8GB
As for the JBOD/RAID, although I'd be a little annoyed at losing an entire drive of data it wouldn't be the end of the world (as I probably didn't watch it anyway) ... The RAID is nice but I already have the 3x2TB and 1x3TB and 1x1.5TB full so I have no room for redundancy...
I considered trying to sell the 2TB's and get more 3TB's but I can't imagine Samsung F4's held their value well
The more I read, the more it sounds like what I need half the price of the NAS I was planning to build once I factored in the case and PSU etc...
DigitalVortex you said it can take 6 drives easy? - I can see the 4 regular bays, and a fifth possible in the 5.25" bay ... where is the 6th going?
Thanks
ASUS C60M1-I or ASUS P8H77-I+G1610
Lian-Li PC-Q25 or PC-Q08
300W PSU
4GB RAM
(2013-05-31, 03:44)masterbyllet Wrote: [ -> ]It does say in the specs list that it's max memory 8GB
Correct, but 16GB (2x 8GB) has been confirmed working with no problems in all models (N36L, N40L and N54L) so HP probably just erred on the side of caution, or 8GB was the max supported (2x 4GB DIMMS) at the time the original N36L specs were released (since then the only changes have been to the processor, so the specs probably haven't been reviewed).
(2013-05-31, 03:44)masterbyllet Wrote: [ -> ]As for the JBOD/RAID, although I'd be a little annoyed at losing an entire drive of data it wouldn't be the end of the world (as I probably didn't watch it anyway) ... The RAID is nice but I already have the 3x2TB and 1x3TB and 1x1.5TB full so I have no room for redundancy...
I considered trying to sell the 2TB's and get more 3TB's but I can't imagine Samsung F4's held their value well
I'm not an expert on JBOD, but I highly suspect the entire volume will go offline (marked as disabled) until you replace the failed disk, and you may then have to restore all of your data to bring the volume back online (as the filesystem now contains a great big "hole" where there used to be data, including important and basically irreplaceable filesystem meta-data).
You might be better off looking at UnRAID which can handle disks of differing capacities better than FreeNAS with ZFS, while still offering some level of redundancy. Basically, you have no redundancy with JBOD and can expect to lose all your data when one of your disks fails.
(2013-05-31, 03:56)masterbyllet Wrote: [ -> ]The more I read, the more it sounds like what I need half the price of the NAS I was planning to build once I factored in the case and PSU etc...
DigitalVortex you said it can take 6 drives easy? - I can see the 4 regular bays, and a fifth possible in the 5.25" bay ... where is the 6th going?
Thanks
With something like the
Nexus Double Twin you can fit two full height HDD in the space for the optical drive. You'll need to route a SATA cable from the external e-SATA port back inside the case for the 6th drive, and you may also need the modified BIOS to enable full speed SATA on the eSATA port (or maybe it enables full speed on the "Optical" internal SATA port - can't remember).
These boxes are hugely popular and there are many threads on various forums offering support and hacks.
As long as you are ONLY running the programs you describe literally any modern hardware will do the trick as long as it has enough SATA ports for you. The only CPU intensive part is the unrar process in SABNZBD, but it will just take a little bit longer with a weaker CPU. Serving files doesn't take much CPU power.
I think the fractal design node 304 is great for a NAS (I use it for mine).
If you have a mixture of drives you're likely better off using something like UnRAID.
I went the FreeBSD + ZFS route - deets in my sig.
ZFS is a very good solution, however, it isn't as flexible. As @MilhouseVH mentioned you could do a JBOD / simple 'pool' in ZFS and gain the checksum metadata, etc functionality, but lose a single drive and you're hooped in that config.
To also optimize performance it's recommened to use at least 5 x same drive for raidz1 (raid5) or 6 x same drive for raidz2 (raid6). I went the 10 x same drive for raidz2 (raid6) for first zpool.
3-disk RAID-Z = 128KiB / 2 = 64KiB = good
4-disk RAID-Z = 128KiB / 3 = ~42.7KiB = BAD!
5-disk RAID-Z = 128KiB / 4 = 32KiB = good
6-disk RAID-Z = 128KiB / 5 = ~25.6KiB = BAD!
7-disk RAID-Z = 128KiB / 6 = ~21.3KiB = BAD!
8-disk RAID-Z = 128KiB / 7 = ~18.3KiB = BAD!
9-disk RAID-Z = 128KiB / 8 = 16KiB = good
4-disk RAID-Z2 = 128KiB / 2 = 64KiB = good
5-disk RAID-Z2 = 128KiB / 3 = ~43KiB = BAD!
6-disk RAID-Z2 = 128KiB / 4 = 32KiB = good
7-disk RAID-Z2 = 128KiB / 5 = ~25.6KiB = BAD!
8-disk RAID-Z2 = 128KiB / 6 = ~21.3KiB = BAD!
9-disk RAID-Z2 = 128KiB / 7 = ~18.3KiB = BAD!
10-disk RAID-Z2 = 128KiB / 8 = 16KiB = good
I've been running FreeNAS for years on an old AMD 2600+ with 1GB RAM. Serves up video to multiple XBMC setups fine, runs sickbeard/sabnzbd for tv shows, etc etc. I didn't mess with RAID at all. Started with 2 1TB drives and rsynced one to the other for backup. Have added another 1TB and a 2TB since, but still just rsync important files, have the drives used for different storage and set up separate shares easily enough.
If I were starting from scratch I might raid, but I'd definitely move to NAS4Free, the successor to FreeNAS, and probably move from an embedded install on compact flash over to a full install on a small HDD just to make adding packages easier. Still, a cheap, reliable, powerful system that runs 24/7 for months at a time between reboots.
I'm convinced that everyone on the internet would rather spend money than do it correctly.
1. ZFS requires atleast 4gb of ram.... Seriously, start with 8gb which will give you a 2-4gb buffer.
2. Samba on FreeBSD (FreeNAS) is slapped on.
3. Anything with a GUI requires CPU.
Here's what I recommend... and it's going to be a pain to setup but much easier on the pocket book and most likely just as fast.
Buy a SuperMicro Atom board and make sure it has IPMI.
Buy any amount of RAM.
Buy a VelociRaptor hard drive (5 year warranty). If you are going to use RAID, use Soft Raid 0... but an RSYNC process nightly to a friend is smarter for redundancy.
Ubuntu Server installed on a thumb drive add SSH, SAMBA, and popcon during the install.
Format the drive to EXT4. Mount and share it in SAMBA. Finally add Webmin and Plex server.
60MB/s read and 45MB/s write
Now swap the thumb drive to FreeNAS and see how you just lost 10MB/s.
Switch to ZFS and lose another 10MB/s.
If you want more CIFS speed, switch to EXT2 and run Solaris... but you will lose Plex.
@justgosh: Strange, how then do you account for my 60MB/s CIFS writes from Windows 7 to N36L/8GB/FreeNAS 8.3/RAID-Z1?
Thanks for the replies, I've settled on the HP Microserver as @DigitalVortex and @MilhouseVH suggested, I've just got to wait for it to come back in stock.
I think I was a little confused when I previously mentioned JBOD, I was under the impression that it would just make the drives appear as one, without linking them....
I'm sure there is something else I'm getting it confused with ....
If not XBMC does aggregate the files anyway so not the end of the world.
I'd rather not buy UnRaid so I think I'll stick with FreeNAS and just tinker until I get it to what I want
On a side note, can anyone comment on this:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Hewlett-Packar...1e7b67beb6
From what I read of the HP cashback scheme, as long as it is a UK seller it qualifies but I'd prefer a second opinion before I take the plunge (I'm only considering this over Ebuyer who have the same price because they still have some instock)
Again thank for the replies
@
masterbyllet - JBOD basically just 'concatenates' the drives together and will make them appear as one. Until a disk fails that is. ;-)