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DIY NAS Newbie from Downunder

Kosti
in Hardware

Featured Replies

G'Day All,

 

I'm a newbie to DIY NAS and would like to build one using unRAID. Yeah 1st post :D

 

At the same time I am looking to build an AIO setup where I have one "supercomputer" to do all the tasks required for the following requirements but not limited to below, these are in no specific order

 

  • Storage - the main one is for photo's as now with digital pictures/video you seldom delete or print so these need to be stored safely
     
  • Plex/XBMC - wanting a simple solution for all the wifi devices including ATV, XIOS and other media capable devices to access and play movies TV shows. Transcoding a must for various file extensions
     
  • Torrents/downloads - A place where they can be downloaded, scanned and stored as required
     
  • TV - Currently have Foxtel and wish to move to a simpler and or less expensive option for TVshows, NEWS and other FTA programs. PVR option as well
     
  • Security - Surveillance record and capture IP camera's
     
  • Remote Access - Ability to securely access files or manage the AIO machine remotely

 

That pretty much covers everything that comes to mind to get out of my AIO solution.

 

As for budget, well I'm looking in the 2nd hand market for high end gear that I can source and reuse via eBay and other 4sale forums.

 

Amount of Drives will depend on how many i can fit into the case and so far it looks like I can do 15 HDD with the use of the caddy's I've listed below.

 

With the amount of coin I am putting into this I want expandability to be able to maximise my outlay and use this for a very long time.

 

Great thing with unRAID are the addon's, so yeah will probably run most like; Plex Media Server, Transmission, etc.

 

As for running none NAS type HDD's, this will depend on how well i protect and how often i back up so not fussed if I get greens v's red HDD prefer REDHeads LOL :).

 

With the above information and idea's I have I set out to obtaining some of the hardware. Below is a list of what I have already acquired thus far and the plan is to watercool the CPU's as well

 

Now for the hurdles

What raid card? Do I need one now? I have no idea what to look for but I've been looking at these two on ebay

 

LSI 3Ware 9650SE-24M8 SATA PCIe 24-Port RAID Controller

 

or

 

3WARE/LSI (9750-4i) SATA/SAS 6Gb/s PCI-Express 512MB RAID CARD (But with this I would need a SAS extender and I am just not ready for that :(

 

Next is OS

I'm no Linux or Windows guru, i have used both and I don't mind getting my hands dirty if I have a guide to follow but I also like simplicity of out of the box solutions.

 

Do I go Solaris,use ESXi, run ZFS, Xen or another flavour to achieve my goal

 

Should I grab an off the shelf platform like WindowsServer 2008/2012 R2, Do I need R2 or Hyper-V?

 

Will a copy of Mint or Ubuntu be enough to tackle all of these tasks and provide options to expand? Am I biting off to much here and asking to much from a simple unRAID box?

 

(sorry for the long intro) however please feel free to Critique/Opinions/Thoughts/Idea's !!

Looking forward to some helpful tips and idea's for the community and I can start a worklog

PEACE

Kosti

  • Quote
    • Author

    I guess this is in the wrong forum?

     

    Well while I've been waiting for some feedback I decided to upgraded the hardware a little further :P

     

    Changed CPU from 2 x Intel Xeon Processor E5540 now running 2 x Intel Xeon X5670 2.93GHz Six-Core's

     

    http://ark.intel.com/products/47920/Intel-Xeon-Processor-X5670-12M-Cache-2_93-GHz-6_40-GTs-Intel-QPI?q=x5670

     

    Also picked up an IBM m1015 flashed to initiator-target firmware P19  ;D

     

    All I need now is some SFF-8087 TO SATA

    not

    SATA TO SFF-8087  :o

     

     

    Anyways guess I'm on my own  :-X

  • Quote

    As you can see from my configuration in my signature, I am not really a high-power user.  In looking over your list of equipment, I noticed the following items:

     

    1- You have specified more RAM in your setup then any other that I have ever seen.  Basic unRAID will run with a 1GB for version 5 but (apparently) version 6 requires a bit more.  See this poll:  http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=33383.0

     

    2- A 1500watt power supply is over-the-top overkill.  A computer that required that much power would typically be a gaming rig that has two $750 GPU cards in it.  I don't see any video cards in your list so I assume you are using on-board graphics.  I would think that you would never need more than 750 watts.  However, you do need a single 12 volt rail supply as most of the 12 volt load will be the hard drives-- Primarily, their startup current as all of the drives spin up at once on server startup.

     

    The probable reason why you have not seen more responses is that you (with your 'supercomputer' approach) are attempting to move well beyond what I have seen anyone attempt to do before.  You are moving into areas where no one has any (or very little) experience.  Security is one area where I think you need to be very, very careful.  unRAID has never been intended to interface directly to the Internet. 

     

     

  • Quote

    OCAU FTW lol, getting a ml110 g6 on the go for my upgrade for vm's, x3450 4c8t with 20gb of ecc non buff with a vt-d passthrough 760gtx and its about what you would call pretty over the top. Anyhow the best cards to get without any fuss or flashing would be the SuperMicro AOC-SASLP-MV8 or newer sata version SuperMicro AOC-SAS2LP-MV8. The 9650SE-24M8 looks interesting will have to have a look at that myself, a quick google says it doesn't support smart arguments above 15 so thats a worry :(

  • Quote

    You have quite an extensive configuration laid out. A few comments ...

     

    1 - Why are you looking at 2 CPUs? And water cooled? I don't use PLEX but most addons are not that CPU intensive. This thing will run 24x7. And will house valuable data assets. I'd look at conventional cooling, no overclocking, and a single CPU.

     

    2 - Suggest you look at HGST drives instead of WD RED or GREEN. HGST have emerged as the most reliable in several studies.

     

    3 - Consider the Supermicro 5in3s. They are cheaper and I have had very good luck with them. (Hope available down under).

     

    Many of the components puzzle me. BluRay burner? 2x512 SSD? You would have to better articulate the rataionale for some of the components. Maybe this is the reason for no one responding, as it is confusing what you are planning and why.

     

    Case looks good. If that is 12 5.25 slots you would have room for 4 5in3s = 20 drives. I have the Sharkoon Rebel 12 which is similar in size and like it.

  • Quote
    • 1 month later...
    • Author

    Hey All

     

    Sorry it has been a while, I have been distracted with other projects but for now I did manage to update some of the original parts list from my plans and I am almost ready to fill with water test for leaks and then power up

     

    Here it the new list of parts that I have purchased and installed in the case

     

    So next will be trying to figure out on whether I am going to use Hyper V or Esxi or full version of Microsoft Windows Server 2012 (64-bit) and the OS and spin up VM to run unraid and my other VM OS that I would like to run

     

    Can anyone point me in the right direction for building the OS for such a rig?

     

    PEACE

    Kosti

  • Quote
    • Author

    You have quite an extensive configuration laid out. A few comments ...

     

    Thanks for the reply - sorry for the late entry, a lot going on and I will try and answer some of your Q

     

    1 - Why are you looking at 2 CPUs? And water cooled? I don't use PLEX but most addons are not that CPU intensive. This thing will run 24x7. And will house valuable data assets. I'd look at conventional cooling, no overclocking, and a single CPU.

     

    It picked up cheap Dual CPU motherboard so thought I'd go to 6 core CPU's to future proof and to be able to used this as not just a storage system

     

    I am looking to perform a number of functions on this so hence the overkill in power - I usual over do things  ;D

     

    2 - Suggest you look at HGST drives instead of WD RED or GREEN. HGST have emerged as the most reliable in several studies.

     

    Yes they are well price but the AUD$ is down now and so I am left with picking up some 2nd HDD with warranty to kickstart this server, hence i grabbed 2 x 4TB and 3X3TB red NAS drives, plus the SSD drives will be for spinning up VM as quickly as possible

     

    3 - Consider the Supermicro 5in3s. They are cheaper and I have had very good luck with them. (Hope available down under).

     

    See above, it was a board i thought was prices well and sold off the CPU's and RAMS which allowed my to upgrade to more RAM and faster CPU's. Since I was not going into a Rack mounted case, I needed to cool it so watercooling was an easier option for the 1366 platform

     

    Many of the components puzzle me. BluRay burner? 2x512 SSD? You would have to better articulate the rataionale for some of the components. Maybe this is the reason for no one responding, as it is confusing what you are planning and why.

     

    SSD are for fast spin up of OS and VM's as will live on these drives, upgraded to two 600GB SSD now  ;). As for the burner, I will be doing some video editing on this as well so I want to be able to burn DVD and BR's, as required and since it wasnt a hugh price difference for an Optical drive I thought it was a good idea to throw one in.

     

    Case looks good. If that is 12 5.25 slots you would have room for 4 5in3s = 20 drives. I have the Sharkoon Rebel 12 which is similar in size and like it.

    Agree, I have 3 of those caddy's and if I drop the optical drive i could add in one more to go 20 drives, however I figured with 6TB and larger units coming out, i should be ok to upgrade and not need the 4th caddy - time will tell  :)

     

    Again, thanks for your comments sorry for the delay, I am not the fastest project builder, however I am close now. What I need now is to understand unRAID and how I am going to achieve running this on VM and making sure i have passthrough on all my peripherals

     

    PEACE

    Kosti

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