I need to build a NAS (only nas, no other fancy stuff - unless a NAS/DAS Combo is possible) to store video files

We edit 4k Videos and the files come in at an average of 300GB. Now, I am planning for around 50TB of storage, and the files will generally be accessed by one machine. The machine in question is running 4x 500gb SSDs in Raid0 for performance while editing. The NAS will simply be used for archival purposes with very rare accessing stored data.

 

As I'm looking for 50TB total it means I need at least 10 sata-ports on the MB.

 

But the confusing thing is people talking about high-end processors. Could a Simple Nas just work with an "Average Processor" (PASSMARK of less than 8000? for e.g.)

 

Any MB/CPU combos that can point me in the right direction?

 

Thanks

You are correct, if the need is just for a NAS, then you do not need much in the CPU department, if you were going to buy a commercial off the shelf solution, a dual core Atom processor would do. Seeing as you want to build an unRAID solution, then a dual core Celeron would be fine. I recently built one myself using a micro ATX board using a dual core Celeron G1840, it works fine for my purposes.

As I'm looking for 50TB total it means I need at least 10 sata-ports on the MB.

 

Do you need 10 SATA ports because you already have hard drives for the storage and this is the quantity needed to get to the 50TB?  If you will also be buying disks, with six 8TB (even some 10TB disks are available) you would have 48TB, and with an 8-port board, that gives you two SATA ports for one parity drive and one cache drive (or dual parity if you skip the cache).  You could also go with single parity (protects against a single drive failure) and 7 data disks for 56TB with 8TB drives.

 

8 SATA port boards can be had without going socket 2011 which usually supports high-end server processors only.  Most of the boards I have seen with 10 SATA ports (without an expansion card) are Supermicro server boards.

 

See their board matirx at https://www.supermicro.com/ResourceApps/MB_matrix.aspx

 

Several 6-8-port boards are available from ASrock Rack whch support socket 1150 or 1151 with Celeron up to Xeon processors.  You can get to 10 or more SATA ports with a PCIe expansion card.

 

http://www.asrockrack.com/general/products.asp#Server

 

I am not familiar with AMD board and CPU combinations, but, there is likely something is there that may meet your needs as well.

unRAID has more and more become a platform for running applications in addition to basic NAS functionality.  You don't need much CPU for basic NAS functionality, though - the extra CPU is needed for those applications.  You should be able to get away with something much more basic since you're strictly interested in a NAS.

 

I would go for a Pentium G4400 as a starting point because it gives you a little more CPU than a Celeron and supports ECC RAM, which is a good idea in an always on server.  4GB is adequate but 8GB is a good idea.  You could also go up to a Core i3, but there's really no need to go beyond that give your use case.

 

I'd probably build a 50TB server in a micro-ATX case like the Fractal Design Define R5.  Have you given thought to what size case you want?  Obviously that affects the motherboard options. 

 

I personally prefer to manage a smaller number of larger disks so I'd build with at least 6TB disks and probably 8TB given your target of a 50TB array.  I'd also go with dual parity from the outset.  I'd go with a motherboard from ASRock or Supermicro, again because of the ability to get a server class board with ECC RAM support.  Which brand is dependent on size - ASRock has better mini-ITX boards but Supermicro has some nice micro-ATX and ATX boards.

Might be an idea to do the editing right there on the nas if there is a lot of acces to the storage.

 

If however Most Data is Produced and then given to the nas for mostly reads only it will Not help much.

 

Thing is, it will Take time to move the data from One pc to the other and Gigabit is getting a Bit to slow for often occuring Transfers of multiple hundred Gigs.

 

You should think about Bonds, or setting up a 10 Gig Interface, or Just work on the nas itself. 10 Gig Interfaces can be had cheap.

 

If you do Not have an offsite Backup Solution up i would recomend Double parity aswell. As a failure can happen while you rebuild your Array, especially with larger Drives as it takes longer. Make sure you are aware of shingled Drives, as you probably want high write speeds which these do Not deliever.

Thanks All for the great recomendations.

 

Yes for the time being it will just be a NAS, if I feel any need to add any other features later then I will probably just build another one.

Will probably set up 10g connections between the computer and the nas just to increase throughput.

 

One last thing I read about was RAM and the requirement of 1GB ram per TB of Storage. Is this the case or did I mis-read something?

One last thing I read about was RAM and the requirement of 1GB ram per TB of Storage. Is this the case or did I mis-read something?

You misread something, probably somewhere else.

One last thing I read about was RAM and the requirement of 1GB ram per TB of Storage. Is this the case or did I mis-read something?

That's the FreeNAS requirement, and probably one of the reasons you're here looking at unRAID.  unRAID can successfully run an array of many Terabytes on 4GB of RAM.  More is good - unRAID will use it for write caching.  But 4GB is adequate and there's little need to run more than 8GB or maybe 16GB of RAM for a NAS only box.

 

Running Dockers and VMs changes that.  They need RAM and CPU to work and you will need to size for that, but that's independent of the amount of storage on the box.

 

One last thing I read about was RAM and the requirement of 1GB ram per TB of Storage. Is this the case or did I mis-read something?

 

That's the nonsense the FreeNAS dweebs spout, and it's not even relevant to FreeNAS unless it's serving hundreds of clients at any one time.  4GB is plenty for a basic unRAID box that's only doing NAS duties.