+80TB NAS

[remi]

ok Final Round : unRAID vs Storage Spaces

we need more bullet points for Pros and Cons

A huge Pro for unRAID : you can only lose data on the failed drive (depending on File Structure set up)
A huge Pro for Storage Spaces : Windows based (like everything else i own) and very easy to setup, maintain etc

Please only add Pros ad Cons if you have worked with either of them and know something for a fact.

 

[Jetster]

@Fx , correct me if I'm wrong...
@remi , if you were to build a system like the conversation is talking about, you need to realize how much money is involved. If you're going to be getting 1 GB RAM for every TB of storage, then you are going to need a motherboard that supports 128 GB of RAM. Then that registered ECC RAM will cost upwards of $350 for every 32 GB DIMM......

There are 2 columns missing in that spreadsheet. One for building a system (including the cost) and one for a prebuilt NAS. If you go with a prebuilt, I'm thinking you could start with the $600 5 bay Synology DS1517 (the 8 bay is $850) and then latter add up to 2 of the 5 bay Dx517 for $520. Let them deal with all of the configuration. I also believe that this is the easiest way to add capacity they way that you want.

The Synology NAS will also have fetures that the build would not. Media server and many apps

 

[ERazer]

ok Final Round : unRAID vs Storage Spaces

we need more bullet points for Pros and Cons

A huge Pro for unRAID : you can only lose data on the failed drive (depending on File Structure set up)
A huge Pro for Storage Spaces : Windows based (like everything else i own) and very easy to setup, maintain etc

Please only add Pros ad Cons if you have worked with either of them and know something for a fact.

To go in detail about the file structure, i setup my Media folder to use all my 5 drives if drive A fails only the movies/music thats in drive A will be lose not my whole Media folder thats if my parity drive fail as well.

Intial cost its completely up to you, you can use old pc as start up and upgrade from there or go all out with server grade.

Replace/upgrade whole symtem(cpu/mobo/ram) only need the thumbdrive and drive path

Im no expert but it works for my needs, my recommendation is do 30day trial with old
computer just get the hang of it.

EDIT:

one more thing theres an app called preclear what it is in simple term it stress test new HDD to make sure no errors before you add it to your drive pool.

 

[thebluebumblebee]

The Synology NAS will also have fetures that the build would not. Media server and many apps

And, maybe the most important feature, someone to call when you have a question:

+1 425 296 3177 (Support)

 

[ERazer]

The Synology NAS will also have fetures that the build would not. Media server and many apps

What i don't like with those NAS is limited hardware upgrade. Tho they are compact .

 

[azdesign]

Ram, Raid and Disk aside,
You should decide what kind of nas you will be using first.
Building your own custom nas seems cool and spot-on in term of performance/price. Just remember that you're the one who will maintain it. You will need to study, experiments, and prepare for the worst.

also, DO NOT go for ZFS unless you're tech-savvy and have lot of time to learn it. ZFS have huge learning curve and you need to do a lot of experiments to build a reliable, stable, and safe zfs nas.

I suggest you save more money for expandable synology/qnap system.
I had freenas for 5+ years and quite lucky enough that my data are still intact (consumer-grade hardware, non-ecc ram, scrub only 2 or 3 times a year, etc)

Now I'm happy with my synology; why?

1. Far easier to maintain, don't need to concern yourself with hardware (except ram, drive, ssd cache) and complicated technical stuffs.
2. You can easily expand it however you wish. ZFS on the other hand, you need plan your expansion and raid structure beforehand to be scaleable in the future as you cannot "expand" an existing pool that simple.
3. When something happened is when the nightmare start for zfs. Before you try to get help on freenas forum, they will ask your specs, if you do not have their recommended specs, well... good luck, especially you're on a budget.

Make your life easier and buy prebuilt nas. They have easy-to-use UI, tons of apps, and professional support.
SHR2 + hot spares + scheduled short, long SMART, scrub, update + good UPS + strict user permissions + put some dust filter (this little box surprisingly quite a dust magnet)
Then you don't have to worry about anything else.

 

[Jetster]

What i don't like with those NAS is limited hardware upgrade. Tho they are compact .

I've been going back and forth. But I just ordered one so we'll see how it works out

 

[ERazer]

im sub to this guy he makes good how to vids for unRAID

 

[Sasqui]

Yea, I'm really late to this party, but what about a desktop NAS?

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822107342

It lists a max capacity of 64 TB, but then goes on with this:

• Scalable design with 2 QNAP expansion enclosures UX-800P for total storage capacity of up to 24 drives

 

[ERazer]

I've been going back and forth. But I just ordered one so we'll see how it works out

Eventually ill have my main rig as my server, im amaze a lot ppl never heard about unRAID specially here, a lot users have second rig even third they hardly use why not use it as NAS/Media server.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

So, I just tried @newtekie1's advice on my own Highpoint RAID which is approximately a decade old. I had it configured as 3 RAID5 + 1 hot spare that whole time but it was down to <20% capacity remaining. I used OCE to add the hot-spare to the RAID. It estimated less than six hours to complete. I went to bed and it was done by the time I got up. No issues, Highpoint's software showed the drive was incorporated but Disk Management didn't reflect the change. The following night, I rebooted it so the extra space showed up in Disk Management and extended the existing volume to fill the newly added space. Now my 640 GB RAID5 is 960 GB.

Mind you, I did all of this because I just did my monthly back up so if something went wrong, I was prepared to deal with it. Nothing went wrong and the only inconvenience is that it required rebooting once.

 

[newtekie1]

Nothing went wrong and the only inconvenience is that it required rebooting once.

Strange, what OS are you running on the system? I swear the last time I did an OCE on my Win10 machine it just showed up as a larger drive in disk management, all I had to do was extend the partition, no boot required. But my card is a newer.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Server 2012 R2. It's a RocketRAID 2300 so pretty dang old.

I'm not running the latest BIOS on it because my previous motherboard literally couldn't boot because it ran out of memory with it. When I changed motherboards, I decided to leave well enough alone. That update maybe fixed that issue.

 

[newtekie1]

Server 2012 R2. It's a RocketRAID 2300 so pretty dang old.

I'm not running the latest BIOS on it because my previous motherboard literally couldn't boot because it ran out of memory with it. When I changed motherboards, I decided to leave well enough alone. That update maybe fixed that issue.

Yeah, the 2300 is pretty dang old. I still have 2 though. LOL One in service an another that I was using but retired, and kept as a spare/backup for the one I still use. I had boot issues on old motherboards with the 2300 too. You can flash the firmware and there is an option in the flash utility that changes a setting in the firmware that lets it boot on more motherboards. It's been so long since I've done it though, I can't remember the setting.

The cool thing is the RAID 5 I'm running now started on a RR 2300 card. Then I moved it to a 622, then it went to a 642L, and finally to a 2722. It also started with 3 drives and now has 5. It was the same array through all the changes, I never had to re-create it.

 

[Steevo]

Yeah, the 2300 is pretty dang old. I still have 2 though. LOL One in service an another that I was using but retired, and kept as a spare/backup for the one I still use. I had boot issues on old motherboards with the 2300 too. You can flash the firmware and there is an option in the flash utility that changes a setting in the firmware that lets it boot on more motherboards. It's been so long since I've done it though, I can't remember the setting.

The cool thing is the RAID 5 I'm running now started on a RR 2300 card. Then I moved it to a 622, then it went to a 642L, and finally to a 2722. It also started with 3 drives and now has 5. It was the same array through all the changes, I never had to re-create it.

This is why I bought my 640 card, and put one in a production machine for backups and thin clients. Something about having 20TB and able to saturate the PCIe link with mechanical disks during sequential reads off a RAID 5 array.

With simple striped arrays the array was detected by the AMD chipset even though it was created by Highpoint

 

[remi]

Ok it's settled Storage Spaces it is.

Let's talk hardware :

Will ECC RAM help prevent copying errors or something if the system is just used for a personal video library ? No networking, just copying to and from the HDDs.

Will a good CPU improve the performance of Storage Spaces ?

For motherboard i was thinking of
ASRock X99 TAICHI or
ASRock X99 Extreme4

both have 10 SATA 3 ports and for 21 total HDDs (in the future) i will need to add SAS expanders

The problem is that those MoBos have 2011-3 Socket so the cheapest CPU i can add is 450$ Intel Broadwell-E, Core i7 6800K 3.4GHz ???

If possible i would like to spend half that on the CPU(if it's not necessary for Storage Spaces)

 

[Jetster]

I would just get the Synology DS1517 or the ds513

 

[newtekie1]

Ok it's settled Storage Spaces it is.

Let's talk hardware :

Will ECC RAM help prevent copying errors or something if the system is just used for a personal video library ? No networking, just copying to and from the HDDs.

Will a good CPU improve the performance of Storage Spaces ?

For motherboard i was thinking of
ASRock X99 TAICHI or
ASRock X99 Extreme4

both have 10 SATA 3 ports and for 21 total HDDs (in the future) i will need to add SAS expanders

The problem is that those MoBos have 2011-3 Socket so the cheapest CPU i can add is 450$ Intel Broadwell-E, Core i7 6800K 3.4GHz ???

If possible i would like to spend half that on the CPU(if it's not necessary for Storage Spaces)

Ok. First SAS Expanders only work with SAS ports, not SATA. Hence the name SAS Expander.

However, you don't need an expensive motherboard(and hence expensive CPU) if you are using Storage Spaces. Storage Spaces can use any drive Windows sees, they all don't have to be connected to the motherboard. So buy a cheaper 1151 motherboard, and just add cheap SATA PCI-E cards to get more SATA ports to connect more drives.

 

[remi]

newtekie1 Something like this ?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ESFEI2E/?tag=tec06d-20

Cause i might as well buy a 10 SATA 3 port MoBo, the price difference isnt that much.

What do you think about ECC RAM ? Synology and Drobo dont have it, should i ? Can i lose a lot of data if i dont have it ?

 

[FordGT90Concept]

You need a server processor to use ECC memory at all and considering how cheap you're aiming, that's out of the question. Just buy some non-ECC Kingston sticks and be happy.

 

[remi]

All Ryzen CPUs support ECC RAM, and some are quite cheap. The ECC RAM isnt much more expensive then Non ECC.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Ryzen doesn't work in X99.

 

[newtekie1]

newtekie1 Something like this ?
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ESFEI2E/?tag=tec06d-20

Cause i might as well buy a 10 SATA 3 port MoBo, the price difference isnt that much.

What do you think about ECC RAM ? Synology and Drobo dont have it, should i ? Can i lose a lot of data if i dont have it ?

No need for ECC, IMO. You only really need ECC if you were using ZFS with FreeNAS. FreeNAS needs ECC memory because it caches the parity data in RAM.

 

[Jetster]

All Ryzen CPUs support ECC RAM, and some are quite cheap. The ECC RAM isnt much more expensive then Non ECC.

Not entirely true, while they don't block the use of ecc, they offer no support for it ether. So depending on the board it may work or may not

 

[remi]

ASRock X370 Taichi + Ryzen + ECC RAM

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...ws/75030-ecc-memory-amds-ryzen-deep-dive.html