Help building a NAS with cloud

[saneman]

Hello!

I'm thinking of putting together a NAS that will help me have my own cloud storage (accessible remotely too) I have an old C2D e8400 lying around. Need to buy everything else.

This is what I was thinking about;
- micro ATX case
- micro ATX motherboard
- 8GB RAM
- 2-2TB HDD to make RAID 0 (will add more HDD later)
- don't need a video card (will use on-board as I'm going to use it specifically for the above mentioned purposes)

Am planning to use FREENAS but need to know how to turn that into cloud.

As always,

Thank you very much!

 

[mfenn]

I don't really see the point in scrounging around for an old LGA 775 motherboard. You might as well get a new motherboard and a cheap Haswell Pentium or Celeron and enjoy modern benefits like more SATA ports, USB 3.0, and Gigabit NICs as standard.

Also, RAID 0 doesn't make sense on a NAS, especially one that's being used for remote access. The network will bottleneck you long before the throughput of a single new 2TB drive.

The remote access part is more about how you set up your router than what you're running on your NAS. If you're not network savvy and don't want to go through a long learning process, then you may want to look at something like a Synology, which has built-in helpers for cloud functionality.

Finally, what's your budget?

 

[saneman]

Budget < $500

I'll look into Synology. Thanks mfenn!

 

[mfenn]

No problem. You can get a Synology DS213j for $188 and a pair of WD Red 3TB drives for $122 each. That totals $432.

 

[VirtualLarry]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2392592

MSI G41 S775 mobo for $60 + ship / tax (Newegg / MC)

Though, I didn't double-check if it had gigabit ethernet, that's a requirement for a home-grown NAS these days.

Edit: As an aside, too bad that there aren't A85X / A88X boards, with eight native SATA6G ports, AND an Intel gigabit NIC. Would seem to make sense for server builds.

 

[mfenn]

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2392592

MSI G41 S775 mobo for $60 + ship / tax (Newegg / MC)

Though, I didn't double-check if it had gigabit ethernet, that's a requirement for a home-grown NAS these days.

Edit: As an aside, too bad that there aren't A85X / A88X boards, with eight native SATA6G ports, AND an Intel gigabit NIC. Would seem to make sense for server builds.

The MSI G41M-P33 has a 10/100 NIC only.

At any rate, the software and network is the tricky/time-consuming part of building a remote-sharing setup, not the hardware.

 

[saneman]

Thanks mfenn and virtuallarry! Looks like I'll go with Synology- still debating the model. Will the 2 bays be enough for future or should I invest a bit more and go with more bays?

The WD REDs sound great too!

As for the cloud, is it built in the Synology?

 

[Gunbuster]

Raid 0 on large drives? Adding more later? Not the best plan...

 

[dave_the_nerd]

The MSI G41M-P33 has a 10/100 NIC only.

At any rate, the software and network is the tricky/time-consuming part of building a remote-sharing setup, not the hardware.

If your primary access is over a WAN, 100Mbps Ethernet is, sadly, not the bottleneck. :'(D:😱

 

[mfenn]

Thanks mfenn and virtuallarry! Looks like I'll go with Synology- still debating the model. Will the 2 bays be enough for future or should I invest a bit more and go with more bays?

The WD REDs sound great too!

As for the cloud, is it built in the Synology?

It's up to you, but with 3-4TB drives, I think that a 2-bay is enough for most people. Synology do come with cloud services (including sync and remote access) built in.

If your primary access is over a WAN, 100Mbps Ethernet is, sadly, not the bottleneck. :'(D:😱

That's certainly true, but actually filling up a multi-terabyte unit over a 100Mb link is really unpleasant and the OP presumably also wants to have reasonable local access to his files.

 

[cbn]

Edit: As an aside, too bad that there aren't A85X / A88X boards, with eight native SATA6G ports, AND an Intel gigabit NIC. Would seem to make sense for server builds.

Here is a A88X with Intel NIC and eight SATA ports:

http://rog.asus.com/324692014/cross...ogs-first-fm2-motherboard-the-core-of-gaming/

(Not exactly budget class unfortunately)

 

[Stuka85]

for a server, never use gaming parts.