Help me build a dirt cheap home file server :)

[RyanGreener]

Hi everyone. My brother had the idea of wanting to do a home file server, but right now he's trying to use a FreeNAS setup on my old Pentium 4 Desktop, which seems like a lame idea to me. The old IDE hard drive is probably on it's way out, and only stores 80 GB. There is only room for one hard drive as well, so no RAID or multiple hard drive storage. It's also loud and power hungry (but that's just cause it's old, dusty, and worn out). And honestly, I just wouldn't trust a machine like that to be reliable backup/storage.

What I'm wondering is:

1. Atom vs E-350. Will the E-350's advantage in power mean any difference in what a file server is supposed to do? Should I just go for the low power atom?

2. Do I actually need any RAM, or can I just get away with 1 GB?

3. Recommendations for hard drives/power supplies. Looking for cheap and efficient. Also looking to make sure that I get reliable hard drives. Should I try RAID? I've never done RAID before and I'm curious as what I'll need to do it.

 

[SViscusi]

I built a file server last year with a athlon II combo and it's worked just fine so far, if I were to build one today I'd go with a e-350. Just be careful o pay attention to two things, the on-board nic, which at least in my experience has been hit or miss with bsd based systems even when supported, if you can fit it in your budget then a intel pcie nic is a good buy. Also since your using Freenas and ZFS, then remember to pay attention to the drives and whether they're advanced format or not.

On the PSU, I'm not sure if I'd pay too much attention to efficiency as much as quality. At the power levels you'll be running there just wouldn't be enough of a difference to justify allocating a larger percentage of your budget than necessary.

 

[RyanGreener]

Just be careful o pay attention to two things, the on-board nic, which at least in my experience has been hit or miss with bsd based systems even when supported, if you can fit it in your budget then a intel pcie nic is a good buy. Also since your using Freenas and ZFS, then remember to pay attention to the drives and whether they're advanced format or not.

Thanks for the advice about the hardware! I'll probably go with the E-350. Also I have to ask about this little part....what exactly does it mean to have advanced format, etc? My brother is the one using FreeNAS (not me) and I don't really have any knowledge of BSD or any of that stuff.

 

[SViscusi]

Thanks for the advice about the hardware! I'll probably go with the E-350. Also I have to ask about this little part....what exactly does it mean to have advanced format, etc? My brother is the one using FreeNAS (not me) and I don't really have any knowledge of BSD or any of that stuff.

Advanced format drives have 4k sectors instead of 512 bytes. Manufactures, in order to maintain backwards compatibility then emulate 512 byte sectors to the O/S. What this means is if your doing a RAIDZ array you need to make sure the drives align properly with the sectors.

Example
RAIDZ1 (the Zfs equivelent of Raid 5) with 3 total drives, 2 data - 1 parity would give you 1024b (512b per drive) emulated sectors which divides evenly into 4096 (4k).

If you used 4 drives with 3 being data and 1 parity, you would end up with 1536b which would overlap the 4k hardware sectors and cause massive speed slowdowns.

A simple guide would be RAIDZ1 3 or 5 drive arrays. RAIDZ2 (Raid 6) 6 drives. There are more combos but I can't remember. You can search for a user here Sub.Mesa who knows all about this stuff and even has his own BSD/ZFS distro called ZFSGuru.

edit.
Just to add since I don't want to scare you off, there is nothing to worry with advanced format drives and ZFS. Lots of people do without any problems. I currently have 2 sets of 3 drive raidz1 arrays in my storage pool and have had no problems whatsoever.

 

[RyanGreener]

Wow! I've got a lot to learn about RAID and ZFS/BSD/FreeNas in general. I've mainly been using Windows these years, but lately I've been testing out Linux for fun, but I hear Linux and BSD aren't really similar.

 

[mfenn]

You also don't necessarily have to use ZFS if you don't want to. You can also use plain ol RAID for a simple setup. I'm somewhat partial to just installing a stable Linux distro like CentOS and setting things up manually. That way, you'll be forced to expand your knowledge of what's really going on under the hood.

 

[SViscusi]

You also don't necessarily have to use ZFS if you don't want to. You can also use plain ol RAID for a simple setup. I'm somewhat partial to just installing a stable Linux distro like CentOS and setting things up manually. That way, you'll be forced to expand your knowledge of what's really going on under the hood.

That's a good point. ZFS is a far better option for pure storage, but with the sheer number of users Linux becomes far easier to use and troubleshoot than BSD. Instead of CentO/S though, since this will be a home server, Amahi might end up being a better option. You can still configure the underlying O/S but then you have a great framework for a home media server on top of it.

 

[SViscusi]

Wow! I've got a lot to learn about RAID and ZFS/BSD/FreeNas in general. I've mainly been using Windows these years, but lately I've been testing out Linux for fun, but I hear Linux and BSD aren't really similar.

There are some simularities and a lot of the basics that you lean in one can easily translate to the other i.e. setting permissions, creating users and groups, navigating the commandline. With something like Freenas, the BSD part is basically invisible, you can do pretty much everything you need to do from the WebGUI, and Freenas 8 is very polished and easy to configure.

Unless you want to extend functionality through adding your own software, everything you do is from the WebGUI. I had a freenas box running for years and the only time I ever needed to go into the commandline, I was trying to turn it into a print server. I also have m0n0wall running on my router and I've never had to do anything other than write the image to a pccard and plug it into my router.

 

[fffblackmage]

Are there any E-350 with mATX or ATX mobos?
As much as I would love to have the E350 instead of my current Sempron/Athlon II, the ITX mobos doesn't offer as many SATA ports or PCIe slots for additional SATA/RAID controllers.

BTW, you'll also want 4GB of ram for ZFS. You could do with less, but it's highly recommended you have 4GB.

Power supply... just about anything not crappy will do. A low-wattage PSU can more than handle a low-end cpu and several HDDs. The only limitation I found with my Antec Neo Eco 400C is that it only has 5 SATA power connectors, though the PSU has more than enough power to handle more HDDs (I ended up buying a couple molex-to-SATA adapters when I saw them on sale).

 

[Raduque]

Get yourself a copy of WHS v1 (Not this new Veil crap) and don't worry about raiding this or that.

 

[SViscusi]

Get yourself a copy of WHS v1 (Not this new Veil crap) and don't worry about raiding this or that.

Why buy 8 year old tech? You're only going to face more problems going forward. Plus it's an extra $100 bucks spent when you don't really need to do it.