NAS w/ separate Media Server or build an all-in-1 solution [Build ordered]

[Medwynd]

I am looking to replace my old setup of WHS v1 with 3x2TB WD Green drives. Along with this I used older SageTV extenders.

I am evaluating my options for the holiday sales and trying to decide the pros/cons of building 2 separate boxes, one with unraid just for storage and another to act as my media server or build one box for both with plenty of bays, redundancy for my data, and transcoding media.

Transcoding will only be necessary for playback on mobile devices away from the house, everything in the house is wired gigabit.

For media playback I am considering Plex or Emby on my xboxes and devices, since I have several, I can also still use my old SageTV extenders.

I have a lot of movies I have not backed up because of lack of storage so will definitely need more storage. So I will be probably be using 6TB WD Reds for storage.

I would like both boxes to be relatively silent as they will be living in my office.

I could buy a prebuilt NAS with plenty of horsepower to transcode and house all my drives, which is pricer than building, or I can build one one, or I can build two separate dedicated boxes, one for storage and one for playback and potential for other virtual machines as necessary.

Thoughts on the pros/cons of these options? I haven't rebuilt this setup in about 5 years and I am sure there are a lot of things I am not considering that I haven't thought of.

 

[Captain_WD]

~snip~

Hey Medwynd,

Regarding the drives, WD Red are good for what you are planning if you are setting up a pool with up to 8 drives. For larger pools (for up to 16) I'd recommend going for WD Red Pro drives as they have some additional features that handle the higher temperatures and vibration levels of denser arrays better, work faster (with the higher rpm) and have a longer warranty. Here's some more info about them: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=gA9hfX

You could build one massive NAS setup that can handle everything you do (it would save you some finds, space and trouble building a second one) and you could get a larger pre-built NAS for backups of everything you don't want to lose. WD My Cloud EX4 would be a good option (depending on what features and what storage space you are looking for): http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=sTmkP0

Having separate NASs also has its benefits as it will keep the data safe on one of them if the other fails and you would be more flexible managing two separate ones.

Post back with the planned hardware parts, storage space, RAID controllers and other plans that you have.

Captain_WD.

 

[Charlie98]

If you have the ability to remote control the NAS to stream to the TV, etc, I'd just build one box. If heat/noise are going to be a problem (all those drives spinning around in your TV viewing area,) you could build a NAS and stream to the TV via a mITX PC or a prebuilt (think NUC or similar.)

 

[Medwynd]

So I have been doing my research for a while on putting together a new all in one machine.

My old setup was a WHS v1 with 3x2TB drives which has since run out of space and is a bit long in the tooth being about 5 yrs old.

I already have replacement drives on the way because I got a good deal on them, 4x3TB WD Reds. This will give me 3 TB more space and one to use as a parity drive. A cache drive will be ordered shortly to run virtual machines on.

I pretty much only plan on serving up media for now with this machine, using unraid, running Plex to transcode to mobile devices while away from home and run kodi or emby possibly inside my home because we like the interface better.

I would like to leave plenty of room to grow the setup as well.

Case:
Size isn't a huge concern really as I have a large office I can stash this setup in.

If I got mini ITX the most common options seem to be Lian Li PC-Q25B, this gives 5 hot swap bays + 2 additional and runs about 120$ and the SilverStone DS380B that runs about $150.
DS380B - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811163255&cm_re=ds380b-_-11-163-255-_-Product
Q25B -http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811112339&cm_re=q25b-_-11-112-339-_-Product

Another way I can go is to get something like a CoolerMaster HAFX which I could add up to 3 Icy Dock Vortex 4 in 3 cages (only 35 after rebate currently) if I ever needed that much space.
A HAFX would run me only 130 currently after rebate or you could move down to a HAF 922 for 80 after rebate. This would also give me access to a full size motherboard as well.
HAF 922- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119197&cm_re=hafx-_-11-119-197-_-Product
HAF X - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119225&cm_re=hafx-_-11-119-197-_-Product
Icy Dock Vortex - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...&cm_re=icy_dock_vortex-_-17-198-059-_-Product

Motherboards:
I am all over the place on this with people running all sorts of setups. Some using server motherboards some using desktops motherboards.

My own requirements are that I clearly would like enough SATA ports, ECC is more of a nice to have, and vt-d support would be nice as well, low power draw.
I think I might be missing what some of the advantages are of the server motherboards. Is it mostly for the support of ECC RAM? Are there other features I am not considering?

I could use something like an ASRock Z97 Extreme6 which has 10 x SATA 6Gb/s ports, supports LGA1150 chips, and is only 110$ after rebate. I could also add more sata ports in the future if needed.
The con of this motherboard is its 52W power draw when idle.

The sata connectors are:
6 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s Connectors by Intel Z97
2 x SATA3 6.0 Gb/s Connectors by ASMedia ASM1061
1 x SATA Express 10 Gb/s Connector
1 x M.2_SSD (probably will never be needed in this rig)

ASRock Z97 Extreme6 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157500

On the server motherboard side the most common seem to be:
ASRock E3C226D2I and the ASRock E3C224D4I-14S.
The con of the E3C224D4I-14S is that it is an extended mini ITX board, the pros are it can support 12 drives, 6 fan controllers, and up to 32GB of ECC ram.

CPU:
This is entirely dependent on motherboard choice

Power Supply:
Not too much to mention here. Depending on my case I will need to consider an ATX or SFX PSU.
On the SFX side, I like the Silverstone SX500-LG @ $80 after rebate
On the ATX side, I like the Corsair CX500m only 25$ after rebate

SX500 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...e=Silverstone_SX500-LG-_-17-256-116-_-Product
CX500 - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...m_re=500w_power_supply-_-17-139-027-_-Product

So a straight desktop setup will cost me:
$299 after rebates not including RAM and CPU, so say an additional 75$ for 16GB of ram and 200$ for a quad core i5, bringing the total to about 600$, not including the couple hundred I spent on the WD Reds.

Well that about sums up my research so far. If I can get some hardware opinions from those with some more experience, that would be great. I would hate to end up with something only to realize I over looked a feature. Thanks.

 

[smitbret]

I was thinking exactly this. unRAID will probably be your best choice. I don't know what you are doing with your 3x2TB WDs from the other system but you can repurpose them into the unRAID box since you can mix HDD sizes with unRAID.

If you are going Intel, it is going to be tougher to get ECC memory support. It's probably not necessary. I do it in my system for piece of mind but in reality it shouldn't be high on the list of must haves for home use. Nice thing about unRAID is that it's not a memory hog. 4GB is probably plenty and I can't conceive of a need for more than 8GB.

Whatever CPU you get, don't cheap out. If you are looking at something and not quite sure if it is enough then it probably won't be. Transcoding is tough. My personal starting point would be along the line of i5-2500K or FX 6300. I wouldn't consider anything less than those if I planned on transcoding BD rips.

A good, low-power PSU will be better than a less reliable high power. The CX500 would be plenty. I usually recommend the CX430 for server builds. HDDs don't draw a lot of power and the lack of a power hungry video card means the wattage can stay pretty low. I really like that my server's PSU is modular so I could/can keep things tidy and avoid extraneous cable lying around.

Your case choice looks solid if you want hot swappable bays.

 

[Medwynd]

I don't know what you are doing with your 3x2TB WDs from the other system but you can repurpose them into the unRAID box since you can mix HDD sizes with unRAID.

They are about 5 years old. If they pass the unraid preclear step I will probably add them back into the array.

If you are going Intel, it is going to be tougher to get ECC memory support. It's probably not necessary. I do it in my system for piece of mind but in reality it shouldn't be high on the list of must haves for home use. Nice thing about unRAID is that it's not a memory hog. 4GB is probably plenty and I can't conceive of a need for more than 8GB.

If I want to run a couple of virtual machines, I don't think 4GB is going to be enough. Thoughts?

Whatever CPU you get, don't cheap out. If you are looking at something and not quite sure if it is enough then it probably won't be. Transcoding is tough. My personal starting point would be along the line of i5-2500K or FX 6300. I wouldn't consider anything less than those if I planned on transcoding BD rips.

Good point on the CPU horsepower. I want to strike a good balance between power usage when relatively idle though.

Your case choice looks solid if you want hot swappable bays.

This is where I was mostly torn. Since motherboard selection will possibly change case selection. I can put some hot swap cages into a full tower like the HAF series cases since space isnt a huge concern of mine.

 

[Charlie98]

Good point on the CPU horsepower. I want to strike a good balance between power usage when relatively idle though.

I agree. I've transcoded with a Pentium, an i3 (Sandy) and and i5 (2500K) and there is a marked difference in code times. Don't cheap out.

If memory serves... I can transcode a 2 hour movie on the i5 in about 7-10 minutes, it took over 40 on the Pentium (G620) and roughly 30 minutes with the i3 and HT. That's writing to an SSD in any event.

 

[Medwynd]

As a followup, this is the build I ended up going with. I got a pretty good price on the storage. Everything else was pretty average in price. I'll be adding a cache drive that is a WD Green 2TB as soon as I move the data off it onto the new array.

Summary:
E31241V3, 16GB ECC RAM, 16TB Data Storage, 4TB Parity Drive, 500W PSU

PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Xeon E3-1241 V3 3.5GHz Quad-Core Processor ($248.99 @ SuperBiiz)
Motherboard: Supermicro X10SL7-F Micro ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (Purchased For $249.99)
Memory: Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) DDR3-1600 Memory ($119.39 @ Directron)
Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $83.75)
Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $83.75)
Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $83.75)
Storage: Western Digital Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $83.75)
Storage: Hitachi Deskstar NAS 4TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $105.00)
Storage: Hitachi Deskstar NAS 4TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (Purchased For $105.00)
Case: Antec Nine Hundred ATX Mid Tower Case (Purchased For $79.99)
Power Supply: Corsair Builder 500W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (Purchased For $24.99)
Other: SanDisk Cruzer Fit CZ33 16GB USB 2.0 Low-Profile Flash Drive- SDCZ33-016G-B35 ($4.99)
Other: LimeTech Single unRAID® Server Plus Registration key ($89.00)
Total: $1362.34
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-12-01 00:24 EST-0500

 

[XavierMace]

Not bad, but needs more SSD. LOL.