Suggestions for a NAS Build?

[haziz]

What do you suggest for a home-built NAS solution. I do not need hot-swappable drives and will likely build using a standard mid-tower case. OS will be UNIX (FreeNAS) with which I am very comfortable.

What motherboard do you suggest? It has to be able to handle 6 HD with SATAIII 6Gb/s plus a seventh slower drive for the OS. I can theoretically boot the OS via a USB stick but may prefer to boot off of a seventh slow drive. I will not have any optical drives in this build.

CPU? I was thinking an AMD FX 6100 or 4 core FX chip or an older phenom II. I am also open to using Intel.

Case that can accommodate seven 3.5 HD disks?

Cheap old graphics card or builtin graphics? Most AM3+ boards do not have built-in graphics though. With the graphics in some ways the older the better. FreeNAS is based on FreeBSD 8 which is pretty old and will not be able to deal with a recent graphics chips (though it can handle them as VESA). It will be headless most of the time anyway, an when I do need to manage it, will do so from the command line without a GUI.

Solid but boring PSU?

I have already an AMD FX8350 and an ASUS Sabertooth 990FX with 32 gigs of RAM that I intended as a main machine but that seems like overkill for a headless NAS?

Thanks.

 

[Ken g6]

It has to be able to handle 6 HD with SATAIII 6Gb/s plus a seventh slower drive for the OS. I can theoretically boot the OS via a USB stick but may prefer to boot off of a seventh slow drive.

I think you got this backwards. A NAS is necessarily operating over a network. I imagine your network is at most gigabit Ethernet. Even SATA1 was 1.5 gigabits/s. On the other hand, you want your OS to respond as quickly as possible so you can start streaming stuff. You might even want it on an SSD.

Why do you want an AMD processor on a NAS build? Intel processors are much more power-efficient.

Can you answer [thread=80121]some questions about budget and other things[/thread]?

 

[Deaks2]

My FreeNAS box runs just fine with the OS off a USB key. Once the OS is loaded into RAM the storage medium speed does not matter.

 

[jaqie]

I just upgraded my intel-NIC gigabit NAS+ (runs win7, a few windows apps I always want running, and serves files) from an atom n330 with 2GB ram to a core 2 duo 2.333-4M@1333fsb using an intel mini itx lga775 mobo with intel gigabit onboard... even with 4gb ram, win7 x64, and intel gigabit and some stuff running the cpu is barely even touched. You don't need cpu for a nas box, even for a nice gigabit one. I wouldn't have even upgraded from that atom n330 if the pci extension cable hadnt started giving me issues. I always maxed out my gigabit connection far before the cpu became an issue, and usually also maxed out my hard drives off-platter rates before that.

there are mini itx boards with 4+ sata ports and a pcie port which is enough for 4 more sata devices.

 

[AtenRa]

What motherboard do you suggest? It has to be able to handle 6 HD with SATAIII 6Gb/s plus a seventh slower drive for the OS. I can theoretically boot the OS via a USB stick but may prefer to boot off of a seventh slow drive. I will not have any optical drives in this build.

ASUS F2A85-M PRO

Storage
AMD A85X FCH(Hudson D4) chipset :
7 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s), gray
1 x eSATA 6Gb/s port(s), red
Support Raid 0, 1, 5, 10, JBOD

Plus AMD Trinity A8-5500 or 5600K (or lower)

 

[grimpr]

I suggest buying an Intel nic like this one to finish the build, its somewhat essential for a NAS.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833106033

 

[haziz]

I think you got this backwards. A NAS is necessarily operating over a network. I imagine your network is at most gigabit Ethernet. Even SATA1 was 1.5 gigabits/s. On the other hand, you want your OS to respond as quickly as possible so you can start streaming stuff. You might even want it on an SSD.

Why do you want an AMD processor on a NAS build? Intel processors are much more power-efficient.

Can you answer [thread=80121]some questions about budget and other things[/thread]?

The OS will likely be RAM resident throughout. FreeBSD which underlies FreeNAS will happily run within 64 megs of RAM, though there is a heavy overhead due to ZFS particularly if the machine is rebuilding a HD, or managing hard drives. I will be putting 16 Gb of RAM in the machine to roughly follow the dictum of 1GB RAM for every 1TB of NAS storage. Will have 6 x 3TB WD Red drives arranged in a RAIDZ2 setup giving me roughly 12TB of storage using ZFS as the filesystem.

Many people run it fine from a USB stick. I expect the OS drive only needs to reboot once every 6 months to a year. The speed of the OS HD really does not matter.

 

[smitbret]

What do you suggest for a home-built NAS solution. I do not need hot-swappable drives and will likely build using a standard mid-tower case. OS will be UNIX (FreeNAS) with which I am very comfortable.

What motherboard do you suggest? It has to be able to handle 6 HD with SATAIII 6Gb/s plus a seventh slower drive for the OS. I can theoretically boot the OS via a USB stick but may prefer to boot off of a seventh slow drive. I will not have any optical drives in this build.

CPU? I was thinking an AMD FX 6100 or 4 core FX chip or an older phenom II.

Case that can accommodate seven 3.5 HD disks?

Cheap old graphics card or builtin graphics? Most AM3+ boards do not have built-in graphics though. With the graphics in some ways the older the better. FreeNAS is based on FreeBSD 8 which is pretty old and will not be able to deal with a recent graphics chips (though it can handle them as VESA). It will be headless most of the time anyway.

Solid but boring PSU?

I have already an AMD FX8350 and an ASUS Sabertooth 990FX with 32 gigs of RAM that I intended as main machine but that seems like overkill for a headless NAS?

Thanks.

Stick with the AMD AM3+ and get an Asus Motherboard that supports ECC memory. I just built mine with an FX-6100 and the Asus M5A78L-M LX Plus. Has built-in video and 6 SATA ports that aren't SATA III but as someone else mentioned, it won't matter with normal HDDs. It only supports 8GB of memory, but $30 more will get you an Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 that will support up to 32GB of ECC, non-buffered memory.

You don't need that much CPU for FreeNAS. Just get the cheapest AM3+ CPU you can.

Running FreeNAS off of a flash drive will be fine. You won't notice any issues.

 

[Phynaz]

I'd go with a cheap Pentium for NAS. Even Atom would be fine.

 

[dagamer34]

Is it going to be a pure NAS, or will there be realtime transcoding involved for streaming media?

 

[haziz]

Is it going to be a pure NAS, or will there be realtime transcoding involved for streaming media?

Pure NAS. Will actually use it as a backup solution for several other machines. Will not do streaming of any kind.

 

[Soulkeeper]

ASUS F2A85-M PRO

Storage
AMD A85X FCH(Hudson D4) chipset :
7 x SATA 6Gb/s port(s), gray
1 x eSATA 6Gb/s port(s), red
Support Raid 0, 1, 5, 10, JBOD

Plus AMD Trinity A8-5500 or 5600K (or lower)

I'm inclined to agree with this recommendation.
I own the fm1 version of that motherboard and like it.

NAS is the perfect setting for an APU, assuming you don't need ecc mem.

for PSU i'd recommend one of the budget seasonic units
If you wanna step it up to $100 you can get gold rated 400/460 watt seasonic, but for sub $40 that is a good choice imo.
They are oriented towards soho computers.
I purchased it and replaced the fan with a quieter sflex fan.
A review I did on the seasonic efficiency.

For memory i'd recommend the samsung 30nm stuff: cheap, low power, low profile, and handles overclocking better than most anything. It's what I'm running in my sig (tightened timings low voltage).

One of the people recommended the intel nic above. I am running that in my pc right now. It's not essential, although they are nice. Most the fm1/fm2 boards come with a recent realtek revision, which is generally good.

 

[ControlD]

I suggest buying an Intel nic like this one to finish the build, its somewhat essential for a NAS.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833106033

Why? Both of my NAS boxes work just fine with integrated Realtek NICs.

 

[tweakboy]

Nah man NAS died.. they killed him...

 

[colonelciller]

Why do you want an AMD processor on a NAS build? Intel processors are much more power-efficient.

the cpu will be on idle most of the time and barely awake when actively serving files... not sure i understand why power effieiency differences would matter here? which CPUs did you have in mind for intel vs AMD?

benefits of AMD build... ECC Memory as an option, less expensive CPU?

 

[colonelciller]

Why? Both of my NAS boxes work just fine with integrated Realtek NICs.

i'm curious as well

 

[grimpr]

Why? Both of my NAS boxes work just fine with integrated Realtek NICs.

Read the newegg comments, in my case i have faster connections, higher throughput for gigabit, lower latency and lower cpu utilization. I buy this cards for desktop pcs too since they accelerate web browsing after fiddling with their intel drivers, they work with all oses too including linux and freebsd.

 

[jaqie]

I only use intel nics and have for years. grimpr is completely right.

 

[colonelciller]

Read the newegg comments, in my case i have faster connections, higher throughput for gigabit, lower latency and lower cpu utilization. I buy this cards for desktop pcs too since they accelerate web browsing after fiddling with their intel drivers, they work with all oses too including linux and freebsd.

CPU latency kinda makes sense i guess... but are we talking microsecond differences or something more on the human scale?

higher throughput... are you using SSDs for all your storage? The only bottleneck i experience is file transfers being limited by HDD speeds of 30-50 mb/sec.

as to accelerating web browsing... again I'm confused. Do you need to have a fiber connection and 100mbit downloads onto SSD drives in order to notice such things?

i'm not saying that those cards aren't nice cards, I'm just not seeing how a home setup could actually experience an acutal benefit where the integrated NIC was the bottleneck or somehow created a tangible "CPU" hit... but i would like to learn

 

[jaqie]

my atom n330 would hit the cpu as a limit with a realtek nic, besides the realtek windows drivers being less stable, and also sending out runt frames et cetra.

single drive off platter speed and multi drive raid output are two different things, I regularly max my gigabit with my server.

speaking of maxing it out, even without jumbo frames which are a headache with networks that talk to the internet... even without them my intel nic based gigabit network goes upwards of 90MB+/s and ive never, ever seen a realtek that could sustain those speeds especially under multiple simultaneous network demands. They also, as said above, hit the cpu far harder, instead of doing their own work like the intel nics.

 

[tweakboy]

This A8 rocks,, no no Im talking about the audi car.

 

[AtenRa]

Just to add

ASROCK FM2A85X-ITX

Mini-iTX for the win
Just add a Trinity A4-5300 and you done

Actually, im going to get one my self

 

[colonelciller]

my atom n330 would hit the cpu as a limit with a realtek nic, besides the realtek windows drivers being less stable, and also sending out runt frames et cetra.

single drive off platter speed and multi drive raid output are two different things, I regularly max my gigabit with my server.

speaking of maxing it out, even without jumbo frames which are a headache with networks that talk to the internet... even without them my intel nic based gigabit network goes upwards of 90MB+/s and ive never, ever seen a realtek that could sustain those speeds especially under multiple simultaneous network demands. They also, as said above, hit the cpu far harder, instead of doing their own work like the intel nics.

thanks for expaining