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#1 2010-08-19 12:11:40

Fackamato
Member
Registered: 2006-03-31
Posts: 579

Building new NAS, advice?

Tried to find a good section in the forum, not sure this is the right one.

I'm thinking of building a new NAS. Components:

6x Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS 64MB 2TB
1x Nexus LOW-7000 Heat Pipe Cooler   
1x Corsair XMS3 DDR3 PC12800/1600MHz CL9 2x2GB
0x Intel SASMF8I RAID SATA-300 SAS <- gone
1x Lian Li PC-Q08B (black)
1x Gigabyte GA-H55N-USB3
1x Corsair CMPSU-750HX 750W
1x Intel Core i5 650 3,20GHz Socket 1156 Box

The i5 should support AES en/decryption in hardware, so if I'm using LUKS I really shouldn't see a performance penalty, right?
The Intel RAID controller supports XOR ops (RAID5) in hardware, right? I went with Intel because they usually have good Linux support.

The rest are chosen because they are relatively cheap, or fit the purpose. The case takes 6 HDDs, which is what I need.
Planning on running Archlinux AMD64 with FTP, Samba and SSH services.

What do you guys think?

Last edited by Fackamato (2010-08-19 13:16:52)

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#2 2010-08-19 12:30:51

hokasch
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Registered: 2007-09-23
Posts: 1,461

Re: Building new NAS, advice?

Never build a NAS myself, let alone one with 12 TB storage... but are you sure you need that much CPU power? sounds a bit overkillish to me.

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#3 2010-08-19 12:40:20

Fackamato
Member
Registered: 2006-03-31
Posts: 579

Re: Building new NAS, advice?

hokasch wrote:

Never build a NAS myself, let alone one with 12 TB storage... but are you sure you need that much CPU power? sounds a bit overkillish to me.

Well, the CPU is quite cheap, and it comes with hardware acceleration for AES stuff. But yeah, it's probably overkill. 6 2TB drives should yield just below 10TB of usable storage in RAID5. smile

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#4 2010-08-19 13:02:40

jdarnold
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From: Medford MA USA
Registered: 2009-12-15
Posts: 485
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Re: Building new NAS, advice?

Don't use hardware RAID! I made the same mistake on my simple home NAS and you just don't need it. Linux does a very nice job of software RAID and hardware RAID ties you to the controller too tightly.

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#5 2010-08-19 13:08:30

Fackamato
Member
Registered: 2006-03-31
Posts: 579

Re: Building new NAS, advice?

jdarnold wrote:

Don't use hardware RAID! I made the same mistake on my simple home NAS and you just don't need it. Linux does a very nice job of software RAID and hardware RAID ties you to the controller too tightly.

Hm. So no benefits at all with HW RAID then?

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#6 2010-08-19 13:11:34

tsv
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From: UK
Registered: 2008-12-03
Posts: 71
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Re: Building new NAS, advice?

jdarnold wrote:

Don't use hardware RAID! I made the same mistake on my simple home NAS and you just don't need it. Linux does a very nice job of software RAID and hardware RAID ties you to the controller too tightly.

This is very true, I would definitely recommend the software route.

Also, although the CPU is overkill as mentioned, it could be useful if you decided to serve video up from it, and have it encoded on that box (which I think can often be a good media solution).

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#7 2010-08-19 13:15:20

tsv
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From: UK
Registered: 2008-12-03
Posts: 71
Website

Re: Building new NAS, advice?

Fackamato wrote:

Hm. So no benefits at all with HW RAID then?

There's a post here that sums it up quite nicely. I think you can worry too much about disk performance, but it obviously depends on how the NAS is being deployed.

http://backdrift.org/hardware-vs-softwa … al-world-2

EDIT: Sorry for the double post!

Last edited by tsv (2010-08-19 13:16:05)

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#8 2010-08-19 13:16:20

Fackamato
Member
Registered: 2006-03-31
Posts: 579

Re: Building new NAS, advice?

Ok, deleted the RAID controller. Total price of everything is about USD 1700 or ~ €1300 + shipping.

I wonder if there is a smarter component choice somewhere, or a good way to save money.

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#9 2010-08-19 14:32:08

.:B:.
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Registered: 2006-11-26
Posts: 5,819
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Re: Building new NAS, advice?

jdarnold wrote:

Don't use hardware RAID! I made the same mistake on my simple home NAS and you just don't need it. Linux does a very nice job of software RAID and hardware RAID ties you to the controller too tightly.

Technically hardware RAID wouldn't be a problem; you're probably talking about FakeRAID here. FakeRAID is mostly Windows-centered, and support on Linux exists but is shaky. On Windows, you usually have no choice but to use what software RAID levels Microsoft offers you (or hack them in, if you're savvy enough). On Linux, software RAID offers you way more possiblities and it's very stable.

Personally I wouldn't do RAID. If you want security, use backups (I prefer eS-ATA). If you want uptime and availability, I can understand you want RAID, but if it's only about backing up and data security then nothing beats a good ole 1:1 backup. So I'd lose the RAID.

At ~10W per HD, I think your PSU is way too heavy too. 500W should be sufficient if you ask me (there are online calculators around to estimate how beefy your PSU needs to be). Keep in power efficiency increases with PSU load - so you don't want a 80+ PSU picking its nose at 30% load; you want a 80+ PSU consuming 60%, for example.

Also, if you want to cut expenses, use an AMD solution instead of an Intel one. Low-end Athlon II's are way cheaper than i5's, same story for AMD vs. Intel motherboards.


Got Leenucks? :: Arch: Power in simplicity :: Get Counted! Registered Linux User #392717 :: Blog thingy

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#10 2010-08-19 14:37:49

Fackamato
Member
Registered: 2006-03-31
Posts: 579

Re: Building new NAS, advice?

Thanks for all the replies. I'm going to go with RAID5 because of the performance increase + if I lose a drive, I don't lose any data. I just remembered I already have 2 of those HDDs I've listed, so a few things have changed:

3x Western Digital Caviar Green WD20EARS 64MB 2TB
1x Corsair XMS3 DDR3 PC12800/1600MHz CL9 2x2GB
1x Intel Core i5 650 3,20GHz Socket 1156 Box
1x Asus Radeon EAH5850/2DIS/1GD5 1GB
1x Lian Li PC-Q08B
1x Zotac H55-ITX

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#11 2010-08-19 14:54:57

foutrelis
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From: Athens, Greece
Registered: 2008-07-28
Posts: 705
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Re: Building new NAS, advice?

1x Asus Radeon EAH5850/2DIS/1GD5 1GB

Are you really going to stick a Radeon HD 5850 in a NAS? The Core i5 650 already has integrated graphics, so a discrete GPU is not needed.

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#12 2010-08-19 14:56:27

Fackamato
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Registered: 2006-03-31
Posts: 579

Re: Building new NAS, advice?

foutrelis wrote:

1x Asus Radeon EAH5850/2DIS/1GD5 1GB

Are you really going to stick a Radeon HD 5850 in a NAS? The Core i5 650 already has integrated graphics, so a discrete GPU is not needed.

Hehe, I know. I figured, it's already powerful.. so I might as well stick a GPU in there and play some games on it.

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#13 2010-08-19 15:36:12

.:B:.
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Registered: 2006-11-26
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Re: Building new NAS, advice?

That's not a NAS... That's a desktop you leave on all the time wink.


Got Leenucks? :: Arch: Power in simplicity :: Get Counted! Registered Linux User #392717 :: Blog thingy

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#14 2010-08-19 17:06:31

rusty99
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Registered: 2009-03-18
Posts: 253

Re: Building new NAS, advice?

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#15 2010-08-19 17:38:19

.:B:.
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Registered: 2006-11-26
Posts: 5,819
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Re: Building new NAS, advice?

I certainly wouldn't consider Solaris after Oracle's recent shenanigans, but who am I? ZFS works on some BSDs too afaik.


Got Leenucks? :: Arch: Power in simplicity :: Get Counted! Registered Linux User #392717 :: Blog thingy

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#16 2010-08-19 17:58:27

dunz0r
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From: Sweden
Registered: 2009-03-30
Posts: 258
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Re: Building new NAS, advice?

ZFS support in BSD is not that great compared to "the real deal" unfortunately.


RTFM or GTFO
hax0r.se

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#17 2010-08-19 18:32:22

rusty99
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Registered: 2009-03-18
Posts: 253

Re: Building new NAS, advice?

Care to elaborate?

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#18 2010-08-19 19:43:00

Fackamato
Member
Registered: 2006-03-31
Posts: 579

Re: Building new NAS, advice?

.:B:. wrote:

That's not a NAS... That's a desktop you leave on all the time wink.

Very true. big_smile

Although, if it'd be used as a gaming machine as well, I'd have to run Windows. That means I wouldn't be able to read the files of the mdadm RAID setup. sad

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#19 2010-08-20 15:16:43

samiam
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From: EAX
Registered: 2010-08-20
Posts: 58

Re: Building new NAS, advice?

Don't listen to the overkill comments. I recently built a NAS box and I regret not going bigger on the CPU.

My whole setup is luks encrypted with 2 RAID5 sets; one 2TB and one 3TB. My house is wired with gigE, and I stream movies from the fileserver to the other rooms in the house. It will serve 1080P content, but just barely. If there's anything else going on on the box that demands any I/O from the media md the CPU can't keep up and the video starts studdering.

Granted it's only an Atom board, but in hindsight, a faster CPU and/or hardware crypto would be really nice.

Last edited by samiam (2010-08-20 15:22:27)

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#20 2010-09-13 00:50:18

ould
Member
Registered: 2007-05-22
Posts: 124

Re: Building new NAS, advice?

samiam wrote:

Don't listen to the overkill comments. I recently built a NAS box and I regret not going bigger on the CPU.

My whole setup is luks encrypted with 2 RAID5 sets; one 2TB and one 3TB. My house is wired with gigE, and I stream movies from the fileserver to the other rooms in the house. It will serve 1080P content, but just barely. If there's anything else going on on the box that demands any I/O from the media md the CPU can't keep up and the video starts studdering.

Granted it's only an Atom board, but in hindsight, a faster CPU and/or hardware crypto would be really nice.

I found this thread as I was researching building a NAS. Are you using a dual core atom in your build and is the CPU bottleneck only due to the use of encryption? Why are using encryption for simply streaming media? Just curious. I was planning to build my NAS around one of my existing systems which is a dual core atom based board. I was hoping to be able to use it with a 4-drive RAID 5 setup. Probably 4 2TB green drives(I already own one so would only need 3 more.)

Thanks,

Kevin

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#21 2010-09-14 04:36:41

Evanlec
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From: NH, USA
Registered: 2007-12-16
Posts: 141
Website

Re: Building new NAS, advice?

From what I have been hearing...I would go with Raid10 (raid 1+0), having 2x mirrored raid0 arrays (3 disks each);
I've heard the performance is a lot better than Raid5 and also more robust.
Costs you more space for sure, but if you're really concerned about performance (and who isn't?), but also need the redundancy, then you can't beat Raid10. Only thing is you'd be sacrificing a good amount of space -- but thus is the trade-off.
Also you'd better have some gigabit connections on that thing (i'd make sure to have 2 higher-end gigabit NIC's on that thing, or even better a dual-head NIC that can do hardware load-balancing and packet processing [reduces load on cpu greatly] -- server class network card is what you'd want); otherwise your network will be the obvious bottleneck.

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#22 2010-09-14 06:32:24

Fackamato
Member
Registered: 2006-03-31
Posts: 579

Re: Building new NAS, advice?

Evanlec wrote:

From what I have been hearing...I would go with Raid10 (raid 1+0), having 2x mirrored raid0 arrays (3 disks each);
I've heard the performance is a lot better than Raid5 and also more robust.
Costs you more space for sure, but if you're really concerned about performance (and who isn't?), but also need the redundancy, then you can't beat Raid10. Only thing is you'd be sacrificing a good amount of space -- but thus is the trade-off.
Also you'd better have some gigabit connections on that thing (i'd make sure to have 2 higher-end gigabit NIC's on that thing, or even better a dual-head NIC that can do hardware load-balancing and packet processing [reduces load on cpu greatly] -- server class network card is what you'd want); otherwise your network will be the obvious bottleneck.

RAID10 is not really more secure than RAID5, if you're lucky, you can lose 2 disks, if you're unlucky, just 1 (as in RAID5). smile

Anyway, I've decided to get a subwoofer instead of a new computer. Going to wait for Sandybridge next year and build something out of that perhaps.

Cheers,

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