homebuild NAS recommendations

[kris.vandevijver]

Hi,

I'm in need for (budget) storage at home. After doing a little
research i decided to build my own NAS server.
I've got an "old" AMD Athlon XP 2400+ with one GB of ram, so that will
be more than sufficient i guess.

I've been thinking of doing the following, but i wonder if it's the
best way to do it:

- I can use the onboard IDE or SATA port to setup a mirrored OS (two
small drives).

- I'll add an 8 port SATA Raid controller, for example the FastTrak
SX8300 from Promise Technology to store all data in RAID5. I can
attach 8x 250GB discs = 2000 GB in total , minus one disc for Raid5 =
1750 GB for data! That should be enough for a long time!....

- With this setup i have fault tolerance for both OS and especially
for the data!

What do you guys think of this setup? Is the FastTrak a good choice?
Are there better disc configs?

One very important question remains: i'd very much like an automated
backup, not expensive of course. Raid5 is fault tolerant, but of
course, i still need a way to backup my data! How can i do this? Or
should i add 320gb dics (to have more storage) and then use a part of
the discs for backup purposes? What's good software to backup to
HDD? Or is there a better solution?

This is all new for me, so i can use some advice

Thanks in advance guys!
Kris

 

[kris.vandevijver]

Hi,

I'm in need for (budget) storage at home. After doing a little
research i decided to build my own NAS server.
I've got an "old" AMD Athlon XP 2400+ with one GB of ram, so that will
be more than sufficient i guess.

....

An additional question: i just read that there are SATA I and SATA II
compliant raid controllers on the market. Since only two or three
users will be accessing the NAS server, i wonder if this is important
for me? My motherboard doesn't support PCI-Express so i'm hoping
that SATA I will be sufficient. Also, isn't the network the
bottleneck here and not the SATA I or II controller?

thanks again!
Kris

 

[Arno Wagner]

Hi,

I'm in need for (budget) storage at home. After doing a little
research i decided to build my own NAS server.
I've got an "old" AMD Athlon XP 2400+ with one GB of ram, so that will
be more than sufficient i guess.

Should be fine.

I've been thinking of doing the following, but i wonder if it's the
best way to do it:

- I can use the onboard IDE or SATA port to setup a mirrored OS (two
small drives).

- I'll add an 8 port SATA Raid controller, for example the FastTrak
SX8300 from Promise Technology to store all data in RAID5. I can
attach 8x 250GB discs = 2000 GB in total , minus one disc for Raid5 =
1750 GB for data! That should be enough for a long time!....

If you go the ''hardware'' RAID way, you need a spare controller.
I would advise you to use software RAID instead, because of better
manageability, better flexibility and higher reliability. At
least fi you want to do this with Linux. Don't know how good the
software RAID implementation is under other OSes.

- With this setup i have fault tolerance for both OS and especially
for the data!

What do you guys think of this setup? Is the FastTrak a good choice?

I don't think so.

Are there better disc configs?

I would use RAID6. You also need working disk and RAID monitoring.

One very important question remains: i'd very much like an automated
backup, not expensive of course. Raid5 is fault tolerant, but of
course, i still need a way to backup my data! How can i do this? Or
should i add 320gb dics (to have more storage) and then use a part of
the discs for backup purposes? What's good software to backup to
HDD? Or is there a better solution?

What do you want to backup? The RAID array? In that case the only
cheap solution is to have a second server.

Arno

 

[Arno Wagner]

An additional question: i just read that there are SATA I and SATA II
compliant raid controllers on the market. Since only two or three
users will be accessing the NAS server, i wonder if this is important
for me? My motherboard doesn't support PCI-Express so i'm hoping
that SATA I will be sufficient. Also, isn't the network the
bottleneck here and not the SATA I or II controller?

Another reason not to use hardware RAID. If you have any controller
issues with software RAID, you can exchange the controller without
loosing the RAID array.

And yes, even with typical Gigabit Ethernet, the entwork will
be the bottleneck.

Arno

 

[Mike Tomlinson]

- I'll add an 8 port SATA Raid controller, for example the FastTrak
SX8300 from Promise Technology to store all data in RAID5. I can
attach 8x 250GB discs = 2000 GB in total , minus one disc for Raid5 =
1750 GB for data! That should be enough for a long time!....

Allow approx 10% for the filesystem structures and another 5% for the
reserved space for root if you're using Linux, and you're getting more
towards 1500GB.

What do you guys think of this setup?

1) do you need to mirror the OS? It can be reinstalled if the OS disk
fails.

2) you'll need a beefy PSU for 10 drives (or two PSUs).

3) you'll need to arrange very good cooling for the drives if you want
them to last.

Is the FastTrak a good choice?

My experience with FTs has not been good. A mirror broke when a failing
disk went offline, then the disk spontaneously went back online and the
FastTrak decided to re-build the mirror. Problem is, it mirrored the
failing disk onto the good one, trashing all the data.

The 3ware controllers are highly regarded, but I have no direct
experience of them. I'm just about to try out an Adaptec 1420SA SATA
RAID controller, but another contributor to this NG doesn't rate them.

Linux software RAID is very very good, but you will need to be
experienced in Linux.

Are there better disc configs?

Consider a hot spare for your 8 disc RAID5 - that'll eat into your
available capacity some more. 250GB x 6 = 1500GB (manufacturer's
capacity, unformatted.) About 1300GB by the time you've created
filesystem(s) and allowed for MiB vs. MB.

Doesn't seem like so much now does it? B-)

If you don't want to lose another drive to hot-spare, you'd be wise to
have a cold spare available at the very least.

I'll leave your questions on backup to others, with one exception:
backing up to another partition on the same physical disks is a Very Bad
Idea.

 

[timeOday]

2) you'll need a beefy PSU for 10 drives (or two PSUs).

3) you'll need to arrange very good cooling for the drives if you want
them to last.

If I were a home user thinking of having 8-10 drives online, I would put
a lot of weight on power-saving options for the different options. I
have my bios set up so my backup and media drives spin down when not in
use. This could lower the average number of drives you have spinning
from 8 to just over 1. Sure there's a couple seconds spinup delay when
I access a backup drive, or first pull up my music, but who cares?

My intuition would be that hardware RAID might not support that whereas
software RAID might be more likely to do so, but I don't know.