New basic NAS build

[Pugsport]

well im feed up of having now storage already and wanted to build a basic NAS that i can store videos, documents, photos etc on and just after some advice as to specs

at the moment ive been looking at

CPU
Intel Pentium gold G5400 or Intel Celeron G4920

Motherboard
Asrock Intel 7370M-ITX/ac

RAM
8GB Corsair DDR4 Vengeance LPX 2666MHz

M.2 drive for OS
Samsung 970 EVO 250GB

PSU
Be Quiet Pure Power 11 400W

Hard Drives for storage
unsure which drives to use, i had been looking at Western Digital and Seagate drives

just after your thoughts on the above setup and if maybe you would change anything.

i wanted to try and keep it small form factor as i planned to have it sat in my office on display. once my home network is complete this NAS will only be used to store work files (wiring diagrams, invoices etc) and a second server will be used for personal storage

 

[WYP]

I'm currently planning a similar NAS, but using AMD AM4 instead of Intel Z370.

What are you planning on using on the software side? A Samsung 970 EVO could be a little overkill for what you are building. For example, a lot of FreeNAS used use USB memory sticks instead of internal drives.

 

[Pugsport]

I'm currently planning a similar NAS, but using AMD AM4 instead of Intel Z370.

What are you planning on using on the software side? A Samsung 970 EVO could be a little overkill for what you are building. For example, a lot of FreeNAS used use USB memory sticks instead of internal drives.

ahh id not thought of using an AM4 AMD CPu and board.

looking at running FreeNAS and yes i know the EVO is overkill but i dont want to use a memory stick for the fear of it getting broken some how while its sitting on the desk and i dont have space for a 2.5 inch drive so the M.2 drive was the next best option.

i did use a memory stick when i first had a play with FreeNAS and it worked well so i do agree it would be a good option but i know people here can be heavy handed with stuff when cleaning/dusting etc

 

[grec]

You can get a USB header -> USB port adapter so you can plug the memory stick in internally.

https://www.egenisys.co.uk/startech...male-to-usb-motherboard-4-pin-header-f-f.html

AM1 might also be worth considering if you don't need much CPU grunt, you can get AM1 APUs for about £15 and MITX boards for about £40.

 

[Kei]

I used 7x WD Se 2TB drives in my nas (build log on that here) which has so far run faultlessly since 2014. I'm planning on adding some more drives to my array with the current enterprise class drives being WD ultrastar.

That said, most people seem to go with reds but personally, the enterprise disks are in some cases cheaper and have better specs and the same 5 year warranty.

 

[Pugsport]

You can get a USB header -> USB port adapter so you can plug the memory stick in internally.

https://www.egenisys.co.uk/startech...male-to-usb-motherboard-4-pin-header-f-f.html

AM1 might also be worth considering if you don't need much CPU grunt, you can get AM1 APUs for about £15 and MITX boards for about £40.

thanks for that i may well end up going down that route for using a memory stick.

i did look at the amd stuff but found that all the itx boards seem to only have 4 sata ports on them where as the Intel ones have 6 ports.

I used 7x WD Se 2TB drives in my nas (build log on that here) which has so far run faultlessly since 2014. I'm planning on adding some more drives to my array with the current enterprise class drives being WD ultrastar.

That said, most people seem to go with reds but personally, the enterprise disks are in some cases cheaper and have better specs and the same 5 year warranty.

yes i will admit that i was looking at using WD Red drives or the Seagate Ironwolf drives but maybe its worth looking around again.

my other issue with running a ITX board is only 6 sata ports and only a PCI-e x16 slot. i was hoping to be able to run up to 12 drives in this but im unsure if id be able to get a raid card to support extra drives or not

 

[Kei]

In principal, you'd need a host bus adaptor (HBA) that supports initiator target mode. (IT mode) A normal HBA will create arrays itself and present the OS with disks configured using it's own software. In IT mode, the HBA presents each individual disk connected to it to the OS so that you can do your own thing with software raid solutions. I stuck with good old hardware raid.

Each mini SAS port, usually SFF-8087, supports a breakout of 4x SAS/SATA ports, meaning 4 drives per port. This is why I have a SAS expander card in my system, which expands my 8 port HBA to a maximum of 24 ports. If I added a second expander to the HBA, I could push it up to 40 ports.

 

[Pugsport]

In principal, you'd need a host bus adaptor (HBA) that supports initiator target mode. (IT mode) A normal HBA will create arrays itself and present the OS with disks configured using it's own software. In IT mode, the HBA presents each individual disk connected to it to the OS so that you can do your own thing with software raid solutions. I stuck with good old hardware raid.

Each mini SAS port, usually SFF-8087, supports a breakout of 4x SAS/SATA ports, meaning 4 drives per port. This is why I have a SAS expander card in my system, which expands my 8 port HBA to a maximum of 24 ports. If I added a second expander to the HBA, I could push it up to 40 ports.

would you recommend anything for the above job, somethings thats easy to work with, would work with a single pci-e x16 slot?

 

[Kei]

If you are looking for a card that supports IT mode for software raid, I don't really know them well enough to advise on models. A good guide is available on the freenas forums here regarding LSI cards and their re-branded equivalents.

 

[Pugsport]

If you are looking for a card that supports IT mode for software raid, I don't really know them well enough to advise on models. A good guide is available on the freenas forums here regarding LSI cards and their re-branded equivalents.

thanks for the information mate, ill give it a read or two when i get time

on a side not are you using your NAS with a gigabit network or have you gone faster?

 

[Kei]

Gigabit for now, I’ve been looking at 10G, but it is still a bit too expensive for a decent switch. Due to the age of my raid card (lsi 8888elp) and the phenom II powering my server, I seriously doubt I’d actually gain much going to 10Gbe.

 

[grec]

Not sure if there's any practical hardware for it out there yet but 2.5Gb and 5Gb ethernet have been proposed as upcoming stop gap steps in the consumer world since full 10Gbe is still kinda reliant on optronics for reasonable distances which is still fairly expensive tech.

 

[Pugsport]

ahh thanks for the info people, i was not sure what it would be like on gigabit as this was not a planned build but i do have one spare cat 6 cable in the office

 

[Pugsport]

reading into it a little more from what i can see the Pentium and celeron only work with the 300 series chipset and there seems to be little range of these.

so my question is now how over the top is it going to be to spend a little extra money and buy a i3 CPU and Z390 board instead

i would be looking at the

Intel i3 8100 CPU and the Asrock Intel Z390M itx board