glennda Posted January 6, 2011 Posted January 6, 2011 Does anybody have a rough price for making a homemade nas - just if anybody out there has got one in the last year - looking for probs 12 hard disks (2tb) with a raid array anybody got a price of how much they paid as just currently bidding for funding and don't want to spend ages speccing one up if i'm not going to get the funding (highly likely!)
dhicks Posted January 6, 2011 Posted January 6, 2011 Does anybody have a rough price for making a homemade nas Around £3,000 - £4,000 for a 12-disk device, depending on exactly what components you want to use. Over the summer, we built a backup server consisting of an Antec 1200 case (£150) with 12 5.25" drive bays which we then filled with 12 front-loading caddy-less Antec SATA drive bays, (£30 each = £350). We fitted Antec's largest available power supply (£200) and a motherboard, processor and some RAM of some sort (£300) - call it £1,000 for the basic chasis: We then added 12 2TB WD Caviar Green harddrives, maybe around £100 each, although WD do now do a 3TB version (maybe £150 - £200 each?). It depends on your requirements - I think the 2TB drives were actually very good value for money, being quite power-efficient and quiet as well as being the then-largest drives on the market, I think the 3TB drives are pretty much the first ones out and draw rather more power and cost a fair bit more, but a bit of a Google search should give you an idea of the merits of each. It depends on what, exactly, you'll be using this server for as to wether you'll want a hardware RAID card or to just use Linux's software RAID. The device we built was a backup server, so we just used software RAID, which has the advantage that pretty much any Linux distribution these days (including ones like SystemRescueCD which boot from CD) will recognise and use an mdadm software RAID array, making it easy to get at your data if there's a hardware failure. I don't imagine disk performance would be up to using it as a live file server, though, so a "proper" hardware RAID card will cost somewhere between £300 and £1,000. I did originally try and find a motherboard with 12 SATA ports, but this proved tricky, so in the end we just had to add a few cheap SATA interface cards to connect the drives up. It also probably worth adding some extra network ports (lots of motherboards come with two now, anyway) so you can have a 4-port bonded connection. -- David Hicks
glennda Posted January 6, 2011 Author Posted January 6, 2011 Thats pretty much what i thought of making! I did see the 3tb version of the hard disk but they are new so was going to wait - although I'm not going to get the funding until next summer so they may well have come down in price. Wasn't sure about the raid but my boss would rather go for a raided version - although i'm not fussed as it is for backups using backuppc. Actually to save me asking nearer the time you don't happen to have a list of the parts do you?
plexer Posted January 6, 2011 Posted January 6, 2011 You'd presumably want some sort of raid anyway otherwise you'd be restricted to the capacity of the largest hard drives available. Ben
glennda Posted January 6, 2011 Author Posted January 6, 2011 You'd presumably want some sort of raid anyway otherwise you'd be restricted to the capacity of the largest hard drives available. Ben sorry should have made it clearer - I wasn't sure between hardware/software! I have put down that i need 3k so that I can go for hardware raid - to be honest my list (for everything) has come to about 100k which i know will be snipped to about 50!
dhicks Posted January 6, 2011 Posted January 6, 2011 Wasn't sure about the raid but my boss would rather go for a raided version - although i'm not fussed as it is for backups using backuppc. In my experience, Linux software RAID is very reliable, it's just that if you want more performance you'll need dedicated hardware RAID to achive that - although a hardware RAID card is another component to potentially fail. you don't happen to have a list of the parts do you? I've just discovered some 5-drive caddies: LinITX.com - Chenbro 5 x 3.5" HDD Hot-Swap Bays - Fits in 3 x 5.25" ODD Bays The above allows you to fit 5 drives in 3 5.25" bays. Just think, you could fit 20 3TB drives in that Antec 1200 case, making 60TB of storage... LinITX.com also do four-port network cards and single 5.25" drive bays. We used an Antec 1200 case, Antec drive bays and an Antec 1.2kw power supply. I can't remember what motherboard and so on we used, but in six months different stuff will be available anyway. -- David Hicks
jamesfed Posted January 6, 2011 Posted January 6, 2011 Have a look at the HP ProLiant Micro Server - Athlon Neo Dual Core, space for 4 HDD bays and 1Gb of RAM pre installed - can buy for around £200 and HP are doing it with a £100 rebate at the moment.
dhicks Posted January 6, 2011 Posted January 6, 2011 you could fit 20 3TB drives in that Antec 1200 case Intrigued: so Linux enumerates drives as sda, sdb, etc. What happens when you get to drive number 27? -- David Hicks
glennda Posted January 6, 2011 Author Posted January 6, 2011 Intrigued: so Linux enumerates drives as sda, sdb, etc. What happens when you get to drive number 27? -- David Hicks Linux gets seriously confused!!! @jamesfed even 4 x 3tb isn't enough for me i'm afraid have to many servers to backup but then i could buy it and take the insides out and use in the antec case - could be a cheap way to do it actually but would void the warranty the £100 back doesn't really matter as this wouldn't happen to until at least end of april/may so doubt they will still have the offer - although they may do.
glennda Posted January 6, 2011 Author Posted January 6, 2011 what rating do you think the power supply would need to be to support say 10/12 x 3tb hard disks with probly a core i5 quad core processor and say 4gb ram? 850w? or higher?
glennda Posted January 6, 2011 Author Posted January 6, 2011 just specced this up because i'm bored of what i was doing! 1 x Antec Twelve Hundred case £109.67 1 x 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3-1333 CL9 Non ECC £28.39 1 x Gigabyte X58A UD5 1366 ATX £177.87 1 x Quad Core Xeon E5506 2.13GHz LGA1366 4.80GT/sec... £145.36 1 x Gainward NVIDIA GeForce 8400GS Graphics Card 25... £19.99 1 x ANTEC SIGNATURE SG-850 PREMIUM 850W A/PFC CABLE... £141.67 10 x Western Digital 3tb Hard Disk at £1583.3 2 x Chenbro 5 x 3.5" HDD Hot-Swap Bays - Fits in 3 x 5.25" ODD Bays £198 All in all not bad and under 2500 - motherboard has 10 sata connections plus also raid support
dhicks Posted January 6, 2011 Posted January 6, 2011 1 x Gainward NVIDIA GeForce 8400GS Graphics Card 25 Good point - we only figured out we'd need a discrete graphics card in the machine above when we came to plug the monitor in and couldn't find the VGA port... 1 x ANTEC SIGNATURE SG-850 PREMIUM 850W A/PFC CABLE I think that's the same series as the (1200W) one we got - the "signature" range come in a completly over-the-top gloss-black, embossed cardboard box. Fine for a pair of desinger trainers or whatever, but I thought it was a tad over the top for a PC power supply. I think I remember reading a review that reckoned the 2TB Caviar Green draws around 2W, whereas the 3TB draws maybe 6W, which seems like quite a difference. I could have completly made those figures up, though, and I don't have the review to hand to check, sorry. 2 x Chenbro 5 x 3.5" HDD Hot-Swap Bays - Fits in 3 x 5.25" ODD Bays Ah, not going for the full 60TB, then? motherboard has 10 sata connections plus also raid support There was some technical reason why we couldn't get a couple of the SATA ports on our motherboard to work - we just couldn't have them all going at once for some reason, so it might be an idea to have a SATA interface card handy. Ignore the on-board RAID, it'll be "fake RAID", requiring a Windows driver to provide the functionality and still passing all the processing over to the main CPU. If you're not going to buy a proper, discreet hardware RAID controller then you're best off using Linux's mdadm software RAID. -- David Hicks
glennda Posted January 6, 2011 Author Posted January 6, 2011 Ah, not going for the full 60TB, then? as much as i would love it i'm not quite sure i could get away with it! 30tb should last us - on our current amount of data - about 6 weeks before it needs to overwrite which is much improved on 2 weeks (although 3 monthly ones kept on tape) There was some technical reason why we couldn't get a couple of the SATA ports on our motherboard to work - we just couldn't have them all going at once for some reason, so it might be an idea to have a SATA interface card handy. Ignore the on-board RAID, it'll be "fake RAID", requiring a Windows driver to provide the functionality and still passing all the processing over to the main CPU. If you're not going to buy a proper, discreet hardware RAID controller then you're best off using Linux's mdadm software RAID. tbh the raid bit was just becuase as i wrote it i noticed - assumed it wasn't going to be great - just gotta convince them to give me the money now!!
plexer Posted January 6, 2011 Posted January 6, 2011 What backup s/w are you using? Something like r1soft cdp. Ben
glennda Posted January 6, 2011 Author Posted January 6, 2011 What backup s/w are you using? Something like r1soft cdp. Ben Half and Half backup exec and backuppc Exec for things like dc's, exchange and app server + anything that needs system state properly recovered and backuppc for file servers where i'm not fussed about the system state etc. use Backuppc for all my KVM Hosts for there config files aswell going to be installing some other opensource stuff such as Zmanda plus a few others to test as really want to lose the backup exec if possible as now moving to 2k8r2 we don't have a version of exec which works with them.
dhicks Posted January 6, 2011 Posted January 6, 2011 What backup s/w are you using? Something like r1soft cdp. The server pictured above was designed to be used with a simple rsync-based script - use rsync to get an up-to-date backup of a filesystem, then run a script to de-duplicate the files and reorganise user's folders so that each user's Samba share has a bunch of links to previous days backups. Backup shares could then simply be mounted as a (read-only) Windows drive, showing only a given user's files, enabling users to simply restore there own files as needed. Backups of virtual machines were done by shutting down the VM, setting a snapshot (all VMs ran on top of LVM volumes), restarting the VM and copying the snapshot disk image over to the backup server. VMs with large stores of data tended to have one LVM volume for the OS, backed up via a snapshot, and one for data, backed up via rsync. In the end I moved the file servers away from being VMs as I felt it was easy enough to reconstruct a simple file server from scratch if there was a catastrophic failure and just had them backed up via rsync running on the live file system. Backups were done overnight, so there was only a small chance of a file being transferred in an inconsistent state, and even then the chances are that yesterday's or tomorrow's backup would have the same file anyway. -- David Hicks
glennda Posted April 26, 2011 Author Posted April 26, 2011 Just bringing this back to life - i've been given the go ahead for 4k's of funding for the new backup server - i'm thinking the following 1 x Quad Core Xeon LGA1366 1 x 6Gb Ram 1 x Antec Twelve Hundred Tower Case 1 x 1000W PSU 2/3 x Chenbro 5 x 3.5" HDD Hot-Swap Bays (using 9 of the 12 bays) 10/15 x 2TB HDD Can anybody recommend a MOBO + Raid Cards which will support the stuff Although i'm contemplating just using a software raid (using ubuntu) and PCI Sata cards for extra slots - what do people think?
synaesthesia Posted April 26, 2011 Posted April 26, 2011 Gordon bennett : 1kw psus? 20 hard drives will barely go over 200watt, 100w for mobo/cpu under load and a few here and there for cooling. You absolutely certainly will not need over 400w for a *serious* file server. The PSU's in 14bay arrays are typically around 250 watt. I'd use the difference in cost there to look for a case that will allow either a pair of PSUs to be used (Coolermaster Stackers did, fairly sure some newer models still do) to allow for redundancy, or rather more of a server type unit complete with redundancy PSU setup.
glennda Posted April 26, 2011 Author Posted April 26, 2011 I'm only going to be using it as a backup server so 1psu should be sufficient imho - i went for a large psu as I wasn't sure the power required by the HDD's + Raid cards etc.
dhicks Posted April 26, 2011 Posted April 26, 2011 1 x Quad Core Xeon LGA1366 We have a QNAP NAS that uses an Atom processor, which might be more energy-efficient for a device left on all the time. I figure if it's good enough for a company that makes NAS devices for a living they can't be too far wrong. 1 x Antec Twelve Hundred Tower Case Antec do do a range of rackmount cases, if you want something a bit more "server"-like - the 3U26EPS600 might be suitible, it should take 2 of those 5-bay disk caddies. Although i'm contemplating just using a software raid (using ubuntu) and PCI Sata cards for extra slots - what do people think? For a backup server, I'd say software RAID should be just fine. The main speed advantage a hardware RAID card would seem to offer is in the cache handling. For just writing a constant stream of data out to a harddrive, adding a hardware RAID card isn't going to make a difference - I imagine the average processor can calulate RAID-5 checksums just fine these days, too.
glennda Posted April 26, 2011 Author Posted April 26, 2011 H'mm I will look into the possibility of using a lesser processor - i'm going to keep a decent processor in there as i want to be able to use the server for other things during the day - not mission critical things so i don't want the processor to be too small although maybe a quad core xeon is a bit ott - but as you mention having a software raid i think beefier processor then an Atom is required I did look at the rack mount cases but i also have an old HP dl380 g2 which had a p3 xeon in it sitting in the store which i might strip and use as a case!
dhicks Posted April 26, 2011 Posted April 26, 2011 I did look at the rack mount cases but i also have an old HP dl380 g2 which had a p3 xeon in it sitting in the store which i might strip and use as a case! Wouldn't it be cheaper to just buy half a dozen harddrives and maybe an SSD for the OS? 6 3TB drives in RAID 5 would give a pretty respectable 15TB raw storage capacity (which would probably be nearer 10TB by the time you had a formatted file system on there) - just how much backup space do you need?
glennda Posted April 26, 2011 Author Posted April 26, 2011 Well i currently have a 12tb backup MSA 60 which gets full in just under 2 1/2 weeks. So i'm looking at getting aprox 20+tb so i can keep the data for longer - then replicate the most important stuff to the msa 60 (sims etc) i was thinking of getting an SSD for the os just depends on cost.
dhicks Posted April 26, 2011 Posted April 26, 2011 Well i currently have a 12tb backup MSA 60 which gets full in just under 2 1/2 weeks. So i'm looking at getting aprox 20+tb so i can keep the data for longer - then replicate the most important stuff to the msa 60 (sims etc) You could use the HP DL380 G2 as an additional backup rather than making a new server and using the MSA 60 as a backup-backup, so you'd have 12TB + 10TB-ish for minimal cost (i.e. the cost of 6 harddrives). That HP chassis isn't going to hold more than 6 disks anyway. i was thinking of getting an SSD for the os just depends on cost. You could always just use a USB memory stick for the OS.
glennda Posted April 26, 2011 Author Posted April 26, 2011 You could use the HP DL380 G2 as an additional backup rather than making a new server and using the MSA 60 as a backup-backup, so you'd have 12TB + 10TB-ish for minimal cost (i.e. the cost of 6 harddrives). That HP chassis isn't going to hold more than 6 disks anyway. You could always just use a USB memory stick for the OS. Having thought about it i think its an ml series which has slightly more disk space. like this http://www.techtradepartners.net/storage/Compaq%20Proliant%20ML370%201.jpg?__SQUARESPACE_CACHEVERSION=1294103580846 But i'll talk to my supplier tomorrow and rip things out of the case tomorrow and have a look at what space it has. Cheers.
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