Building a NAS for home storage. A cautionary tale of the woes of no badwidth cap.

So iv been rolling this around in the back of my mind for a while and with cyber monday closing fast I have decided to bite the bullit.

Im going to use FreeNAS as a base as it supports a lot of plugins for fuctionallity as well as its core freature set witch is badass.

Pricing out a NAS solution for my house. Its a slow day at work:

Spoiler: Parts list

Cart Item List:
Qty.Product DescriptionSavingsTotal Price
1

Crucial 16GB (2 x 8GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM Server Memory Model CT2KIT102472BD160B
Item #:N82E16820148770
Return Policy: Memory Standard Return Policy
$219.99
$209.99


1

ADATA Value-Driven S102 Pro Effortless Upgrade 32GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive (Gray)
Item #:N82E16820211573
Return Policy: Memory Standard Return Policy
$29.99
$15.99


4

Western Digital Red NAS Hard Drive WD30EFRX 3TB IntelliPower 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" NAS Hard Drive
Item #:N82E16822236344
Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
$599.96
$519.96


1

Fractal Design Define R4 Blackout Silent ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Item #:N82E16811352038
Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
$129.99
$99.99


1

Antec HCG M HCG-750M 750W Antec HCG-750M Power Supply
Item #:N82E16817371066
Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
$129.99
$119.99


1

AMD A10-6800K Richland 4.1GHz (4.4GHz Turbo) Socket FM2 100W Quad-Core Desktop Processor - Black Edition AMD Radeon HD 8670D
Item #:N82E16819113331
Return Policy: CPU Replacement Only Return Policy
$174.99
$147.99


1

Refurbished: ASUS A88XM-PLUS/CSM Micro ATX AMD Motherboard
Item #:N82E16813132147
Return Policy: Standard Return Policy
$89.99
$69.99


Grand Total:$1,183.90

Went with 4x 3TB HDDs over 4TB or larger due to cost. Also with a properly managed RAIDz setup adding new drives or migrating the array is possible.

Will probably add a multi port NIC at some point but at the moment I dont see the gigabit network bottling it out.


The case and board have room to support up to 8x drives.
Initial set of 4x 3TB HDDs = 9TB storage

Expansion, by adding more drives up to a total of 7x3TB HDDs = 18TB storage and a free slot to move up in HDD space. By using that last spot with a larger drive I should be able to start rebuilding the array up in size by failing out single small drives one at a time untill they are all the larger size. Of course i dont have to wait till I have 7 small drives but it works as a plan.

Other options involve grabbing an SSD that can run of the PCIE bus to act as another HDD cache.


Thoughts?

 

Dear god man you can buy something pre-made cheaper than that. Unless you just want to run your own NAS and build it, there are better solutions.

12TB:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178329&cm_re=NAS-_-22-178-329-_-Product

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236851&cm_re=NAS-_-22-236-851-_-Product

For ~1300 you could have 24 raw TB of storage. Plus you get a dedicated hardware. I personally think what you have is massive overkill for a NAS.

 

Its also going to be used as a centralized torrent downloader, run my usnet stuff, act as a media converter and local streaming service that can encode for specific devices on the fly. Manage backups and snapshots of the machines on the network. Oh and a personal home cloud as well. Much more than just a NAS.

Its also very scaleable as I need more space..

Those NAS appliances are also only 6TB if your mirroring as you should be doing for any large amount data. With the FreeNAS setup I can control the RAID setup and the bonuses of ZFS as far as data protection and reporting cant be underestimated.

 

Just ordered the case. Black friday preview sale extra $20 off. Watched a review for it this morning on teksyndicate, cant link right now since im at work but you guys can find it.

It begins. I'm excited.

Need to come up with a good name for this think. Its black like a monolith but small. Minilith?

 

Gotta love price and sale alerts. Proceesor ordered at %30 off.

 

Grabbed a 1000w power supply for $100 same as the original one in the build list at t the top but cheaper.

So many packages being shipped, yay for the new egg premium free shipping!

 

ECC RAM and mobo ordered. $20 off each.

 

Drives finally arrived today!

Server is built and configured. Migrating media from machines on the network then all of our scattered archive drives.

I call it Gullinbursti! Big with the PIG!


Now need to upgrade to a gigabit router