Centralized storage for home, w. minimum power

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academica

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I am planning to put all data in one place, for backup purposes. The conditions are:

  • minimum power consumption (MOST IMPORTANT)
    about 3 TB space (probably RAID 1 or RAID 5)
    remote and mobile access
I am confused by the diversity of options. Since minimum power is crucial, I started considering building a home server around a fanless processor like VIA Eden® ULV Fanless. I have 3 questions:

    Is it possible to build a home server with a fanless ULV processor? Which processor would you recommend?
    Such a home server would require at least 2 or 3 SATA HDDs to achieve 3TB disk space
    What is the specification of such a home server: motherboard, PSU, HDD, RAID controller (yes/no?), system SSD (yes/no?), OS: FreeNAS / OpenFiler?

On the other hand there are a number of NAS stations designed for this purpose like the Buffalo NAS System and WD MyCloud solutions. Modern NAS systems meet all conditions, but I have a Question: Is the power consumption of a NAS system far more than or compatible with a low power home server described above?

Finally: What is your advice: home server around a ULV processor or a NAS system?
 
Solution
Hawkeye22
RAID is not a backup solution. RAID is for redundancy so that in case a drive fails the system can continue to run. RAID will not protect you from accidental file deletion and viruses. A good backup solution is needed.
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popatim

popatim

Titan
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to me the issue isnt low power but rather will it have enoough power to do what you want.

so what expectations do you have for this home Nas beside just sending and receiving files? Will it need to run anything else besides the NAS software?
Do you want it to run windows server? Linux? something else?
 
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academica

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You are right - What is the configuration with least power consumption for a backup and file transfer home facility?


Nothing else - just a backup storage with the least demanding OS, probably FreeNAS. Mobile and remote access to the files (like a private Cloud) would be perfect.
 
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popatim

popatim

Titan
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With freenas you'll need to know how you are going to setup your disk. ZFS and raidz take more processing power than, say, ntfs or ext/4. ZFS is also more feature rich.

If you're not looking to any kind of drive pooling or raid then, yes, a less powerful proccesor would work fine for you. Just keep in mind that probably 90% of the time it will be asleep and then consumption differences between systems will me minimal.

How many drives are you thinking of having at first?
How will you back up this nas?
 
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academica

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"How will you back up this nas?"
I am new to this stuff, so sorry if I say something stupid. I need the NAS to backup my files. Should I backup the NAS, too? I guess some kind of RAID would offer enough reliability. Can RAID 1 restore all files in case one drive fails?
"How many drives"
I think of 2 drives on an inexpensive NAS, between USD 100 and 300.
 
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Hawkeye22

Hawkeye22

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Most NAS's provide RAID support. RAID 5 is always a good compromise between performance and storage space, although it requires a minimum of 3 drives. RAID 1 (mirroring) is good, but wastes half your disk space since it keeps an identical copy of a drive. The point I was making is you should still use some decent backup software and store the backups it creates to an offline drive or at least to multiple drives so that you don't lose a copy of the backup. With the amount of data you are storing, you are most likely going to want to use incremental backups.

A lot of people including myself like Acronis True Image, but there is a lot of good backup software out there, free and paid.
 
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academica

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Thank you, Hawkeye22. I was thinking for making copies on DVDs, although this is not the ideal solution. Maybe there isn't one. Buying 2 NASes with RAID 5 is an overkill for me.
 
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popatim

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Titan
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If you're looking at just 1 drive then a simple disk configuration is all you need so your cpu requirment will be small.

I don't know if I would build with an eden board. Looking at their prices I could easily build something much better for alot less.
Something like a cheap $50-60 intel motherbd with a pentium g630T (35w)
or maybe something like this sempron system (45w total at max) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813138377

I personally wouldn't bother with anything less than 4 sata ports which I couldnt find on a Via or atom board.
 
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academica

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Yes, I have just begun my research into this matter and I discovered suitable Intel boards with a built-in Atom processor like D2700DC (http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/motherboards/desktop-motherboards/desktop-board-d2700dc.html) or DN2800MT (http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/motherboards/desktop-motherboards/desktop-board-dn2800mt.html). Later I found Supermicro board with a faster processor Intel Atom S1260 and 4 SATA ports. YOur suggestion for BIOSTAR is also very attractive, but I thought a fanless processor would consume less and would be quieter. What do you think?
 
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