High-End home storage NAS - 72TB or more

grease-monkey · Jan 12, 2015

You guys probably run into people who ask this question a lot, but i want to create a home media server thats accessible via my home network, i got to thinking that a rackmount and cabinet might be the best suitable solution.

my idea is to have my server accessible in my living room where i can have access to all my media as well as any device that's connected to my home network. now i know there will be the issue of noise so i don't mind moving the server to another room and connecting it via a cable to the access point (which will probably be situated in the living room).

i currently have 10 terrabytes of media on my external hard drives and want to move up to something vast and secure which wouldnt need an upgrade for at least 10 years.

Now here's the technical part of it all.

I am not very budet constrained but i am not sure what parts i require.

i found this online which i am thinking of getting along with any small sized cabinet thats not an eyesore but i need to know what motherboards, network cards, PSU's etc. i would need to get as i require my server to be....[drumroll]:

1. 24bay x 6TB = 144TB...(12bay x 6TB =72TB would be acceptable as well)
2. RAID6

i wouldn't bother with software right now (though i hear that windows server 2008 is decent) my main concern is hardware at this point.

now i am not a VERY technical person, i assembled my gaming pc back in 2012 but i've no experience with networking.

in case you're wondering, my pc is:

CPU: Intel i7 4770k
GPU: Nvidia GTX580
MoBo: ASUS Rampage IV Formula
Ram: G.Skill Ripjaws 16(4GBx4)
PSU: Mushkin 1000watt Gold

i dont know if any of you might find this relevant but there you go.

please let me know what parts i need to get to finally make my awesomely nerdy dream come true.

I do not need the server to run 24/7, i will probably regularly turn it off assuming its not reading or writing; a step i hope would greatly increase the HDDs' MTBF's

Also please tell me if this is a practical solution along with everthing that could potentialy go wrong.

I am aware that buying the hard drives would be expensive especially if i was going for the WD60EFRX 6TB Western Digital NAS 3.5 drives but i don't mind buying the drives one or two at a time over a long period, my biggest concerns are getting the rest of the server assembled and whether or not it's parts are compatible and since these drives have only been in the market very recently, i'm not sure if there is a compatibility issue or not, please post specifications when replying, thanks.

and please let me know if there is something i missed out.

Solandri · Jan 12, 2015

A few thoughts:

If all you're doing is serving media files, this seems like vast overkill. RAID is for redundancy - a drive can fail and the data is still available. If you don't need 100% uptime, there's little point to using RAID, much less RAID 6. Even with RAID, you still need a backup to protect against accidental deletions. RAID with no backup is just one wayward rm -f or folder delete away from losing your entire media collection.

While the idea of future-proofing yourself by getting a lot of storage now sounds nice, fiscally it's a huge waste of money. 10 years ago, a 200 GB drive cost about $100. Today a 3 TB drive costs about $100. Based on that, the 72 TB array you'd buy today for $3240 should cost you about $216 in 10 years. It's much more cost-effective to increase storage incrementally as you need it.

Along those lines, a RAID 6 probably isn't going to work. It requires all drives be the same size. It'll only work if you want to keep buying 6 TB drives for 10 years. More than likely, at some point before those 10 years are up, HDD prices will have fallen enough that you'd rather junk the array and buy a few 25 TB drives, instead of buying more 6 TB drives. I mean you can still buy 250 GB HDDs, but they're about $30 or 12 cents/GB. The 6 TB drives you're planning to get are about 4.5 cents/GB. The sweet spot right now seems to be around 3 TB, which is 3.3 cents/GB. 250 GB HDDs are a huge waste of money now, just as 6 TB HDDs will be a huge waste of money in 10 years. I suppose you could partition a 12 TB disk as two 6 TB disks, but that would defeat the protection of RAID 6.

Also consider the safety factor of RAID is diminishing as capacity increases. RAID only protects you against drive failures. It does not protect you from read or write errors and bit rot. As capacity increases, the number of read errors increases. An alternate filesystem like ZFS which detects such errors upon writing, and "self heals" bitrot is probably a better alternative.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/why-raid-6-stops-working-in-2019/

If the only thing this is going to do is serve media files, pretty much anything with an i3 or recent Atom processor will work. Those are all you need to transcode video in real-time, which is the most processor-intensive thing a media server does. I think there are even some ARM solutions coming down the pipeline which will transcode in hardware.

Along the same lines, just a few GB of RAM is all you'll need. You should aim at getting low-power components to reduce electricity use (each Watt left on 24/7 translates into about $1 per year). Unless you're planning to have a dozen people playing back different movies simultaneously, the hardware requirements just aren't that high. (You could do that. This guy has a 209 TB storage rack and top-tier business FIOS plan for his home, and among other things streams movies to all his friends and family.)

Jones2112 · Jan 12, 2015

I'm partial towards Synology, see link below...Never heard of the brand in the link in your post plus it looks like it needs a lot more stuff to get it going. I know the Synology isn't rack mount but their products are top notch.

As for location I would find a closet and ventilate it or perhaps have it in a nice cabinet which is ventilated, then you can run the wires necessary and its behind closed doors which would eliminate noise.

As for the drives, they are good and are on Synology's list of approved drives for use in their NAS, I use the WD red drives in mine.

http://www.amazon.com/Synology-DiskStation-Diskless-Attached-DS2413/dp/B009EMFXGQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421065066&sr=8-1&keywords=SYNOLOGY+DS2413

grease-monkey :

grease-monkey · Jan 18, 2015

Solandri :

A few thoughts:

If all you're doing is serving media files, this seems like vast overkill. RAID is for redundancy - a drive can fail and the data is still available. If you don't need 100% uptime, there's little point to using RAID, much less RAID 6. Even with RAID, you still need a backup to protect against accidental deletions. RAID with no backup is just one wayward rm -f or folder delete away from losing your entire media collection.

While the idea of future-proofing yourself by getting a lot of storage now sounds nice, fiscally it's a huge waste of money. 10 years ago, a 200 GB drive cost about $100. Today a 3 TB drive costs about $100. Based on that, the 72 TB array you'd buy today for $3240 should cost you about $216 in 10 years. It's much more cost-effective to increase storage incrementally as you need it.

Along those lines, a RAID 6 probably isn't going to work. It requires all drives be the same size. It'll only work if you want to keep buying 6 TB drives for 10 years. More than likely, at some point before those 10 years are up, HDD prices will have fallen enough that you'd rather junk the array and buy a few 25 TB drives, instead of buying more 6 TB drives. I mean you can still buy 250 GB HDDs, but they're about $30 or 12 cents/GB. The 6 TB drives you're planning to get are about 4.5 cents/GB. The sweet spot right now seems to be around 3 TB, which is 3.3 cents/GB. 250 GB HDDs are a huge waste of money now, just as 6 TB HDDs will be a huge waste of money in 10 years. I suppose you could partition a 12 TB disk as two 6 TB disks, but that would defeat the protection of RAID 6.

Also consider the safety factor of RAID is diminishing as capacity increases. RAID only protects you against drive failures. It does not protect you from read or write errors and bit rot. As capacity increases, the number of read errors increases. An alternate filesystem like ZFS which detects such errors upon writing, and "self heals" bitrot is probably a better alternative.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/why-raid-6-stops-working-in-2019/

If the only thing this is going to do is serve media files, pretty much anything with an i3 or recent Atom processor will work. Those are all you need to transcode video in real-time, which is the most processor-intensive thing a media server does. I think there are even some ARM solutions coming down the pipeline which will transcode in hardware.

Along the same lines, just a few GB of RAM is all you'll need. You should aim at getting low-power components to reduce electricity use (each Watt left on 24/7 translates into about $1 per year). Unless you're planning to have a dozen people playing back different movies simultaneously, the hardware requirements just aren't that high. (You could do that. This guy has a 209 TB storage rack and top-tier business FIOS plan for his home, and among other things streams movies to all his friends and family.)

Thanks for the answer, really put things in perspective for me.

But this just made me more curious.

For the sake of argument, what parts would you include in your home server if it were to to be a Raid6 72-144TB DIY?

so we've already established the following:

CPU: i3 or Atom.
Ram: few GB's (I'm assuming maybe 4 to 8 should be fine)
PSU: should be a low watt power supply.

assuming that a fairly cheap rackmount is bought

But what about the motherboard and the raid card plus anything else?

can anyone give me specific names? include links if you could.

Also for anyone looking into the same thing, heres something to get you started.

Thanks Solandri

Search

High-End home storage NAS - 72TB or more

grease-monkey

Honorable

Solandri

Solandri

Illustrious

Jones2112

Reputable

grease-monkey

Honorable

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page