Building a RAID5 NAS

Well my first post here and I'm asking questions.

I'm looking to build myself a NAS. Not too hard a challenge me thinks.

So far I've done a lot of reading and have got ideas for most components, but I'm having issues selecting a mobo.

The RAID cards I'm choosing from come in both PCI-x and PCIe variations and I'd like to be able to upgrade to 2 RAID cards in the future.

This means I'm looking for a mobo with either two PCI-X (64-bit/133MHz) slots or two PCIe (X8 ) slots. Both cards are hardware RAID so I don't need hi spec CPU's or lots of fancy on board graphics and such. I was looking at the VIA all in one range but they don't do PCI-X or e.

Can anyone recommend a good motherboard that fits these criteria?

1. Cheap (or should that be Good Value)
2. At least 1 (if not 2) PCI-X or PCIe (X8 ) slots
3. USB & FireWire ports
4. 10/100 LAN if not GBLan.

I'm hoping to run my OS off of a CF card so a single IDE is needed but other than that I'm not going to hook anything else up to it so the most basic mobo but with v.good PCI-x or PCIe support is what i need. (I think)

Thanks in advance for any help.

DJ

Maybe grab a Tyan S2882G3NR-D + 1 inexpensive Opteron some Corsair XMS REG ECC and one or more 3Ware PCI-X CTRLs.

The S2882G3NR has 2 independent PCI-X buses for TWICE the bandwidth! And is relatively VERY reasonably pirced at only $372!

I have actually built servers with this setup here are some disk benchmarks on FC3 i386 and FC3 x86_64:

http://66.235.243.163/bench/index.html

Good luck!

Thanks for the input guys, although i fear the Tyan S2882G3NR is a bit rich for what i want but seems to be missing things like firewire and usb2. it is the only 2 slot pcix i've seen so far though.

The Biostar looks like a good example. I'll have a check round and see if its available.

Thanks again and does anyone else have other recommendations?

If I want to run two RAID cards i will need two lots of PCI(x or e) slots.

OK. I might be being stupid but if a card requests an 8x slot i can't put it in a 1x slot. can I? I read that you can put an 8X card in a 16X slot but i don't think the reverse would work. or would it?

You're right - PCIe cards are compatible with larger PCIe slots, but not compatible with smaller ones. The x8 card will work in a x16 slot, but a x4 will not work in a x1 slot - the x1 slot is physically too small.

Read

Thanks for confirming what i thought Rugger.

The question is can anyone recommend a PCI-X board? The difference in PCI X and PCIe Cards is about £100 So its kinda like a balancing act in cost here. I wanna do this as cheaply as possible and at the moment i'm not too sure its possible.

The couple of prebuilt systems are

The terastation is £520 with 4 250GB IDE drives.

The Infrant Ready NAS. Comes in two flavours. The X6 is the newest and you can buy it empty (it takes 4 SATA drives) for £480. (pre-bought populated £700)

I'm looking at at least £800 before i even get to buying HD's. I'm spec'ing higher than what i can buy but its still not "close".

The terastation got alright reviews mostly "its the cheapest out there. go buy it". While the Infrant is getting better reviews and has a more "solid" feature set.

Dontcha just love making decisions when moneys involved.

http://www.infrant.com/ is the ready NAS X6 and http://www.buffalotech.com/product [...] egoryid=19 is the terastation


The spec I'm looking at is the Areca 1120 (PCI-X) RAID 5 8port SATA card. CoolerMasters new Stacker case and a supermicro hot swap case (http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/ProductInfo.asp?WebProductID=90116).

Gonna start off with 3 HD's and expand upto 8 as and when i need to. OSwise looking at running a version of linux off of a CF card.

At the moment. the Infrant X6 looks better than the terastation. although neither are hotswappable or expandable beyond 4 HDs I don't think i can make an empty case for the cost of a x6 empty though...