My futur NAS build, your advice please

Hardware
1

Hello all,

i am planning ( as most of the people here, i guess ) to use Rockstor and some awesome hardware to build the perfect NAS …

Lets beging by myself. I am a French geek from Grenoble, FRANCE.
I will try to be as clear as possible using English here.

I am NOT an advance linux user, but i know how to install a distro like centOS or debian, i know some of the easy tricks inside a console using some hard typing command line. Also, i am used to deal with words like nic, eth0, ram, fbi, cia and kgb, of course :slight_smile:

For example, when installing Rockstor on a very old rig test bench ( old Asus M4N78 ) the NIC of the motherboard was either physically dead or not recognized by Rockstor 3.9.1 . I end up having a “NO NETWORK CARD FOUND”… and i am stalling here with no clue until i check the network cable … guess what, it was defective.

BUT, as i say, my goal here is to build a brand new rig, with non-expenses hardware ( i am dreaming ), but with some pretty redundancy and storage capacity. Hoping of course that nothing goes sideway during install.
I am spending around 240 eur/Y (19.99 X 12 ) for a 3TO personal cloud, with only 8TO bandwidth per month. It is around 80% full. Upgrading will put me on a yearly 400 eur for having a double storage… On a familly prospective, we could be 5 to 8 users, with almost the same data capacity ( 8 X 2TO )…

This new machine will be running on a 7/24, hooked to a FTTH network, and will have several users. The purpose is to build a family cloud.

Step 1: why Rockstor ?
Well, my business used a 45drives Storinator running Rockstor. Nerver saw a fault.
Also, stuff like nas4free or freenas are sharing the same old ( more than 10 years ) platform.
Buying a Storinator for our familly use is still in the pipe but my geek side is kicking …

Step 2: Capacity and redundancy:
Actually, i have a old Asus M4N78 based on a nForce 720D chipset and seven 1TO HDD (from 2003 to 2009 era ).
I have check raid config 5-6-10 and finally going to build a 5 or 6 raid depending on budget.
I have found seagate’s 3TO Ironwolf hdd for a very cheap deal ( 80 EUR a pieces, planning 6 pieces )
This will give me a Capacity of 12TO, with a 2-drive failure and a 4x read speed, no write gain.

Step 3: hardware.

  • 6x Seagate IronWolf 3 TB, ST3000VN007
  • Asus PRIME B350-PLUS motherboard
  • AMD A6-9500 with 8Go crucial cheap ram.

All together, this is a “one time budget” around 680 EUR.
My son and me are spending around 350 EUR per years for less capacity … see my point here.

Step 4: my network.
I have a Fiber to the Home network, with a up/down 200Mo/1Go and i guess it will work for my family cloud project.

Now, your part. I am waiting for your comments. My project is for the end of january …

THX

1 Like
2

Since your considering the long term running, consider the power usage. I built a rockstor box on the basis my old machine was running around 180W, which works out to around $200 a year. In this consider how many drives and the cost of running them, not just per drive cost.

I should post my build and Power figures, but I don’t have them on me.

3

sympa le projet, still under construction?

have you done some testing on raid 6? I saw many post saying it’s having difficulties during reconstruction/scrubbing, and not much of a resolution or being improved in the lasts BTRFS kernel revisions.

As I’m around the same place your were in december, I’d like to know the kind of configuration you put in place (rockons, plugins, method to save…)

Hardware wise you seam to have something good too and with a decent upgrade capability.
Do you use the NVMe slot? Any caching and on what hard drive?

I already have a 24 bay server with 12 x 3To Toshiba hardware Raid6, but only used it, so far, as a sharing system in house, downloading and remote desktop.
Soon I’ll change hardware too and add 12 more 3To.

Have you check out https://www.backuppods.com/collections, to make your own storinator?

Hope everything works great on your system.
A Geek des Ardennes