Mainboard for home NAS?

[Austerus]

Hello all,

I've been putting together a list of hardware to build my first home NAS and I'm stuck on choosing a motherboard.
My constraits are as follows:
- must support RAID 5
- must be a mini-ITX having an integrated APU
- processor speed is *not* important

Currently I own a QNAP TS-419P with 4x2Tb HDD in RAID 5 and I would like to migrate the RAID as-is into the new system (that should support at least 6 SATA hdd's - my currently chosen chassis supports 7).

My main hope is to have a system that's as compact as possible given the constraints and that would cost less than a prebuilt solution.

So far I was looking at something like this: View: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJDXAjnwUeQ


Thanks

 

[Nindustries]

You don't need a controller that supports RAID 5, as this is done completely software-wise in FreeNAS.
As for the motherboard, you could go for one with a cpu soldered on it. Woops, just read you're looking for this.

I can't really come up with one now, but i'll post when I remember one.

 

[Austerus]

You don't need a controller that supports RAID 5, as this is done completely software-wise in FreeNAS.
As for the motherboard, you could go for one with a cpu soldered on it. Woops, just read you're looking for this.

I can't really come up with one now, but i'll post when I remember one.

Thanks for the reply.

It's really great news to me that FreeNAS supports software RAID5 (same as my current QNAP)!
This also means that I don't have any real restrictions regarding the motherboard so I'll have to review some options that I've disregarded before (there were some Asrock and Gigabyte models based on Hudson M1 with AMD APU's soldered - I didn't look closely as it said they have no RAID support whatsoever)

Seems that my only question remains if it's possible to migrate my existing software RAID5 disks to FreeNAS and if so, how?


Thanks!

 

[cyberjock]

FreeNAS doesn't support software RAID5 in any fashion. So that's a very easy "no" to migrate your data. What you'll have to do is make your pool on your FreeNAS server and then copy your files over the network from the QNAP to FreeNAS.

 

[gpsguy]

Look for motherboards that accept ECC RAM. Search the forum for discussions as to why you should use ECC RAM. Also read the manual regarding memory needs. For ZFS on FreeNAS you'll need at least 8Gb RAM. Since most mini-ITX boards only have 2 memory slots, I'd go directly to 16Gb.

 

[Austerus]

Look for motherboards that accept ECC RAM. Search the forum for discussions as to why you should use ECC RAM. Also read the manual regarding memory needs. For ZFS on FreeNAS you'll need at least 8Gb RAM. Since most mini-ITX boards only have 2 memory slots, I'd go directly to 16Gb.

Thanks for the info.
I was looking at http://www.asrock.com/mb/overview.asp?Model=E350M1/USB3 and http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=3681#sp
However, what you're saying also worries me. My current NAS only has 768Mb of RAM and a single-core CPU but manages to handle its software RAID5 with 4 HDDs nicely, including transcoding for Twonky Media Server DLNA. If ZFS on FreeNAS requires that much memory, I will need to think twice about that. I was hoping to be able to keep my drive configuration and just move it inside a lower-cost self-built solution.

Then again, I might be able to simply throw a regular Linux on it and just make the same kind of software RAID on it.

 

[cyberjock]

yeah, if you are wanting low cost that's the anti-thesis of FreeNAS. This is enterprise class stuff and does require more hardware than many want or can afford.

 

[jgreco]

Our company fileserver circa 1998 had 32MB RAM and a 200 MHz processor, plus about a dozen hard drives. Today, 32GB and multiple 3GHz cores...

ZFS is not a lightweight filesystem solution. It is intended for larger deployments. It is designed to be able to handle dozens of disks without blinking and offer great performance while doing so. But it will not run on yesteryear's 32MB/200MHz box. That's because ZFS explicitly assumes the availability of resources. So if you don't have resources or just don't want to provide them, ZFS will be a poor fit.

 

[ECCfrenaslover]

Hi,

found a thread where you said you have a qnap 219...do you still have it? I have a 4 bay 419p+ but I finally got sick of messing up after I upgraded to the latest firmware. I've opened the case and I am going to take the MOBO and put another itx MOBO in it. I am stuck at the backplane. The proprietary backplane will get in the way and I was curious if you have a source of where to get them.... been googling the darkest parts of the web but nothing.

Got any ideas...

 

[anRossi]

This will probably be unpopular around here, but for cost-consciousness, you might consider looking at Microsoft Storage Spaces. The memory requirements are not as high, but you definitely want ECC RAM regardless, for the same reasons that are mentioned all over this forum.
Anyway, I'm not going to talk about Storage spaces any further. This is a FreeNAS forum. Also, this thread is old and probably nobody is watching it anymore.