NEW NAS FROM A Z600

[from Area 51]

Hello to all, I am very new with NAS, I was searching online for one and I saw that you can build one from a old computer, i have one and the specs are:

INTEL XEON E5504 TWO SOCKET @ 2.00 GHZ
MAINBOARD 0AE8H C INTEL 5520 REV 13
RAM 16 GB TRIPLE CHANNEL
VIDEO ATI FIREPRO V7750 1GB VRAM
KINGSTON SV300S37A120G for the OS

i have only 2 bays where i can put 3.5 inch HDDs, I was thinking two of my external Seagate HDDs, but they are already 3 years old, I think I would buy 2 WD RED HDDs. it would be much good for the system.

So what do I want from my NAS?

I am a photographer, I have 18 tera of drives in my new main system on which I am working on, 2 X 4 TB wd purple, 1 x 2 tb wd red, and 4 x 2 tb external Seagate, I would like the NAS to be my sharing platform where I share my photos with my clients (like dropbox) and from time to time movie clips (not that big files). i was thinking of buying 2x10 tb wd gold, to backup my 4 external drives and the remaining space to be sharable.

I have installed FreeNAS 11in virtualbox on this system is working okay but I don't know to configure it for now. Is the system okay, are there plugins for a photogallery like dropbox or something like that?

Thanks.

 

[Chris Moore]

No,

I have installed FreeNAS 11in virtualbox on this system is working okay but I don't know to configure it for now.

I would say that this is less than ideal, but we can make some suggestions if you are interested.

 

[from Area 51]

Yes i am open to suggestions, please do tell :)

 

[Chris Moore]

I will guess that you actually want something with some redundancy, so that the loss of a drive does not destroy all your data. That means you need more drives, if you want to be able to put all your data (18TB) into the NAS.
If you are on a really tight budget, you might be able to put the system board from the system you have into a chassis with more drive bays.
What are your plans for the system?
How tight is the budget?

Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I537 using Tapatalk

 

[Evertb1]

4 years ago I had a situation fairly simular to yours. I had a main desktop with a wild collection of drives. And I had an even more wild collection of external drives for backup purposes. That is not an ideal situation. I owned a big collection of audio files (flac), I had my private administration fully digital (pdf), I had the usual collectiong of photos and movies and I also had some software projects stored and in progress. And it all was very unstructured. Something needed to be done. First I admitted to myself that I needed to establish a sound storage strategy and -almost more important- a good backup strategy. So I dis something about it. My current situation is as follows:

My desktop only holds the boot drive and a couple of mirrored storage disks used for files where I work on (hourly backupped ). My normal data storage is a share on my file server. Some of the project files are also synced to the cloud.

I have a FreeNAS file server with a storagepool with a size that is based on my estimated need for the coming 3-5 years. This server holds all my files. That incluids the (media files) I share, like photo's and music. Most of the files are in SMB shares.

I have a backup server (somewhat off site) that has just one purpose: being an rsync target for my FreeNAS server for backup. The storage capacity for this backup server is also based on the size of my main storage.

My external drives have been "cannibalized" for the HDU's. These are now in the backup server (luckely they were of a good brand). This with exception of two 2.5 portable disks that I still use if I need to take some files with me.

My most important files are also backupped to a cloud storage.

All the backup jobs are automated (that is important to me because otherwise I just know it wil be down hill with the backups very soon).

Of course that I am happy with how I do it, does not mean it is the way for you to do it. But getting a clear picture of what you want and need is important. As @Chris Moore stated some form of reduncdacy in your storage is important but having good backups even more I think.

 

[Chris Moore]

The z600 has two 5.25 bays in front and two 3.5 bays inside for hard drives. I would suggest getting an adapter to allow installation of hard drives in the 5.25 bays so that you can connect as many drives as possible.
If you could get something like this:
https://www.scan.co.uk/products/icy-dock-mb153sp-b-fatcage-3-in-2-sata-internal-backplane-module
it would allow you to put 3 in the front bays.
This would allow you to have 5 of the 10TB drives and you could put them in RAID-z2 for reliability sake. This would provide 25TB of raw storage with 20TB of usable, reliable storage that should last for a good amount of time. It would also be possible to attach more drives to this system using an external SAS attached drive enclosure, but we can look into that more when additional storage is needed.

 

[tvsjr]

Here's the reality:
Your system, even running bare metal, is sub-optimal. It's an FSB processor, so IO will suffer. It also simply doesn't have enough drive bays to construct an 18TB array with any level of redundancy (even 4 10TB drives in RAIDZ2 will only give you a touch under 16TB usable).
Running FN on any sort of virtualization solution without a VERY clear understanding of exactly what you're doing is asking for trouble.

FN makes sense for a back-end storage solution for your use case. For the sharing part, you would need to run something like Nextcloud (which could be done on a separate system, or in an FN jail).

 

[Chris Moore]

even 4 10TB drives in RAIDZ2 will only give you a touch under 16TB usable

That is why I suggested using 5 drives by putting a 3 drive adapter in the front two bays.
I think he was just doing the virtual thing for testing.

 

[Chris Moore]

I have installed FreeNAS 11in virtualbox on this system is working okay but I don't know to configure it for now

You would need to dedicate this computer exclusively to FreeNAS on bare metal. It will not work well otherwise.

 

[from Area 51]

Hello again, so to answer if I have the budget, NO, for now I will just invest in 2 x 2 tb WDPurple or 1x4tb WD Re that I found very cheap, I will stick with my initial configuration just for sharing photos with the system.

And yes I will dedicate this system to FreeNAS only.

I don't know what FN means.
Yes in the future I was thinking of buying extra rack in.the 5.2 bays, but for now, I will stick with NEW hdd's, the 18 tera that I have now are full of content.

So what do you suggest, WD Purple 2x2tb or larger 1x4tb, or the WD Re 1x4tb.

Thanks a lot for helping me out!

 

[Evertb1]

Hello again, so to answer if I have the budget, NO, for now I will just invest in 2 x 2 tb WDPurple or 1x4tb WD Re that I found very cheap, I will stick with my initial configuration just for sharing photos with the system.

And yes I will dedicate this system to FreeNAS only.

I don't know what FN means.
Yes in the future I was thinking of buying extra rack in.the 5.2 bays, but for now, I will stick with NEW hdd's, the 18 tera that I have now are full of content.

So what do you suggest, WD Purple 2x2tb or larger 1x4tb, or the WD Re 1x4tb.

Thanks a lot for helping me out!

I think he means FreeNAS with FN.
I would go for WD Red (if you want to stick to WD) and not for Purple. As far as I know those ar designed for continues writes and not reads. Anyway, Reds are a proven solution for NAS applications. And I don't know how it is at your side of the world, but here in the Netherlands there is almost no price difference. By the way, I have always been loyal to the Reds but with my next buy I wil certainly consider some IronWolfs.

 

[from Area 51]

I think he means FreeNAS with FN.
I would go for WD Red (if you want to stick to WD) and not for Purple. As far as I know those ar designed for continues writes and not reads. Anyway, Reds are a proven solution for NAS applications. And I don't know how it is at your side of the world, but here in the Netherlands there is almost no price difference. By the way, I have always been loyal to the Reds but with my next buy I wil certainly consider some IronWolfs.

Okey FN is FreeNAS, now I know, i have a 2tb wd red, but is from 2013, and all my harddrives are WD, i will search for RED ones.
Why do you think Iron Wolk are good for nas? Do you have some test? Prices are good here in Romania, an 2 tb wd purple new is 45 eur.

 

[Evertb1]

Okey FN is freenas, now i know, i have a 2tb wd red, but is from 2013, and all my harddrives are WD, i will search for RED ones.
Why do you think Iron Wolk are good for nas? Do you have some test? Prices are good here in Romania, an 2 tb wd purple new is 45 eur.

If have no personel experience with IronWolf drives, but there has been some positive reviews and comments on them. There are also some threads in the Forum where they are mentioned/discussed. That should not be hard to find with the Forum search function. Also there are plenty of tests/reviews to find on the WWW for example: http://www.storagereview.com/seagate_ironwolf_hdd_10tb_review

Seagate positions those drives as NAS drive and they are supposed to be a direct competitor for the Reds. The pricing makes them interesting enough to at least consider them (here in the Netherlands they ar cheaper then the Reds). And there is no reason why you could not mix and match with WD reds in your (future) pool.