Read the guide, new build, thoughts?

[Jokah]

First of all I would like to thank cyberjock for putting together that excellent presentation. Shame I didn't come across it sooner.

I set out to build a 6+ NAS system on a budget for streaming media around my home. I had no prior knowledge, did some research and jumped in with both feet first (as I usually do) and bought what I thought would be ideal for the job. After reading your guide I don't think I did too bad but there are some mistakes. I will list what I have got and the mistakes I believe I have made.

CPU = AMD FX 4100

Yes it is AMD but unfortunately, as I said, I purchased before I came across this forum. However, I believe in terms of performance it should be more than adequate and can handle the all important ECC RAM and is 64bit.

RAM = 16GB (2x8GB) Hynix PC3-12800E 1600MHz DDR3 ECC RAM

Probably one of the only things I got right.

Motherboard = M5A78L-M/USB3

I chose this board and the CPU for there ECC support and low all round cost. It is however where I have probably made my biggest mistake for two reasons. Firstly the NIC is Realtek. The second is the SATA controller. So my questions here are: Will I get by with the Realtek LAN driver? If not what are my options? And also: Is the SATA controller adequate? If not then again what are my options?

I've got a high quailty PSU and a case with 8 drive bays and adequate cooling.

Remember this only only for a home media server for a handful of devices. I would like to avoid data loss but wouldn't loose sleep over it. The aim was to migrate my media to one place and not in my Main PC.

 

[gpsguy]

Your SATA controller is fine.

All you need is an Intel Pro/1000 CT NIC. Cost for an OEM copy is ~$30 USD. If you look at @joeschmuck signature, you'll see that he's using the same motherboard. I am using one, with the Intel NIC for my primary Win 7 desktop. Get the latest firmware, it was updated in October.

Beware of the AMD H@ters

 

[Jokah]

That's all I needed to hear. Thank you. AMD may not be the number one choice, most optimal or best performer but as long as it has the the required features then surely it should be more than acceptable.

Now all I need to do is decide how I am going to set up my hard drive space. To RAID or not to RAID? That is the question.

I was initially going to just use a RAID 5 config with one redundant drive (the dreaded RAIDZ1 I believe) but cyberjock's guide has made me think twice. The idea of two redundant drives at a cost of £200 for something I am not overly concerned about losing seems a bit steep (coupled with the fact I simply can't afford to drop another hundred into this just before Christmas). Therefore I am still toying with the idea of RAIDZ1 (don't worry I won't come crying if it all goes pair shaped) or sack of the Zpool all together and just use the drives as they are. Weighing up the pro's and con's if you will. If a drive goes down in RAIDZ1 there is a "chance" I might lose everything. If a drive goes down in regular use I am "guaranteed" to lose some data. Obviously what data I lose will depend on how I have distributed it across the drives.

I like the functional practicality of a Zpool but is that practicality worth the small chance of losing it all.

 

[pschatz100]

Redundancy is a matter of your tolerance for risk. Most posters will agree that Raidz2 is the preferred way to go; offering more redundancy than Raidz1. However, the question you have to ask yourself is: What Risk am I willing to tolerate? The way I look at it, my time has value. Even though I can reconstruct most of my data, the thought of spending a couple of months recreating everything is not pleasant. Raidz1 offers some protection against a disk failure, Raid z2 offers more. Having no redundancy at all will defeat the main purpose of ZFS in the first place, so you might as well not bother.

Do you have a backup strategy? You should.