mITX NAS/HTPC

[abbotsmike]

This won't be happening for a little while, but I'm having thoughts about building a NAS and a HTPC. NAS for bulk media storage and backup, HTPC for connecting to the TV and running XBMC, amazon instant video, youtube, web browsing from the sofa etc.

Any reason I couldn't roll these into one box? I'm thinking i3, r9 270, load of WD reds, an SSD for the OS and sofware, all inside a bitfenix prodigy or similar, with some nice slow moving fans.

Anyone see any flaws?

 

[Baboonanza]

The hardware seems reasonable, I have a similar setup in a Fractal Node 304 (minus the GPU since the I don't use it for gaming).

The WD Reds seem like they might be overkill unless you're going to be using the NAS heavily, and in that case you'd probably want a separate NAS as AFAIK running 'proper' NAS software as well as the HTPC software isn't going to be possible, though not being a NAS expert I could be wrong there.

 

[abbotsmike]

I'm not sure I'd even bother running 'proper' NAS software, just set them up as folder shares within windows. I haven't seen any compelling reasons not too, and I'm not going to bother with RAID or anything.

 

[El Pew]

I'm not sure I'd even bother running 'proper' NAS software, just set them up as folder shares within windows. I haven't seen any compelling reasons not too, and I'm not going to bother with RAID or anything.

Well the compelling reason is that one day a HDD will die and you'll lose all the data on it, which may or may not be retrievable. RAID protects you to an extent. Often it's not feasible to backup a large media collection but RAID can give you at least a little resilience so you can survive one or two disk failures.

I had a combined HTPC/NAS and whilst it was perfectly adequate for it's time, it's very difficult to get the best of both worlds. There's no easy way of combining, say, ZFS as your filesystem whilst having a decent XBMC front end without faffing about with virtualisation and the extra hardware requirements that places upon you. Windows + FlexRAID/SnapRAID or whatever might be suitable with certain limitations.

I switched to a Solaris NAS and a NUC as my HTPC and the overall experience was a lot better, but obviously that costs more than running a single box. The perfectionist in me was a lot more satisfied doing it this way.

e: also, why the discrete GPU? If all you're using it for is media playback then Intel onboard graphics are plenty good enough.

 

[abbotsmike]

So it's possible, but not necessarily the best way. I thought that might be the case! It might be I'll do it until my budget expands sufficiently.

I would probably aim for a pair of 2TB drives. One for media and one for backup. The backup drive will be cloned to a USB portable that will live offsite. The media drive might well be worth setting up in RAID0 or similar to give me some redundancy.

Cheers for that!

 

[El Pew]

So it's possible, but not necessarily the best way. I thought that might be the case! It might be I'll do it until my budget expands sufficiently.

That's the way I went about it. I had Windows + FlexRAID on my combined box and it was adequate, with some annoyances. The trouble I had was the the 'NAS' side of the equation became more and more demanding - adding things like MySQL for a centralised XBMC library, torrent/Usenet and related tools and allowing access to my other devices compromised things too much. There comes a point when that setup just becomes sub-optimal and you need to separate things a bit. The typical OSs that people suggest for a NAS (FreeNAS, XPEnelogy, FreeBSD etc) are all much better for home NAS use than Windows, but they are all terrible choices for HTPCs.

That box then became my Solaris NAS and the NUC took over all the front-end work.

 

[abbotsmike]

I'll probably do the same. I suspect it might be a mATX board though, as I have an old case lying around (further reducing cost!) and then it will be perfect to be stuck in a cupboard later when I can afford a separate HTPC!

 

[El Pew]

I'll probably do the same. I suspect it might be a mATX board though, as I have an old case lying around (further reducing cost!) and then it will be perfect to be stuck in a cupboard later when I can afford a separate HTPC!

mini-ITX is great for a small NAS to hide in a corner somewhere, but the extra expansion slots on mATX can be useful. Especially if you want a RAID card plus a better NIC, or maybe a TV tuner card, or something like that. It's disappointing that the 2-slot (BTX?) motherboards in stuff like the Microserver aren't more available, especially with cases like the 304 and DS380 that can fit 2 expansion cards.

Re-using components is fine for this sort of role, neither the NAS or HTPC role is particularly stressful so you don't need bleeding edge stuff.

 

[Edward78]

mini-ITX is great for a small NAS to hide in a corner somewhere, but the extra expansion slots on mATX can be useful. Especially if you want a RAID card plus a better NIC, or maybe a TV tuner card, or something like that. It's disappointing that the 2-slot (BTX?) motherboards in stuff like the Microserver aren't more available, especially with cases like the 304 and DS380 that can fit 2 expansion cards.

Re-using components is fine for this sort of role, neither the NAS or HTPC role is particularly stressful so you don't need bleeding edge stuff.

Yes I love the look of the Element Q & MI 008 cases, but only 1 expantion slot.

 

[memyselfandi]

So it's possible, but not necessarily the best way. I thought that might be the case! It might be I'll do it until my budget expands sufficiently.

I would probably aim for a pair of 2TB drives. One for media and one for backup. The backup drive will be cloned to a USB portable that will live offsite. The media drive might well be worth setting up in RAID0 or similar to give me some redundancy.

Cheers for that!

Not RAID0 ... That would give you no redundancy as it's striping data across all the drives in the RAID set so if one drive fails you lose the lot.

 

[abbotsmike]

Definitely meant RAID1. Definitely.