SFF NAS

[ubern00b]

Hi all

I am replacing my aging HP Microserver with something that will give me a bit more flexibility and expandability in the long run. I have decided on the Silverstone DS380B as the case but everything else is up in the air.

Can anyone recommend a Mini ITX mobo with 8+ sata ports OR, maybe a 6 port mobo and 4-6 port SATA PCI-E card?

I am aware of the ASRock server board but reading around, it can be quite a headache. Looking for easy sailing here so where I haven't totally discounted it, other recommendations are appreciated. Thanks!

 

[ubern00b]

Should have explained further I guess. No need for a RAID card as I will not be doing traditional RAID or software RAID so I will only need something low power. Have been looking at the G3258 for CPU duties.

I will be using uNRAID 6 so each drive is pretty much treated individually and then a parity drive for protection. This is my current setup in a Microserver (using unRAID 5) using 4 drives. I have 2 more 4TB I wish to add but I didn't want to go down the route of squeezing the drives into the 5.25" bay (Have done this previously and have all the gubbins to do it, just thought migrating to another system with better expansion would yield a better outcome in the future).

So with this in mind I found the Gigabyte GA-H97N-WIFI which has 6 onboard SATA. I can add in a 4 port PCI-E 2x SATA controller to give me a total of 10 drives. Paired with the G3258, 8GB of RAM and the Silverstone DS380B case, I think this will make quite a decent box.

Duties are purely SMB/NFS as I have an HTPC and a NUC in the bedroom running Kodi for playback. The server will be doing no transcoding or anything heavy duty. With this in mind, even the above spec is complete overkill but it would last me a good number of years for not a great outlay.

Thoughts?

 

[ubern00b]

Cost?

Old desktop motherboards/cpus etc are cheap and plentiful.

Spot on. Those ASRock mobos are the better part of £250. The Gigabyte is still more.than I wanted to spend at just over £100 but it has everything I need at a price point that isn't too ridiculous. The ASRock are soldered CPU's, the Gigabyte I can upgrade over time. Etc etc. People think you need server grade hardware for a home build but I have 0 use for iLO/KVM, ECC memory or anything like that.

 

[ubern00b]

You should never use redundancy/server grade hardware etc as a substitute for backups of your important data. If it is that important to you, it needs to be backed up to at least 2 other locations, one of them being off site.

Also, "I'm more of the opinion it's up until something goes wrong somewhere", you seem to be of the opinion that server grade hardware does not fail? I have more failures at work on £100k server racks with all the redundancies known to man built in than I do with the desktops out on the floor.

You need to weigh up what your data means to you I guess and mine is pretty "throw away", hence not needing to worry about the hardware too much. Just need to be able to throw a number of hard drives at it.

Your opinion is very welcome, a healthy discussion is what these forums is all about

 

[ubern00b]

So, I have done some more research and come up with the below spec. Anybody spot anything wrong with the below?

Case: Silverstone DS380B 8 Bay NAS Chassis
PSU: Silverstone Strider SST-ST30SF SFX Series - 300 Watt '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply

Motherboard: ASRock FM2A78M-ITX+
Processor: AMD A6-7400K
CPU Cooler: Arctic Cooling Alpine 64 PLUS
RAM: Team Group Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit

All together it comes out at £320. Don't think I could do any better than that for the money?

 

[ubern00b]

snip

Thank you for the input however it isn't ALL about cost. The aim of this build is functionality. I think you missed the point of the chosen motherboard in that it has 6 on-board SATA ports. Add in a 4 port PCI-E SATA card and that gives me 10 drives to play with. 8 of them being via the removable drive bays that my chosen case offers.

 

[ubern00b]

I can understand that. But there are AM1 boards with 4 sata ports. If you add the raid card, that's 8 drives. Why do you need 10?

So the difference between your build and p4clock's is half the price at the cost of two drives. Plus lower power requirements and costs going forward.

Not trying to persuade you at all - the decision is totally yours. Just playing devil's advocate really.

That board had 2 SATA though. Can you show me a 4 port AM1 board? Very open to suggestions as long as they fit my goal

 

[ubern00b]

I use this one - http://www.asrock.com/mb/AMD/AM1B-ITX/

Perfect! Thank you. I had looked but I could not find a 4 port AM1 board. Obviously I did not look hard enough

My spec even tho chep was nothing about cost. it was showing you what spec a nas needs to be. if anything am1 is high spec for a home nas/media server, and a quad core is way over kill.

the board was an over sight on my part how ever with a better board and am1 build would perform on par with your build.

Don't get me wrong, I know exactly what a NAS should be, I was just having trouble finding what I needed. Hence my post here! Thank you for your input, it has been quite invaluable. My revised spec list is below. I am sticking with the Silverstone PSU purely because it is very recommended in the unRAID forums as it has a single 12v rail, which apparently unRAID prefers.

Case: Silverstone DS380B 8 Bay NAS Chassis (£116.51)
PSU: Silverstone Strider SST-ST30SF SFX Series - 300 Watt '80 Plus Bronze' Power Supply (£41.99)
Motherboard: ASRock AM1B-ITX (£31.51)
Processor: AMD APU Athlon 5350 Quad Core Processor (£31.89)
CPU Cooler: Arctic Cooling Alpine M1 (£5.35)
RAM: Team Group Elite Black 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C11 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit (£29.99)

SATA Card: Syba SATA III 4 Port PCI-e 2.0 x2 Card with Low Profile Bracket (33.79)

All of that for a smidge over £290 saving me ~£60 and is without a doubt a better build for a NAS system.

Thank you both for your time and efforts and sticking with me

EDIT: Been a while since I have had to build anything and just wanted to check. Will the SATA card, being a PCI-e 2.0 x2 card, work with this board which is a PCI-e 16x slot but operating at 4x. The slot will allow a lower operating speed?

 

[ubern00b]

the only thing i would say is if you are going 8 bay chassis you might be worth looking at a 8 port hba card so you have more future capacity space, you can get them pretty cheap off the bay

especially if you know what you are doing with flashing them

Thanks, but with 4 SATA onboard and a 4 SATA PCI-e card at ~£30 that gives me the 8 ports I need already.