versatile home server

Capt Doufos

Capt Doufos

Capt Doufos

Soldato
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
2,721
Location
Nr Colchester, Essex
Hi Guys,

I am just after an opinion really. I have a server at home which hosts all my media (Home Photos's/Videos, Music Rips/Downloads, Bluray/DVD rips, and software ISO's) as I can't stand having the physical media cluttering up the place. This is about 4TB hosted on a RAID5 array with the irreplaceable content replicated to another drive and my PC. I am just trying to cover loosing a drive with the other content, as it can be downloaded again\re-ripped (it's just a mega PITA if it happens).

I would like to change the setup so I can run some other server apps (on multiple virtual servers) rather than just the file server, things like a minecraft server for 4 people and being able to use it for test setups as required (new serverOS's and Apps etc).

So it gets a bit complicated as I really need to run a hypervisor (2012R2 Hyper-V or ESX 5.5) However I am conflicted as I would really like to keep the storage as simple as possible and have the minimum amount of potential failure points. I am thinking of migrating to a drive pooling style setup where I can just flag the content I to duplicate rather than risk raid rebuilds, which also means I can just pull the drives and put them in another machine if any other part of the hardware/OS fails.

I would like to keep it in one server to minimize cost/power draw but I am beginning to think hosting effectively a NAS virtually might be more trouble than it's worth.

What do you think? Would you have a separate nas and server or all in one box? Any software would you recommend? I have been looking into Openfiler, FreeNAS, Stablebit Drivepool, Unraid, ZFS RAID-Z2 etc.

Help me please! I am rubbish at making decisions at the best of times. There are too many options.

:)
 
Thanks for the input so far, I have been messing about with it for ages and have been getting random BSOD's on hyper-v, wasting night after night on it. I nearly just bought a NAS last night out of frustration, but I resisted due to PSU/Board failure in a nas it's bye bye data most likely.

I like the idea of Drivepool as time goes on and you need more space you can just add in extra drives or start swapping out your 2TB's for 4's etc without having to rebuild an array.

I don't mind using Linux as the fileserver, it's not that hard to manage when using Samba and Webmin, and other than the intial setup of things like SabNZB+ they are easily managed. I did stick to using an NTFS drive for storage though to give me the option to plug it into a windows PC. I'm not sure about a drivepool type option for Ubuntu server though.
 
I have found this for Linux, doesn't look as nice as drivepool, but seems to do a very similar job. http://www.greyhole.net/

There are quite a few FM2+ boards with 8 SATA3 sockets for about £55 (A88X) There is also a Quad Core A8 6500T due out very shortly which is only 45W TDP for about £72. They could be a good option. The boards also support SCSI over USB.
 
I have an HP P400 8 Port card which I was passing through Hyper-V I'm just not sure it worth the risk of secondary failure and associated rebuild time with Raid 5/6/10 or Z. Obviously the more drives you have in the array the greater the chance of a failure. With drives being so cheap I think I may as well just go for data duplication apart from the things I really don't care about. I think I would certainly want at least Raid 6 or Z2 if I was going to raid it, but I'm not sure it's worth it.
 
It's more the fact, say I have 6 2TB drives Raid 6/Z2 would give 8TB useable, and if I loose a drive the rebuild time is going to be significant.

If I just use a JBOD drivepool and duplicate everything I would only loose a max of 2TB, which is equates to a £60 drive and has the bonus of being able to take any of the drives out of the pool and read them in another PC and be able to increase the size of the pool whenever I desire. I would loose performance, but I don't really require it, I just think it adds another layer of complexity I don't really need.
 
I guess going forward, having a half decent APU there could be of benefit with anything you use that offers GPU acceleration, but I know what you mean. I would rather a the same CPU with lesser GPU for less of my pennies.
 
Found my stability issues are my Q6600 G0 vs Abit AWD9D-MAX, so I may take the opportunity to put something with some more poke in.

I am thinking:

AMD FX 6300 (8 core would be nice but not sure if I can stretch the extra £30)
Gigabyte 970A-DS3P (8x SATA would be nice, but there only seem to be FM2+ boards in this price bracket with 8)
8GB Teamgroup Vulcan 2400mhz
 
Sorry yes hex core, I meant not sure if I should stretch to the 8 core, another 8GB of ram would probably be of more benefit.

Everything was put on this week only today, maybe it's a sign.
 
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