What OS + M/B?

[Skyboat]

Right, so I've sourced a Fractal Array R2 chassis, which as you know can hold up to 6 drives.

As my media streaming and storage needs grow, I eventually want to keep adding additional drives into one big drive pool either via RAID or through some other method that involves data redundancy. Which OS and/or software would be best for this, or any add-on cards too for that matter?

With this in mind, on the motherboard front, the case can take either ITX or DTX, what would anyone recommend? Either integrated or socket CPU, preferably Intel but would also consider AMD variants.

Advice muchly appreciated Cheers.

 

[LePhuronn]

On a whim, I specced up a 18TB NAS box on a competitor's site using that case and ended up at a delicious £1,600 lol Note that this isn't something I plan to build, but I think is a good reference if you need this kind of storage.

To make the most of the 6 drives I put in a Highpoint RocketRAID 2320 SATA II RAID card - 4x PCI-E 8 port card. If I were to actually build this, I'd put the 6 drives either into a RAID 0+1 or RAID 5 depending on if I needed fast access times or not (RAID 5 gives you more usable space with data redundancy, but writing the parity data can be slow sometimes).

For CPU & board, I put in Asus E35M1-I DELUXE AMD Zacate board even though I'd never use the media capabilities. I chose that one for the ridiculous passive heatsink on it. Now I should imagine Zacate has enough processing power to support the RAID card, but if it doesn't then you could look at a dead cheap H61 ITX board and drop in the cheapest Sandy Bridge i3 you can find.


Full spec then was:

Asus E35M1-I DELUXE AMD Zacate
4GB OCZ Platinum 1333MHz RAM
OCZ Agility 60GB SSD
6 x 3TB Western Digital Caviar Green
Highpoint RocketRAID 2320 SATA II RAID card
Fractal Array R2 w/ 300W PSU

 

[Skyboat]

Hum, still can't decide on the motherboard - I'll see what bits I have lying around to see if I can cobble something together on the cheap.

The point I was trying to make was that I'm not going to have 6x3TB drives lying around to RAID together, I'll have about 3 or 4 drives ranging anywhere between 500GB to 2TB each.

I've been looking at both Drive Bender, using WHS 2011 as the OS, or unRAID, a Linux distro; and the pros and cons of each. They both use software which is an alternative to hardware RAID, that allows pooling of disks and dynamic expansion, replacement, and merging - none of which hardware RAID controllers can do easily or for relatively cheap.

 

[LePhuronn]

I see your point about the flexibility you want with multiple discs, but if you're going Mini ITX you'll be limited to 4 SATA maximum.

May well be right up your street then, and my spec was purely a theoretical build to maximise the case's potential.

 

[Cycrow]

what do u actually plan to use the system for ?

will it be a HTPC type thing allowing you to watch media, or do u just plan to use it as storage and steam media to other places ?

main problem with mITX is the limited expansion, usually limited to 1 slot, and less SATA ports than u get on bigger boards, some have 4, others can be lower
and with only 1 expansion slot u'll also be limited to addon cards to increase the sata ports.

asfor the OS, that would depend on the main use of the system

 

[Skyboat]

It'll only be for storage and streaming, however I'm contemplating whether to just get a Zotac DTX Atom board or something more powerful in socket form to help with transcoding. The expansion slot will of course be used up for additional SATA ports; though, Jetway do an expandable motherboard that is able to provide 4 extra ports without compromising the expansion slot too which may be another option.

I think I've decided on getting WHS 2011 with FlexRAID installed, gives me more options in terms of streaming then with Plex and PS3MS among other tools etc.

Just a lot of research really to see what hardware/software combinations are out there to match my needs tbh. I wish they made more DTX boards too