New Home media / File server build

[Lazybones]

-Fractal Design Node 304 mITX Compact Case Black 6X3.5INT No PSU Front Audio 2XUSB3.0
-Seagate Barracuda 3TB 7200RPM SATA3 64MB Cache 3.5in Internal Hard Drive
-ASUS H87I-PLUS mITX LGA1150 H87 DDR3 Motherboard
-Kingston KHX1600C10D3B1K2/16G 16GB Kit 2X8GB 1600MHz DDR3 240PIN DIMM CL10 1.5V
-Intel Core i5 4430 Quad Core 3.0GHZ Processor LGA1150 Haswell 6MB Cache Retail *IR-$5*
-Thermaltake TR2 500W Power Supply Cable Management ATX12V V2.3 24PIN With 120mm Fan
-ADATA SX900 2.5" 128GB SSD SATA 3 SandForce 2281 550MB/SEC Write and 530MB/SEC Read
-TP-Link TG-3468 10/100/1000MBPS Gigabit PCIe Network Adapter

So after limping along on my ultra budget 2T NAS with my Server VMs running on my workstation I have run out of space and wanted to BUILD!.

Goals:
- The storage should be high performance SATA-3 6Gig
- The data volume should be RAID-5 (hardware / software)
- The server should be a virtual server platform.
- The OS for the server should not be on the storage volume.
- Quad Core for visualization
- There should be at least two NICs so that the server and VMs have separate interfaces.

So the hardware is build and now the wonderful issues being:
- Motherboard chipset is BRAND new I217, so the onboard NIC does not work with ESXi and there are only windows 8 drivers. (had to hack it to make it work with 2012 server)
- I am still debating completing this build with 2012 Hyper-V server however I have found setup a nightmare.. If I went ESXi the onboard NIC would not work.
- The RAID offered by the Mother board is not TRUE hardware RAID so I am sort of ignoring it.. It was not a key feature as I expected to do software RAID anyway... although that presents an issue if I decide to go ESXi

On the plus side:
- Even those it is a small case, I found it super easy to mount drives and the full SIZE ATX power supply.. This thing easily holds 6 drives no compromise.
- With all the reboots I have done fiddling, the SSD drive for the OS sure is quick.
- Over all it is very quite, I think the stock Intel CPU fan is louder than the case fans.

[Mr. Analog]

How is it for heat? The big problem I found running a media box was it was hot all the time and so the fans would be geared up to high RPMs in use.

[Lazybones]

How is it for heat? The big problem I found running a media box was it was hot all the time and so the fans would be geared up to high RPMs in use.

The case has a built in fan controller with 3 settings, all of them are quiet. I still haven't transferred my data to it so I haven't had it run at full blast yet.. The design seems to be really well though out for air flow.

[Mr. Analog]

You should also be good with an SSD, fewer moving parts is usually less heat and vibration, the enemies of silent computing

[Lazybones]

You should also be good with an SSD, fewer moving parts is usually less heat and vibration, the enemies of silent computing

It is 1x 128 Gig SSD for the OS / swap, and 3x 3TB drives for the data, those are regular spindle drives. (Total of 4 drives so far)

I should point out that this is a VERY large case for mITX, but I think it is a very SMALL case for 6x 3.5 inch drives.

[Tom]

How is it for heat? The big problem I found running a media box was it was hot all the time and so the fans would be geared up to high RPMs in use.

I haven't noticed a heat problem with my NAS. Seems like a similar setup to Lazy's, except for it being a corei3 ivy on a intel m-itx server board.

So long as you get the air flowing, temps should be fine. Mind you all my nas does is file sharing. I have a separate htpc.

This is the case I went with: http://lian-li.com/v2/tw/product/upload/image/pc-q25/q25-12.jpg

Mainly because it had a few extra 3.5" hdd bays. Only problem with it so far is that the io backplate didn't quite fit for some reason, I had to modify the backplate a little, and the PSU I got for it is probably a little too big for it. I opted for a high-er quality PSU which generally means its a bit larger... It's a very tight squeeze getting it in there, and the power cables to route between it and the hot swap disk bays.

IMO lazy should have looked at ECC support, but it does add like a couple hundred to the cost of the build but if you care about file integrity at all, its kind-of a necessary thing. Especially with software raid. raid parity won't save you if the data was corrupted before it hit the parity generation I'm pretty sure its happened to me more than once on my older arrays.

[Mr. Analog]

Oh yeah, from the picture it didn't look that big, but then read the dimensions:

Case dimensions (W x H x D): 250 x 210 x 374 mm

[Lazybones]

IMO lazy should have looked at ECC support, but it does add like a couple hundred to the cost of the build but if you care about file integrity at all, its kind-of a necessary thing. Especially with software raid. raid parity won't save you if the data was corrupted before it hit the parity generation I'm pretty sure its happened to me more than once on my older arrays.

Already over what I planned on spending going Intel VS AMD.. There was no budget for SERVER grade parts. My server resides in a cool basement, has a UPS providing clean power...

I am thinking of using the old 2TB nas as a backup target for the OS and critical files... I am not that concerned about bit flipping on my media files.

[Tom]

I just got incredibly sick of my files corrupting. I have a backup for my raid array. (sure I haven't actually put it online yet, but one step at a time ) Got tired of re acquiring all the unimportant stuff after a while too.

I just got sick of messing with cheap consumer stuff for my backups and data storage. I don't want to have to deal with the headaches that being cheap has caused me in the past.

For my most important stuff, it gets stored on the original machines, on a raid1 volume locally, and again remotely. And I may add another remote backup location. Paraniod? Me? maaaayyyybbbbeeee... Also may stick it on my data backup array (well, it'll be a linear array if I don't end up picking up a couple more 3TB disks...) as well.

[Mr. Analog]

If you were REALLY paranoid Iron Mountain would visit your house once a week so you could offsite your backups out of rotation LOOOL

[Tom]

If you were REALLY paranoid Iron Mountain would visit your house once a week so you could offsite your backups out of rotation LOOOL

I haven't quite gotten rid of my cheap side.

[Lazybones]

RAID IS NOT BACKUP.. hehehe.. Ya that is why I plan on using the old slow NAS as a backup target...

Budget is key.. I was planning on going with a QNAP or Synology, but I really like having Plex Trans-code, and I plan on adding DVR style recording in the future.

[Mr. Analog]

If you were REALLY paranoid Iron Mountain would visit your house once a week so you could offsite your backups out of rotation LOOOL

I haven't quite gotten rid of my cheap side.

You have a sealed bag full of hard drives buried in some field don't you

[Tom]

RAID IS NOT BACKUP.. hehehe.. Ya that is why I plan on using the old slow NAS as a backup target...

Hehe. Yeah, I've had my arrays blow up, I am /fully/ aware of how raid != backup... Especially when the admin is fond of fat fingering commands.

Thats why I have a backup array in the works, one that will be easy to expand (linear concat!), and maintain. I have 3x3TB drives ready for it. More than enough space to backup all the data I have right now, but not large enough to make a complete copy of the nas if it were full. If I do end up finding some 3TB disks for cheap, I may build the backup array as raid5, but I dunno. a plain old linear concat would be more than enough, and scale better.

If you were REALLY paranoid Iron Mountain would visit your house once a week so you could offsite your backups out of rotation LOOOL

I haven't quite gotten rid of my cheap side.

You have a sealed bag full of hard drives buried in some field don't you

I've been thinking about getting a underground fireproof safe. One of the ones that get mostly encased in cement. Then place disks and some archive grade storage media in there.

[Darren Dirt]

RAID IS NOT BACKUP.. hehehe.. Ya that is why I plan on using the old slow NAS as a backup target...

Budget is key.. I was planning on going with a QNAP or Synology, but I really like having Plex Trans-code, and I plan on adding DVR style recording in the future.