DIY NAS - A work log

[GrunkaLunka]

My DIY NAS - Project Journal

There's no shortage of thread detailing member's DIY NAS project, but I am starting this thread to document my own project in hopes that it helps people building similar systems in the future.

Current Setup

My current setup is fairly simple. I run a Debian system on a JBOD configuration with 1x200GB, 1x250GB and 2x500GB IDE drives. I use the Addonics Storage Tower, and a (now ancient) VIA EPIA 800.

This little server has, well, served me well for a couple years, but the time has come to upgrade.

New System

I had two primary goals for my new system when I started planning it out: easy to maintain/upgrade and small form factor. This of course, comes with a hefty price, literally.

The decision of which case to use was a simple one. Like many others, I am building my system around the very popular Chenbro ES34069 case. I think it's easy to see why this particular case is a common choice with the DIY crowd. The case is small, aesthetically pleasing and it features hot swappable trays for easy hard drive replacement. I have yet to see the case in person, but it's easy to see its shortcomings: among other issues, the case lacks a slot for PCI cards, which I would have liked to use to install a card with eSATA ports.

The second easiest decision was regarding which software to base the system on. When I read about the benefits of Sun's ZFS, I knew I had to use it for my system. I tried out VMs with FreeNAS, OpenSolaris and Nexenta and ultimately decided to go with this last one. I like that the distribution is very basic, without pre-installed GUIs that I ultimately don't plan on using, and I think that the fact that it uses Linux userland tools makes the transition from Debian Linux easier.

Unlike the case, which I decided to use from the first time I saw, I mulled over a choice for motherboard for much longer. Originally I was planning on using the VIA EPIA SN 10000EG. This board is passively cooled, and very low power consumption, but I ultimately decided against it because of its higher price and sacrifices in the performance department. After looking at a few others I ended up selecting the Jetway NC62K. This board is the second recommendation for the Chenbro case by the fine folks over at mini-itx.org. The fact that I can choose my own CPU made my decision easier. I am going to pair the board with an AMD Athlon 64 X2 4850e, and 2GB of Kingston DDR2 PC6400. These three will cost less than the VIA board would have, and should provide me with much better performance.

The rest of the components are fairly irrelevant: 4x1TB WD Caviar Green drives (sacrificing some performance for lower power consuption), a 10GB 2.5" HD for system and a slim optical drive I have laying around.

Baring any unforeseen issues, I will be ordering these components over the course of this week, and taking some snapshots along the way to document the project. Any and all input/questions regarding any facet of the build are more than welcome.

 

[germ]

Thanks for your post.

Nexenta looks very interesting to me as well, if a very "marginal" OS. Do you know if it can do AFP?

Your mobo already costs $170 w/out the processor. Have you considered the MSI Atom boards?

 

[GrunkaLunka]

@germ: I don't have any Mac clients, so I haven't looked at all into AFP support. A cursory Google search doesn't turn up anything specific, but there's results mentioning that NexentaStor, their commercial offering, does support it.

I don't think I looked at any MSI board specifically, but I did consider the Atom chip and I decided against it for the same reason I did the EPIA: performance, and forcing me into their socket, limiting my upgrade options down the line.

edit: I think this is the board you were referring to: MSI IM-945GC. That's actually looks nice. I'll do some research.

 

[bliko]

Sounds kl... be sure to post some pictures

 

[GrunkaLunka]

@bliko: I most definitely will.

@germ: I look a little bit more into that MSI board, and while it does look very respectable, it does seem like it sacrifices performance for low power usage. I see that the goal of your own build is low power, so it makes sense you're leaning that way.

I was about to start ordering parts when I realized that the Chenbro case comes in two versions: one with a 120W PSU and one with 180W. There's about a $20 difference between the two. I think I'll order the one with the bigger PSU, just to be safe. I just have to find the place with the best price.

 

[GrunkaLunka]

I really hate it when I do this to myself; I agonize over the small details of my projects and that just sets me back and frustrates me. I need to be less of a perfectionist and just try things dang it.

Today I obsessed over two things: I found another (better?) motherboard to use: Jetway NC81-LF, the ATI cousin of the one I had previously decided on. I mean, look at that thing: 2x eSata! Proper HDMI! I could probably have the server perform dual duty as an HTPC with this. Of course, the questions then start coming up: Will it fit on the case? Does Nexenta/OpenSolaris even support the damn thing? If not, should I choose a different OS? etc, etc. I deferred this decision to another day, since I think the case will take some time getting here (more on this in a bit).

The second thing that stalled me today was the announcement of the WD Caviar Green 2TB drive. It's not so much that I want to use the new drive--the price per GB is still a bit high--, but that I wonder if the price on the 1TB drives will come down. I ended up ordering a single drive from Amazon (free S&H FTW). I want to order the remaining three from different vendors anyway, since it's my understanding that it's better to try to get RAID drives from different batches.

Like I mentioned, I did end up ordering the case. I threw caution to the wind and bought it from the cheapest vendor found on Google. An apparent fly-by-night operation called computerHQ. I paid $183.95 total. I have been very lucky so far on most of my online purchases and have yet to be scammed or suffer any similar unpleasantry, so I'm hoping my luck stays with me in this occasion.

I'll probably decide on the motherboard tomorrow and get this thing going.

 

[germ]

The second thing that stalled me today was the announcement of the WD Caviar Green 2TB drive. It's not so much that I want to use the new drive--the price per GB is still a bit high--, but that I wonder if the price on the 1TB drives will come down. I ended up ordering a single drive from Amazon (free S&H FTW). I want to order the remaining three from different vendors anyway, since it's my understanding that it's better to try to get RAID drives from different batches.

Price of disk drives always comes down over time...

I am very curious about your statement on buying RAID disks from different batches? Can you elaborate?

 

[GrunkaLunka]

@germ: Yeah, you're absolutely right, there's no sense waiting because something bigger/better/faster is always around around the corner when it comes to technology. I'll stick with my original plan of 4x1TB.

Re: mixing hard drives from different batches, I think it's something that professionals do to mitigate the chance of two or more drives failing close to each other due to errors introduced in the same assembly line/batch. A quick googling has people going as far as recommending buying different brands. See: "A Small Tip when Setting up a Raid array", "Life on a hard drive". I won't go that far though, I don't want to risk getting drives with slightly different geometries, which I understand could cause other kinds of trouble.

 

[GrunkaLunka]

Placed a big order today. I set my foot down on the motherboard decision and got the Jetway NC81-LF. If for whatever reason I can't get the board to work with Nexenta or OpenSolaris then I'll just go back to Debian. Yeah, it'll hurt to leave ZFS behind, but I don't want to sacrifice on the hardware because the software hasn't caught up with it.

Newegg has a $195.98 combo deal on the board plus an AMD Athlon X2 4850e, which works perfect for me. I also bought 2x1GB Kingston Memory, and another WD 1TB hard drive.

Also, I was very surprised to see today that the website I ordered the case from has increased its price, from $170 to $250! I called them to make sure they had the case in stock, and that my order had gone through. They said the case will be shipping out Friday. I'm still a bit leery, but I guess I can't do much besides wait and see.

 

[GrunkaLunka]

Another uneventful update from me. I received the "big" order I placed last Wednesday on Friday. Newegg rocks!

Here's a few pictures of the stuff, as well as the motherboard with the CPU/memory installed and ready to go: http://www.getdropbox.com/gallery/257212/1/frink?h=598568

Over the weekend I installed both Nexenta and Opensolaris on the machine. As I feared, hardware support isn't quite there yet. Nexenta couldn't detect the network ports, while OpenSolaris did, but was never able to connect to the network. I didn't have much time to troubleshoot either one, I'll give it another try this week.

I got a tracking number for the case, and it should be here by Thursday. I can really ramp things up then. I placed order for the remaining two hard drives as well.

 

[bigclaw]

Do tell us about the actual power consumption of your setup.

I've been looking at a microATX solution myself. A 4850e/740g combo described here draws 31W idle, which is very respectable. The combo is about $120, I guess.

Of course the Chenpro NAS case is not compatible with microATX. To me that's not a big deal as I won't buy a case that expensive anyway.

 

[GrunkaLunka]

@bigclaw: I don't own a Kill-a-Watt yet, so I can't currently measure power consumption, but I've been thinking of buying one. Once I do so I'll be more than glad to figure out power consumption.

I finally received the Chenbro ES34069 case last Thursday. I've taken quite a few more pictures and uploaded them to my photo gallery. First impressions: the power brick is HUGE. It's not a deal breaker or anything, but it did jump out at me how big the damn thing is. Other than that, the case is very, well built. Clearance is of course tight, but the case is properly designed to fit all the components meant to go into it. Once it's all loaded up, the case weighed 18.5lbs (not including brick).

I installed the 64-bit version of Ubuntu 8.10. I've been playing with the setup all weekend and the RAID5 array is rebuilding as I type this. I have to do some reading into how to do proper performance testing.

 

[yasu]

SATA question

The rest of the components are fairly irrelevant: 4x1TB WD Caviar Green drives (sacrificing some performance for lower power consuption), a 10GB 2.5" HD for system and a slim optical drive I have laying around.

Hi Grunka,

This is a great thread; I'm looking at building a very similar box, but am still trying to find a motherboard/cpu.

I've built a couple of simple servers but I'm not a hardcore DIY'er so I have a question for you. Like most of the relevant mobos, your Jetway has 4x SATA and 1x PATA (or 5 inputs). How do you connect 4x 3.5 drives, 1x 2.5 drive, and 1x slimline optical (or 6 components)?

I'm sure it's something simple, but I'd love to include all those same components in my build as well and don't want to come up short on inputs!

Also, did you get the Chenbro PCI riser? It sounds like people have a hard time fitting PCI cards into the Chenbro case even with the riser.

Thanks!

 

[bigclaw]

Hi Grunka,
I've built a couple of simple servers but I'm not a hardcore DIY'er so I have a question for you. Like most of the relevant mobos, your Jetway has 4x SATA and 1x PATA (or 5 inputs). How do you connect 4x 3.5 drives, 1x 2.5 drive, and 1x slimline optical (or 6 components)?

One PAPA connector can accept two IDE devices, one master and one slave.

 

[yasu]

One PAPA connector can accept two IDE devices, one master and one slave.

Fantastic. Presumably I would also need an IDE to SATA converter like this to hook up a 2.5 SATA drive? Or would I just be better off getting an ATA6 drive?

Thanks!

 

[GrunkaLunka]

Personally, I just used an ATA drive. I also ended up not installing an optical drive because the only one I have is a CD-ROM only, and I didn't see much benefit from using it.

edit: Oops, forgot to answer: I didn't use the PCI riser card. I had no need for it.

 

[eon]

Solaris question

Grunka

What version of opensolaris did you try? You said it had a driver for the nic but you couldn't see the network. Was that the rtls (realtek) interface?

How about the sata ports? Was opensolaris able to see the drives attached to the sata ports?

Also if you have a chance can you give this opensolaris 104 ram NAS a twirl and share feedback on what works and what doesn't

http://eonstorage.blogspot.com/2009/01/eon-0589-based-on-snv104-is-released.html

format -e should show list any drives found.

 

[djchester]

Hi Grunka

Great find indeed this thread. I have a Chenbro chassi just next to me here now and my problem, as yours was too, is the motherboard choice.

I do not want to compromise on the heat/powerconsumtion though so I'm thinking about VIA EPIA-SN18000G. If that 1,8GHz C7 CPU does not perform good enough for handling torrents and producing acceptable speeds on Gbit I'm thinking it could be upgraded to a Nano cpu when they are available.

I'm also in favor of the WD greenpower disks. Do you plan to use all four in a raid5 or only three and keep one as JBOD for backup of the most important stuff? Are you planning on making filesystems crypted? I do and this will of course bring speed down a bit.

Good luck with the setup and I hope we can compare some performance when my NAS is ready.

 

[bigclaw]

If that 1,8GHz C7 CPU does not perform good enough for handling torrents and producing acceptable speeds on Gbit I'm thinking it could be upgraded to a Nano cpu when they are available.

I don't think p2p is CPU-intensive at all; 1.8GHz should be plenty.

 

[GrunkaLunka]

@eon: I tried OpenSolaris 2008.11. It is indeed the Realtek interface. At that point I didn't have any of the SATA drives in, but if I remember correctly the ports did show up on the hardware management applet. I'm in the process of transferring some stuff over, but I'll give your live image a shot.

@djchester: I think that the VIA mobo should be enough for what you want it too. My requirements changed when I started looking into ZFS first, and later when I thought I could make the machine a media server/player hybrid.

I am using the drives as a RAID5 array, and will backup the important stuff to the machine that is being replaced. I'm haven't looked into any kind of encryption, but I recall reading that the VIA board has some sort of crypto chip that helps with that sort of application, so that might be another good reason for you to use it.