Here's what I went with for my new 15-HDD media server (build late last year):
Antec Twelve Hundred V3 Black Steel ATX Full Tower Unbeatable Gaming Case<http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811129100> CORSAIR Enthusiast Series TX750 V2 750W ATX12V v2.31/ EPS12V v2.92 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC High Performance Power <http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139021> 3 x NORCO SS-500 5 Bay SATA / SAS Hot Swap Rack Module<http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816133030> 2 x Intel RAID Controller Card SATA/SAS PCI-E x8 8internal ports (SASUC8I)<http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816117157> 4 x 3ware CBL-SFF8087OCF-05M 1 Unit of .5M Multi-lane Internal (SFF-8087) Serial ATA Breakout Cable<http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816116097> Intel Xeon E3-1225 Sandy Bridge 3.1GHz LGA 1155 95W Quad-Core Server Processor BX80623E31225<http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819115088> ASUS P8B WS LGA 1155 Intel C206 ATX Intel Xeon E3 Server/Workstation Motherboard<http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131725> Kingston ValueRAM 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 ECC Unbuffered Server Memory Model KVR1333D3E9SK2/4GI<http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820139041> 3 x ENERMAX UC-8EB 80mm Case Fan<http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811999199> I also re-used an SSD from my old laptop as the boot drive. By ripping out the existing 5.25 bays in the Antec case (and bending a whole bunch of little metal tabs) you can put in the three Norco hot swap modules to support 15 HDDs total and still have a couple of 5.25" bays at the top for a Blu-Ray drive or whatever. The 80mm fans that came installed in the Norco modules were wicked loud - I swapped them for the The other option is to go with this Norco rackmount case (and you don't need the hot swap modules): NORCO RPC-4220 4U Rackmount Server Chassis w/ 20 Hot-Swappable SATA/SAS 6G Drive Bays (Mini SAS Connector) - OEM<http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811219033> They key is to get enough SATA ports to match the number of drives you have, plus enough bandwidth to use all the drives. The Intel controller card has 4 internal SAS ports which (using the two cables above) turn into 8 SATA ports. You need two of those cards to cover the 15 drives, using the SATA ports on the motherboard for the boot drive and any optical drives. An important thing to keep in mind with the motherboard selection is that the two adapter cards need PCI-E 8x slots. That's why I went with the server motherboard and Xeon chip I did - it gives me two x8 slots and two x4 slots. It also has the new UEFI Bios and has some really cool diagnostics. When you power on, it has a blue LED next to the CPU, RAM, and HDD that will light up if one of those components is bad. It also has an add-on card that gives you specific error codes if there is a problem during the boot process. But be really careful which model Xeon CPU you get - make sure it has the GPU capabilities Instead of the Xeon/server mobo you could also go with one of the normal Sandy Bridge CPUs (like the awesome Core i7-2500k) and a Z68 motherboard. Just pay attention to the speeds of the PCI-E slots. I went with FlexRAID (http://www.flexraid.com/) which is software based solution that uses some basic concepts from RAID. It calculates parity for all your data which allows you to recover if you lose a drive, but it stores the parity separately from the data drive(s). You can have it do either "real time" mode (ie constantly recalculating parity" or "snapshot" mode. I have it set to update the parity every night, because my media content doesn't change that often. The key advantages to FlexRAID: - You can have theoretically infinite number of parity drives and infinite data drives, where the number of parity drives gives you your redundancy level. I built mine with 2 parity drives and 13 data drives. Even though I only have 6 data drives at the moment, the built-in expansion allows me to just add more when needed and not have to rebuild the array - You can mix and match drive sizes, as long as your parity drives are at least as big as your biggest data drive - Since the parity is stored separately from your data, you can easily delete and recreate the array when you need to. The data is sitting in a readable form on your data drives, which you can plug directly into another computer if needed - FlexRAID also does folder spanning, where it will combine multiple data drives into one or more virtual drives. I have all of mine combined into one Z shared media drive, but you can also do things like make virtual drives for just your movies and just your TV shows. The great thing about the RAID software I used (FlexRAID) is that you can mix and match the sizes of drives. The only thing is that your parity drives must be the same size as your largest data drive. So if you want, you could go with a couple of 3 TB parity drives and then have a mix of 3 TB, 2 TB, and 1 TB data drives depending on what you have available. And if you need more space, just swap out one of the smaller drives for a larger one and restore the array. Hope that helps. --------- Brian On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 3:30 PM, Gary Udstrand <[email protected]> wrote: > Which other approaches? My plan is to set up the NAS to be used by all the > PC's in my house (everything from video, audio, recording studio, homework > etc..). Besides RAID for data safety I am also backing up a second copy to > a remote NAS (another Synology in this case). This is not a cheap solution > and I would be interested in hearing other approaches. > > Thanks! > > -- > Gary > http://www.twigsandtracks.com > Twigs snap and tracks fade, a photograph reacquaints > Twigs and Tracks Blog Superior > Sunrise< > http://blog.twigsandtracks.com/2012/03/08/superior-sunrise/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=superior-sunrise > > > > > On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 2:18 PM, Brian Weeden <[email protected] > >wrote: > > > I made the change from a RAID-based system to a FlexRAID system for my > home > > media server several months ago and love it. My biggest fear with > running > > a RAID based on consumer drives is that I'll have a 2nd drive fail while > > recovering from the 1st failure, at which point you're screwed. Yes, > RAID 6 > > helps but it's still a concern. > > > > If you have an application where uptime is a priority, then RAID is > > probably the way to go. But if your application is data redundancy and > > backup, then I would look to other approaches. > > > > --------- > > Brian > > > > > > > > > > On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 3:04 PM, Gary Udstrand <[email protected]> > > wrote: > > > > > Oh, BTW. Where did you get the drives? That seems like a great price. > > > :-) > > > > > > Thanks! > > > > > > -- > > > Gary > > > http://www.twigsandtracks.com > > > Twigs snap and tracks fade, a photograph reacquaints > > > Twigs and Tracks Blog Superior > > > Sunrise< > > > > > > http://blog.twigsandtracks.com/2012/03/08/superior-sunrise/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=superior-sunrise > > > > > > > > > > > > > On Tue, Aug 28, 2012 at 1:47 PM, Jason Chue <[email protected]> wrote: > > > > > > > Just curious... How do you see using the 1512+ to be more > advantageous > > > than > > > > say building your own NAS? > > > > > > > > BTW, just bought the 4 units of the 3tb WD Red drives for about USD > 170 > > > > each after conversion. > > > > > > > > Jason > > > > > > > > > >
