Hello all,
I'm looking to replace my current 16TB NAS (A4-5300, Debian, mdadm, mixture of 4 and 2TB drives) with something with more storage and room for the future. I expect to use it for media storage, Jellyfin, backups of other computers, miscellaneous cron jobs (including uploading incremental backups to a cloud service), and light serving duties. My reasons for the upgrade are running out of space in the face of a growing media collection, making space to back up family members' computers instead of just my own, and just boredom/upgrade lust--the existing NAS has been serving me since sometime around 2013.
I have never built on a server platform before and so went for a more consumer-style build because of familiarity. I'd be willing to experiment with server components, but I don't know where to start, which is part of the reason why I'm posting here.
Here's the initial parts list, which is slightly modified from the exact list you'll find by following the PCPartPicker list due to some missing parts there.
"Silver" (the old NAS is "Copper," so I'm going one better)
PCPartPicker Part List
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600 3.4 GHz 6-Core Processor
Motherboard: Asus ROG STRIX B450-F GAMING ATX AM4 Motherboard
Memory: 4x Kingston 32 GB (1 x 32 GB) DDR4-2993 CL21 Memory (KSM29ED8/32ME)
Boot Device: 2x Western Digital Blue SN550 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive
Bulk Storage: 8x Seagate Exos X14 12 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Case: Fractal Design Define 7 XL ATX Full Tower Case
Power Supply: Corsair RMx (2018) 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply
HBA: LSI LOGIC SAS 9207-8i Storage Controller LSI00301
Possible Future Additions
More storage:
HBA: LSI LOGIC SAS 9207-8i Storage Controller LSI00301
Bulk Storage: 8x whatever drive has good value at the time
ZIL/SLOG
ZIL/SLOG Drive: Intel Optane 900P 280 GB PCI-E NVME Solid State Drive
L2ARC
L2ARC Drive: Intel DC S3610 800 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (will look for this or similar on eBay)
What are your thoughts on this build? I have a few specific questions and thoughts:
I'm looking to replace my current 16TB NAS (A4-5300, Debian, mdadm, mixture of 4 and 2TB drives) with something with more storage and room for the future. I expect to use it for media storage, Jellyfin, backups of other computers, miscellaneous cron jobs (including uploading incremental backups to a cloud service), and light serving duties. My reasons for the upgrade are running out of space in the face of a growing media collection, making space to back up family members' computers instead of just my own, and just boredom/upgrade lust--the existing NAS has been serving me since sometime around 2013.
I have never built on a server platform before and so went for a more consumer-style build because of familiarity. I'd be willing to experiment with server components, but I don't know where to start, which is part of the reason why I'm posting here.
Here's the initial parts list, which is slightly modified from the exact list you'll find by following the PCPartPicker list due to some missing parts there.
"Silver" (the old NAS is "Copper," so I'm going one better)
PCPartPicker Part List
CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 2600 3.4 GHz 6-Core Processor
Motherboard: Asus ROG STRIX B450-F GAMING ATX AM4 Motherboard
Memory: 4x Kingston 32 GB (1 x 32 GB) DDR4-2993 CL21 Memory (KSM29ED8/32ME)
Boot Device: 2x Western Digital Blue SN550 500 GB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive
Bulk Storage: 8x Seagate Exos X14 12 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive
Case: Fractal Design Define 7 XL ATX Full Tower Case
Power Supply: Corsair RMx (2018) 850 W 80+ Gold Certified Fully Modular ATX Power Supply
HBA: LSI LOGIC SAS 9207-8i Storage Controller LSI00301
Possible Future Additions
More storage:
HBA: LSI LOGIC SAS 9207-8i Storage Controller LSI00301
Bulk Storage: 8x whatever drive has good value at the time
ZIL/SLOG
ZIL/SLOG Drive: Intel Optane 900P 280 GB PCI-E NVME Solid State Drive
L2ARC
L2ARC Drive: Intel DC S3610 800 GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (will look for this or similar on eBay)
What are your thoughts on this build? I have a few specific questions and thoughts:
- Is it worth it to get the 800GB SSD for L2ARC and partitioning it down to 400GB for wear leveling, or would getting a 400GB-ish drive of similar caliber be sufficient?
- I'm still undecided on which OS to use: Debian for my familiarity, plain FreeBSD, or TrueNAS Core. Either way, I'll be going ZFS for this build.
- Is setting this up with consumer parts foolish? Should I switch to server parts for CPU/motherboard/enclosure? (Note that I don't have a rack, all I have is a nice spot of floor.)
- I know I'm missing a GPU for the Ryzen processor, but I have an extra one lying around for set up and I believe (and will confirm) that this motherboard will boot headless with no GPU.