Long Read! But I wan't to give the full view of my current dilemma for the best advice possible.
Where I am at in my mental turmoil right now is deciding to go with a true "NAS" or to build an all in one workstation/file server.
What I am asking for are opinions, options, feedback, on the best way to do what I want to do.
Here are the main action items:
I have a single high end desktop that is on 24/7, overclocked eating power, its full of older drives from 1-3TB with important data that I do not want to lose. I also have 3 external drives.
I want to consolidate all of that data into some kind of storage that offers me protection against data loss and leaves me with room to grow.
My first idea was to build a NAS using FreeNAS and a Dell T20 for $250 but it wont hold enough drives, then I started looking to build a custom PC for it, but prices started to get higher, so then I found out about all the recycle companies that sell used servers (very popular here on this site) they range from fairly cheap to really expensive and usually have lots of great enterprise grade equipment.
This was the first major stopping point for me, I started my search for some server equipment and almost bought some.
But, here were the gotchas and what has had me stop to do a double take on my action plan.
1.) The server will most likely be loud, and possible could use a good amount of power. If it is too loud I have nowhere to put it in our current place that would keep the fiance from killing me.
2.) I hate that my desktop uses so much power already, now I would be adding yet another device to the mix making my total power cost higher.
3.) I would need to do everything via network, that may actually bottleneck based on 1Gb/s vs local storage.
4.) I do video encoding for a side job, staying up late waiting for encodes to finish to get rush work done. I have been wanting to upgrade my PC for a couple of years to newer tech that would increase my processing power. Now I am looking at dual xeon machines that might encode faster than my computer but how to use it on a FreeNAS box?
So those 4 "gotchas" are what then started me on.... Why not upgrade or build a new desktop to be my NAS?
This way I can get rid of my yesteryear gear and get more power efficient stuff, toss all my old 1/2/3TB disk and replace them with 8TB WD Red's get a new CPU that will increase my encode times by atleast 50% but use less power idle, local storage access so no network bottleneck, just one machine in the house, less power, more quiet. Id would have more power for the NAS (for Plex and such) and more power for the Desktop.
But at what cost?
No more FreeNAS now I need to find a way to do what I wanted to do with just 1 box, and I need to be able to use Windows and have this as my normal desktop.
I thought Storage Spaces was going to be my answer. I can do all my shares just like normal in windows, I can get my data protection via mirrors or parity, and the ReFS system is supposed to protect from BitRot.
However based on feedback here, it's not so great and performance is pretty terrible.
Then I started to look into an ESXi box running FreeNAS and my OS but realizing that its mostly a headless server situation, it probably wont make a suitable desktop setup like this. I did find Linus TechTips do something similar using UnRaid + Windows VM and it worked well it seems however UnRaid does not have any native BitRot protection (some plugins may do it)
So I started reading more to make my decision, and just came up with more decisions to make.
I found out about Drive Pool + Snap Raid and how that is a popular way to have a psudo nas setup on a single machine, no BitRot protection again, but it seems Drive Pool has a scanning product that checks file integrity and that might be close enough.
So, ok lets try to bring this to a close (Thanks for reading this far)
Where I am left right now for my big questions.
Do an all in one machine or build a separate NAS and why?
If I go separate NAS should I go cheap and make it "just good enough" for NAS duty or try to make it do double duty as a Plex and Encoding machine?
If I go all in one, is that really going to be an issue down the road. Upfront I should see power savings, gain the benefit of having all my processing power available for both NAS work and Encoding/Gaming.
I already always have my desktop on 24/7 so its not like I am going to make a change to turn my desktop into a NAS as far as uptime.
If one box is the way to go, what is the best way to get my data storage/protection needs and still have a functional Windows 10 environment? ESXi, UnRaid, VMWare, DrivePool+SnapRaid, Storage Spaces, or something completely different?
I am so lost, I hope I can get some good advice or pointers that give me the confidence to pick a direction.
P.S. here is the one box build I put together last night, not too much more than some of the mid grade servers I was looking at on ebay after I sell my current setup to ofset the cost a bit: https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=23068114
Where I am at in my mental turmoil right now is deciding to go with a true "NAS" or to build an all in one workstation/file server.
What I am asking for are opinions, options, feedback, on the best way to do what I want to do.
Here are the main action items:
I have a single high end desktop that is on 24/7, overclocked eating power, its full of older drives from 1-3TB with important data that I do not want to lose. I also have 3 external drives.
I want to consolidate all of that data into some kind of storage that offers me protection against data loss and leaves me with room to grow.
My first idea was to build a NAS using FreeNAS and a Dell T20 for $250 but it wont hold enough drives, then I started looking to build a custom PC for it, but prices started to get higher, so then I found out about all the recycle companies that sell used servers (very popular here on this site) they range from fairly cheap to really expensive and usually have lots of great enterprise grade equipment.
This was the first major stopping point for me, I started my search for some server equipment and almost bought some.
But, here were the gotchas and what has had me stop to do a double take on my action plan.
1.) The server will most likely be loud, and possible could use a good amount of power. If it is too loud I have nowhere to put it in our current place that would keep the fiance from killing me.
2.) I hate that my desktop uses so much power already, now I would be adding yet another device to the mix making my total power cost higher.
3.) I would need to do everything via network, that may actually bottleneck based on 1Gb/s vs local storage.
4.) I do video encoding for a side job, staying up late waiting for encodes to finish to get rush work done. I have been wanting to upgrade my PC for a couple of years to newer tech that would increase my processing power. Now I am looking at dual xeon machines that might encode faster than my computer but how to use it on a FreeNAS box?
So those 4 "gotchas" are what then started me on.... Why not upgrade or build a new desktop to be my NAS?
This way I can get rid of my yesteryear gear and get more power efficient stuff, toss all my old 1/2/3TB disk and replace them with 8TB WD Red's get a new CPU that will increase my encode times by atleast 50% but use less power idle, local storage access so no network bottleneck, just one machine in the house, less power, more quiet. Id would have more power for the NAS (for Plex and such) and more power for the Desktop.
But at what cost?
No more FreeNAS now I need to find a way to do what I wanted to do with just 1 box, and I need to be able to use Windows and have this as my normal desktop.
I thought Storage Spaces was going to be my answer. I can do all my shares just like normal in windows, I can get my data protection via mirrors or parity, and the ReFS system is supposed to protect from BitRot.
However based on feedback here, it's not so great and performance is pretty terrible.
Then I started to look into an ESXi box running FreeNAS and my OS but realizing that its mostly a headless server situation, it probably wont make a suitable desktop setup like this. I did find Linus TechTips do something similar using UnRaid + Windows VM and it worked well it seems however UnRaid does not have any native BitRot protection (some plugins may do it)
So I started reading more to make my decision, and just came up with more decisions to make.
I found out about Drive Pool + Snap Raid and how that is a popular way to have a psudo nas setup on a single machine, no BitRot protection again, but it seems Drive Pool has a scanning product that checks file integrity and that might be close enough.
So, ok lets try to bring this to a close (Thanks for reading this far)
Where I am left right now for my big questions.
Do an all in one machine or build a separate NAS and why?
If I go separate NAS should I go cheap and make it "just good enough" for NAS duty or try to make it do double duty as a Plex and Encoding machine?
If I go all in one, is that really going to be an issue down the road. Upfront I should see power savings, gain the benefit of having all my processing power available for both NAS work and Encoding/Gaming.
I already always have my desktop on 24/7 so its not like I am going to make a change to turn my desktop into a NAS as far as uptime.
If one box is the way to go, what is the best way to get my data storage/protection needs and still have a functional Windows 10 environment? ESXi, UnRaid, VMWare, DrivePool+SnapRaid, Storage Spaces, or something completely different?
I am so lost, I hope I can get some good advice or pointers that give me the confidence to pick a direction.
P.S. here is the one box build I put together last night, not too much more than some of the mid grade servers I was looking at on ebay after I sell my current setup to ofset the cost a bit: https://secure.newegg.com/WishList/PublicWishDetail.aspx?WishListNumber=23068114
