Hi all. Been following the threads for a bit, but this is my first post.
My Synology NAS is getting old (2010 model) and it's time to replace and upgrade. I've spent the last 4 months researching the crap out of all the replacement models on the market and am disenchanted with most of them, so considering building my own to have better horsepower at a lower price. Leaning towards an Unraid setup, but open to FreeNAS if I can keep costs down.
Features/requirements, starting with most important to me:
1. Small, quiet, and low power. - Been most seriously contemplating a D-1521, D-1528 or maybe an i5-7600T based system, trying to minimize TDP for more of a 24/7 appliance than a big beast. Smaller footprint=better. Also moving to the Netherlands soon where I'm told electricity is going to cost me more.
2. Budget - looking at $500-800 USD range. I already have a couple new 4TB Ironwolf NAS drives, plus the older Seagates in my current NAS, so outlay would be for mobo, cpu, ram, psu, and case.
3. VMs - Intend to run 2 or 3 light or medium weight linux VMs most of the time. Wife wants a server to play with node.js on, I have a couple small personal webapps I want to selfhost rather than VPS/host. No gaming or heavy graphics needed. I figure a Passmark of 6000 or higher with 4 or more cores should probably handle my needs. (this seem about right for a NAS/VM host?).
4. Docker - not as critical as VMs, but there are a few apps that would be nice to spin up that don't need a full VM
5. NAS functions - holds our personal docs, ebooks, large music collection and once I finish ripping it, my DVD collection, and will feed my Sonos and Roku respectively. Haven't dabbled in Plex or Kodi much yet, but predict that my transcoding needs are minimal. I have a PC I can recode stuff "offline" as needed. Would be nice if I could run an HDMI to my TV and just play stuff directly though. Nice-to-have-but-not-a-requirement. Probably 1 video stream at a time at most, and 2-3 other accesses between music and docs.
6. Storage - planning on an SSD or 2 for VMs and/or caching. Would like 4 drives minimum for docs and media collection counting a RAID or parity drive. So been looking at 5,6,or 8xSATA motherboards mostly.
7. Ports - I have a gigabit switch (TL-SG2424) that supports link aggregation and also has "Combo SFP" slots. So, platforms that support being able to give a VM its own IP on its own jack are desirable and so I'd like 2 1GBit ports as minimum, although trying to decide if I should expect to go 10gbit at some point. Also would like USB 3.0 for an external drive for doing local backup, which kinda quashes some of the older Xeon options.
...
So, given the budget indicated, and wanting something on the smaller side (like no extended ATX, full tower, or deep 4U box), what might be a nice combo that gives me 4-5 drives and a decent virtualization/NAS all-in-one setup? Should I go low-end Xeon D? One of the T-model i5 or i7 skylake or kaby lake procs? Or an older Xeon... perhaps an L-model e3/e5 with lower TDP?
My Synology NAS is getting old (2010 model) and it's time to replace and upgrade. I've spent the last 4 months researching the crap out of all the replacement models on the market and am disenchanted with most of them, so considering building my own to have better horsepower at a lower price. Leaning towards an Unraid setup, but open to FreeNAS if I can keep costs down.
Features/requirements, starting with most important to me:
1. Small, quiet, and low power. - Been most seriously contemplating a D-1521, D-1528 or maybe an i5-7600T based system, trying to minimize TDP for more of a 24/7 appliance than a big beast. Smaller footprint=better. Also moving to the Netherlands soon where I'm told electricity is going to cost me more.
2. Budget - looking at $500-800 USD range. I already have a couple new 4TB Ironwolf NAS drives, plus the older Seagates in my current NAS, so outlay would be for mobo, cpu, ram, psu, and case.
3. VMs - Intend to run 2 or 3 light or medium weight linux VMs most of the time. Wife wants a server to play with node.js on, I have a couple small personal webapps I want to selfhost rather than VPS/host. No gaming or heavy graphics needed. I figure a Passmark of 6000 or higher with 4 or more cores should probably handle my needs. (this seem about right for a NAS/VM host?).
4. Docker - not as critical as VMs, but there are a few apps that would be nice to spin up that don't need a full VM
5. NAS functions - holds our personal docs, ebooks, large music collection and once I finish ripping it, my DVD collection, and will feed my Sonos and Roku respectively. Haven't dabbled in Plex or Kodi much yet, but predict that my transcoding needs are minimal. I have a PC I can recode stuff "offline" as needed. Would be nice if I could run an HDMI to my TV and just play stuff directly though. Nice-to-have-but-not-a-requirement. Probably 1 video stream at a time at most, and 2-3 other accesses between music and docs.
6. Storage - planning on an SSD or 2 for VMs and/or caching. Would like 4 drives minimum for docs and media collection counting a RAID or parity drive. So been looking at 5,6,or 8xSATA motherboards mostly.
7. Ports - I have a gigabit switch (TL-SG2424) that supports link aggregation and also has "Combo SFP" slots. So, platforms that support being able to give a VM its own IP on its own jack are desirable and so I'd like 2 1GBit ports as minimum, although trying to decide if I should expect to go 10gbit at some point. Also would like USB 3.0 for an external drive for doing local backup, which kinda quashes some of the older Xeon options.
...
So, given the budget indicated, and wanting something on the smaller side (like no extended ATX, full tower, or deep 4U box), what might be a nice combo that gives me 4-5 drives and a decent virtualization/NAS all-in-one setup? Should I go low-end Xeon D? One of the T-model i5 or i7 skylake or kaby lake procs? Or an older Xeon... perhaps an L-model e3/e5 with lower TDP?
