1st Timer NAS setup - Any Suggestions?

[the_analyst]

So within the next month or so I will be moving into my new house. For the first 6 months or so it will just be me until I get married to my awesome girlfriend. Anyways, I'm wanting to setup NAS. I've done a little research into it, but being that I have no hands on experience with it, I cant decide on what setup i should get. I will also be getting a new router too. Any suggestions or recommendations on what I should get? Luckily, I don't have a specific budget I'm sticking too, but I obviously don't want it to cost more than my house(which wouldn't be hard).

 

[slozomby]

how much storage are you needing on the nas?
does it need to be independent of your main desktop?

 

[the_analyst]

how much storage are you needing on the nas?
does it need to be independent of your main desktop?

I would guess 2Tb+ and I would prefer it to be separate but don't have a good reason as to why. I'm open to any suggestions

 

[cdawall]

How much storage, redundancy in the storage and how much speed are you needing?

I had no issues with my little am1 build until I was trying to stream to multiple clients with 1080p60Fps uncompressed data.

 

[the_analyst]

How much storage, redundancy in the storage and how much speed are you needing?

I had no issues with my little am1 build until I was trying to stream to multiple clients with 1080p60Fps uncompressed data.

Atleast 2Tb, but the other questions I would say idc. But now that you mention it, streaming would be cool, but not needed. Like I said, I'm not on a fixed budget, so whatever it takes to have a reliable setup that would last is most important to me.

 

[Kursah]

What's your budget?

What kind of NAS are you looking to setup. A guy could setup a Windows 7 PC with a large hard drive for storage, setup some network shares limited to specific accounts. Or you could go full ZFS FreeNAS with RAID 5, 6, 10 or 50. I use 4X2TB in RAID5 for 5.5TB of storage that I use for media, virtual machines, general storage, etc.

You can build your own or buy something from the likes of Thecus or QNAP, etc.

Do you plan to host services from this NAS...for example a media streaming service like Plex or Kodi?

Do you plan to host any kind of virtualization?

What is your current network infrastructure like (router, is it 10/100 or gigabit?)? Will you be able to do an Ethernet run to the NAS? Wireless is NOT recommended for such a device IMHO. Even with AC standards, consistency and reliability of signal quality aren't at a level that beats Ethernet cable.

 

[the_analyst]

What's your budget?

What kind of NAS are you looking to setup. A guy could setup a Windows 7 PC with a large hard drive for storage, setup some network shares limited to specific accounts. Or you could go full ZFS FreeNAS with RAID 5, 6, 10 or 50. I use 4X2TB in RAID5 for 5.5TB of storage that I use for media, virtual machines, general storage, etc.

You can build your own or buy something from the likes of Thecus or QNAP, etc.

Do you plan to host services from this NAS...for example a media streaming service like Plex or Kodi?

Do you plan to host any kind of virtualization?

What is your current network infrastructure like (router, is it 10/100 or gigabit?)? Will you be able to do an Ethernet run to the NAS? Wireless is NOT recommended for such a device IMHO. Even with AC standards, consistency and reliability of signal quality aren't at a level that beats Ethernet cable.

No budget, but lets keep it realistic.

Currently have a custom built windows 10 PC and this is where I'm looking for suggestions on a good setup. What RAID to use etc.

I can build or buy, pros & cons?

Media streaming would be cool

will not be hosting any virtualization

Network will be 60mbps download minimum not sure about upload. But I haven't bought a router yet either (recommendations?) and yes it will be wired.

 

[slozomby]

well 2TB is pretty small as far as most NAS's are concerned. a 2TB hard drive shared out from your main desktop with an additional drive for backups would generally be sufficient for most folks. all this requires you leave your main desktop on and disable sleep mode.

as @Kursah mentioned qnap and thecus are good premade dedicated nas suppliers. a small 2-4 bay nas isn't terribly expensive

something as simple as the qnap hs-251+ is a decent starting place for your storage needs. put in a couple of 2-4 tb hard drives (in raid 1 )so you have plenty of growth space. and it doubles as an XBMC device for streaming, and has some browsing capabilities built in.

or build your own htpc and add in the storage you want.

as for reliability its mostly on the hard drives. they will all eventually fail. so backing up every so often is always a good idea.

edit: i mostly deal with higher end routers ( business class). if you want some recommendations for one of those i can help you.

edit2: as far as drives. i'd recommend getting something rated to run 24/7. the Western digital red series, Seagate has a couple of nas series drives ( ironwolf and constellation). hitachi makes a nas series.

 

[the_analyst]

well 2TB is pretty small as far as most NAS's are concerned. a 2TB hard drive shared out from your main desktop with an additional drive for backups would generally be sufficient for most folks. all this requires you leave your main desktop on and disable sleep mode.

as @Kursah mentioned qnap and thecus are good premade dedicated nas suppliers. a small 2-4 bay nas isn't terribly expensive

something as simple as the qnap hs-251+ is a decent starting place for your storage needs. put in a couple of 2-4 tb hard drives (in raid 1 )so you have plenty of growth space. and it doubles as an XBMC device for streaming, and has some browsing capabilities built in.

or build your own htpc and add in the storage you want.

as for reliability its mostly on the hard drives. they will all eventually fail. so backing up every so often is always a good idea.

Yea 2Tb was just a minimum. But im glad you mentioned leaving my PC if i had a shared hardrive. I definitely dont like that idea. I briefly looked over the qnap hs-251+ and that looks pretty good.
and for the routers i'm open to any suggestions.

 

[Kursah]

No budget, but lets keep it realistic.

That's why you set a budget...NAS's can very wildy in price depending on what you want. Need more than vague answers here TBH, it will benefit you the most the more specific you can get to your budget and needs.

It would be easy to setup a $300 cheap single-disk NAS without redundancy... or you could spend $3,000+ on a beast with high reliability, performance and functionality. So you really should know what you want to spend and what you want to do...different builds for different purposes.

Currently have a custom built windows 10 PC and this is where I'm looking for suggestions on a good setup. What RAID to use etc.

Did you build it or have it built for you?

I can build or buy, pros & cons?

I really urge you to utilize Google and do some more research too beyond asking here, you will really benefit from that. Even simply Googling "Home NAS Solutions" would be a good place to start. Spend some time researching...take the suggestions here and research them too. It's your wallet, and you need to make sure you're investing with information rather than just other's opinions.

Build = Can build for less than buy, can customize to suit needs, more complex and complicated, noone to blame but yourself if something goes wrong, great experience, more risks. Easier to scale up depending on what kind of build you do. You can control what OS and services are provided.
Buy = Expensive, generally reliable, use proprietary hardware, OSes and services in many cases, warranty and customer support.

Media streaming would be cool

I highly recommend and love Plex. I use it on all my devices at home and on the road. Kodi works well too, but for me Plex was better. You will want a decent CPU (no less than a fast dual core, quad core recommended) for media stream management and handling multiple streams. You should research Kodi and Plex. They turn your home media collection into a Netflix-style UI sorta. Well Plex does. It works really really well.

will not be hosting any virtualization

This will save you on processing power and RAM, usually left to servers but many NASes are beefy enough to host virtual machines these days...which is why I ask.

Network will be 60mbps download minimum not sure about upload. But I haven't bought a router yet either (recommendations?) and yes it will be wired.

60Mbps is your Internet speed, WAN (wide area network). I'm also talking about your LAN speed, Local Area Network. That will be critical to high-quality streams in your network. I recommend looking at PFSense for a really good router, but the Ubiquity EdgeRouter Lite3 and EdgeRouter X are both good, and add an Ubiqutiy UniFi AC access point for enterprise grade wireless.

Home grade router's I like are the TP-Link Archer series, Asus RT/AC66/68-series, you could even take an old PC, add a NIC card and install PFSense on it, or Untangled, or another open source routing software, or even go Linux and create the IPTables rules yourself. It depends on what you want to do. I'm assuming a home-grade router, but without knowing your experience and what you want, and especially what your budget and understanding of networking is...it's tough to really recommend anything specifically.

I do like Netgear, TP-Link and Asus products for home solutions, MicroTik has a decent home-grade router option, Ubiquity has some good home-grade options too as stated above.

 

[cdawall]

Athlon 5350
Single 8gb ddr3
Asrock am1h
Adapter 5805+breakout cables
Drives of your choice for a raid 5 array
Cx500
Case to fit the shit in.

 

[the_analyst]

That's why you set a budget...NAS's can very wildy in price depending on what you want. Need more than vague answers here TBH, it will benefit you the most the more specific you can get to your budget and needs.

It would be easy to setup a $300 cheap single-disk NAS without redundancy... or you could spend $3,000+ on a beast with high reliability, performance and functionality. So you really should know what you want to spend and what you want to do...different builds for different purposes.



Did you build it or have it built for you?



I really urge you to utilize Google and do some more research too beyond asking here, you will really benefit from that. Even simply Googling "Home NAS Solutions" would be a good place to start. Spend some time researching...take the suggestions here and research them too. It's your wallet, and you need to make sure you're investing with information rather than just other's opinions.

Build = Can build for less than buy, can customize to suit needs, more complex and complicated, noone to blame but yourself if something goes wrong, great experience, more risks. Easier to scale up depending on what kind of build you do. You can control what OS and services are provided.
Buy = Expensive, generally reliable, use proprietary hardware, OSes and services in many cases, warranty and customer support.



I highly recommend and love Plex. I use it on all my devices at home and on the road. Kodi works well too, but for me Plex was better. You will want a decent CPU (no less than a fast dual core, quad core recommended) for media stream management and handling multiple streams. You should research Kodi and Plex. They turn your home media collection into a Netflix-style UI sorta. Well Plex does. It works really really well.



This will save you on processing power and RAM, usually left to servers but many NASes are beefy enough to host virtual machines these days...which is why I ask.



60Mbps is your Internet speed, WAN (wide area network). I'm also talking about your LAN speed, Local Area Network. That will be critical to high-quality streams in your network. I recommend looking at PFSense for a really good router, but the Ubiquity EdgeRouter Lite3 and EdgeRouter X are both good, and add an Ubiqutiy UniFi AC access point for enterprise grade wireless.

Home grade router's I like are the TP-Link Archer series, Asus RT/AC66/68-series, you could even take an old PC, add a NIC card and install PFSense on it, or Untangled, or another open source routing software, or even go Linux and create the IPTables rules yourself. It depends on what you want to do. I'm assuming a home-grade router, but without knowing your experience and what you want, and especially what your budget and understanding of networking is...it's tough to really recommend anything specifically.

I do like Netgear, TP-Link and Asus products for home solutions, MicroTik has a decent home-grade router option, Ubiquity has some good home-grade options too as stated above.

Okay then, for a budget I would say $800.

I built it myself, on the first try to!

I have done some brief research on google, there just seems to be so many options I figured I could get some better direction on here as to which way to go. Honestly building sounds a lot funner and could be more rewarding if successful lol.

For the router I prefer a higher end home router (doesnt count toward budget)

And the Plex idea sounds awesome!

 

[alucasa]

There are a lot of ways to do this.

For 2TB setup, the simplest way to me would be just get a NUC and be done with it.

For me, I don't exactly have NAS. My setup is like this. My main PC, Media PC that acts has a storage medium and then a 2U server that is almost always offline unless I back stuff up to it. The server is headless and I set FTP server on it just to transfer stuff.

This is a photo of my media PC. It's as simple as it gets. It's basically a PC with a focus on being small and HDD storage.



Below is my 2U backup server. It stores stuff. That's it. It's offline unless I need back stuff into.



I will repeat this; There are a lot of ways to do this.

 

[Frick]

IMO: If streaming; custom (for processing power), otherwise; Qnap or something similar, like the one already mentioned. Google tells me Qnap can do Plex too, but they generally lack CPU power (at least the affordable models, afaik).

 

[the_analyst]

IMO: If streaming; custom (for processing power), otherwise; Qnap or something similar, like the one already mentioned. Google tells me Qnap can do Plex too, but they generally lack CPU power (at least the affordable models, afaik).

Yea im leaning towards building my own because of price per performance. thanks for the insight

 

[slozomby]

before i start recommending parts for a built nas.
do you want it to double as an HTPC? or do you already have something for livingroom entertainment in mind?

 

[the_analyst]

I would say yes unless there is a way it could work using an xbox one s? if not then yes

 

[alucasa]

So, you are basically looking to build a new PC or, as I suggested, get a NUC.

 

[the_analyst]

So, you are basically looking to build a new PC or, as I suggested, get a NUC.

After what im hearing yes, thats the way im leaning

 

[alucasa]

Have fun with it. It's basically building a PC but having different set of focuses.

Low power usage. Low idle power usage is also important as a media PC sometimes tends to idle for hours. (Mine at least)

Use iGPU if you can. Saves power and reduces cables.

Go for mATX or mini ITX to make it smaller if that fancies you.

It's just me but I don't use 3.5 inch HDD anymore. 2.5inch (laptop) HDDs do the job fine.

 

[slozomby]

here ya go. I went AMD on this to shave a little cost but still have good browsing/streaming.
the case and cpu cooler are focus'd on being quiet and looking nice since it'll be in your living room.

ssd for os. 3tb for dedicated storage.

the keyboard is great for couch surfing. its the one i buy for every conference room i setup.

http://pcpartpicker.com/list/XX2qd6

 

[the_analyst]

here ya go. I went AMD on this to shave a little cost but still have good browsing/streaming.
the case and cpu cooler are focus'd on being quiet and looking nice since it'll be in your living room.

ssd for os. 3tb for dedicated storage.

the keyboard is great for couch surfing. its the one i buy for every conference room i setup.

http://pcpartpicker.com/list/XX2qd6

thats a nice list with an even better price tag. Thanks for the help

 

[Kursah]

I can recommend the Asus N3150-C mITX board, has a quad core Celeron SoC, and us a sub $100 CPU/MB combo also takes full DIMM DDR3. I use one as my PFSense router, with an Intel Dual-port NIC on the PCI-e card. Though I've deployed a few NASes with these and a RAID card using RAID5 with great success. The Celeron is very power efficient, has a passive cooler pre-installed and will run just fine with Plex as well, but it idles around 7-8W w/o HDD's. I've even used one of these boards for a Server 2012R2 Hyper-V lab host running several VM's. Has integrated GPU as well, so really all you need to do is either add HDD's or add a RAID card for more HDD's. Very good and stable solution that I've used with Windows and Linux. I've also used the 3050 when the 3150 ra

I'd recommend an SSD for OS storage, and research a case that holds no less than 4 drives. I prefer 3.5" drives due to my experience... if I'm going 2.5" it's for an SSD. Not that all 2.5" HDD's are bad...but I see FAR more of them fail than their larger bretheren.

Some folks don't like SoC and I have been weary too...the one I mention has truly been excellent though! You could build an Intel Celeron/i3/i5 system, 4-16GB DDR3/4 (4-8 should be PLENTY for most cases), mATX/mITX board, etc. I usually try to go budget and get previous generation parts. Haswell parts would work great here... a 4xxx series CPU or 3xxx series Celeron, B85/H81 board, DDR3, an older RAID card that still performs good enough for a home-user (Dell Perc 6/i are still plenty serviceable and very cheap for example, that's what I use...can get a card for $15-30, battery around the same). Then pick your hard drives.

There's a lot of good options for sure, just depends on how you want to go about it.

@slozomby has a great AMD build up there that will work excellent! Might not be as power efficient as an Intel build and only having 1 HDD are the worst I could say for it... and really AMD is great for budget stuff and it's perfect for this application. Also I would recommend 2 hard drives in a RAID 1, only because I'm a sucker for redundancy and that way if one hard drive fails, you don't lose all your data. Plus anything can run RAID1, hardware or software. You really shouldn't notice any performance issues while streaming and have a peace of mind. Also that AMD processor should be more powerful than the quad core Celeron I posted above...but the SoC is more power efficient. Depends on your needs for sure!

 

[alucasa]

I am fine with SoC. People have problems with it because they tend to have their expectation way up there. As long as one knows what to expect from sub 15w TDP CPU (or even 7w TDP), those embedded motherboards with soldiered CPU are often the wonders of low power rigs.

2.5inch HDD goes up to 4TB now but with 15mm height. I transited from 3.5 to 2.5 inch HDD about 3 years ago as I was trying to build smaller and smaller rigs. I currently own about 10 2..5 inch HDDs now. Only one of them is 4TB though. Rest are 2TB /1TB ones. Out of those, Ive one failure so far which Seagate replaced promptly.

I am fine with being limited to 4TB per drive because, the bigger a drive gets, you receive more damage from a drive failure. Try imagining replacing data on 8TB HDD. What a pain. So, I tend to have many smaller drives and backup of those drives which is why I have two machines dedicated to data.

P.S. contrary to popular belief, my porn collection is less than 1TB.

 

[the_analyst]

I can recommend the Asus N3150-C mITX board, has a quad core Celeron SoC, and us a sub $100 CPU/MB combo also takes full DIMM DDR3. I use one as my PFSense router, with an Intel Dual-port NIC on the PCI-e card. Though I've deployed a few NASes with these and a RAID card using RAID5 with great success. The Celeron is very power efficient, has a passive cooler pre-installed and will run just fine with Plex as well, but it idles around 7-8W w/o HDD's. I've even used one of these boards for a Server 2012R2 Hyper-V lab host running several VM's. Has integrated GPU as well, so really all you need to do is either add HDD's or add a RAID card for more HDD's. Very good and stable solution that I've used with Windows and Linux. I've also used the 3050 when the 3150 ra

I'd recommend an SSD for OS storage, and research a case that holds no less than 4 drives. I prefer 3.5" drives due to my experience... if I'm going 2.5" it's for an SSD. Not that all 2.5" HDD's are bad...but I see FAR more of them fail than their larger bretheren.

Some folks don't like SoC and I have been weary too...the one I mention has truly been excellent though! You could build an Intel Celeron/i3/i5 system, 4-16GB DDR3/4 (4-8 should be PLENTY for most cases), mATX/mITX board, etc. I usually try to go budget and get previous generation parts. Haswell parts would work great here... a 4xxx series CPU or 3xxx series Celeron, B85/H81 board, DDR3, an older RAID card that still performs good enough for a home-user (Dell Perc 6/i are still plenty serviceable and very cheap for example, that's what I use...can get a card for $15-30, battery around the same). Then pick your hard drives.

There's a lot of good options for sure, just depends on how you want to go about it.

@slozomby has a great AMD build up there that will work excellent! Might not be as power efficient as an Intel build and only having 1 HDD are the worst I could say for it... and really AMD is great for budget stuff and it's perfect for this application. Also I would recommend 2 hard drives in a RAID 1, only because I'm a sucker for redundancy and that way if one hard drive fails, you don't lose all your data. Plus anything can run RAID1, hardware or software. You really shouldn't notice any performance issues while streaming and have a peace of mind. Also that AMD processor should be more powerful than the quad core Celeron I posted above...but the SoC is more power efficient. Depends on your needs for sure!

Thanks, i will be doing more research as advised but i will definitely keep in mind everyone's opinions, suggestions, etc. Both options seem like a good way to go for my situation.
thanks for the knowledgeable response