Any advice on components for a homebrew NAS server?

[mhv10]

My current project is to build a homebrew terabyte NAS, akin to a Buffalo Terastations. They are cheap and nice sized, but they don't seem to support their products very well, and frankly I'd like to be able to play around with the software a bit more. I may start with the FreeNAS package, or build a equivalent using Linux 2.6, or maybe even OpenSolaris with the ZFS filesystem.

The high-level goals are:
1. not be a power hog (as it will be on 24 x 7)
2. not loud (it will be 5 feet away in a closet).
3. stable (i.e. BSD/Linux/Solaris must have good drivers for the hardware).
4. relatively cheap

I have some components already:
1. 2x256MB of DDR333 ram and/or 1x512MB of DDR400 ram.
2. fanless Radeon 9000 AGP video card (although I hope to run the thing headless after setup)
3. Seasonic S12-330 power supply
4. Antec P180 case

The last two were impulse purchases ... I should have asked here first, so feel free to tell me I'm an idiot.

As far as disks, I plan to boot the open source OS off of a USB keychain drive and use software RAID 5 across 4 SATA disks. It would be nice to have expansion capacity for up to another 4 drives. The SATA disks will be the main investment I plan to make (approx $400-$800, depending on whether I go for 250GB or 400GB drives). I'm currently leaning towards the Western Digital raid-edition (RE) series unless I hear otherwise, either in 250GB, 320GB, or 400GB form.

My main dilemma is with the motherboard / chipset. My hope was to find a motherboard integrating gigabit ethernet over PCIe as well as a fanless southbridge with 4-8 SATA ports. On the CPU side, a cheap Sempron seems to make most sense, but it is not clear to me which of the Socket 754 motherboards will satisfy all these constraints. The NVidia 4x boards make me nervous in terms of open source drivers, and they also seem to have heatsink fans often. The one other I see on newegg is a K8T800-based Soltek, whom I have never heard of before.

Alternately, a low-end Celeron D 326 with an Intel 915/ICH6 motherboard would seem to be the gold standard for BSD/Linux/Solaris support for both gigabit eithernet and SATA, but the heat and power draw is probably going to make it challenging. But I don't know that for sure, or whether these can be underclocked to reduce heat and power.

I'd love to get an old Celeron M, but both the chips and compatible motherboards are a little too pricey. And unfortunately, I don't think the new Conroe chips will be affordable anytime soon, let alone have much driver support in the open source OSs. The Via C3 and other older technologies like AMD Geode seem to lack mostly in the chipset area for gigabit + SATA, which is why I was focusing on semi-current CPUs + chipsets.

Final question -- if I have to compromise and use an add-on card for the 4 SATA controllers, I'm curious if people have analyzed whether PCI bus is adequate or if PCIe would be a good thing to have. My current Linux desktop is a Athlon 64 3000 in a K8M800 motherboard that only has 2 SATA ports integrated, so if I decide to scrouge this CPU and motherboard, I'd have to buy a PCI add-in board with at least 2 and maybe 4 SATA ports, assuming I can find one that is supported by Linux/BSDs.

Thanks for reading this far, and much appreciation for any feedback or advice!

[Shuriken]

Are you planning to run any kind of RAID lvl or just JBOD?
If any RAID soft or hardware?

If you can answer those questions i can tell you if the PCI bus will be sufficient

If you plan to go for lowpower, AMD Sempron (S754) might be a better choice. However nforce driver support for Linux/BSD is not great. So Celly might be the way to go.

Also a tip for the OS: http://www.openfiler.com/
I havent tried it yet but it even has iscsi support. Might be worth a look.

[mhv10]

Thanks for the pointer to openfiler ... it looks very full featured. I'll have to dig more and see if it can be run in-memory as a "LiveCD" off a 1GB USB disk.

But to answer your question, I intend to use vanilla software RAID, so the fact that all the cheap Sil3114 "RAID" cards can only be used as JBOD by most Unixes is no biggie. I'm just a little worried about going really low end and putting a vintage (i.e. well supported) PCI GigaE as well as a PCI Sil3114 style of SATA controller onto a vanilla motherboard that lacks both.

I keep seeing these combo CPU + motherboard deals from Fry's that are tempting, but their choice of motherboard usually convinces me to stay away.

[JazzJackRabbit]

mhv10
You could use always use Mobile Celerons. Those are socket 478 and they are compatible with most 478 motherboards as long as you bend AE1 pin. Most of them are rated only 35W. I have Mobile Celeron with AOpen 865GM-IL in my fileserver and it does wonderfully. The only problem is that most of the socket 478 motherboards only have 2 SATA ports so you may have to use an add on card.

[mhv10]

JJR,
thanks for the idea. I just scanned Karaktu's thread on AnandTech, and also found these CPUs on eBay for around $20. Is something like the 1.8 Ghz (SL6J4) model about right?
And I may be able to get an Intel 865 mobo with integrated gigabit ethernet from a friend, so I'd be halfway there.
But if a Sempron 64 can match the 35W rating of these chips, then I'd probably be willing to spend the extra $50 and buy something more modern, even if it is overkill.

Thanks!

[nix-madness]

mhv10
I've been looking to build one myself too. Been doing some research on the hardware for sometimes.

It's a pity that, here in Singapore, most motherboards sold in the retail are of the "latest and greatest" meant for the gaming and overclockers' market. Most of these mobos comes with all those SILly graphic capabilites and noise making junk onboard. And it's really difficult to get one without it these days.

Anyway, rant aside, I've been considering to use those VIA C3 mini-ITX mobos for my homebrew NAS. The reason for choosing VIA C3 mini-ITX is that it runs really cool and uses very little energy (20W max). I'll like to be able to build one with at least 1TB (4x400GB in a RAID 5 config using Linux + md raid tools) for the start and expand it to use more harddisks later.

However, most SATA host adaptors with more than 4 SATA ports are very expensive here. I had thought of using a single 4-ports SATA adaptor (about SG$178 or US$108) for a start and then add another 4-port SATA adaptor as my need increases later. However, I have to write off the idea of using mini-ITX mobos as they all come with only 1 PCI port.

I really wish that some motherboard makers can come out with mATX mobos that can use the VIA C3 or the latest VIA C7 processors. That would definately be the best choice for a 24/7 NAS box, that is cool and quiet.

The idea of using Celeron M/Pentium M on Socket478, as mentioned in Karaktu's thread over at Anandtech, is really a good one. Although it's power consumption is not as frugal as those of VIA's, but this is really the next best thing one can get besides the VIA mini-ITX solution. Then again, new Socket478 motherboards are hard to get from the usual retail outlets here in Singapore.

Cheers

[VultureJ]

The VIA Epia boards, although they come with only one PCI slot, you can get a PCI-riser card (it is a special one I've heard) that will let you use two PCI cards in it, when you're using a proper case (it's not likely to work with most cases though).

Here's my file server specs:
AMD AthlonXP 2400+
Silicon Image 3114-based 4-port SATA card
4x 250GB drives (actually IDE drives with IDE->SATA adaptors) in software RAID-5, using ext3fs
Fifth drive dedicated to MythTV use
512MB RAM
Antec SLK3000B case with Super Silencer PSU (400W)
Fedora Core 5 (probably soon to be ClarkConnect)

I was looking at OpenFiler myself, however, it has the main drawback that unless you buy the commercial version, you must be running some sort of authentication server to use it. Since I don't run a Windows NT domain or an LDAP server, I'm kinda screwed there.

Yes, I know that an AthlonXP 2400+ is overkill, but:
1. It's what I had lying around,
2. I used to usa a VIA Epia before I decided that I wanted to use this machine as a MythTV backend also - now I have a PVR-500 and a FusionHDTV5 Lite in there for three tuners worth of recording (two analog, one digital/HD)

I don't seem to have any problems at all with PCI traffic in my setup - and that's with all five drives and the NIC operating. The test I used for this was copying files around on the RAID while letting MythTV run commercial flagging on an HD show while streaming another show to my MythTV frontend PC. The CPU was pegged at 100%, but I didn't see any problems in the files I copied or in my playback.

Becuase of the number of drives and how cramped the wiring is, I'm looking to move to an Antec Titan to hold this - the extra depth will help things out, as most of the hard drives hang out over motherboard ports, even though they are SATA. When I used the Epia, I was actually using a five-bay SCSI drive enclosure that I hacked up to cut out a hole for the ATX back panel and I held the motherboard along the side with Zip-ties.

-- Joe

[nix-madness]

The VIA Epia boards, although they come with only one PCI slot, you can get a PCI-riser card (it is a special one I've heard) that will let you use two PCI cards in it, when you're using a proper case (it's not likely to work with most cases though).

Yes, I've seen the active dual PCI raiser card on the mini-itx.com website ( http://www.mini-itx.com/store/?c=8#p1902 ). However, there are a few other considerations to make:

1. If I started out with a 4-port SATA controller (8-port SATA controllers costs an arm and leg here in Singapore), and when my need increases, won't adding another 4-port SATA controller (thru' the active dual PCI raiser) put a strain on the PCI bus and thus slows down the access?

2. Can the mini-ITX boards be mount into say an ATX case for the additional space needed for the extra HDD drive bays? Or do I have to custom make my own casing?

Cheers

[mb2]

may i suggest a geode? if u can get a MB that undervolts well they are fairly close to VIA.. 1500 is good, 9w max. 1750 is undervoltable/clockable to the same level (1500 clockspeed is virtually a p-state of the 1750, but i think it might be hotter at the same clock/volts, i dunno). mobile Celeron or mobile pentium 4-m are seconds (even if u leave the pins at normal, u will get 1.2ghz, fast enough i'd think)

[VultureJ]

1. If I started out with a 4-port SATA controller (8-port SATA controllers costs an arm and leg here in Singapore), and when my need increases, won't adding another 4-port SATA controller (thru' the active dual PCI raiser) put a strain on the PCI bus and thus slows down the access?

If you want that many drives, I think that you'll need to go PCI-X, unless you're doing hardware RAID. (Even then, I haven't seen too many 8-port PCI SATA cards on Google). If you're not doing hardware RAID, then the software RAID code will have to send the data for each drive individually which will kill the bus, but with hardware RAID, only the real data has to be sent to the card, and the card sends it to the drives.

2. Can the mini-ITX boards be mount into say an ATX case for the additional space needed for the extra HDD drive bays? Or do I have to custom make my own casing?

Mini-ITX boards can be mounted in an ATX case, but only if you don't use the PCI riser card. If you use the riser card, then your PCI slots get turned at a 90 degree angle to the case, and you'll have to build your own case (or figure out some way to wire the PCI riser card, mini-itx.com does have them).

-- Joe