Reply to: Anyone running an office server for home use, suggestions

[rl4engc]

I think I've discounted NAS as it seems to me they're mainly for if you want access to their files 24/7, but have a sepatate PC/Gaming Rig that they turn on when needed, which isn't the way I work..

Quite like the look of the Lenovo TS440 which is a bit bigger than the TS140 but a bit more pricey, but more space and bigger PSU.

[vwdan]

This is my gear - I'd not really describe it as quiet, though.


(It's destined for the garage when we move)

[b0redom]

I now use ECC memory, because it wasn't _that_ much more expensive. I ran it without for quite a few years with no problems (in a HP Microserver actually).

[stek]

I bought a 12TB Oracle 7210 Unified Storage SAN/NAS cheap, that does ZFS and has a wee card with some SSD's on it for cacheing. Despite being a diehard Sun (now Oracle)-head I just don't get on with it, the Fishworks OS and GUI I find hard to navigate.

It's basically a Sun X4450 stuffed with disks and fibre cards....

I'm always on eBay looking for bargains, bought a quarter rack of IBM kit that wasn't moving so I made a silly offer (£200) and it was mine. I wanted the DS3400/EXP3000 SAN from it but I got a TS3100 tape library, 16-port Fibre Switch, and four IBM servers I chucked in the corner as well. Recently took a look at them, two meaty ones, but no disk/ram, one little thing but the last one was a dual Xeon with 128gb ram so that's my home server now, uses 180w not bad for the oomph....

[sal]

Do you use ECC memory with ZFS? I have heard a lot of horror stories of data corruption in ZFS by not using ECC memory, some details here:

https://forums.freenas.org/index.php...and-zfs.15449/

[b0redom]

I use FreeNAS 9.3 for my NAS box. It does ZFS (software RAID). If the hardware fails, you can pull the disks out and put it into any other system capable of running ZFS, run zfs import and it'll all just start working again. You don't even need to attach the disks in order. I've tried it and it definitely works.

I use a bunch of the plugins too:

Download FreeNAS Release - FreeNAS Project

Plugins:

Features - FreeNAS Project

[sal]

I'm using Xpenology, port of the Synology DMS that can run on non-Synology hardware

[Lockhouse]

What do people do about an OS?

I'm running an 8 year old Tranquil PC Sqa5h Cube with 2Gb memory and 10Gb RAID but I'm still on Windows Home Server. I've found WHS to be exceptionally reliable but I can't keep running it forever. I don't want something I'm going to have to faff about with, I just want something that works out of the box. (Backup, file server, media, etc). About once a year I think about replacing it but then think "Nah, can't be bothered"....

[rl4engc]

Liking the look of the Lenovo, but Dell has £70 cash back.

Wouldn't say a Dell is like a Metro, they all seem built like tanks whenever I've had to move one.

Lenovo has 2x 16x PCI which I guess is good for twin graphics cards (if PSU can power it)

Gonna research them more, seems there's a few offers for this month (also end of business year so could do with one soon.. )

[suityou01]

Running a AMD FX 9590 (Water cooled) on a Asus Sabertooth 990FX/R2.0 with 32GB Ram.

500GB Primary drive runs Centos 7, with Samba4 providing an active directory.

2TB Secondary drive has all my VMs, NFShares etc. VMs running in KVM behind a virtual network. I use noip and have a few holes pocked in my firewall so I can access the VMs remotely if I am aaaat and aabaaaat.

I don't need to heat the office, if I'm cold I just start up another VM

[vetran]

So that's, just bung a disc in, tell it to format it as NTFS and have each drive as a seperate volume? I don't mind merging as long as I can be 100% sure that if the NAS enclosure goes nipples skywards in 1,2 5, 10 years I can get at my data just by plugging the disc into a SATA connector on a motherboard. I wouldn't want 4 doorstops.

I'm not fussed about RAID, never had a Hitachi drive fail on me, my oldest is my 24/7 torrenting one and that's about 8 years old I'd estimate.



This is the bit I don't get; surely a 24/7 NAS+Apps == 24/7 Microserver ? as long as microserver is energy efficient. And a server you can use direct you don't have to remote into it?

Its normally a linux format as the boxes are embedded linux, you can get drivers to use on windows or use a bootable inux.

The Microserver depending what you throw at it will be about 40->250w 40w motherboard + 40w for 4 drives + Graphics & others.

NAS will be 60w max. 10-20w motherboard + 4 *10w drives.

Access to a NAS is as a web page. NAS is near silent.

Think of it as NAS=central heating, Gaming machine is a fan heater, they both do the same job, one just happens to run all the time.

[Platypus]

I chose this NAS software LimeTech

because if one disc fails you can get at the data off the others (it doesn't stripe files across disks). And it has a parity disk so that if on disk fails you can replace it and it will rebuild.

Just a thought.

In my HP Microserver I have 4 x Hitachi 4TB discs giving me 12TB of storage (and the parity disk)

HTH

[stek]

Looks a good spec, Aren't Lenovo chinese design though so risk they come with 'phone home' firmware? Are they reliable/well built, I'm used to Dell which are like the Austin Mini Metro of the server world?

FTFY

[rl4engc]

It does JBOD as well.

So that's, just bung a disc in, tell it to format it as NTFS and have each drive as a seperate volume? I don't mind merging as long as I can be 100% sure that if the NAS enclosure goes nipples skywards in 1,2 5, 10 years I can get at my data just by plugging the disc into a SATA connector on a motherboard. I wouldn't want 4 doorstops.

I'm not fussed about RAID, never had a Hitachi drive fail on me, my oldest is my 24/7 torrenting one and that's about 8 years old I'd estimate.

I have Asterisk, TVheadend, torrent ,DLNA & squeezebox on mine. I can play films etc from my smart tv or via various STBs.

This is the bit I don't get; surely a 24/7 NAS+Apps == 24/7 Microserver ? as long as microserver is energy efficient. And a server you can use direct you don't have to remote into it?

[rl4engc]

I use a couple of these at home. One for a NAS (FreeNAS and plugins) and one for a VMWare ESX server. Loaded with RAM they're very fast. No idea about gaming on one - should be fine as long as you can keep inside the power output envelope of the PSU I would guess.

Looks a good spec, Aren't Lenovo chinese design though so risk they come with 'phone home' firmware? Are they reliable/well built, I'm used to Dell which are like the Toyota Hilux's of the server world?

When you say NAS, as in the server itself is the NAS? i.e. you put a NAS OS on? Linux?