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Hi, I seek your advice to build a PC as storage array for my small office having 5-7 users. I am thinking to build a PC to be used as storage array, one which could house around 6-8 HDDs and supports different RAID types. As a dedicated NAS box is going out of my budget, and a additional PC in office will always be handy. My budget would be around 50-55k.
My point of concerns are; what specifics should I keep in mind to build the system, and what NAS software solution can I use?
I recommend that you go with Intel G2010 CPU with Z77X motherboard of Biostar along with 8GB RAM (faster the better). You could have 4 3TB HDds to have 12 TB storage. This board supports RAID so you can configure for redundancy. On network sharing, it helps to have a dual network port for teaming so speed up the network throughput. This will not slow down the network when 6-7 people access the storage simultaneously. Costs you'll have to check and I guess it will go beyond your budget.
Also, FreeNAS in one software that is used for building NAS storage.Try that.
Concern that you should have is of network bandwidth, and with network teaming I presume it can be resolved. I hope this helps.
I would say a dedicated NAS box is always better than using a PC as a storage box. At 50-55k you can get a decent populated NAS box, but am not sure if you would get redundancy features as well within this budget.Quote:
Originally Posted by saurangshu
If you're building a PC, then specs suggested by geets are fine. Biostar z77x has 6 SATA ports; I recommend that you use 4 3TB hdds as storage array, and use a SSD to install Windows Server, as SSD will also make the processing requests faster.
But do not use your storage PC as guest PC or for any other purpose and keep it as a dedicated storage PC with no other functions.
Hi Saurangshu,
I hope by now you would have decided what PC config you are building. I would just like to raise a point on network teaming and RAID here. Indeed it will help you in shared network environment and will ensure good network throughput when users are accessing the NAS. As Biostar z77x has single network port, you'll have to add another port by installing a new NIC card on PCI slots. I suggest that you install two NIC cards for network teaming purpose, and keep the on-board network port free.
The free port can be accessed while accessing the NAS as administrator for configuring the NAS storage, and it will not hamper the network traffic for the users accessing the NAS.
The Biostar z77x board has 2 Sata 3 and 4 Sata 2 ports. So use 4 Sata 2 3TB hdds only for RAID configuration and then attach SSD to Sata 3 port. If you go for RAID 5 and have four 3TB drives, then you'll get storage of around 9TB in total, as almost 3TB or a complete drive will be kept for redundancy purpose.