Resources for building a file server?

EarthQuake

So I'm thinking about setting up a file server, to backup art, photos, and for general file/music sharing around the house. I've probably got enough spare parts lying around to put together the box, sans psu and hard drives.

I'm curious if anyone here has done similar, and if so do you have any specific recommendations or helpful links?

Most of my house is wired with RJ45 cat5 I think, though speed isn't a huge concern as this will mostly be for periodic backup and streaming mp3s, which 100mbit should be fine for?

Will I need a special router or anything to do this? I've got a pretty basic router with 4 ports/wifi atm.

Uhhhh, raid 1? Or something different? Again backup/redundancy is important not so much speed.

OS? We have win 7 on most of our devices here so I should probably use that on the server too?

Setting up the actual sharing etc... Halp?

ZacD

I haven't read too much into file servers, but have you read much about NAS?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network-attached_storage

There's a lot of how to NAS guides.

EarthQuake

Looking at NAS stuff now, though I'm not sure exactly what the difference would be with a NAS vs a windows box operating as a file server. It looks like I could just buy a pre-built NAS system, but I've got a bunch of hardware sitting around already so I might as well just build my own box. Unless someone has a compelling reason to go for a pre-built NAS?

ZacD

I was just suggesting to look at how to build/make a NAS guide, they often talk about networking and software options.

EarthQuake

ZacD wrote: »

I was just suggesting to look at how to build/make a NAS guide, they often talk about networking and software options.

Ah sure, thanks, will do.

VPrime

Hak5 (a podcast) had a great video (series?) on building you own nas and goes over different software, and features like SAN.

Bek

There's probably a lot of ways to do this, so finding the best for your situation will be the tricky part. Awhile ago I had an old machine running ubuntu that I would turn on now and then, and use either command-line access (putty) or VNC to run a script that would backup certain folders using rsync (which only transfered changes, so was great for backing up large files that were changing often). Setting that up was a bit of a screwaround and there's probably a much simpler way to get the same thing—I've heard good things about Bacula but never tried it myself. Not sure if that could cover the stream mp3 part, or if it is total overkill.

Maybe someone more knowledgeable with linux stuff can point you in the right direction.

Eric Chadwick

I've been using Plex on a Win 7 box, and it's been pretty good to get music & vids around the house.

Also just signed up for Crashplan, paid cloud backup, very nice software and setup. Also use it to backup to local drives. One nice thing is I can use my own encryption key, so all the backups are totally secure. Tax docs, etc.

oXYnary

Do Debian and apt-get like ftp. You could do samba, (windows file sharing) for movie/mp3 sharing but you wont have the throughput that a raw ftp would give uploading to the server. If you plan on using some autoback up software on the client end, this shouldnt be an issue using Samba.


I woulf suggest a 1 gigbit connection/router if you are planning on large files. 100 mbit is less than 15 mb a sec. Your cat5 is fine going to a gigabit comnection.


If possible, do a hardware mirror. Like a 3ware pcie card. Its more dependable than a software/os based one. In fsct many of the newer 3wares can be setup to autorebuild an array when replacing a drive.


Fwiw, for a storage server, you dont need much horsepower, especially if you run a light Debian install. I use an Atom with 2.5 drives here. No redundancy though since I backup my work files locally as I connect to server through wifi. Where you should spend money is on a 3ware card.

JohnnyRaptor

iv got one of my old machines set up at home with xbmc for media streaming around the house and got the drives shared for manual backup. I looked in to automated backing up to the server for a bit but most of it seemed more effort than what i needed it for.

Its only me and the gf using it so its easy to manage the backuping manually, but if theres more of you with varying computer skills, then something automated may pay off in the long run tho.

also, another thing iv got is iv got set up so i can do remote startup and shutdown of the server which i think is a huge plus, since i shut things down overnight and when i know the server wont have any use. the startup is real easy to get setup with wake on lan, but the shutdown was a bit more difficult, having to create correct user priviliges and accounts for use with the shutdown command.

anyway, let us know what you end up setting up..always good to know!

EarthQuake

Thanks for all the info guys.

So I have a windows box that is pretty much always on, and hooked up to a printer than I plan to re-purpose for this use. I've got Win XP 64 on it now but will be putting Win7 pro on it so it plays nice with all the win7/win8 devices we have. Not interested in going the linux route. Its an older core2duo box so it should be fine for fileserver duty.

I ordered a raid card for it: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124064

And 2x 3TB WD green drives: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136874

That should be all that I need to get the basics up and running for manual file transfer right? Just need to create a homegroup then. I'll look into the various stuff you guys have talked about for automated backup etc when I get it up and running.

oxy: Do you have any recommendations for routers? I seem to have the worst luck with routers, they generally start to fail completely or act weird after a few months. Grumble.

The more interesting part of the project is a new HTPC (i want to get all the files off the current one, which is a loud and ugly beast, so finally getting the fileserver put together which I have been procrastinating for years).

Got one of these: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856102001 + 30GB SSD and 4GB ram, should make a perfect little Win8 HTPC box.

JohnnyRaptor

Hey I got the nuc too, works great as a htpc streaming from the file server or running netflix etc!

Also, worth to check that your mobo bios supports 3tb hds.

oXYnary

EQ, that card you ordered is just a sata controller, not a raid. You would still need a software raid which isn't as reliable nor as transparent/fast as hardware.

Here is an alternative: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA3Y51AM8796

For your router, did you reference a wireless one or just a plug alone type? I cant think of any of the top of my head as at least wireless are transitioning to the newer standard. (The one beyond N). A good rule of thumbI use is can the device use dd-wrt? http://dd-wrt.com/site/support/router-database

EarthQuake

Ah shit, I see, I had this in my cart too at the same time: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816124060 but must have deleted the wrong one. Is this a hardware raid card? FDGSDG, looks like that is software raid as well.

I've looked at the 3ware stuff but other than the one you linked (which is a refurb from an asian seller, which I want to avoid) they start at $330, which just seems overkill for my needs.

I want a wireless router, yeah. I have a Linksys WRT54G now, but I can't log in to it anymore to change settings etc so Its probably time for a new one anyway.

EarthQuake

I've got a Core 2 Duo E8400 in an Asus PK5PL-CM

I also have a Q6600 sitting in an Asus P5K E/WIFI AP that is currently unused, but I vaguely remember having some issues with the raid on that mobo.

oXYnary

Yea, thats a software rakd as well (says in description). Hardware raids aren't cheap, but fhat seller is going throUgh newegg which means possibly they might be more reliable? You could check ebay as well for an american reselle

oXYnary

God I hate typing on a android device. Now that I'm at a real keyboard,

802.11ac is the newest version. Get a draft 2 and above. This is more to future proof your network when you say get a new laptop or phone that supports that speed. 10/100/1000M LAN is what you seek. That and try to match to the router database on DD-wrt. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833320115 (example) Just don't get too close to it or your nose will start to bleed.


This is the cheapest new hardware raid card I could find. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816118114 The problem is it doesn't come with an adapter from SAS to SATA (SAS is a SCSI implementation of Sata). So you have to buy this on top of above. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816133033. So basically $200 is the cheapest hardware based raid.

If you want to think over it more, here is an article explaining the difference.
http://www.computerweekly.com/news/1367590/Software-RAID-vs-hardware-RAID-Pros-and-cons

commador

Maybe look into freenas? It can backup your PCs and act as a file server.

EarthQuake

Bit of an update.

After looking into quality hardware raid cards I came to the conclusion that I could just buy a pre-built NAS solution for a little more. At this point I was sick of all the research and everything so an already built solution seemed great.

I picked up:
Synology DS413j: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822108123
2x Seagate 3GB NAS drives: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822178392
And a UPS: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16842102070

I got the cheapest Synology NAS I could that had 4 drive bays (two extra for future expansion). I returned the WD Green drives after doing a bit more research, apparently those drives are a terrible choice for a NAS system due to the stuff they do while idle to save power (you can do some tweaks to them but I can't be bothered). I also made sure the UPS was supported by the Synologoy.

Setup took about 20 minutes with the Synology, super easy and awesome. Very happy with it so far but its only been up for a couple days.

I also installed Google Drive on the NAS and I went with the 1TB plan for $10 a month which is way, way, way cheaper than any other remote backup service I found. Now I've got local and remote backup, hooray!

Only thing left to do is get a better router as I'm only getting about 10mbps transfer speeds over old my 100mbit router.

Eric Chadwick

Tx for the update. Is that $10 per month if you pay for a year or more in one big chunk? Or do they bill it monthly?

weee

for remote backup, I wonder is google drive any better than crashplan as I'm currently using?

EarthQuake

Eric Chadwick wrote: »

Tx for the update. Is that $10 per month if you pay for a year or more in one big chunk? Or do they bill it monthly?

AFAIK they bill you monthly, and you can cancel any time.

https://support.google.com/drive/answer/2375123?hl=en

The prices are really good, literally 10x cheaper than dropbox.

https://www.dropbox.com/upgrade

Carbonite personal plans look ok, but they don't support NAS. Cheapest Carbonite plan with NAS is 250GB at $260 a year. No thanks.

http://www.carbonite.com/backup/pricing-plans/business-plans

Symform is again, about 10x more expensive than google drive
http://www.symform.com/plans-pricing/

Eric Chadwick

Crashplan supports using your own custom encryption key, which is really nice for personal data, like anything that could be used for phishing... tax docs, financials, etc. I don't think Drive lets you do this.

EarthQuake

Eric Chadwick wrote: »

Crashplan supports using your own custom encryption key, which is really nice for personal data, like anything that could be used for phishing... tax docs, financials, etc. I don't think Drive lets you do this.

Looking into crashplan now, dunno why I didn't look at it after you first mentioned it. Looks like they do unlimited data for only like $4 a month for an individual, and support NAS.... Whats the catch?

Yeah not sure if drive can do encryption, not a big concern to me but maybe worth looking into.

Eric Chadwick

Files are not as accessible as Drive. Crashplan is cheap for 1 pc, a little more for backing up up to 10 PCs (my plan, have 5 systems here). Also does all the local backups. I like how it sends me email reports, when 1 or more PCs miss a few sched backups (laptop in my bag)

I dunno, different strokes for different folx and all that.

Edit.. forgot to say, does file versioning auotmatically, and no real limit, can do multiple TBs for no extra fee.

EarthQuake

Really I just want something to grab all the files in a folder off my NAS and send it off to the interbutts. I don't need much more than that or really any of the auto-backup stuff. Can crashplan do that?

It looks like crashplan can be installed on a synology NAS, but with third party software and a bit work, which gives me a bit of hesitation. Seems like the crashplan app is a little heavy for my particular NAS too. =(

Eric Chadwick

Well, what do you use for the rest of your backup system? This replaced all the other junk I used to use... SyncToy, Dropbox, Skydrive, etc.

I don't have a NAS box, so can't say if it does that well or not. But works the best of all the junk I've messed around with so far.

Also had Carbonite before this, but hated the client.