If you’re choosing your own motherboard, some additional features to look for would be: The most important feature when choosing a motherboard is that it must have a PCIe slot that runs at a minimum x8 electrical, and either x8 or x16 physical, to accommodate the RAID card. Used server hardware is fine except for hard drives (more on that later). You don’t need to buy everything new (some RAID cards I recommend are used). You don’t even have to use a Mini- ITX motherboard if you don’t want to (although you’d need to choose a larger case). Now let’s start with the hardware and keep in mind, it’s very flexible. See Wikipedia RAID Levels for a good overview and technical data, and this RAID calculator will help you see how much disk space is available for each RAID level. I recommend RAID-5 or RAID-6 because they provide the best redundancy and speed (I use RAID-5 as you still retain 66% disk space compared to 50% for RAID-6). RAID 10 (nested RAID 1+0) (Excellent speed and redundancy, 50% disk space).RAID-6 Block-level striping with two parity blocks distributed across all member disks (Excellent speed & redundancy, 2 drive failures, 50% disk space).RAID-5 Block-level striping with distributed parity (Excellent speed & redundancy, 66% disk space).RAID-4 Dedicated parity disk (Good speed & redundancy, 66% disk space).RAID-0 Stripe (Fastest, but no redundancy, 100% disk space).RAID-1 Mirror (Excellent redundancy, good speed, 50% of disk space).RAID-0 Stripe (Fastest, but no redundancy, 100% of disk space).I will give you a quick overview of some standard RAID levels and their pros and cons. I use 6G SAS, and it never gets close to stressing the server no matter what I throw at it, so unless you have a busy home/office, stick with 6Gb/s SAS gear throughout this guide and save some $$ ) RAID LevelsĬhoosing the right RAID level will also determine how many hard drives you need to purchase, so it’s best to choose your RAID level well before buying any hardware. It will also influence what RAID card and case you choose later in this guide. You need to decide if you’re using SAS-6G (6Gb/s transfer speed) or SAS-12G (12Gb/s transfer speed) as they vary considerably in price. I’ll show you how to get brand-new SAS drives on the cheap. I will be using enterprise-class SAS hard drives rather than desktop-class SATA drives because SAS ( Serial Attached SCSI) is faster, more reliable, and built for RAID arrays (see HP’s take on SAS vs SATA). See this comparison of Hardware vs Software RAID. In my early days, I used software/BIOS RAID for my workstation and had endless troubles with disks falling off the array with disastrous results, so I don’t recommend software RAID. Add to that a nice big cache and battery backup, and it’s a no-brainer. For a home/office server, hardware RAID is so far ahead of software RAID it’s almost incomparable. I’m using a dedicated hardware RAID card in this tutorial rather than the motherboard BIOS to configure software RAID. That being said, I am always here to help and if you have any questions about the gear I link to, please email or comment before purchasing. You will need at least some experience building PCs and understand technical terms to complete this guide. You can buy expensive off the shelf systems with or without included hard drives, but they’re not a patch on the system I will show you today plus, it’s way more fun building your own NAS server!Īdvisory: This is an intermediate level tutorial. Having your own home or office NAS server is a great way to back up files, stream movies/audio, and share files on your local network. Desktop Class Motherboard – PRIME H610I- PLUS D4- CSM.Total budget is between USD$850 to USD$2,000 depending on the hardware you choose (I’ll give links to all the gear you’ll need). Today I’ll show you how to build a rock-solid home/office NAS server using a Mini- ITX motherboard, a dedicated hardware RAID card, and enterprise class SAS hard drives, all in a Mini- ITX NAS case with an 8 drive hot-swap bay.
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