NAS Hardware Selection (2012)

Requirements

In 2012, my current storage server (NAS) was running full, so I wanted to buy a replacement server. I now have 4(!) external disk drives connected to my main desktop, and wanted to reduce that number. Also, I now often decommission smaller size disks which would still be useful in a server. So my first requirement was a system with at least four drive bays, but preferably more.

I first considered (in order from low price to high quality) a LaCie 5big network 2, Synology DS412+, Drobo FS, or IX Systems' FreeNAS mini and QNAP TS-559 Pro II. All these systems have four or five 3.5" disk bays, and range from €300 to €750 without disks. Add about €100 for each Terabyte disk.

Two requirements prompted my to build my own solution:

Services

The server should run the SMB and AFP protocols, as well as allow direct playing

Price

Building your own solution costs about the same for the bare system, but is more powerful and is cheaper per terabyte.

So I decided to build a custom FreeBSD (or FreeNAS) system. Not only would that give flexibility, it also allows me to play with ZFS, my favourite file system.

Choice of chassis

I mostly considered Fractal Design and Li Lian chassis, which offer a good wide choice in products. My first decision is what size I wanted to case to be. There are a few cases of less than 10 litre which allow 4 disks, like the [Lian Li PC-Q12]. However, that would limit myself to 2.5" disk bays. I wanted at least six 3.5" bays, and it was possible to achieve this in a mini-tower chassis of 20-25 litre. For comparison, a regular tower PC typically is 30-35 litre in size. Good choices in this size where the Fractal Design Array R2 NAS Chassis (with six 3.5" and one 2.5" disk bays) and the Lian Li PC-Q25 (with seven 3.5" and one 2.5" disk bays, where five of the 3.5" bays are hot swappable). Both these cases support mini-ITX and mini-DTX motherboard (the difference is that a mini-ITX has one expansion slot, and the mini-DTX has two expansion slots).

I picked the Lian Li PC-Q25 after reading a few favourable reviews. For those interested: the specification of the disk bays is somewhat confusing. The PC-Q25 can support eight disks at most. Five of these are in a hot swappable disk bay, the other three on a fixed metal plated. The middle location on the metal plate must be a 2.5" disk; the other locations can be either 2.5" or 3.5" disks.

Choice of CPU

My biggest hurdle was the choice between a low power CPU soldered on the motherboard or a regular pluggable CPU with some more power. CPU World certainly helped me compare the different CPUs. I naïvely thought that "a Atom CPU would do", not realising that there are many types of Atom CPUs, AMD alternatives, and also other juicy CPUs that only consume 30-35 Watt of power.

For starters, I looked up the benchmark of CPUs that I used previously. My 3-year old MacBook Pro benchmarks at 1501, while a consumer laptop my wife just bought now benchmarks at 2668. Those are the high-ends for me. The low end is my Soekris net6501 router which also runs FreeBSD. While it's load is near-zero for the switching routing and VPN it does now, it is sluggish when I want to compile a new tool. So that's my low-end. A colleague with his own NAS had a Sempron 140 at first, but recently upgrade to a Athlon II x2 250e so he could use it as a more spicy server.

Vendor	Type	Frequency	#Core (Threads)	L2+L3 cache	TPD	socket	Benchmark
Intel	Core 2 Duo E6600	2.4 GHz	2	4.0 MiB	65 W	LGA 775	1501
AMD	A8-3510MX	1.8 GHz	4	4.0 MiB	45 W	FS1	2668
Intel	Atom E640	1.0 GHz	1 (2)	0.5 MiB	3 W	BGA 1466 (onboard)	250
AMD	Sempron 140	2.7 GHz	1	1.0 MiB	45 W	AM3	752
AMD	Athlon II x2 250e	3.0 GHz	2	2.0 MiB	45 W	AM3	1680
AMD	G-T56N	1.6 GHz	2	1.0 MiB	18 W	BGA 413 (onboard)	721
AMD	E350	1.6 GHz	2	1.0 MiB	18 W	BGA 413 (onboard)	726
AMD	E450 APU	1.7 GHz	2	1.0 MiB	18 W	BGA 413 (onboard)	740
AMD	Fusion C-60	1.0 GHz	2	1.0 MiB	9 W	BGA 413 (onboard)	563
Intel	Atom D525	1.8 GHz	2 (4)	1.0 MiB	13 W	BGA 559 (onboard)	714
Intel	Atom N550	1.5 GHz	2 (4)	1.0 MiB	9 W	BGA 559 (onboard)	568
Intel	Atom N2800	1.9 GHz	2 (4)	1.0 MiB	7 W	BGA 559 (onboard)	723
Intel	Atom D2700	2.1 GHz	2 (4)	1.0 MiB	10 W	BGA 559 (onboard)	818
Intel	Celeron G530T	2.0 GHz	2	2.5 MiB	35 W	LGA 1155	1800
Intel	Pentium G620T	2.2 GHz	2	3.5 MiB	35 W	LGA 1155	2261
Intel	Pentium G630T	2.3 GHz	2	3.5 MiB	35 W	LGA 1155	2344
Intel	Pentium G640T	2.4 GHz	2	3.5 MiB	35 W	LGA 1155	2400
Intel	i3-2100T	2.5 GHz	2 (4)	3.5 MiB	35 W	LGA 1155	3290
Intel	i3-2120T	2.6 GHz	2 (4)	3.5 MiB	35 W	LGA 1155	3088
Intel	i5-2390T	2.7 GHz	2 (4)	3.5 MiB	35 W	LGA 1155	4004

I was extremely impressed with the benchmark of the Intel Atom D2700 compared to its power usage. Since Atoms, like AMD E350s are only used as soldered onboard a motherboard, its availability is limited by the motherboards available. While making my purchase, no suitable motherboard was available with a Atom N2800 or D2700. I briefly considered a low power Intel core i3 variant, like the i3-2100T. After some consideration (including the $200 price increase for motherboard, cooling and separate CPU), I decided that my NAS wouldn't need that power, and decided that any low-power CPU with benchmark over 700 would do. That's comparable to an AMD Sempron, and good enough for basic file I/O and an occasional compile of a new kernel.

Choice of Motherboard

Mini-ITX and the less common mini-DTX motherboard are pretty small, so it's important to choose between the right expansion options. The main requirement for my motherboard was clearly the number of SATA ports. I needed as much as eight(!) SATA ports, and no motherboard had this many available. It was clear that I had to revert to an expansion slot. Some (but not all) Jetway motherboards could use a SATA daughter board, so I wouldn't have to use the regular expansion slot. Unfortunately, the Jetways that would support that SATA daughter board all had an old PCI instead of a PCI-express expansion slot, so that turned out to be a pig in a poke. I decided to go with at least one PCI-express slot and use that for a SATA adapter. Nearly all modern CPUs have an internal graphics chips, so I didn't need a separate graphics card (it's a server after all), so I needed just one PCI-express slot. I could use mini-ITX or mini-DTX motherboard. If I had needed a second expansion bay, I would have needed a mini-DTX motherboard (which are harder to get by).