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madmac63
09-27-2011, 02:39 PM
I'm going to build a new NAS solution for my home. I've got a Western Digital SOHO NAS, selected because it supports NFS, in addition to CIFS/SMB shares, but the throughput sucks, and the NFS support is really weak . . .

So, I'm going to build a system and run OpenFiler on it.

What I'm hoping to end up with is a very small, quiet system that has:

1. A 3x5 SAS/SATA Internal Enclosure occupying 3 adjacent 1/2 Height 5.25" bays to hold 5 2 or 3 TB 6 gbps SAS drives.
2. A single CPU/Quad Core processor
3. 1 or 2 GB of RAM (OpenFiler needs relatively little RAM)
4. 1 or 2 (mirrored) small SSDs for the OS (Openfiler takes up very little space)
5. 1 1 gbps Ethernet

My questions are:

1. Which of the 3x5 Drive Enclosures to get? There is precious little feedback on these out on the net . . .

2. Which case? Smaller the better, but I need 3 adjacent 5.25' half-height bays for the 3x5 enclosure . . .

3. Which motherboard, driven by which case . . . onboard RAID would be nice, but I'm resigned to buying a SAS RAID controller for the 5 drives in the 3x5 case. Onboard video and USB 2 and USB 3 ports would also be nice . . . as well as the ethernet interface . . .

Once I make these 3 choices, the rest falls into place neatly (power supply; RAID Controller, fans, etc.).

Any help or suggestions would be welcome.

I'll post my final config and build experience to the group . . .

Thanks

Doug MacFarlane
madmac63@gmail.com
dmacfarlane@commvault.com