FAST & CHEAP Network Attached Storage (NAS)

Can you build a fast NAS with 10Gbit ethernet for under £200 or $200?

In this video I take an old Dell PowerEdge T20 server, make a few upgrades, and re-purpose it as a fast network attached storage device with TrueNAS.

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[ConstantGeekery]

A couple of errors and omissions:

Firstly, I said I used RAID 6, but it's actually RAID z2 - the concept is exactly the same, but I should have made that clear.

Secondly, a few viewers have asked about wattage. I will try and measure this exactly and update this comment, but the Xeon CPU in the T20 should idle at around 20w, and will hit 85 ish when maxed out (which is unlikely to happen in this use case).

[joealtona]

I did a similar build using HP Z420, Xeon E5-1620v2, RAM upgrade 8 -> 64GB DDR3 ECC, 4 shucked 10 TB WD drives, LSI SAS card. The Z420 has a bunch of PCIe slots, so you dont need a separate 10 Gbit switch, build one youself! I installed a couple of Mellanox X3 dual ports and a 4 port Intel 1 Gbit card. Setup a bridge, DHCP daemon. Most computers connected via cheap direct attached copper cables, no need to spend on optical adapters. The RAM and all cards are dirty cheap on ebay.

[songsan]

Great video. I am looking to build a NAS for home use and your solution seems to be very good for my needs. Thanks.

[marcwesterink]

Doing the same thing using HP ML310e Gen8 v2 and HP Microserver Gen8 machines. Both equipped with HP P222 Smart RAID. Maybe not the best solution for ZFS, but no issues experienced at all and they perform well. TrueNAS Scale runs flawlessly on those machines. The benefit of these machines is they halve builtin SD Card slots to use as an OS drive. Maybe a bit slower at boot, but run fine once up and running.

So I agree there's no need to buy new hardware if you can find machines like these for a good price...

[coleandthegiggles]

I appreciate your video! I enjoyed it!
You spoke about the data transfer at the end and I also enjoyed watching Lawrence systems vidoes on "truenas is a cow" and als "asynchronous vs synchronous writes" defending what you have set, it can help understand the transfer speeds and RAM usage.

[TantissTheEmperor]

Did the same with an equivalent from Lenovo (P310) and it ran for years 24/7 without breaking a sweat. Still on TrueNAS Core, but now on enterprise rack server with lot's of PCIe lanes, nvme storage pools and tons of ram for caching.

[Technocrat.]

Another nice workstation is the Dell Precision 5640. Comes with the W1290P cpu/apu 10 core 20 threads, 2x m.2 slots on board and PSU is generic.
I got one for my brother as a gaming PC.
Cpu speeds 3.7ghz all core boost 4.7ghz and 1 core boost 5.3 GHz. My system ran at all cores 5.8 GHz lol. After I did the thermal paste. I bought it from a server reseller. I paid them for 32gb ram and 1tb my.2 nvme upgrade. Paid $647 cad.

[davidoconnell]

Have a bunch of these coming of EOL as Small biz servers. I was going to dump them but now Hosting them as backup destination at our office for clients.

[bryans]

I enjoyed your video. While I don't have need for a NAS I do like upgrading old computers, and my recent project was a SFF Dell OptiPlex 7010.

[TazzSmk]

at low budget, I'd definitely consider having only two huge-capacity drives in mirror setup,
likehood of failure and rebuild speed should be better than RaidZ2 with 4 drives,
speeds will be less most likely, but with enough RAM or proper caching it would still provide nice throughput for most use cases,
rather saving cost on expanding lack of onboard SATA ports as well as operational total power draw might be worth it,
and price/capacity is on par too,
thoughts?

[kuremaClaimer]

I like PC cases with optical drive slots. I typically choose those with 5 inch slots but slim drive is better than nothing. I understand that PC nerd need a space for water cooling fan but I'm pretty sure that there's always spare space for slim drive. All case should have that. If you spend $1000 for whole system, extra $20 for optical drive is totally reasonable even if you use it once a year or less.
Anyway, I'm doing thing like this with ThinkCentre of Core i3-3220. It only costed me $20 for whole system. But I don't know how much electricity it sucks, if it is good for environment as a whole and if the cost worth for what I do which is basic local file sharing, automated download and server management practice.

[BK-owus]

Great video, thank you 😀
I think the power utilisation was worth delving into more.
NAS are a balance between size, abilities and power draw.
That Dell will be using a fair bit of power and is of course huge compared to a typical 4 drive NAS.

[Leni-Byrd]

I did something similar with an old lenovo p310 awesome vid!!

[EsaKarjalainen]

I have an old xeon x5460 desktop, with integrated graphics and pretty good amount of SATA and PCI slots. It has two downsides as a NAS/homeserver: Power consumption and limited RAM. 8GB is in theory, plenty for a NAS, but not if you start running containers in it with OpenZFS.

I should note, underclocked the system uses a total of 60-120 watts, depending on load, so not TERRIBLE, but it really doesn't make me want to run it 24/7.

I could get a pretty ideal upgrade - a N100 + 32GB of RAM - for 300, but I am wondering if it's worth the cost.

[Gill_Bates]

The trouble with the T20 case is the lack of airflow/cooling for the harddrives and 10Gb nic. Both get toasty under sustained use and I leave mine on 24/7. Also I like TrueNas Core but wish Docker Compose was easier to implement, much prefer Unraid for this reason but storage config is defintely better in TrueNas for a noob like me.

[JoeDezibel]

Awesome project, like allways. Thumbs up and greatz from Bavaria😊.
P.S. Missing Erin 😅 bonded with network cables 😂

[gamr_py]

with 4 disk, you better go with 2 mirrors for more IOPS and the same protection

[valkaielod]

It has one great feature: cooking hard drives. I have one in use and I hate it because of this.

[casfren]

at 8:40 you mention using sata connectors. many have reported injection moulded sata connections as fire hazards due to the cables very slowly eroding the plastic and coming into contact. i don't think it is a good idea to say to people to buy possible fire hazards.

[ep_dimi]

What is the power consumption at idle state and what is when the disks are working?