Looking for advices for my NAS build

Bronk · Sep 1st 2017

Hi everyone ,

This is my first time on this forum, first of all, english is not my first language so i'll try to be as clear as possible, sorry !

I'm currently trying to build my own NAS. I want to use it to as a backup solution, a multimedia server, do some virtualisation and to be able to access it remotely from the internet. So i've tried OMV on virtualbox and I like it pretty much. Now I need to select the hardware. I've already chosen a few parts:

-Case: Fractal Design Node 304 Black

-Motherboard : ASROCK H270M-ITX/ac Intel H270 LGA1151 Mini ITX

-CPU: Pentium G4400 3.3 GHz

-Disk: Two NAS WD of 2Tb

I live in one little room so I'm looking for a quiet build.
I don't know if i should go for 8 or 16gb of ram and if you have one to recommend, and i'm still clueless about the PSU either.

What do you think about this build, will it fit what i'm looking for ?
Thanks for the advices !

drinks2go · Sep 1st 2017

If you want to get into virtualization and can swing it might as well go for 16GB ram, that's always going to be a bottleneck for VMs (unless you want to swap to disk, then have bad performance). Sorry, I can't offer any advice on the PSU because I'm not much of a hardware buff.

geaves · Sep 1st 2017

First off that M'Board does not support ECC Ram and with what you are looking to do ECC Ram would be on my list, second that CPU is only Dual Core, again to do what you want, a Quad Core would be a better choice. That M'Board does not support virtualisation down to Bios level, whilst this is not necessary it helps.

You're then back to your budget as this usually determines what you build.

Good luck.

drinks2go · Sep 1st 2017

for what it's worth if your vms aren't going to be using 100% of their vcpu at all times I don't think over provisioning is such a huge issue in a home environment (that is to say, 2 cores is probably ok)

Bronk · Sep 1st 2017

I won't do more than 1, maybe 2 vm at a time, i'll mainly use plex and some backup, so I think the CPU will do just fine. For the motherboard, I don't know what the virtualisation to Bios level is ? Is that this thing like VT-x you need to activate before setup a vm ?

drinks2go · Sep 1st 2017

@geaves Virtualbox is not bare metal??

geaves · Sep 1st 2017

Quote from Bronk

Is that this thing like VT-x you need to activate before setup a vm

Yes.

Quote from Bronk

I won't do more than 1, maybe 2 vm at a time, i'll mainly use plex and some backup

Then a dual core may struggle......but that's my thought. When I build I have a tendency to look toward a budget....what do I want to spend, if the budget is limited then I have to accept that the hardware may not quite do what I'm asking of it.

geaves · Sep 1st 2017

Quote from drinks2go

@geaves Virtualbox is not bare metal??

No....it's a Desktop Product, but if you have a m'board that has Virtualisation your vm can be assigned more than 1 core, but again it's personal choice.

ryecoaaron · Sep 1st 2017

Quote from geaves

No....it's a Desktop Product

It has a desktop client available but it is not a desktop product. The virtualbox plugin doesn't even install the desktop client. Virtualbox works very well for many tasks. I used it for years.

drinks2go · Sep 1st 2017

so I'm saying bios level virtualization, which I take to mean bare metal, doesn't matter. Virtualbox is not a "bare metal" hypervisor...???

PS. You can over provision vcore 4:1 safely so long as you're not doing compute heavy tasks... so long as no transcoding probably no issues... ? Unless you have lots of disk iops you should be fine with even 3 or 4 single core vms....???

geaves · Sep 1st 2017

Quote from ryecoaaron

but it is not a desktop product

Perhaps that was an incorrect statement....but VB requires an underlying o/s for it be installed, and it's certainly a better option than dual booting.

Quote from ryecoaaron

The virtualbox plugin doesn't even install the desktop client.

I know that

Quote from ryecoaaron

Virtualbox works very well for many tasks.

I would agree with that.

geaves · Sep 1st 2017

Quote from drinks2go

so I'm saying bios level virtualization, which I take to mean bare metal, doesn't matter. Virtualbox is not a "bare metal" hypervisor...??

I never implied VB was a bare metal hypervisor, if the option is available within the Bios then enabling it allows more than a single core to be allocated to each vm.

Quote from drinks2go

You can over provision vcore 4:1 safely so long as you're not doing compute heavy tasks... so long as no transcoding probably no issues... ? Unless you have lots of disk iops you should be fine with even 3 or 4 single core vms....???

I agree....but if you only have a dual core processor and you start running 3/4 single core vm's especially transcoding something is going to slow down.....I'm trying to think of a saying and the only one I can think of 'horses for courses' although the analogy is related more to people than computers but I suppose it's a role reversal.

ryecoaaron · Sep 1st 2017

Quote from geaves

VB requires an underlying o/s for it be installed

Virtualbox is a kernel module with service daemon. kvm is a kernel module with service daemon. ESXi is even kind of a module with daemons. They virtualize differently (virtualbox virtualizes every cpu call where ESXi passes through a lot) but all have an OS. Not sure I understand the problem.

geaves · Sep 1st 2017

Quote from ryecoaaron

Not sure I understand the problem.

There isn't a problem, what I'm trying to say is that VirtualBox requires a 'host' for it to be installed, unlike ESXI, Proxmox etc that's all.

ryecoaaron · Sep 1st 2017

Quote from geaves

VirtualBox requires a 'host' for it to be installed, unlike ESXI, Proxmox etc that's all.

This is getting way off topic but Proxmox is 'hosted' by Debian (proxmox 4 is jessie, proxmox 5 is stretch).

As for the dual core issue, one of my ESXi cluster nodes is an i3-6100 and it works ok (hyperthreading means very little to me). I would definitely want a true quad core if the VM and host were doing anything important.

geaves · Sep 1st 2017

Quote from ryecoaaron

This is getting way off topic but Proxmox is 'hosted' by Debian (proxmox 4 is jessie, proxmox 5 is stretch).

But it's a single installer, whereas VirtualBox requires an o/s for it to be installed, that's why I inferred a 'Desktop Product'.

At school I run 5 vm's all Server 2012 R2 I don't think I would run those on a dual core and 16Gb Ram what I'm trying to get over is it better to be over powered or under only to find that your newly built server which you've spent time and money on runs like a dog

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