Recently, I needed to implement a low-cost, enterprise grade storage system for backups and to provide network attached storage for vserver-based Debian servers. After considering the requirements and projected short-term future growth, I decided to build a storage server with at least 12TB of raw storage, which would allow me to create two 4TB RAID6 arrays.
Ultimately, I was able to get 13TB of raw storage for less than $6300 (~$484 per TB, compared to many vendors starting prices of $1000 or more per TB).
Hardware
- Supermicro CSE-933T-R760B Black 3U Rackmount Case – $769.99
- Supermicro MBD-X7DBN-O Dual LGA 771 Intel 5000P Extended ATX Motherboard – $359.99
- 2x Intel Xeon E5405 Harpertown 2.0GHz LGA 771 80W Quad-Core Processor – $224.99 ($449.98 for 2)
- 4x Kingston 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR2 667 FB-DIMM ECC RAM – $212.99 ($851.96 for 4)
- 13x Western Digital RE3 1TB 7200 RPM SATA Hard Drive – $189.99 ($2469.87 for 13)
- 2x Western Digital VelociRaptor 300GB 10000 RPM Hard Drive – $229.99 ($459.98 for 2)
- HighPoint RR3540 RAID Controller – $799.99
Total: $6161.76 (plus shipping)
After reviewing the current Linux distributions targeted towards NAS systems, like FreeNAS and OpenFiler, I decided to stick with a simple system using Debian with LVM2 and AoE. My next post, Debian NAS using AoE (Part 2), will dig into the details of the OS and software setup.
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