File/Streaming Server

[Voo]

So I decided I want a file/streaming server and thought I could ask people for input. The question is two-fold, I need new hardware but also have to decide on the software.

General conditions:
- Streaming movies to android devices (all running Kit Kat) - so enough power to transcode a single video stream on the fly
- File server for linux and Windows clients
- About 8+ TB of usable space (i.e. I need a backup solution as well), but expandable
- I can get Windows Server versions for free through msdn
- Long enough experience with linux and CLI to be sure I can setup OpenBSD or similar. And playing with ZFS sounds pretty fun
- should be quiet and power efficient
- doesn't have to be particularly small although obviously a big tower would be overkill


Price isn't a major concern and I'm in Europe right now, although I don't need links to specific products, just general recommendations about OS (I guess it boils down to OpenBSD/FreeNAS, etc. variants vs. Windows server), good cases, etc.

 

[mfenn]

Give ZFS a shot, either through FreeNAS or ZFSonLinux. FreeNAS is the more turn-key approach, ZFSonLinux gives you an easier access to a wider variety of software, but definitely requires more tinkering and CLI knowledge as well.

If you don't want to use a *nix system, then Windows Server 2012 is finally a reasonable choice for a storage server since they added Storage Spaces. This is probably the simplest approach to get up and running.

As for case, check out the Fractal Design Node 304. It's got support for 6 3.5" drives in a mini-ITX footprint, so that's 24 TB raw if you use 4 TB drives. Look for a motherboard with a 6 SATA 6Gb/s slots like the Gigabyte H97N-WIFI. On any of the *nix systems, you can use a USB 3.0 memory stick as a boot and root device, whereas on Windows you will need to give up one of the SATA ports for a boot device.

 

[smitbret]

Give ZFS a shot, either through FreeNAS or ZFSonLinux. FreeNAS is the more turn-key approach, ZFSonLinux gives you an easier access to a wider variety of software, but definitely requires more tinkering and CLI knowledge as well.

If you don't want to use a *nix system, then Windows Server 2012 is finally a reasonable choice for a storage server since they added Storage Spaces. This is probably the simplest approach to get up and running.

As for case, check out the Fractal Design Node 304. It's got support for 6 3.5" drives in a mini-ITX footprint, so that's 24 TB raw if you use 4 TB drives. Look for a motherboard with a 6 SATA 6Gb/s slots like the Gigabyte H97N-WIFI. On any of the *nix systems, you can use a USB 3.0 memory stick as a boot and root device, whereas on Windows you will need to give up one of the SATA ports for a boot device.

FreeNAS with the Plex plugin would probably be the most robust system from a file system standpoint. FreeNAS is a much better file system than Storage Spaces at this point. FlexRAID and SnapRAID would be excellent systems on top of Windows Server.

An i3 would have enough horsepower to take care of your transcoding needs but if you wanted to opt up to an i5/i7 or an AMD 6/8 core CPU then you'd have plenty of extra headroom.

If you go ZFS, get no less than 1GB of memory for each TB of storage. 8-16GB is gonna be enough for your Windows system.

 

[mfenn]

If you go ZFS, get no less than 1GB of memory for each TB of storage. 8-16GB is gonna be enough for your Windows system.

This only really applies if you're running dedupe, which most people don't. With normal or compressed pools, the RAM to storage ratio really depends on how many concurrent users you have and not how much capacity you have. The more RAM, the more of a buffer you have to serialize read access to disks.