It would be interesting to see what others are using for storage (Hardware and Software) And what are you using your storage for.
Please lets go a bit deeper into the setups here. Not only posting the pics and list of hardware but also the story of you have a great one ofcourse.
Ideas are welcome.
— posting this from mobile will fill in more details later
My nas is a custom build out of my old desktop, its a
Intel i7 3770k
16G of memory
Asus Z77 Sabertooth
3 Segate 3tb hdd
2 hgst 3tb hdd
all in a R1
My nas is an intel i3, asrock mb, 16gb ram running Openmediavault server, Debian based. I keep it simple and have 3 raid1, ext4 volumes, I run docker on it and have my unify controller running in one container. I want to run an Emby media sever in another docker container on it. I also setup smb shares on it for my desktop pc, setup 2 smb shares to my xcp-ng server for vm’s and storage. I can post a photo later but it’s just a tower case with 1 16gb ssd for the os and 6 spinning drives in it now.
My server is based on an Intel Xeon E3-1230 V2 cpu, and 4x 4TB WD Red drives in RAID5. I forgot which mainboard is in, but it is acting pretty strange… When turning it on, you can’t press the power button, just nothing happens, however, power cycle it, it and it starts up right away.
I am using the server for web server, ftp server, Unifi Controller, Unifi Video, and I have put all my media on it too so I can get access to it from everywhere using Plex, I still got some old and cheap ip cameras for outdoor surveillance, where I use MotionEye to detect motion, which use quite a lot more cpu than the Unifi cameras.
It is also used as an off site backup of my work computer.
Currently I am running Debian on it, but I am considering if I should switch to Unraid, so I could run multiple machines on it at the same time, and save having multiple computers running.
– Pictures to come –
I did not choose a DIY build for network storage but Synology DiskStations.
My first one was a DS409 with Seagate 3TB drives that all broke down 
within a few weeks from each other.
A DS414 replaced this one with WD Red 4TB drives but I kept the DS409 as a memorabilia 
.
I added a DS1815+ which broke down on me with 8 x 6TB WD Red’s. Most likely due to the Intel CPU bug but Synology did not confirm this but allowed me to replace the unit at my retailer in a process that took some time.
In the meantime I added a DS1817+ to migrate the 8 x 6TB WD Red’s from the broken DS1815+
By now the retailer did not had a DS1815+ in stock anymore to replace the broken DiskStation so I opted to upgrade to another DS1817+ which became the host for the disks in the DS414.
Migrating disks from one DiskStation to the other was quite easy btw. A wizard helps you with this.
This is the current setup which also includes a DS215j (2 x WD Red 3TB):
Disk overview:
Storage is in use by documents, (holiday) pictures and movies (GoPro but also 360 degrees content), security camera footage, ripped music and off course loads of Linux ISO’s.
Just a desktop PC that I’m running unRAID on for home use. System Specs are:
AMD Ryzen 2600
16 GB RAM
MSI Motherboard
Before I built the system I was leaning towards FreeNAS, but ultimately decided on unRAID for one main reason. Being able to add drives whenever, and not having to recreate arrays and such. I can just add capacity whenever the budget allows.
Have a couple of Ubuntu server VMs running, one that is my Unify Controller, and just another one to play around with. Also run a couple Docker containers, such as Krusader, Plex Server, and PiHole.
My solution isn’t the prettiest, I currently don’t have any pictures.
I’m running FreeNAS on a Dell R410 1U Server with 2x2TB hard drives. The server has dual E5620 4 Core/8 Thread processors and 32GB of RAM. This server is strictly for a place to store ISOs and keep client data temporarily while I reinstall their OS.
My Odroid HC1 home “server” … lol
Samsung Exynos5422 - Eight cores (four 2.0Ghz / four 1.5Ghz)
2GB LPDDR3
1TB Samsung ST1000LM024
OpenMediaVault
For my needs at home I do not really need anything bigger at the moment. And most of the time, HC1 is bored.
Dont have any physical pictures as such, but running dual servers with FreeNAS on Dell T30, and a synology RS812
FreeNAS has Z2 4 x 4TB, and Synology 4 x 3TB SHR
I got a Dell PowerEdge R610 a few days ago.
It got two E5630 processors in, and 96gb ram.
I am still considering how I want the storage on it to be setup.
My plan right now is to use Unraid on it, and have 2x 600gb 15k rpm SAS diske for cache. And for storage I am then planning on having 4x 4tb disks in RAID 5.
Whats your case? So its ok to add HDD with different sizes?
The way unraid makes a pool of disks, allow different sizes to be mixed.
Can you add another disk to pool without reformatting them?
Yes, and before moving a disk, you can also move data off just that one disk, and then remove it afterwards. (there are a list of steps you need to follow to do that correctly though, it is on the unraid wiki)
I want to say Fractal Design Define R6 if I recall correctly. And yes, Unraid writes data to a single disk at a time, so that is why you can mix and match drive sizes, add, or change capacity at anytime, and still have some redundancy with the parity drives.
If I had mission critical data on it, then I would likely have built a FreeNAS box and utilize ZFS, but for my home needs, I had discovered that being able to add capacity or change out a drive anytime without affecting the existing array was a big requirement.
Plus add the support for VMs, Docker containers, and the various plugins, it becomes a fairly robust system, especially for home use.
My storage setup is nothing fancy.
Freenas 11.2 on a Dell R710, 44g ram, 40g connectx-3 , and MD1200 disk shelf.
6 vDevs of raidZ1
Since your planning on using Unraid, skip the Raid 5 option. Unraid uses a parity drive. Instead if 15k HDD, use SSD for cache for best performance. Get a Dell H310 flashed to IT Mode for disk passthrough.
I already got Unraid on another server with 4WD red disks in, and performance from the array is so bad, since it only use one disk for one file. I got a lot of large’ish file, and I ofren read and write at the same time. Doing that with just one disk often give me 25-30MB/s, and that isn’t enough for what I need.
Letting the controller do RAID5 with 4 disks gives me closer to 200MB/s.
