NAS/Servers

I'm looking to obtain 250TB of storage for file hosting.

Should I take a big desktop case and put 10 4tb hard drives in it and build it like a desktop? I'd have to build 6-7 computers this way.

Should I just order some dell servers and stack them? Side note, does anyone know a dell distributer? Or another company (suggestions and links are good).

Just looking for the cheapest (good) way to do it. The other hardware doesn't need to be too impressive, I won't be vps hosting or anything like that.

Should I/is there a way to connect them ALL into one big raid array with a raid controller and wiring between them? Or do I have to deal with them each as 40tb raid arrays?

 

Gumopop

 

bump!

 

bump! :/

 

bump :/

 

Last bump, pls.

 

You can buy industrial grade NAS solutions. Not sure if it will be cost effective. There are normal cases out there with shit tons of HDD slots like: http://www.lian-li.com/en/dt_portfolio/pc-d8000/.

If you roll your own make sure you investigate some sort of backup system. You could run FreeNAS on it and stuff. What use case is this for anyways?

 

You can use any computer at all really as long as you make sure you have a good enough PSU and you buy one of those PCI cards with the SATA ports on it. They're usually pretty cheap.

 

That was part of my question.

Thanks for the suggestion. The servers are for commercial web storage.

Any idea what would be more cost effective? Just going the dell route or building in this case? Time has to be factored in as well as repair time and costs.

 

It depends. List all the shit you want or need and add it up.