I am going to be building a Server to store all of my and my collegues files. There are some things I need to know before buying the parts.
Should I pick up ECC ram or just non ecc?
I have a MSI Z87M Gaming laying around and would that be suitable for running 24/7. I know that it doesn't support ECC but I can trrade with a coworker for one that does :)
Is 50/50 fine enough for 25 people with a 100GBs or more each?
I will be picking up 6x3tb NAS drives (Running in RAID 1). Although I haven't decided which ones yet.
Also what Xeon would be suitable.
Is Owncloud fine for what I'll be doing?
My budget is 400€ without the drives.
It seems you want to use this professionally.
Make sure you have an off-site backup. In case of theft, fire, etc. which would destroy, or otherwise render the physical copy of the server inaccessible. You can have this offsite backup (this is not a synchronized copy, but a real backup copy where backup is taken once a day, manually or by a script that will report to you whether the copy has been successfully made) on a virtual server you hire, on a cloud-service, or in your own bedroom. I would even suggest two independent (two logically and geographically separate places) backup copies for extra safety. For this solution you don't need complex configurations, only 2-3 cheap computers with hard-drives.
Also have a look at this regarding complex solutions including ECC and RAID (link to part 2, link to part 1 is below the vid):
https://teksyndicate.com/videos/raid-obsolete-part-2-hw-raid-btrfs-overview
EDIT: that should be a backup with versioning, so that you can revert to a previous version (ideally yesterday) in case your main copy becomes faulty.
. The server is going to be in my room and there is almost always someone at home so theft or fire shouldn't be a problem. Would I be able to back up to another computer in the room using the Ethernet port? I have no idea if Owncloud supports that. I'm quite new to backing up as I have only had 2 drives die over the last ten years. If there are better software alternatives that you know, please let me know.
Also how does versioning work?
(EDIT) If Ownloud is able to be shown as a network drive in Windows would I be able to only backup the files that have been altered or are new?
I will put mu tin-foil hat on and put it like this - theft or fire may not be a problem, but something else could always go wrong. And if it can, it does.
Regarding Owncloud in particular, I am not the right person to ask, since I have never used it. I was aiming to give you a more conceptual input on things to consider. Sorry.
A very good example of how a versioning backup would ideally work for any average user is actually Apple's Time Capsule / Time Machine (again, I am not endorsing Apple, just pointing toward a concept that would ideally be supported by any file-backup solution, and that is very simple to use by an average user). It is handled automatically, and only the altered files are being copied. Also, only differences to the altered files are being copied, so you can get very far with the hard drive space. You can see how it works here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cd2YaBCXpaM .
Do you know of any other router that works like the Apple time machine? 215£ is a bit steep.
Install FreeNAS, and use ECC and throw your disks in RAIDZ2. After that you can set up CIFS (Windows), (AFS) Apple, or NFS (*nix) shares. I recommend using CrashPlan for file-level backups on all workstations and then backing up of-site.
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I second that (what @ibreakthings said). Sounds perfectly reasonable.
The setup works just as I wanted it to. Thanks for your input. Without it I wouldn't have gotten what I wanted :)