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atcrank
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Nas solutions

Thu Sep 06, 2018 10:34 pm

I have been using a WD MyCloud 2TB for maybe three or four years. It has been useful enough as a basic fileserver, and a central repository for all my music and podcast and audio files. I wouldn't want to be without something doing this job. But it is not very configurable and the Twonky media server is so fragile that I can only recall one occasion that it worked. My wife uses a Macbook for work, so the fact that it can provide a Timemachine server when she's working from home is very good. It houses an audio collection running to about 700GB, and a collection of educational videos from coursera courses I've done.

Now that Netflix is here (Australia) everyone is dumping DVDs, except me. I have collected several hundred dvds in the last six months averaging $1 each. I'm thinking of backing the DVDs up to a NAS but I am not sure on the merits of the different solution options. I have an old Athlon x2 245 system in a micro-ATX case, which means I have some scope to reuse some parts, but I am not keen to just use this board as the base because power consumption is pretty high (only 120W, but still). I don't have any really big storage drives - a bit over a terabyte in three small drives.

Here are my options:
0. Do nothing, limp along with a mediocre NAS solution.

1. Online storage eg.Amazon Cloud ($60US / TB). We have a reasonably generous internet plan, but getting the basics uploaded could take a while. But, once its done, its done. Advantages: cheap, probably more secure and better backed up than I can manage for myself. Available everywhere. Exandable, likely to get cheaper.

2. New (or used) commodity NAS. My intention here would be to step up to a two-bay that has a good range of service apps. QNAP seems to offer satisfactory options, but I would prefer something that just runs a version of Linux that I can maintain or extend. I've been learning Django and a little bit of server config, and I'd enjoy applying that knowledge at home. The options I would want here are not cheap - $3-700 dollars empty, plus lots more for drives. There have been some used HP microservers selling in this range, often with drives.

3. Homebrew NAS. Looking at the Asrock J3455M https://www.newegg.com/global/au/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813157729&cm_re=asrock_j3455-_-13-157-729-_-Product microATX (A$125 once taxes and shipping are added), reusing an existing PSU, RAM,. Has two pcie x1 and a pcie x16, but only two SATA ports on board (+ an m.2 slot only for 2230 size devices - why are there no m.2 right angle turn risers?). To minimise outlay I was thinking of this board with a small system ssd and a single large (6-8TB) drive for the first year or so, then add a RAID or a non-raid JBOD type card for more disks as space allowed. I could add a nice sound card or a TV tuner too. The case is a bit cramped and hot-swapping drives would be impractical, but that's not a high priority. This board doesn't support ECC, and I'm not planning to use Freenas or ZFS. This is my preferred option, but I'm worried that my judgment is biased by the fact that system building is fun compared to the other options.

4. Damn the power, just keep that Athlon 245 going.

Which option would gerbils recommend?
Athlon 620e, Asus 7790 (1GB), 8GB KVR 1333, Asus M4A785T-M, Samsung 830 256GB, WD Green 1TB, WD Green 2TB, E-mu 1212m, Dvico HD Dual Digital 4 TV tuner, Hyper 212 Evo (mounted ironically), Antec Earthwatts Platinum 450W.
 
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Re: Nas solutions

Thu Sep 06, 2018 10:39 pm

Is the 120W actual measured power usage, or estimated peak usage? If you're just serving files (not doing on-the-fly transcoding) that old Athlon would probably be sufficient as the basis for a NAS, but 120W at idle is kinda high if that's what it is drawing when just sitting there doing nothing.
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Waco
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Re: Nas solutions

Thu Sep 06, 2018 10:50 pm

ZFS does not require ECC any more than any other file system. Don't let the rants of a particular person (who is no longer an admin from what I understand) on the FreeNAS forums deter you.

I choose to have ECC for mine simply because I live at high altitude and I don't want to think about it - but if you buy quality components and test them occasionally you are still far better off with a NAS running ZFS than any other file system if data integrity is your goal.
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atcrank
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Re: Nas solutions

Fri Sep 07, 2018 1:07 am

120W was at the wall, idling but with the screen (onboard video HD4200 I think) running. With the video powered down it was closer to 100W, I think. There might be some gains with a pico PSU or a platinum certified PSU, but its a 65W CPU from a long time ago - 100W was the price of admission for AMD in 2009. I have a Athlon II x4 620e in another machine (45W), but even then, the power consumption of the older gen of motherboards and peripherals didn't get much below 85W. The J3455 is 13W TDP, idle at the wall seems to be well below that. With a big WD Red and an ssd, the whole thing should be under 30W max, usually much less.

Thanks Waco for the advice on ZFS. I started looking for ECC DDR3 and found it pretty darn cheap in my area (16GB for $55) and its messed me up for ignoring ECC (and the AM3 board supports ECC). But ECC will work in non-ECC slots, I believe? Because I'd potentially run MythTV and because this data is 95% media and data integrity is not paramount, I am not planning to use FreeNAS, but I will definitely give ZFS a whirl.
Athlon 620e, Asus 7790 (1GB), 8GB KVR 1333, Asus M4A785T-M, Samsung 830 256GB, WD Green 1TB, WD Green 2TB, E-mu 1212m, Dvico HD Dual Digital 4 TV tuner, Hyper 212 Evo (mounted ironically), Antec Earthwatts Platinum 450W.
 
demolition
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Re: Nas solutions

Fri Sep 07, 2018 4:47 am

I would definitely go for ECC if possible, just for the peace of mind. RAM bit flips may be rare if your memory is not faulty and is usually not the end of the world if they happen, but it is nice to know that the system is able to correct most of these automatically as if they never happened in the first place. Notice that some motherboards for AMD may work with ECC sticks, but still only operate them in non-ECC mode. Then you might as well save the money and just buy regular non-ECC sticks so you should check up on that before committing to it.

120W in idle sounds excessive. I just built a PC for my sister with a mix of my old components and some new ones. The system ended up with this config:
i7-6700k
MSI B250M PRO-VD
2x4GB Crucial Ballistix Sport LT DDR4-2400
Samsung 860 EVO 500GB
Seagate Barracuda ST4000DM004

And then a 400W Corsair PSU that I had in spare (no 80+ rating).

All in all, this system hovers around 30-35W at the wall when it sits idle on the desktop (using iGfx). Not too bad considering that I think it has relatively decent specs. A few more spinning disks would add a little, but only a couple of W per disk I guess.
 
Usacomp2k3
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Re: Nas solutions

Fri Sep 07, 2018 6:08 am

Personally I would go with an 'appliance' like the QNAP you mentioned, or even better, a Synology. The 4-bay isn't that much more expensive than the 2-bay here and that can give you better space/redundancy flexibility.
 
DragonDaddyBear
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Re: Nas solutions

Fri Sep 07, 2018 6:57 am

How much time are you willing to sink into this. I went the home brew route. I think it's a lot of fun. You get more CPU and storage per dollar than you would going build. That said, it will take a LOT more time. FreeNAS is dead simple to set up and uses ZFS and is the route I went.

For the older, high-power stuff you have laying around I would do an ROI calculation. My server old server, a Dell R710, takes a lot of power to run all day long (it does more than just a NAS). Even then it costs me I think $8 a month to run. It would take years to recover the cost of replacing my firewall, NAS, PLEX, and Wireless Access Point controller super server. My point is that it's a lot of power but is it really worth it to buy new? The math will tell you based on your electricity costs. Bonus, you should be able to transfer ZFS drives really easily if you wanted to get something lower powered later. Using old gear would be a low risk way to dip your toes into the water before you dive head in and get bigger, better stuff.

All of that said, If I could go back I'd just buy a NAS. I just don't have the time and they typically "just work," and have apps and everything.
 
jihadjoe
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Re: Nas solutions

Fri Sep 07, 2018 7:44 am

I went homebrew for this. Was actually considering getting a Synology until a GamersNexus video came out showing how difficult it was to get theirs fixed when it failed (no thanks to the use of non-standard parts).
 
roncat
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Re: Nas solutions

Fri Sep 07, 2018 7:48 am

I have set up and run a FreeNAS server, and have a 4-bay Synology.

After a few years, the FreeNAS has been abandoned. I would recommend the Synology (or QNAP or whatever your fav is).

Use FreeNAS if:
1) You're not worried about having to constantly scrub disks, or have a bullet-proof backup of the NAS data (or occasionally losing some data is no big deal), OR
2) You have really good hardware... name-brand ECC memory running at conservative timings, a great power supply, etc. I would also go the non-recommended route and use a hard disk for the FreeNAS OS, as flash drives are the weak link and seem to have about a one year life span (or start corrupting the OS at that point, lol), AND
3) You don't mind doing custom mods to make add-ons (Media Servers, etc.) work correctly.
You can make FreeNAS work well, it just takes a moderate amount of hands-on work. Kinda like a puppy. It's gonna pee on your data once in a while.

Use Synology if:
1) You just want to plug and play a RAID 5 NAS, and want the thing to tell you "a disk is bad, replace it" by email with some simple setup.
One day setup, and pretty hands-off. Buy the mid or higher end models, and the media server software works great, i.e. completely stutterless playback of HD streams. Some models have link aggregation (I use it on mine). You don't get double the network speed, but I would say I see ~50% more network throughput with two ports aggregated using the simplest method (you have to have a high end switch/router to use the more advanced techniques).
 
qmacpoint
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Re: Nas solutions

Fri Sep 07, 2018 8:25 am

I'm looking for a NAS too, as I also have a WD USB enclosure, with RAID 1 for a whopping total of... 4 TBs. What particular Synology model would you prefer? and how much wallet damage should I expect?
 
Waco
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Re: Nas solutions

Fri Sep 07, 2018 8:39 am

Roncat - I don't understand your FreeNAS gotchas. Losing data and losing access to data are two very different things in my mind. Assuming you set up your pools properly the hardware you run on really only affects uptime, not so much data integrity...

Scrubs are all automated with very little effort.
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Ditiris
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Re: Nas solutions

Fri Sep 07, 2018 8:46 am

Unless you are space constrained, I would recommend the NAS Killer v2.0 from serverbuilds.net. It's amazing how much performance you can get on industrial-grade components a few years old for so little money. You'll be able to do everything you want (and more) and keep control of all your data. IMO, you can't do better for the DIY route.
 
DragonDaddyBear
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Re: Nas solutions

Fri Sep 07, 2018 8:58 am

qmacpoint wrote:
I'm looking for a NAS too, as I also have a WD USB enclosure, with RAID 1 for a whopping total of... 4 TBs. What particular Synology model would you prefer? and how much wallet damage should I expect?

What are you're needs/intended uses?

EDIT: Try this out. https://www.synology.com/en-us/support/nas_selector It should give you an idea of what you will need.
EDIT2: Nevermind, QNAP doesn't have a selector any more.
Last edited by DragonDaddyBear on Fri Sep 07, 2018 9:17 am, edited 2 times in total.
 
morphine
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Re: Nas solutions

Fri Sep 07, 2018 9:05 am

Another vote for a Synology unit. I don't know what GamersNexus' beef was, but if the unit was under warranty then it gets repaired. Their boxes are no different in that regard from other prebuilt NAS units.
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SuperSpy
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Re: Nas solutions

Fri Sep 07, 2018 10:00 am

roncat wrote:
I have set up and run a FreeNAS server, and have a 4-bay Synology.

After a few years, the FreeNAS has been abandoned. I would recommend the Synology (or QNAP or whatever your fav is).

Use FreeNAS if:
1) You're not worried about having to constantly scrub disks, or have a bullet-proof backup of the NAS data (or occasionally losing some data is no big deal), OR
2) You have really good hardware... name-brand ECC memory running at conservative timings, a great power supply, etc. I would also go the non-recommended route and use a hard disk for the FreeNAS OS, as flash drives are the weak link and seem to have about a one year life span (or start corrupting the OS at that point, lol), AND
3) You don't mind doing custom mods to make add-ons (Media Servers, etc.) work correctly.
You can make FreeNAS work well, it just takes a moderate amount of hands-on work. Kinda like a puppy. It's gonna pee on your data once in a while.

Use Synology if:
1) You just want to plug and play a RAID 5 NAS, and want the thing to tell you "a disk is bad, replace it" by email with some simple setup.
One day setup, and pretty hands-off. Buy the mid or higher end models, and the media server software works great, i.e. completely stutterless playback of HD streams. Some models have link aggregation (I use it on mine). You don't get double the network speed, but I would say I see ~50% more network throughput with two ports aggregated using the simplest method (you have to have a high end switch/router to use the more advanced techniques).

I run 3 FreeNAS machines at home under a variety of hardware from Xeon/ECC low-end server hardware all the way down to random pc scraps with a pile of $10 pcie-sata cards at home, as well as a half-dozen production machines running it on server grade hardware. I have never seen any of these issues with FreeNAS. The toughest thing I've had to deal with on a FreeNAS machine is diagnosing a broken Plex install in a jail, and that was 99% fiddling around with Plex and 1% reconfiguring jails (mostly so I could get to a command-line on Plex). The last time I installed Plex (after building a bigger, faster FreeNAS box), it took like 5 minutes to set up, most of which was waiting for the jail to boot and announce itself to the LAN.

Scrubs happen automatically (I've never even had to set them up, they're configured out of the box to run every week or two). I just get an email occasionally with the results of the scrub, which is always just 'yup it finished'.

I've gone through about a dozen disk failures (yaay remote support on an office with shoddy utility power), and I have never had a FreeNAS machine corrupt or otherwise lose an array. I get an email when the disk falls out of the array, or errors on read/write. When I swap the disk out with a new one I click like 2 buttons and then I get an email an N hours later that the array resilver is complete.
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SuperSpy
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Re: Nas solutions

Fri Sep 07, 2018 10:13 am

On the power front I have a FreeNAS machine sitting next to me at work with 10 x 6 TB of spinning rust, 4 x 480 GB of silicon, and a 3.5 GHz Xeon E3 and it's drawing 117 watts according to the UPS it's on. Something very odd is going on if a single disk and whatever SoC that WD MyCloud has in it is drawing more power.
Last edited by SuperSpy on Fri Sep 07, 2018 10:19 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Airmantharp
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Re: Nas solutions

Fri Sep 07, 2018 10:16 am

One of the lines of questioning with a NAS surrounds what else you want/need it to do.

Filesharing is easy.

And one of the complaints of the NAS appliances is that they come rather underpowered until you spend way too much; and you want an M.2 NVMe cache and 10Gbase-T?

Ha!

Now, I know that's not your use case; your needs seem pretty modest with respect to processing power, and you seem to be leaning toward lower power usage.

That given, any of the consumer devices will work well enough, but if you're going that route, I cannot help but also recommend Synology. Their products (any of them) will do what you're asking for and they have the best interface and app ecosystem for the purpose.

Beyond that, a bit of storage theory:

RAID IS NOT BACKUP

RAID is an availability solution.

Definitely recommend getting an external USB3 drive to keep your data backed up to, and backing up essential data offsite as well. Three copies of the important stuff minimum.
 
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Re: Nas solutions

Fri Sep 07, 2018 10:34 am

SuperSpy wrote:
On the power front I have a FreeNAS machine sitting next to me at work with 10 x 6 TB of spinning rust, 4 x 480 GB of silicon, and a 3.5 GHz Xeon E3 and it's drawing 117 watts according to the UPS it's on. Something very odd is going on if a single disk and whatever SoC that WD MyCloud has in it is drawing more power.

Well, it's a 65W TDP CPU with mediocre power management, in a system with a (probably) older, inefficient PSU and an older motherboard. Probably worth checking whether power management has been disabled in the BIOS though, as even given the aggravating factors I just mentioned 117W is a bit much.
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MOSFET
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Re: Nas solutions

Fri Sep 07, 2018 11:00 am

Waco wrote:

Scrubs are all automated with very little effort.


Exactly. I didn’t understand that either. My biggest Freenas issues are usually SMB versioning, and sometimes share permissions for both Win / Lin clients.
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Waco
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Re: Nas solutions

Fri Sep 07, 2018 11:58 am

MOSFET wrote:
Exactly. I didn’t understand that either. My biggest Freenas issues are usually SMB versioning, and sometimes share permissions for both Win / Lin clients.

Exactly. I have mine set to run once a month (I think that's the default), and that's super overkill but useful for ferreting out dying drives before they totally tank. Mixing Win/*Nix clients is a fun problem, but it's no different on other NAS boxes.

Jails are the "hardest" part, and like you, I only had trouble with Plex itself, not the jail.

If you have the inkling to tinker, FreeNAS (or something like it) or a roll-your-own with ZFS is arguably the best choice for data integrity and flexibility.


/ your friendly neighborhood ZFS evangelist out
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dragontamer5788
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Re: Nas solutions

Fri Sep 07, 2018 12:14 pm

XigmaNAS > FreeNAS. Let the flame wars begin /s

Lol, I just prefer that web interface. But ZFS-based is very nice, and its super easy to use. Scrubs are entirely "optional" from the perspective of Synology doesn't do scrubs (EDIT: By default anyway. I'm pretty sure there's an option for it). You have scrubs in ZFS to double / triple / quadruple check the integrity of data. Its almost the point of a NAS (instead of a hard drive). You got this CPU on the box, might as well have that CPU constantly checking / double-checking the data's integrity every week or month or whatever.

No matter what system you're using, you should always have scrubs enabled. How else are you going to detect when your hard drives start to go bad?

4. Damn the power, just keep that Athlon 245 going.


That'd be my approach. Just turn it off when you aren't using the NAS. Be sure to scrub it every few months, but yeah, turn it on / off as you use the thing. If we're talking about home-use, it shouldn't be too big of a deal. Yeah, its manual work, but its just clicking a button. No harder than a lot of other household maintenance tasks.
Last edited by dragontamer5788 on Fri Sep 07, 2018 2:51 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 
SuperSpy
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Re: Nas solutions

Fri Sep 07, 2018 1:33 pm

Note that scrubs in ZFS are only an automated way to read the file, they don't do any special checking they just attempt to read every file so that the built-in consistency check goes off. So a volume that regularly has it's data read as part of it's usage case doesn't really benefit from regular scrubbing, as the normal usage is just as likely to uncover any issue a scrub would find.

The real value in automated scrubs is for data that's rarely read, like backups or logs. That's one of the big reasons I use FreeNAS/ZFS, as it prevents any sort of bit rot on something you wouldn't immediately notice corruption on.
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Waco
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Re: Nas solutions

Fri Sep 07, 2018 2:35 pm

SuperSpy wrote:
The real value in automated scrubs is for data that's rarely read, like backups or logs. That's one of the big reasons I use FreeNAS/ZFS, as it prevents any sort of bit rot on something you wouldn't immediately notice corruption on.

If you have a 100% active dataset, sure, you don't really need to scrub. It does check a few things that are generally only read on pool import, though, as well as some additional metadata that doesn't get touched much in normal operation.
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a_non_moose
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Re: Nas solutions

Fri Sep 07, 2018 9:26 pm

++ for the Synology Qnas solution and the ability to do 2Gb of memory or above.

Memory upgrade takes a bit of dexterity, but is doable in 10 mins or less.

Speed and 3 extra Gb ports helps with need for speed to 3 other direct computers.

With Gb port, switch and primary desktop...max speed possible. (My primary has a 3ware 9650 w/ 3x 8TB RAIDs and pushes/pulls 100MB/s easily)

5 Drives w/ RAID 6...can't go wrong as the 4TB drives are cheap as heck at this point.

My input; YMMV.

Works, fast, rock solid (so far after a year+) and I see good input in this thread.

It is a time vs lock and load and go sort of thing.

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