NAS Advice

[tmbrown97]

This has me thinking I'll take this old desktop I have absolutely no use for and try doing an unraid box on it... although the more I looked at the QNap software the more impressed I was.  Especially the higher end models that have HDMI out and XBMC built right in - along with backup software, home sharing, iTunes sharing; even Time Capsule backup.  This is looking like a huge improvement over the WHS boxes I have been using; although I'll end up with a separate HTPC computer, it can be locked down and purpose built to be low powered and run forever.

 

[BaduFamily]

I have a QNAP TS-670 Pro which is currently serving disk for a mess of Axis cameras. It's running Raid 5 with one hot spare. It's handling requests from an OX X Server hosting Security Spy as well.

I did a test run with a Mongodb server and it ran quite well until the 32 bit build ran into the 32 bit build limitations. feh. The OS X server is now running a 64bit Mongodb instance and using the QNAP for storage.

I also have installed Node.js but haven't move any code over there.

It's been pretty rock solid so far. QNAP has an active users forum.

 

[pete_c]

Yup; here on a lark ....did a quickie build of a small footprint (set up for NAS) XBMC box. 
 
It is bigger than the currently utilized Aopen Digital Engine.  I do also have one TB 2.5" drive in it.  Its more of a mini notebook set up with a heat sink combo cooling fan over the CPU with a modified exhaust.  The fan is only heard when it boots; drops down to a slower speed and not heard while watching a movie.
 
The "testing" media center case is tiny but will fit multiple drives.  That said it has only two fans in it.  One on the CPU and one exhaust fan.  Last night while testing it to play back a movie; noticed it was much too loud.  (even though the sound was "soft").  That and it had a piercing blue LED lamp on it. 
 
That said though thinking the fans are legacy technology where as the aforementioned drive case is whisper quiet with its multiple fans and very quiet power supply.  (just too big looking still to put near the LCD TV).
 
I disconnected the "test" XBMC box combo wanna be NAS this morning and went back to using the Aopen Digital Engine combo talking to the dedicated NAS box in the basement.   To make it lighter I guess I could go with a quad core ARM based CPU; strip out Android OS with XBMC on it and put pure mainline XBMC OS on it and run it off SD or USB memory.  Flip flopping lately between ARM and Intel CPUs.
 
Guessing too that the QNAP box is "whisper" quiet these days if its being utilized as a media center box.

 

[drozwood90]

I setup my old Asus Easy Home server as a Nas4Free box.  Works great.  Using ZFS I am getting sustained 100-120MB/s rates.
That ties into my storage pool on my main server over iSCSI.
That pool is using Drivepool from Stablebit, similar to what WHS V1 used to do.
https://stablebit.com/
 
Works great!  17TB of space.  And I got to pick what I want duplicated.  I can GROW or shrink my pool as needed.  Eject bad drives, and insert new ones.  Combining that with Stablebit's scanner, it will automatically evacuate drives that are starting to go bad (based on SMART).  So, I can prepare to remove for the pool without losing any information.  So far, I've experienced 1 drive die using this and I did not lose anything, just the bad drive.
 
--Dan

 

[gatchel]

I setup my old Asus Easy Home server as a Nas4Free box.  Works great.  Using ZFS I am getting sustained 100-120MB/s rates.
That ties into my storage pool on my main server over iSCSI.
That pool is using Drivepool from Stablebit, similar to what WHS V1 used to do.
https://stablebit.com/
 
Works great!  17TB of space.  And I got to pick what I want duplicated.  I can GROW or shrink my pool as needed.  Eject bad drives, and insert new ones.  Combining that with Stablebit's scanner, it will automatically evacuate drives that are starting to go bad (based on SMART).  So, I can prepare to remove for the pool without losing any information.  So far, I've experienced 1 drive die using this and I did not lose anything, just the bad drive.
 
--Dan

 
Can you share the specs on that box? Proc, memory, etc.

 

[pete_c]

@Dan
 
What convinced you to use NAS4Free over FreeNAS? 

 

[tmbrown97]

FWIW, I think I've made my final decision on this matter.  I've settled on the Synology DS412+. 
 
I started looking at taking an old machine - getting the hot swap bays, maybe getting a different case - etc; then realized for that money and time, I could get something off the shelf that's a great replacement for my WHS with all the automatic backup features for Mac, PC and more plugins than I could ever find time for - and have it running in no time at all; plus I found that UNRAID has licensing costs as well.
 
I do still have a rack mount machine w/16 hot swap bays at my data center (half populated) setup for unraid - just haven't powered it on yet; I'll likely use that and add whatever other drives I have laying around and use that as a mirror for all my stuff here (movie library + NAS) and backup target.
 
The one place UNRAID probably shines is that it can do iSCSI too - for iSCSI on the Synology boxes it seems to cost a bit more.

 

[Slates]

For what it is worth, I have heard that this company is also pretty strong, though relatively new.  Apparently some people left Synology and started this company.   So it has a lot of the same software functionality of the Synology units.  At any rate, I don't have any personal experience with them, but their products seem highly rated on Amazon. 
 
http://www.asustor.com/product?p_id=18&lan=en

 

[drvnbysound]

My lack of desire for Synology or many other standard hardware RAID systems it the lack of recovery options if the RAID breaks (beyond a single drive failure; RAID 5). If unRAID breaks, or even if it doesn't, I can pull any of the HDDs out of the system, place them into my desktop computer and read the data. I'll pay the $69 for a 6 drive system, or $119 for 24 drives... particularly when I can use existing hardware that I already have, including mixing and matching HDD sizes.
 
I'm taking a long approach to building mine and have decided that I'm going to buy new hardware for my daily use desktop (ordered yesterday), re-purpose my current desktop as my SageTV server (will also be running virtualBox or similar), and my current STV box will become my unRAID system. I've decided to take this approach because I plan to get the 24drive license (can only fit ~9 in my case, but >6), but the motherboard that I have does not support PCI-E x8 (v2.0) - HDD controller... and since it's an older LGA775 processor, those MOBOs are now harder to come by. Rather than buy brand new hardware for unRAID, which would likely be far more powerful than needed, I figured I could use this opportunity to upgrade my desktop which was built about 4 years ago... and clean up each of these systems in the process.

 

[gatchel]

My lack of desire for Synology or many other standard hardware RAID systems it the lack of recovery options if the RAID breaks (beyond a single drive failure; RAID 5). If unRAID breaks, or even if it doesn't, I can pull any of the HDDs out of the system, place them into my desktop computer and read the data. I'll pay the $69 for a 6 drive system, or $119 for 24 drives... particularly when I can use existing hardware that I already have, including mixing and matching HDD sizes.

Hardware failure is a good point to bring up. That is one of the reasons I chose freenas7 (now Nas4free) as my nas option. I can drop the drives in to any hardware and detect them appropriately for the raid type and be back up and running. It's also helps to have a backup of the config file but isn't critical.

 

[drozwood90]

Can you share the specs on that box? Proc, memory, etc.

 
Not only the specs, but here is the install instructions:
http://www.happybison.com/reviews/installing-freenas-on-acer-aspire-easystore-h340-6/
 
I had to tweak it a bit because of Nas4Free, but the general idea is the same.  I "installed" using DD and everything has been great since!
I really like the idea of this, as the WHS install took up a partition on one of the data drives.  If that failed, you lose the OS and the data of the array.  So dumb.

 

[drozwood90]

@Dan
 
What convinced you to use NAS4Free over FreeNAS? 

 
It was newer than FreeNas...
"NAS4Free is an embedded Open Source Storage NAS (Network-Attached Storage) distribution based on FreeBSD. This project is a continuation of FreeNAS 7 series project."
 
FreeNAS stopped at 7, when it went PAID.  Looking at the feature set, and playing with FreeNAS a bit, it did not offer anything that NAS4Free did not offer, except that installing in the manor I needed (embedded OS image, so I could DD it to the internal USB Hard drive + keeping the footprint below 256MB...again to fit),  
 
--Dan

 

[drozwood90]

Last thing I need to acclamate myself to is, what happens when drives start to die in the ZFS array...beyond that I am ready to drop my 7.42TB (4 2TB drives) of space into my drive pool using iSCSI.
I should probably do that soon.  This is the first time I had enough space to setup duplication on my movie pool.  That immediately took me from ~25% full to ~86% full.  I could really use that extra 7.5TB of space right now.  However, need to spend the time and understand what my "creation" is going to do.  
Easiest thing is to ADD a drive using ESATA, see what the pool does.  Then pull the drive and see what happens.  Finally, add to the pool.
 
--Dan

 

[pete_c]

Thanks Dan.  Didn't pay much attention once configured my stuff a few years back....
 
Like that iSCSI thing you are doing....
 
It would be nice to see a step by step of what you did....currently not using ZFS here....need to look at my stuff as I no longer pay attention much these days....

 

[tmbrown97]

Failure of the SAN itself is less of a concern to me - if that happens, I expect to have to rebuild anyway.  I'll be mirroring to a machine in my data center as another layer of backup, and every so often, I take yet another snapshot to put in the safe.