[ale] [OT] Home nas

Sun Sep 16 23:50:36 EDT 2012

I have this:  
http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/us/en/sm/WF05a/15351-15351-4237916-4237918-4237917-4248009.html?dnr=1  
I bought it new on newegg for $249 last year. I have been happy with it.  
You can put MS WHS, or FreeNAS, or a custom setup for it.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16816401170 I want to  
get this for it.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TM4QnTDSJLk/TvngeYiG4SI/AAAAAAAAALM/MM5xYev4Spw/s1600/IMG-20111206-00180.jpg
The motherboard (from my blog) supports a mini-sas connector, internal usb  
port, 16x PCIe slot, you can use non-ecc with it if you want to. The  
motherboard slides out. its a nice little setup.

On , Cameron Kilgore <ghostfreeman at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'd like to know more about performance with Atom, since I imagine using  
> ZFS and FreeNAS can be CPU-intensive.

> I'm definitely not looking for more than 2 SATA plugs to do RAID 1  
> mirroring, but i'll check out the Supermicro boards.

> --Cameron

> On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 8:51 PM, Greg Clifton gccfof5 at gmail.com> wrote:

> One problem with many of the Atom and Hudson A350 boards is a minimal  
> number of SATA ports ( often only 2). If you are interested in an Atom  
> board with more SATA ports, check out Supermicro's embedded product line,  
> they have some with 4 or more SATA ports, but they ain't cheap. I  
> recently came across a nano board that VIA is evidently producing in  
> response to the Raspberry Pi and similar such products. It has 2 SATA  
> ports and a quad core processor. Looks like it would make an adequate  
> board to base a mirrored pair of drives off of, when it is available. I  
> could envision such a device with a pair of hard drives "living" in the  
> same case as a desktop system that might be your "main" computer. The  
> article says the price is not yet set, but surely it will be less than  
> $100:
> http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/via-launches-tiny-quad-core-x86-epia-p910-board-2012097/

> I would love to hear anybody's experience that has used an Atom, or esp.  
> an A350 board for a NAS box, because that is an idea that I have been  
> kicking around.

> GC

> On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 4:59 PM, JD jdp at algoloma.com> wrote:

> Backups don't need RAID. You want RAID on the main storage, if that is a

> requirement.

> For simple backups, buy a USB3 dock and connect it to a router with USB  
> ports

> for storage. Using a dock means he has "unlimited storage", just swap in  
> a new

> 2TB hdd when the old one fills up. If performance isn't good enough, newer

> routers should support USB3 soon. Even some of those $50 media streaming

> devices will share USB HDD storage on the network. I'm positive that a  
> WD-TV

> Live HD does. At 100base-tx, it is painfully slow compared to everything  
> else

> that is GigE connected here.

> USB3 is not a good idea for anything other than backups or streaming  
> media,

> IMHO. There has been a queuing issue with USB for years. It handles 1 or 2

> different requests at a time nicely, but not 5-20 like a full OS will  
> make.

> There are eSATA docks for that, but then he needs to leave a PC on all  
> the time.

> eSATA behaves just like internal disks. Same performance, same command  
> set.

> I wouldn't completely knock out building a NAS-PC either. The AMD APUs  
> and Atom

> APUs can use 20W of power + however many HDDs are inside. Last month if  
> saw

> (and purchased) a Slickdeal E-350 MB+APU+case for $100. That's hard to  
> beat on

> the price. Drop in 1-2G of old RAM and an old HDD means a new system is  
> ready

> and will be stingy on electricity. I am not using it as a NAS, but might  
> in the

> future.

> I have a home-built NAS with an external 4 disk array currently. That is  
> primary

> storage running Linux software RAID. To back it up, a USB3 WD external  
> disk is

> used. Simple, cheap and effective. If the backup disk fails - oh well.  
> That

> same disk array has been moved between systems and Linux installs multiple

> times. It was a non-event every time, extremely flexible. Software RAID  
> can be

> slower than HW-RAID. The RAID5 here is much less speed than a single WD  
> Black

> drive for writes. The OS disk cache is about 4G on that box, so the first  
> 4G of

> transfer is always 65-75MB/s. Writing large files (10-22G HD recordings)  
> to the

> single Black drive achieves about 40MB/s over the network, after the  
> cache is

> full. Going to the RAID5 storage might get 10MB/s after the cache is full.

> Same client, same server, same network, just the storage being written  
> onto is

> different. Guess which drive I transfer new files onto over the network?  
> To be

> fair, the Black drives are fairly new and the disks in the array are 5.5+  
> yrs

> old. I'm burning in replacement HDDs as I write this.

> With purchased NAS devices, much flexibility is gone. There are limits  
> set by

> the maker. I guess that is what you are asking - about those limitations?

> Anyway, I hope these ideas are helpful to finding the best answer for his  
> needs.

> On 09/16/2012 12:56 PM, John Anderson wrote:

> > I guess the issues other than the basic one of price would be:

> > reliablility.

> >

> > raid 1

> >

> > Ability to pop a drive out and read it if the unit fries. Are there

> > systems with software versus hardware raid? My understanding is that

> > software is easier to recover if the hardware fails.

> >

> > Transfer speed is probably not an issue. This is more for the first

> > layer of backup for multiple pc's in the household. It probably won't be

> > getting hammered on a regular basis.

> >

> > On 09/16/2012 12:39 PM, JD wrote:

> >> On 09/16/2012 12:02 PM, John Anderson wrote:

> >>> Any recommendations/cautions about picking up a home nas? It's for my

> >>> brother in law so he probably won't want a re-purposed PC. Looking to

> >>> spend
> >> You usually get what you pay for.

> >> http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-charts/view will get you (or  
> him) started.

> >>

> >> There are many other caveats, but without requirements or use  
> scenarios, I can't

> >> begin to make any suggestions.

> >>

> >> If he wants low price over all else, there are cheap 1 or 2 disk  
> options without

> >> any advanced capabilities. However, these have pretty poor  
> performance, but that

> >> may not be an issue.

> >>

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