[ale] NAS recommendations

[dev null zero two]

synology for pre-made. freenas if you want to get real hardware (1 GB RAM /
TB storage) and matching drives. unraid if you just wanna slap some random
hardware and drives together.

Sent from my mobile. Please excuse the brevity, spelling, and punctuation.

On Jun 15, 2017 1:19 PM, "Jim Kinney" <jim.kinney at gmail.com> wrote:

> Wow! A six month recovery time! I've not had any of my RAID6 systems take
> longer than 10 days with pretty heavy use. These are 4TB SAS drives with 28
> drives per array.
>
> On Jun 15, 2017 5:08 PM, "DJ-Pfulio" <DJPfulio at jdpfu.com> wrote:
>
>> On 06/15/2017 09:29 AM, Ken Cochran wrote:
>> > Any ALEr Words of Wisdom wrt desktop NAS?
>> > Looking for something appropriate for, but not limited to, photography.
>> > Some years ago Drobo demoed at (I think) AUUG.  (Might've been ALE.)
>> > Was kinda nifty for the time but I'm sure things have improved since.
>> > Synology?  QNAP?
>> > Build something myself?  JBOD?
>> > Looks like they all running Linux inside these days.
>> > Rackmount ones look lots more expensive.
>> > Ideas?  What to look for?  Stay away from?  Thanks, Ken
>>
>> Every time I look at the pre-built NAS devices, I think - that's $400
>> too much and not very flexible. These devices are certified with
>> specific models of HDDs. Can you live with a specific list of supported
>> HDDs and limited, specific, software?
>>
>> Typical trade off - time/convenience vs money.  At least initially.
>> Nothing you don't already know.
>>
>> My NAS is a $100 x86 box built from parts.  Bought a new $50 intel G3258
>> CPU and $50 MB. Reused stuff left over from prior systems for everything
>> else, at least initially.
>> Reused:
>> * 8G of DDR3 RAM
>> * Case
>> * PSU
>> * 4TB HDD
>> * assorted cabled to connect to a KVM and network.  That was 3 yrs ago.
>>
>> Most of the RAM is used for disk buffering.
>>
>> That box has 4 internal HDDs and 4 external in a cheap $99 array
>> connected via USB3. Internal is primary, external is the rsync mirror
>> for media files.
>>
>> It runs Plex MS, Calibre, and 5 other services. The CPU is powerful
>> enough to transcode 2 HiDef streams for players that need it concurrently.
>> All the primary storage is LVM managed. I don't span HDDs for LVs.
>> Backups are not LVM'd and a simple rsync is used for media files.  OS
>> application and non-media content gets backed up with 60 versions using
>> rdiff-backup to a different server over the network.
>>
>> That original 4TB disk failed a few weeks ago. It was a minor
>> inconvenience.  Just sayin'.
>>
>> If I were starting over, the only thing I'd do different would be to
>> more strongly consider ZFS. Don't know that I'd use it, but it would be
>> considered for more than 15 minutes for the non-OS storage.  Bitrot is
>> real, IMHO.
>>
>> I use RAID elsewhere on the network, but not for this box.  It is just a
>> media server (mainly), so HA just isn't needed.
>>
>> At SELF last weekend, there was a talk about using RAID5/6 on HDDs over
>> 2TB in size by a guy in the storage biz.  The short answer was - don't.
>>
>> The rebuild time after a failure in their testing was measured in
>> months. They were using quality servers, disks and HBAs for the test. A
>> 5x8TB RAID5 rebuild was predicted to finish in over 6 months under load.
>>
>> There was also discussions about whether using RAID with SSDs was smart
>> or not.  RAID10 was considered fine. RAID0 if you needed performance,
>> but not for long term. The failure rate on enterprise SSDs is so low to
>> make it a huge waste of time except for the most critical applications.
>> They also suggested avoiding SAS and SATA interfaces on those SSDs to
>> avoid the limited performance.
>>
>> Didn't mean to write a book. Sorry.
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>
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