Home NAS suggestions?
- Thread starter Simon F
- Start date
So aboutIt kind of adds up
- £44 for the case,
- £20(?) for a power supply,
- £113 for the MoBo
- Memory?
That is a mini-ITX case, so it won't fit a mATX mobo. Not sure why you'd want to spend that much on a mobo for a NAS server though. Can get a system containing everything but the drives for under £200, like this
If you're running on gigabit or faster, i could understand that it might be tempting to run games over a network. You're looking at roughly 100MB/s over the network which is similar to what you'd get from a hard drive. Your seek times would be a bit worse though for obvious reasons.
I had a USB 2.0 HDD attached to my router for over a year but the transfer rate from that was only about 13MB/s due to the CPU maxing out (400 MHz MIPS 24kc). The Synology box will saturate gigabit ethernet. A mini x86 PC of some sort is interesting but I doubt it can come close to matching the power usage of the ARM board in these NAS products.
I have tried gaming across gigabit shares and it does work pretty well but there is as said some extra latency to network accesses. It's a lot less efficient than SATA. Some games might stutter.
I have tried gaming across gigabit shares and it does work pretty well but there is as said some extra latency to network accesses. It's a lot less efficient than SATA. Some games might stutter.
A review of the US$650 Synology DS412+. No doubt more than you want to spend, Simon, but maybe it gives you an idea of what the cheaper models offer (I'm guessing the same web interface, lower performance and fewer drive bays?).
First of all, what are you planning on using it for?
How comfortable are you with tinkering with Linux-based solutions?
Feel like building your own file server?
If it's for multimedia storage such as music or movies and you dont mind tinkering with Linux if you wish to expand functionality, then you might want to check out unRAID. It's pretty much raid-4 using a dedicated parity drive and allows you to use drives of different sizes and is quick to expand the array when adding new drives if you use the separate preclear process so the array isn't offline. The write speeds aren't the fastest [25-43 MB/s], but it lets all unused drives idle and spin-down, only spins-up the single drive needed to read the file, only spins up the single drive and the parity drive needed to write files, presents the array through a union filesystem, and if you have multi-drive failure the data on the remaining drives is fully in tact. It's great for HTPC serving. The read speeds are limited by the single individual drive.
How comfortable are you with tinkering with Linux-based solutions?
Feel like building your own file server?
If it's for multimedia storage such as music or movies and you dont mind tinkering with Linux if you wish to expand functionality, then you might want to check out unRAID. It's pretty much raid-4 using a dedicated parity drive and allows you to use drives of different sizes and is quick to expand the array when adding new drives if you use the separate preclear process so the array isn't offline. The write speeds aren't the fastest [25-43 MB/s], but it lets all unused drives idle and spin-down, only spins-up the single drive needed to read the file, only spins up the single drive and the parity drive needed to write files, presents the array through a union filesystem, and if you have multi-drive failure the data on the remaining drives is fully in tact. It's great for HTPC serving. The read speeds are limited by the single individual drive.
In the end I've decided to by the HP microserver, mainly because, with a cash back offer, it's currently around £130. Have also ordered some extra RAM to get it up from its default 2GB, as well as some extra HDDs. It's nice that it has USB port on the MOBO so I can put the OS on a USB key and it's safe out of harm's way.
Now the question is what to install on it. I started messing about with FreeNAS then discovered that the driver for Qualcomm-based ethernet chips does not support wake on LAN, which is something I'd strongly like to have.
Not realising this was a generic freeBSD problem, I also tried NAS4Free, but that has the same issue. I may yet have to experiment with a linux-based server. Some of those definitely work with the microserver.
Anyway, FWIW, it's not clear to me which of FreeNAS vs NAS4Free is better. Both can be set up via a web interface. NAS4Free's seemed a little more logical until it came to actually setting up the disks and then it is convoluted, at least for ZFS. FreeNAS appeared much simpler in this respect and also had the advantage of a web-based shell tool - the other only gives you a single command line via the web. Then again, NAS4Free seems to have more services built-in.
Don't quite know which I'll settle on.
You wouldn't want your own PC being slowed down because one of your kids or somebody else wanted to stream a movie for example. Or maybe they'd want to watch something late at night when you were in bed, so most NAS would be on 24/7 so your PC didn't need to be. This is why most people want quiet, low power NAS.
There's also a neat advantage with NAS drives supporting Win9x connectivity unlike Win Vista or later. My Diskstation is Linux based and SAMBA works fine with old OSs. Good for VOGONS retro nonsense.
A little NAS box like a Diskstation also barely uses more power than the HDD alone.
A little NAS box like a Diskstation also barely uses more power than the HDD alone.
The Microserver uses 30 Watt in Idle, an ARM box will use a fraction of that.
Not necessarily the case:
http://www.avforums.com/forums/networking-nas/1634235-hp-proliant-microserver-power-consumption.html
The LG, for example, seems to be ARM based.
FWIW: I'm still trying to decide on what I really should install on it.
Onkl Bjorni
Newcomer
I would once again recommend you give FreeNAS(NAS4free) a try. My 2 home servers have been running FreeNAS 0,7RC2 flawlessly for close to 4 years now.. Only thing I have needed to do is replace some failing hard drives in the RAID array. And that's as easy as just taking out the bad drive and puting in a new one of the same size..
As for the difference between FreeNAS and NAS4free, as far as I have gathered (current FreeNAS) is version 0,8 built up from the ground to be a more enterprise version and NAS4free is a "spinoff" from FreeNAS v 0,7 meant more for the average consumer.
As for the file system, I have just been using FreeNAS's native system (UFS)
I have both osx and windows based systems accessing them with no problems..
Hope this will be to some help
As I said, I'm currently trialling NAS4Free but there are some annoyances.I would once again recommend you give FreeNAS(NAS4free) a try. My 2 home servers have been running FreeNAS 0,7RC2 flawlessly for close to 4 years now.. Only thing I have needed to do is replace some failing hard drives in the RAID array. And that's as easy as just taking out the bad drive and puting in a new one of the same size..
As for the difference between FreeNAS and NAS4free, as far as I have gathered (current FreeNAS) is version 0,8 built up from the ground to be a more enterprise version and NAS4free is a "spinoff" from FreeNAS v 0,7 meant more for the average consumer.
As for the file system, I have just been using FreeNAS's native system (UFS)
I have both osx and windows based systems accessing them with no problems..
Hope this will be to some help
- I can't use Wake on LAN with the HP microserver due (apparently) to the state of the Ethernet BSD driver for Qualcomm-based hardware.
- For directories of photos accessed via the webserver interface, I'd like to be able to auto-generate thumbnails and appropriate index files with, say, a cron job on the server, rather than just get a directory listing. I tried to install a BSD build for ImageMagick but that seemed to be broken for NAS4Free ... but that may just be ignorance on my part <shrug>. I'd expect that with a Linux Distro this would be straightforward.
- Something like AjaxExplorer that comes with the Turnkey distro would also be very nice, but I haven't noticed this for NAS4Free or FreeNAS.
Having said that, I like that it runs from a USB stick and that it (apparently) makes use of RAM disks etc. Not sure if there are simple linux distros that are equivalent. <shrug>
Onkl Bjorni
Newcomer
Hmm, I think you may have way more experience with Linux/BSD then me. I use my servers strictly as file servers (video, music & pictures) and to access it I use XBMC Media Center. And that have its on library system (picture thumbnails ect)
And the reason I went with FreeNAS was that it looked fairly easy to sett up and get going, I have really not looked in to the more advanced services that are available..
So other then the fact that for me, FreeNAS has been really stable, easy to use and reliable, I don't think I can offer anymore insights or advice
Blazkowicz
Legend
OpenMediaVault is the new kitchen sink toy, it seems, but still in early 0.4.x territory.
It's based so debian linux, so easier hardware and software support probably but no ZFS on it, just regular RAID.
For the ethernet adapter, a simple cop out would be to use another one. I thought, there are no slots, they can't be seen from pictures of the computer open but.. there are slots, only visible from behind.
So, you could drop in a cheap Realetk. Then I made a google request to be sure about WoL, and oh dear..
http://forums.freenas.org/showthread.php?5807-WOL-Realtek-8111E
FreeNAS 9.x is "expected" in mid 2013, when it'll use FreeBSD 9.x, and I don't know about NAS4free. But you maybe will get better hardware support, someday
For Imagemagick, did you try the "ports collection", or plain building from source the manual way (that can be worth doing if it's just one piece of software, install it in /opt.)
Well, the ports's business should be to automate that building.
I suppose using that system gives your software more chance to work than with downloading a pre-built package.
It's based so debian linux, so easier hardware and software support probably but no ZFS on it, just regular RAID.
For the ethernet adapter, a simple cop out would be to use another one. I thought, there are no slots, they can't be seen from pictures of the computer open but.. there are slots, only visible from behind.
So, you could drop in a cheap Realetk. Then I made a google request to be sure about WoL, and oh dear..
http://forums.freenas.org/showthread.php?5807-WOL-Realtek-8111E
FreeNAS 9.x is "expected" in mid 2013, when it'll use FreeBSD 9.x, and I don't know about NAS4free. But you maybe will get better hardware support, someday
For Imagemagick, did you try the "ports collection", or plain building from source the manual way (that can be worth doing if it's just one piece of software, install it in /opt.)
Well, the ports's business should be to automate that building.
I suppose using that system gives your software more chance to work than with downloading a pre-built package.
Similar threads
- Deleted member 11852
- PC Purchasing Help
