I am planning to put all data in one place, for backup purposes. The conditions are: minimum power consumption (MOST IMPORTANT) about 3 TB space (probably RAID 1 or RAID 5) remote and mobile access The Cloud is not an option I am confused by the diversity of options. Since minimum power is crucial, I started considering building a home server around a fanless processor like VIA Eden® ULV Fanless. I have 2 questions: Is it possible to build a home server with a fanless ULV processor? Which processor would you recommend? Such a home server would require at least 2 or 3 SATA HDDs to achieve 3TB disk space. What is the specification of such a home server: motherboard, PSU, HDD, RAID controller (yes/no?), system SSD (yes/no?), OS: FreeNAS / OpenFiler? On the other hand there are a number of NAS stations designed for this purpose like the Buffalo NAS System and WD MyCloud solutions. Modern NAS systems meet all conditions, but I have a Question: Is the power consumption of a NAS system far more than or compatible with a low power home server described above? Finally: What is your advice: home server around a ULV processor or a NAS system?
A NAS should use less power than a homebuilt server even a ULV one. They're also a lot easier to setup and configure especially if you only require storage
For your instance I would recommend a NAS, if all you need is data storage I wouldn't go down any other route, the power draw will also be lower than anything you can build for the same price. From my personal experiences with NAS boxes, I cannot recommend enough spending the extra and going for Synology. Very well made devices, very quick network speeds and the OS is a pleasure to work with when you need to.
Thank you, saspro and TaRkA DaHl for you replies. Would you recommend any NAS brand / model as I am a complete newbie in this field.
I've been nosing for a new NAS solution recently (my DNS-325 is a little long in the tooth). QNAP and Synology seem to be the best buys (but I am only half way through my half-arsed attempt at researching )
I agree NAS sounds like the best fir for you. Personally I have used a qnap product back in the day (TS-209-II Pro) and I would say that it worked well, also heard lots of good things about the Synology stuff too. I would suggest that you also consider any furture use too. I found that I out grew the Qnap quickly and lots of the optional modules that I would have liked to install would only owrk on the x86 based cpu not the ARM one I had. I dont know if the Synology stuff has the same restrictions.
I agree Synology is probably the one the best Nas systems available. The OS has been made very user friendly, you can very easily remote log onto it should this feature interest you. various models have more functionality like amount of drives you can install, processor power and memory. Dual Ethernet for load sharing. And a very easy setup for anyone wanting to use raid( auto raid sizing after initial setup). There are other Nas systems out there but Synology have done a very good job with their products. Highly recomemnded
They also cater for remote downloads and DLNA too. They're pretty cool products for the price bracket, and quite feature rich. I've been considering getting hold of one for the last few months.
Thank you, everyone, for your help. Much appreciated. Meanwhile I've found a website containing everything on NASes: http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/
Its a good site. I believe you can download the synology is software and install it into a virtual machine. This way you can explore the feature set and make an informed decision when purchasing.
