I've been running a HP N40L as my NAS for about 9-10years, it runs Openmediavault 0.4, quite out of date, nothing special, its just used as a big back up device, spare disc and runs a couple of VMs slowly, it has slow drives and is very noisy but never been an issue, runs great. Its old and its time for an update, I'm thinking of being lazy and just buying a prebuilt from the likes of QNAP/Synology, anyone got any advice regarding them, are they and their software as good as they look or am I just fooling myself into thinking they would all be tightly resolved and i'll still have to get into the guts of Linux to make these things work right, so may as well just do my own build. I was going to make this my transition to 10Gb finally, now we all do more at home, we use a lot more of it, it's fair to say I probably don't need to, just having a NAS that has enough grunt to finally serve a 1Gb LAN is probably a big leap from my underpowered N40L , then I started to think/spec creep considering that with tech like tiered storage running on a NAS, could I possibly use a good NAS as a remote desktop storage solution and go lighter in my main machine, perhaps actually skip 10G and jump to 25/40Gb then let the NAS manage the data, anyone done this. considering what I'd have to buy for 10G, 40G doesn't seem like a massive bump in price. My main use outside of backups of storage etc, is just storing 4k vids, soon to be 8k etc which I tend to manipulate locally on a few NVMes then shift to NAS when archiving, but thinking I could probably just do it on the NAS directly if the connection is quick enough with my 4Tb NVMes being a fast tier on the NAS. One of my new uses and why I was considering these prebuilt would be for surveillance, I have a host of Ring video kit and whilst its functional, it captures lots but cloud can be flaky, I'd be looking to do more continuous recording without the cloud and subscription. Doing all this in a NAS, is it too much? it would have a side benefit of meaning my desktop could be lighter not needing so many lanes, it would also be a good central storage for whole families media needs rather than just me selfishly having loads of quick storage and the paupers having the slow stuff on the N40L. Is any of the free NAS software capable of doing this stuff too, what are the favourites these days? Bit of an unstructured dump hopefully enough info to get started with
Honestly whilst I have a bit of a problem with building to many NAS rigs, I have slowly been moving away. The one thing that prebuilds have over the DIY route is that you dont have to tinker or be knee deep in forum / reddit posts trying to figure out what went wrong. My DS1815+ is still going solid and when the C2000 issue presented itself, getting a replacement from synology was pretty painless. I did start a build to replace the DS1815+ with an UNRAID box, but I had to do what I felt was an infinite amount of tinkering. While I was doing this, two drives in the DS1815 started to go. My options were to move over to the Unraid box I had been testing with (technically 3rd or 4th one) or do something else. I opted for grabbing a DS920+. I now have the two units setup and syncing. I generally dont have to fiddle when new versions of apps / the os come out. I have docker for my containers which work fine. Coming back to your point, you can do all what you want above with either DIY / off the shelf (you might have to rethink RING though). Just a question of how much you want to fiddle.
Yup I was thinking of ditching ring for the surveillance stuff on QNAP/Synolog, which means big spend on cameras, wiring for poe etc, in the hope that it'll be a better service. The simplicity was what I was looking for I don't want to tinker beyond perhaps the odd VM setup, but still want some flexibility, overtime my little NAS has done all sorts of jobs, VPN, mail server, web server, so looking at something like the QNAP TS-h686 or h886 that can do a number of tasks but that fixes the main failing of the old box the weak CPU, probably a bit OTT though and maybe something that is based on the v1500b embedded Ryzen will be more power efficient and enough for the next decade.
Research pre-builts carefully if you plan on using it for surveillance/Ring cameras - some only provide a couple of camera licences with a given device, and extra licences have to be purchased.
Yup, QNAP does 8 cameras unless you user the pro version then it is only 2, you can then add additional via license, I don't mind that if its a one off cost and not an annual one, I only have 4 cams right now, I would like to add another 2, one of the reasons that has me looking for a new do all box.
Yeah, my QNAP has 8 (not that I've used them yet), but Synology were (are?) very stingy on including licences.
The old tinkerer in me is struggling with the prices of what is no doubt good hardware in these pre builts and thinking I could do better, but can I.... it is all about what software I can find, popped a 10Gb card in my HPN40L, some cheapy from ebay £20, seems the N40L can actually push data even with its weak CPU and SATA3 interface, my HDDs some 9year old caviar greens the limiter Oh and the fact it is PCIe Gen2 I guess. So I am going to do some NAS software testing before committing any funds to a particular direction, reckon I could mod the current box and fit an ITX board or just buy a dinky case from the likes of Bitfenix (compact NAS case recommendations welcomed) First up lest see how OMV is looking now that it is on rev 5.6 quite a leap from 0.4 I was running what else is there True NAS, I suspect I will play with these softwares for a bit ....then give up and buy a QNAP but I haven't tinkered with hardware/software for ages and at the moment I'm keen.
If you can spot one reasonably priced maybe a Gen8 Microserver? Some assumptions there of course! 1) You can pick one up reasonably priced, have been very very cray cray on ebay. 2) Given I have most experience with Unraid, you could use the VM function to run a blue iris server for your video server and dockers for all your other stuff 3) The number of bays suits your needs 4 x 3.5 and 1 x 2.5 If you do decide to roll your own and are looking for bigger cases I have a MATX 8 bay kicking around, a beast of a 3u 16drive rack mount case and finally a no name case with lots of 5.25" bays.
If I roll my own as you put it and don't hack the HP to keep it in service as a remote backup NAS I think I would probably build in a bitfenix phenom If I buy pre-built I think I have narrowed down the NAS choice and it'd be a QNAP, either this guy https://www.box.co.uk/TS-673A-8G-QNAP-TS-673A-8G-6-Bay-Desktop-NAS-(Netwo_3600399.html ryzen v1500b, downside my nics are 8x lanes and this has 4x pcie, so I'd need a new nic but looks like nice hardware. I do have a couple of 2.5Gb ports I could lag on my switch to get started. or go OTT with this guy https://www.box.co.uk/TS-H886-D1622-16G-QNAP-TS-H886-D1622-16G-8-Bay-Desktop-NAS_2995879.html A beefier Xeon. See how I get on with stuff like zoneminder etc. on my current setup see if I can live with it. Will look a Blue Iris too, not heard of that
Well spent the weekend trying out software ( truenas, unraid, OMV5, playing with dockers etc and getting stuck ) but generally finding my way around, seeing what my modest hardware can do, it struggles, could barely transfer higher than 5Gb over the network as smbd was raping the CPU, plus on the software side with some of the OSes the machine was well below spec as I don't have much memory, my phone has 4x the cores and 6x the memory the cores aren't even that good, Turion, the old HP was decent for the simple tasks it was doing but I do need to modernise the interfaces as drive speeds have moved on, fast SSDs are a thing, cores are up and power is down, and when you look at resolving some of the issues you end up having to spend a bit on old slow gear etc, so I think I am going to roll my own. I don't think I will save any money over buying prebuilt, particularly if I factor in time and debug issues to get things running but I might end up with better hardware for VMs etc, I should get a new case but my first thought is to see whether I can do a restomod in the HP, weird I know but I like the little box Thinking I could probably squeeze an Itx Ryzen board in there and get up and running with something like a 200GE or 3000G for starters, with scope for more if needed in the future via a drop in ( my daughters 3400G might go missing in the night , she'll never know ) don't know if it will work, just eyeballed for now, I have and ITX board in my box o shite, I will dig it out in the week see what fitment is like. Started to strip it out, anyone done this, it's built well, quite a puzzle to get the sides off, anyone know A few challenges to figure out, firstly, will it fit, then a quieter PSU to go in the top left hole an update to the minisas backplane to take modern 6Gb satas and retain hotswap drive bays. custom motherboard tray update the front USB to USB 3 (no idea on that one) Probably a mistake to start hacking it, I should just put it in the garage as was, buy a QNAP and use HP as remote backup but I rarely do the sensible thing.
Did you look into what kind of speeds you'd get with a HBA or RAID card? iirc, the Gen7s used a mini-SAS connector from the drives' backplane to the motherboard - you can plug that directly into an add-in card. You're still limited by the CPU, of course, but it might provide a boost.
That looks interesting, I might be interested in that, though I have a picoPSU in my scrap yard that might serve me well, I'll probably leave the PSU decision until I know what is going in there, mine might only be 120w. Yes it is minisas, I was struggling to find a card to plug it in to as I've not seen it before, or definitive info as to whether the existing cable was sufficient for 6Gb SATA drives even if I did, I did plug some SSDs in and striped them for good measure to see what it'd do when not held back by my old spinners, the spinners were faster......doh......turns out the SSDs were throwing loads of CRC errors and resetting SATA link according to logs, SSDs came out of my main machine and were quite new with no issues before that so hardware perhaps a bit old for that tech. Would be nice to use a card which would plug into that cable and then I could retain the entire mechanism reducing wiring other wise I'll be doing something clunky with a load of sata cables and power lines to an add in card, I intend to run ~8 drives( 4x3.5 and 4x2.5) in here so I have a sata card on its way. Far as I could find out smbd might not be the most CPU resource friendly so It was probably at its limit, you could see it drop speed if I ran any processes on the NAS, more memory and running dual channel will apparently help but I'm not prepared to spend the dough on ram to for meagre gains, better towards some ddr4 in a new board, also running some iscsi setup might help but that's all new to me and I wasn't bothered, it was more of a curiosity, you know, what'll she do mister
Hmm the more I look into this the less sense it makes, think I am going to back peddle, ITX seems too much of a compromise due to lack of slots without going to something like an Asrock Rack board with Ocullink and onboard 10Gb Lan, it has onboard graphics so can use any AM4 CPU without taking a slot for GPU rather than confining myself to APUs, this is cool, looks like a lovely board but ooh the cost, it does offer more than I need, an if you add up the NICs and flexibility it is probably great value for a server board but more than I need. Might be able to use an M2 to PCI e slot riser perhaps to give me the extra SATAs or perhaps expliot pci bifurcation in the x16 slot such that I can run a 8x card and an additional sata card, dunno. Think I will just clean this HP out drop in new fans/psu, rebuild and use it as off site NAS, build new NAS in a new box with a Micro ATX, to be honest I am not space constrained in any way, perhaps it could just be a small tower.
Lol I feel that this thread is turning into me pimping my wares... https://www.xcase.co.uk/collections/nasbox/products/x-case-nasbox-n8c I got one of the above to mess around with. Initially I wasnt overblown with the cooling potential, but then I put 120mm fan on a PCI bracket and actually closed up the case. Much better performance. Again will be available if it's of interest and a matching PSU,
No problem, I am still in flip flop mode, mulling over options, that doesn't look like a bad case at all, let me know the sort of figures you are thinking of for bundle and independently.
To get a feel for what a full fat Ryzen would be like as a NAS I've been trying out the NAS software on my Threadripper workstation....hmmm, very nice, all the speed, all the lanes, there would be no problems if that was a server, it can do anything, saturating 20Gb LAG link like it was nothing there's a lot of appeal to a build around a 5xxx, not for silly disks but general performance, they are quite a low power platform when not doing a great deal and not to bad when they are.
https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=X570D4U-2L2T#Specifications One of these night be tasty?
If I go MicroATX I would just buy a normal board with all the slots I require to get the job done, but the mini ITX version of that is awesome and could be wedged in the microserver, it was what I was referring to earlier in the post, its 400 which seems pricey but when you factor in it can run any Ryzen due to onboard GPU, has dual !0G LAN, 8x sata/nvme via Occulink meaning I don't need add in cards for extra drives etc it actually seems decent value as I would need addin cards for Micro ATX to hit that level. Of course I am assuming I could use the remote management GPU for a graphics head replacement to access BIOS if needed, that might not be the case, not too familiar with IPMI https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=X570D4I-2T#Specifications
