For less than the (older) second hand 1515+ on Avforums you can get a brand new DS416 Play on Amazon, it only has 4 drive bays compared to 5 but does it matter? Remember that the 1515+ is an Atom CPU, not sure if the latest revelations about the "bug" will matter but if I was spending that kind of money on something that *might* have a bug and with no warranty I would think twice. The DS416Play is a Celeron but still does 4k transcoding. I can't recommend the Synology products enough for ease of use, set & forget(-ish) and peace of mind. Buy one as your main NAS then build a cheap OMV system to back it up to.
I think I have a plan now. Current plan is to get a DS380 and SFX PSU, put in the Asrock board, i3 and ECC ram. Fill the drive bays with the 2TB drives I have (7 WD Greens and 2 Seagate, so enough to have a spare lying around) and put them in a RAID Z2 array for just over 10TB usable storage. This will contain back ups of everything and network shares for my home labs. Then later down the line I'll probably get a 4-bay NAS to put 4 of the 4TB Reds in. The 5th with now go in my lounge PC instead of the 6TB that I had planned to. The screwholes on the underside don't match up to the mounts in the CM Elite 110 so it's going in my main PC instead as a back up drive for my SSD and data drive. Overkill?
How have I not seen the DS380 before today?! That's rather nice. What advantage does RAIDZ2 give you over RAID6?
I think the only overkill is the DS380 case @ circa £140. If it was me I would go for the Fractal Define Mini which can fit 6 drives in 3.5" bays with 2 5.25" bays free to add more drives (e.g. with one of those 2 x 5.25" to 3 x 3.25" bay convertors). Apart from saving £50 on the case, you would also save money on the PSU as it takes normal ATX plus it is already sound-proofed. Having an MATX case gives you more options in the future as well. Yes it is slightly larger than the DS380 but there is not much in it... DS380 = 211mm (W) x 285mm (H) x 360mm (D) Define Mini = 210mm (W) x 395mm (H) x 490mm (D) Thats what I would do.
Very true but it is all relative. It is only 110mm higher and 130mm deeper than the mITX DS380 yet can fit an ATX PSU and mATX board if need be with potentially only 3 HD's less, all for £50 less than the DS380. The sound deadening and build quality of the Fractal cases is also very good.
None, I'm just planning to use Freenas and thus ZFS. I agree it's on the pricey side but I want to hot swap bays. The 2TB drives I'm going to use are of various ages and usage hours, so I'm fully expecting one or two to fail in the not too distant future. I have toyed with getting a different and cheaper case as I wouldn't have to buy a PSU for it either. The Silverstone CS380 would do the job I guess - bit cheaper but larger and also has the hotswap bays.
I would say that this is not true. Traditional RAID requires hardware controllers, which can fail. An often overlooked part of the reliability analysis. The drives and data are intact but require a controller that is compatible with the one that failed in order to recover the data. Software RAID can be recovered by any computer running compatible software. Thus I would argue the RAIDZ2 is better than RAID6.
Data integrity for one. ZFS is a CoW filesystem and all data is check-summed, checked, and repaired as needed, online, so no bit rot, write holes, etc. You also get online snapshots, cloning, encryption, compression, deduplication (if you have ram for it) and so on.
That assumes RAID6 is only available through appropriate hardware and not software. A quick Google suggests that is not the case.
I'm using zfs/RADIZ2 for data integrity as the server will be mainly for backups of everything I have. I am having to use a relatively cheap 4-port SATA card to give me enough ports for the 8 drives, which is a bit of a pain. I'm going to order a case today so I can get it all built over the weekend, still not sure what I'm going for. DS380 and SFX PSU or CS380 are the options.
An observation, not wishing to derail the thread though, I have also been going through this thought process regarding upgrading my current NAS. Originally I wanted a nice Synology 4 bay NAS - but the cost is prohibitive So I turned an old PC into an Xpenology server which works great and gives me Synology DSM on a homebuild which is really nice So then I looked for a sexy 4 bay NAS enclosure with removable bays, Silverstone ones ARE really nice I realised two things : 1. I won't actually be hot-swapping drives, in my current Synology DS214+ I only ever installed the drives when I bought it 2 years ago2. The NAS will sit in my junk room, never to be seen. Conclusion : 1. Buy a big cheap quiet case with good ventilation and loads of space and tool-less drive bays 2. Spend the money you save on really good hardware / internals (e.g. RAM, cpu, drives) and a quiet, efficient PSU 3. Install Xpenology or FreeNAS Many of the dedicated NAS enclosures seem to be compromised by the form factor - a bit tight, with sub-optimal cooling and knuckle ripping internals. If you NEED your NAS to look sexy then obviously ignore above, just sayin' Chunks
This will be my plan next time when I want to build a true monster of a storage server. There are a couple of large cupboards in my new house that could be used to stash away some hardware out of site, but I'd need to have a good clear out and make some space first.
You are right, I am making an assumption and thus making an ass of myself. That said would I be safe to say that the majority of RAID implementations are carried out through hardware controllers? Have you been looking in my basement? You are describing my NAS.
We have the same build then I just need to upgrade it soon. Dual core is not enough for hash calculations.
It is built (minus one drive) and I forgot how annoying small builds are. Cables everywhere! The small HSF I was going to use wouldn't fir either and the heatpipes stick too far out the side.
