Looking for a drive enclosure for DIY Nas?

[Gershy13]

15 hours ago, paddy-stone said:

They did have offers coming up occasionally for it, may be discontinued now maybe, don't know for sure... I got mine around 2-3 years back IIRC, from ebuyer. Still a great little server that. If I see any deals come up for the micro server I'll tag/pm you and let you know, haven't seen any for a while now though.

If the price is right, get it, as long as you're happy with the price that's the main thing. Is it just yourself that's gonna be streaming from the NAS? if so it might be worth considering doing as I did in the end and just add an LSI 9211-8i card that I said about before, to your gaming rig and just use plex from there. Simple 1 click exit of plex if you want to game and don't want anything making you lag.

 

I'm gonna be re-doing my main server again sometime in the next 2-6 months, as soon as Ryzen 2 comes out most likely... yeah it might be a wait, lol. But soon as those CPUs come out I'll be using my main system Ryzen 1700 etc as my server build most likely, and having a PURE system for my other PC duties again. I may swap out the CPU, depends on whether I end up needing all those cores or not, haven't decided yet whether I'll run VMs on the server, the desktop, or both. I'll have to see.

Thanks, please do.

 

Its usually a max of 2 devices streaming at the same time, either the shield tv and or the chromecast. I already have plex and file shares setup on my gaming pc which is basically acting as the server for the house, i just wanted to offload it into a central location that will always be on (i turn my pc off at night). And sometimes i will be gaming while my brothers are watching something using Plex. 

To be completely honest, i could give it a test run on my old Vostro 220 that is sitting around doing nothing (pentium dual core 3.2ghz, gt 610, 4gb ram, LGA775) I would just need to get the node 804 and some bigger drives. And then if it isnt powerful enough i could try and get something else, either a new amd system or an old intel...

[paddy-stone]

6 minutes ago, Gershy13 said:

Thanks, please do.

 

Its usually a max of 2 devices streaming at the same time, either the shield tv and or the chromecast. I already have plex and file shares setup on my gaming pc which is basically acting as the server for the house, i just wanted to offload it into a central location that will always be on (i turn my pc off at night). And sometimes i will be gaming while my brothers are watching something using Plex. 

To be completely honest, i could give it a test run on my old Vostro 220 that is sitting around doing nothing (pentium dual core 3.2ghz, gt 610, 4gb ram, LGA775) I would just need to get the node 804 and some bigger drives. And then if it isnt powerful enough i could try and get something else, either a new amd system or an old intel...

No worries.

 

Yep, that would be my plan, try it on something first to try and get a baseline of what you should need, if nothing else it'll give you some experience with freenas and some of the pitfalls. If that gt610 isn't doing anything, at the very least you could do away with an integrated GPU in the build you have planned, so instead of a ryzen 2400g for example, you could get a 2600 6 core/12 thread for approx £140... if you don't decide to go older intel way.

Yes, I would start with the node 804... don't forget you can ONLY fit a m-ATX motherboard  in there or itx though.

[Gershy13]

4 hours ago, paddy-stone said:

No worries.

 

Yep, that would be my plan, try it on something first to try and get a baseline of what you should need, if nothing else it'll give you some experience with freenas and some of the pitfalls. If that gt610 isn't doing anything, at the very least you could do away with an integrated GPU in the build you have planned, so instead of a ryzen 2400g for example, you could get a 2600 6 core/12 thread for approx £140... if you don't decide to go older intel way.

Yes, I would start with the node 804... don't forget you can ONLY fit a m-ATX motherboard  in there or itx though.

yeah probably what ill have to do... only thing holding me back is im wondering if it is worth it. Or should i just keep everything as is for now until i really run out of space on my gaming pc, and then upgrade everything.

 

And yeah the vostro 220 is matx. Also curious, if the pc is going to be headless, does it need a gpu? After inital setup, can i remove the gpu and will it still work? (if the cpu doesnt have integrated.)

[paddy-stone]

3 hours ago, Gershy13 said:

yeah probably what ill have to do... only thing holding me back is im wondering if it is worth it. Or should i just keep everything as is for now until i really run out of space on my gaming pc, and then upgrade everything.

 

And yeah the vostro 220 is matx. Also curious, if the pc is going to be headless, does it need a gpu? After inital setup, can i remove the gpu and will it still work? (if the cpu doesnt have integrated.)

Unfortunately not on the headless, as POST checks for GPU on consumer boards. Would be really nice if they removed this restriction, or had the option in BIOS for people that wanted to run headless... but on the other hand if you have that GPU spare anyway, or another cheapo £25 jobby, it'd be barely consuming any watts during usage anyway if all you're doing is serving up videos etc via network.

 

Whether it's worth it or not is up to you... you're asking the wrong person here. I currently have 3 PCs (1 I use for everything, 1 that was my server build with an i7 6700k, and an old phenom II 1055t 6 core that used to be my tester system), 2 laptops, 1 "proper" server, and 1 micro server... and I'm planning another for when Ryzen 2 CPUs come out

Plus all the phones, tablets and doohickeys too... I love tech basically, and I don't drink etc anymore, so saved a TON of money not doing that, so spend it on tech I like instead.

 

For now, I would take any extra drives you have and put them in your main system if possible, and get an LSI 9211-8i if needed for the drives.. believe me once you use breakout cables you;ll want them for ALL your drives to keep your builds a bit more streamlined. Then if it seems worth the cost when Zen 2 comes out, see what the lower tiers are for core count and clockspeed.. I suspect that the bottom tier will suffice for a server build at around £100 or so and have 6 cores/12 threads. See if it's worth having that as your main build and have the 4th gen intel as your server, or go higher core count even, depending on your usage. Hey if you need more space, just buy another drive, you can always transfer it to your new build... I will say though, that unless you go unraid, most OS prefer same size drives for arrays if you want raid 5/6  IIRC, so bear that in mind.

Also, when it comes time to switch, if that's what you decide... you'll need to wipe the drives for setting up raid, or other arrays generally, so you'll need to move/copy your data you want to keep to other drives, or somewhere, while you set up the arrays.

[Gershy13]

On 1/25/2019 at 10:30 PM, paddy-stone said:

Unfortunately not on the headless, as POST checks for GPU on consumer boards. Would be really nice if they removed this restriction, or had the option in BIOS for people that wanted to run headless... but on the other hand if you have that GPU spare anyway, or another cheapo £25 jobby, it'd be barely consuming any watts during usage anyway if all you're doing is serving up videos etc via network.

 

Whether it's worth it or not is up to you... you're asking the wrong person here. I currently have 3 PCs (1 I use for everything, 1 that was my server build with an i7 6700k, and an old phenom II 1055t 6 core that used to be my tester system), 2 laptops, 1 "proper" server, and 1 micro server... and I'm planning another for when Ryzen 2 CPUs come out

Plus all the phones, tablets and doohickeys too... I love tech basically, and I don't drink etc anymore, so saved a TON of money not doing that, so spend it on tech I like instead.

 

For now, I would take any extra drives you have and put them in your main system if possible, and get an LSI 9211-8i if needed for the drives.. believe me once you use breakout cables you;ll want them for ALL your drives to keep your builds a bit more streamlined. Then if it seems worth the cost when Zen 2 comes out, see what the lower tiers are for core count and clockspeed.. I suspect that the bottom tier will suffice for a server build at around £100 or so and have 6 cores/12 threads. See if it's worth having that as your main build and have the 4th gen intel as your server, or go higher core count even, depending on your usage. Hey if you need more space, just buy another drive, you can always transfer it to your new build... I will say though, that unless you go unraid, most OS prefer same size drives for arrays if you want raid 5/6  IIRC, so bear that in mind.

Also, when it comes time to switch, if that's what you decide... you'll need to wipe the drives for setting up raid, or other arrays generally, so you'll need to move/copy your data you want to keep to other drives, or somewhere, while you set up the arrays.

Ahh right okay, i didnt realise. The only reason i dont really want to put a gpu in the build is if i needed to add a LSI card with breakout cables... I doubt a motherboard i choose will have slots and bandwidth for both. 

 

Yeah i have a lot of tech in the house too lol. I had to switch over to a Ubiquiti AP because the VM Superhub wasnt keeping up, and the range wasnt great... Im only 17 tho so its a bit hard to get all the money to get all the things i want. 

 

I think ill just have to wait it out a bit yeah... Maybe some of the new intel stuff will drop in price (and ddr4 hopefully) and ill be able to upgrade my main pc and use its old components as a server. (for my main machine i prefer intel, just as a preference) (and its running a hackintosh so im not sure how well AMD cpus work with that).

[paddy-stone]

47 minutes ago, Gershy13 said:

Ahh right okay, i didnt realise. The only reason i dont really want to put a gpu in the build is if i needed to add a LSI card with breakout cables... I doubt a motherboard i choose will have slots and bandwidth for both. 

 

Yeah i have a lot of tech in the house too lol. I had to switch over to a Ubiquiti AP because the VM Superhub wasnt keeping up, and the range wasnt great... Im only 17 tho so its a bit hard to get all the money to get all the things i want. 

 

I think ill just have to wait it out a bit yeah... Maybe some of the new intel stuff will drop in price (and ddr4 hopefully) and ill be able to upgrade my main pc and use its old components as a server. (for my main machine i prefer intel, just as a preference) (and its running a hackintosh so im not sure how well AMD cpus work with that).

The LSI cards are only using 4x pci-e lanes, so should be fine on almost any motherboard, I have personally used mine in an intel b250 and z170 mobo/ AMD b350, and it's worked fine with a GPU inserted also... and these were m-ATX boards too.

 

Yeah, have heard some bad things about the superhub, haven't had the "pleasure" myself as I live in an area that's not likely to get cable EVER. Luckily I do get fibre though (FTTC), so get around 68-71Mbps all the time.. I recently upgraded my wifi as my router's just wasn't cutting it any more. So ended up getting a BT mesh wifi system, and I have to say it has been rock solid, and get max throughput almost everywhere in the house even just using 2 of the set of 3... so I saved the 3rd one for future use if I move, or for breakages.

 

I'm pretty sure that hackintosh are primarily intel, as it IIRC has to match some internals of what actual macs use. I would definitely keep an eye out for when the new AMD CPUs drop, they should be awesome hopefully... it's almost definite we'll be getting a 12 core 24 thread model, but possibly more too

 

[Gershy13]

49 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

The LSI cards are only using 4x pci-e lanes, so should be fine on almost any motherboard, I have personally used mine in an intel b250 and z170 mobo/ AMD b350, and it's worked fine with a GPU inserted also... and these were m-ATX boards too.

 

Yeah, have heard some bad things about the superhub, haven't had the "pleasure" myself as I live in an area that's not likely to get cable EVER. Luckily I do get fibre though (FTTC), so get around 68-71Mbps all the time.. I recently upgraded my wifi as my router's just wasn't cutting it any more. So ended up getting a BT mesh wifi system, and I have to say it has been rock solid, and get max throughput almost everywhere in the house even just using 2 of the set of 3... so I saved the 3rd one for future use if I move, or for breakages.

 

I'm pretty sure that hackintosh are primarily intel, as it IIRC has to match some internals of what actual macs use. I would definitely keep an eye out for when the new AMD CPUs drop, they should be awesome hopefully... it's almost definite we'll be getting a 12 core 24 thread model, but possibly more too

 

ohh right ok, so how do they get enough bandwidth for 8 sata ports?! Usually all the budget boards i see have a max of 2 16x slots but operate at 8x and 4x (respectively) when used at the same time... that also disables all other pcie slots (usually 1x)

 

Yeah, the superhub itself isnt too bad, but in a relatively big house with lots of devices connected and lots of interference from neighbor's wifi it tends to struggle a bit, so a Unifi AP lite in a central location in the house fixed all our problems. Ideally i want to get a USG so all the superhub will be doing is just act as a modem. That way all of my network will be manageable from a central location, and unifi controller is really good. Especially compared to how laggy and slow the interface of the superhub is.

I considered getting a mesh system, but they were about double the price and i always liked ubiquiti gear, and we can always add more APs (they can run in wired or wireless mode) if needed...

 

Yeah thats why i think im going to stick to intel on my main gaming pc, I'll probably consider AMD for a server or something like that tho.

[paddy-stone]

2 minutes ago, Gershy13 said:

ohh right ok, so how do they get enough bandwidth for 8 sata ports?! Usually all the budget boards i see have a max of 2 16x slots but operate at 8x and 4x (respectively) when used at the same time... that also disables all other pcie slots (usually 1x)

 

Yeah, the superhub itself isnt too bad, but in a relatively big house with lots of devices connected and lots of interference from neighbor's wifi it tends to struggle a bit, so a Unifi AP lite in a central location in the house fixed all our problems. Ideally i want to get a USG so all the superhub will be doing is just act as a modem. That way all of my network will be manageable from a central location, and unifi controller is really good. Especially compared to how laggy and slow the interface of the superhub is.

I considered getting a mesh system, but they were about double the price and i always liked ubiquiti gear, and we can always add more APs (they can run in wired or wireless mode) if needed...

 

Yeah thats why i think im going to stick to intel on my main gaming pc, I'll probably consider AMD for a server or something like that tho.

Yeah, it has enough bandwidth, it's approx 150MB/s per SATA port, so good enough for HDDs, not for SSDs IIRC.

 

This is the actual specs from ebay listing

Quote

New LSI Internal SAS SATA 9211-8i 6Gbps 8 Ports HBA PCI-E RAID Controller Card

IO Controller:LSISAS2008/ Fusion MPT 2.0

Storage Connectivity; Data Transfer Rates 8 ports; 6Gb/s SAS 2.0 compliant

SAS Bandwidth:600 MB/s per lane

Port Configurations:8 ea, x1 ports (individual drives)-or-2 ea, x4 wide port

Host Bus:X8 lane, PCI Express 2.0 compliant

PCI Data Burst Transfer Rates:X8, PCIe 4000 MB/s

Physical Dimensions:Low Profile (2. 6” x 6.6”)

Connectors:Two Mini-SAS internal connectors (SFF8087)

Brackets:Full height and low profile

Cable Support:Passive Copper

PCI Card Type:3.3 V Add-in Card

Operating Voltage:+12V +/-8%; 3.3V +/-8%

PCI Power (Nominal):7 W typical (Airflow min 200 LFM

Device Support:256 Non-RAID SAS/SATA devices

Integrated RAID (IR):NO- RAID

Environmental

Operating:0°C to 55°C 5 to 90% Non-condensing
Storage:-45°C to 105°C 5 to 90% Non-condensing

MTBF >2,000,000 Hours

Regulatory Certifications EMC: Class B-US (CFR 47, P15B); Canada (ICES-003); Japan (V-3/02.04); Europe (EN55022/EN55024); Australia/New Zealand (AS/NZS 3548); Safety: EN60950; RoHS; WEEE

OS Support: Microsoft Windows, Linux (SuSE , Red Hat), Solaris, VMware, FreeBSD

Warranty:1 years; with advanced replacement option

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/New-LSI-Internal-SAS-SATA-9211-8i-6Gbps-8-Ports-HBA-PCI-E-RAID-Controller-Card-/272826210322?hash=item3f85b59812

 

8x for a GPU is enough on pci-e 3.0, so it having 8x/4x is fine on the ports.

In actual usage, considering most uses for this are for network transfers, I Gbe wouldn't even come close to drives performance as it's shared across the drives... works out at max 125MB/s, one drive on it's own can max out the network on gigabit/Gbe, so it's not a problem in most cases. anyone wanting to use 10Gbe, would possibly need a better mobo and SAS card, but not entirely sure.

 

Yes, definitely stick with intel IMO if you still want to run hackintosh. For a nice little server build AMD APUs that should come out in 6 months or less maybe, could be the way to go, then no GPU needed also, which frees up all the Pci-e slots for extra cards. I personally like to run a 4x Network card too in my servers, so I can give actual ports to some VMs rather than it being virtual ports sharing a port. They are around £20 or so, which isn't bad.

[Gershy13]

3 hours ago, paddy-stone said:

Yeah, it has enough bandwidth, it's approx 150MB/s per SATA port, so good enough for HDDs, not for SSDs IIRC.

 

This is the actual specs from ebay listing

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/New-LSI-Internal-SAS-SATA-9211-8i-6Gbps-8-Ports-HBA-PCI-E-RAID-Controller-Card-/272826210322?hash=item3f85b59812

 

8x for a GPU is enough on pci-e 3.0, so it having 8x/4x is fine on the ports.

In actual usage, considering most uses for this are for network transfers, I Gbe wouldn't even come close to drives performance as it's shared across the drives... works out at max 125MB/s, one drive on it's own can max out the network on gigabit/Gbe, so it's not a problem in most cases. anyone wanting to use 10Gbe, would possibly need a better mobo and SAS card, but not entirely sure.

 

Yes, definitely stick with intel IMO if you still want to run hackintosh. For a nice little server build AMD APUs that should come out in 6 months or less maybe, could be the way to go, then no GPU needed also, which frees up all the Pci-e slots for extra cards. I personally like to run a 4x Network card too in my servers, so I can give actual ports to some VMs rather than it being virtual ports sharing a port. They are around £20 or so, which isn't bad.

Ahh ok, so they run at technically sata 1 speeds? 1.5gb/s? 

 

Yeah so ill just wait for new stuff to come out and then decide... I did manage to clear up some space on my internal drives and ive got a few random 2.5" ones lying around (might get some usb 3.0 enclosures and put them to use temporarily). Ive somehow managed to completely fill up my pc with drives lol. (6 sata ports, 3 ssds, 2 hard drives, 1 dvd drive)

[paddy-stone]

3 hours ago, Gershy13 said:

Ahh ok, so they run at technically sata 1 speeds? 1.5gb/s? 

 

Yeah so ill just wait for new stuff to come out and then decide... I did manage to clear up some space on my internal drives and ive got a few random 2.5" ones lying around (might get some usb 3.0 enclosures and put them to use temporarily). Ive somehow managed to completely fill up my pc with drives lol. (6 sata ports, 3 ssds, 2 hard drives, 1 dvd drive)

Well, what I mean is it really doesn't matter unless you're planning on get 10 Gigabit ethernet, as you'll be using the NAS for reading and writing over network right? So even if each interface was SATA3 speeds, the drives themselves still can't go over say 150-180MB/s each, so even 1 drive can fill the bandwidth of 1 Gigabit (125MB/s). When I had my server going, I was using 4 drives on the 1 SAS port, so could theoretically get around 600MB/s through that SAS port (all drives being read/written at once), but still limited by the network. Moving stuff on the shares themselves is a lot quicker, but I don't personally do that much at all, as I usually put stuff where I want it when I first write it to the drives. I hope that makes sense?  the actual SAS port can run at 6Gbps, but there's no harm in splitting it out to SATA ports IMO as HDDs are slow comparatively. If you wanted to run SSDs you'd be better off with actual SATA ports maybe, but that'd be a waste for sure.. unless running VMs or a cache drive from them, I wouldn't dedicate data/media to them as that'd be like using a supercar to go to the supermarket via a school district.

 

Yeah I use a USB HDD dock for some of my drives that I write/read off occasionally, it's very handy. I also have USB to SATA adaptors, USB caddys etc... my latest purchase actually was a m.2 to USB type C caddy, and put a 240GB m.2 SSD in there, cost me around £60 all-in (£42 for the drive and approx £18 for the caddy). I can write to that at around 320MB/s, and it's nice and portable size for stuff I need to write to it quickly to take with me.

 

[Gershy13]

15 hours ago, paddy-stone said:

Well, what I mean is it really doesn't matter unless you're planning on get 10 Gigabit ethernet, as you'll be using the NAS for reading and writing over network right? So even if each interface was SATA3 speeds, the drives themselves still can't go over say 150-180MB/s each, so even 1 drive can fill the bandwidth of 1 Gigabit (125MB/s). When I had my server going, I was using 4 drives on the 1 SAS port, so could theoretically get around 600MB/s through that SAS port (all drives being read/written at once), but still limited by the network. Moving stuff on the shares themselves is a lot quicker, but I don't personally do that much at all, as I usually put stuff where I want it when I first write it to the drives. I hope that makes sense?  the actual SAS port can run at 6Gbps, but there's no harm in splitting it out to SATA ports IMO as HDDs are slow comparatively. If you wanted to run SSDs you'd be better off with actual SATA ports maybe, but that'd be a waste for sure.. unless running VMs or a cache drive from them, I wouldn't dedicate data/media to them as that'd be like using a supercar to go to the supermarket via a school district.

 

Yeah I use a USB HDD dock for some of my drives that I write/read off occasionally, it's very handy. I also have USB to SATA adaptors, USB caddys etc... my latest purchase actually was a m.2 to USB type C caddy, and put a 240GB m.2 SSD in there, cost me around £60 all-in (£42 for the drive and approx £18 for the caddy). I can write to that at around 320MB/s, and it's nice and portable size for stuff I need to write to it quickly to take with me.

 

yeah good point i guess... I was thinking of getting a 10gb link between my gaming rig and the nas, but i think that'll be pretty expensive still... id probably be better off just copying the files onto a local drive for when i need them (editing)

[paddy-stone]

43 minutes ago, Gershy13 said:

yeah good point i guess... I was thinking of getting a 10gb link between my gaming rig and the nas, but i think that'll be pretty expensive still... id probably be better off just copying the files onto a local drive for when i need them (editing)

Unless you copy a lot of stuff over from your main PC, or as you said do editing work I wouldn't bother. Even for editing, how likely is it you'll want to edit something you already transferred to the server? wouldn't you be better off keeping unfinished projects on your PC and having a USB backup for it also?  That's what I do, save the unedited content on a USB HDD as well as having it on my main PC, just for a backup in case something happens to the main HDD/SSD... then transfer the unedited and finished content over to the server for future use if needed. 10Gbe is still too expensive right now IMO for it to be worth it.

Even buying another SSD just to have your unedited content on would be better cost wise, 500GB SSD for around £80 or so.

[Gershy13]

1 hour ago, paddy-stone said:

Unless you copy a lot of stuff over from your main PC, or as you said do editing work I wouldn't bother. Even for editing, how likely is it you'll want to edit something you already transferred to the server? wouldn't you be better off keeping unfinished projects on your PC and having a USB backup for it also?  That's what I do, save the unedited content on a USB HDD as well as having it on my main PC, just for a backup in case something happens to the main HDD/SSD... then transfer the unedited and finished content over to the server for future use if needed. 10Gbe is still too expensive right now IMO for it to be worth it.

Even buying another SSD just to have your unedited content on would be better cost wise, 500GB SSD for around £80 or so.

yeah thats probably a better idea, its just that my whole lightroom catalog will probably be on the nas, im not sure if lightroom needs a fast drive tho.

[paddy-stone]

5 hours ago, Gershy13 said:

yeah thats probably a better idea, its just that my whole lightroom catalog will probably be on the nas, im not sure if lightroom needs a fast drive tho.

Couldn't tell you about lightroom, don't use it. Might be worth posting in a sub-forum about that specifically or do some testing to see if it makes much difference once you have the NAS.

[leutcmdrdata]

Sorry to hijack your thread Gershy, but I'm looking to do something similar...  
I want to migrate my current system into a NAS and will then upgrade to a RYZEN 3rd gen series when they come out, so I'm planning ahead a bit here...

@paddy-stone  I have this mobo:  https://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/Z97MPLUS/
Would the SAS card you posted be pretty muchplug and play? Or will there be loads of setup to do? I'm very green when it comes to NAS stuff so I'll take all the help I can get.

I intend to run either  unRaid or OpenMediaVault on it, with the intention to use Sonarr/Radarr and Transmission in a docker container with a VPN and then PLEX in a seperate container (I have no idea howto use docker either, so that will be fun!)

 

ATM I have a QNAP TS431P with 4 2TB drives in RAID 5 and it's nearly full, so I intend to use that as a backup and fill it with 4TB drives again in RAID5 and put it in a friends house.  I can't be  bothered to wait for Silverstone to finally get their act together and issue their mATX hotswap NAS case (cs381), so I'm gonna go with a full ATX case from them in the cs380, which I'll probably get from SCAN or similar.

 

cheers.

  S

[paddy-stone]

3 hours ago, leutcmdrdata said:

Sorry to hijack your thread Gershy, but I'm looking to do something similar...  
I want to migrate my current system into a NAS and will then upgrade to a RYZEN 3rd gen series when they come out, so I'm planning ahead a bit here...

@paddy-stone  I have this mobo:  https://www.asus.com/uk/Motherboards/Z97MPLUS/
Would the SAS card you posted be pretty muchplug and play? Or will there be loads of setup to do? I'm very green when it comes to NAS stuff so I'll take all the help I can get.

I intend to run either  unRaid or OpenMediaVault on it, with the intention to use Sonarr/Radarr and Transmission in a docker container with a VPN and then PLEX in a seperate container (I have no idea howto use docker either, so that will be fun!)

 

ATM I have a QNAP TS431P with 4 2TB drives in RAID 5 and it's nearly full, so I intend to use that as a backup and fill it with 4TB drives again in RAID5 and put it in a friends house.  I can't be  bothered to wait for Silverstone to finally get their act together and issue their mATX hotswap NAS case (cs381), so I'm gonna go with a full ATX case from them in the cs380, which I'll probably get from SCAN or similar.

 

cheers.

  S

Ok, it depends on the OS somewhat whether the SAS card is plug n play, so to speak. But if it does need flashing to IT mode, it's not that finicky to do, and there are several ways to do it also, so one way should be available to you if it needs it. It's best to ask on an unraid or OMV topic really, I don't like unraid personally, so didn't spend long with it... same for OMV but for different reasons, so can't help you with those.

[leutcmdrdata]

12 hours ago, paddy-stone said:

Ok, it depends on the OS somewhat whether the SAS card is plug n play, so to speak. But if it does need flashing to IT mode, it's not that finicky to do, and there are several ways to do it also, so one way should be available to you if it needs it. It's best to ask on an unraid or OMV topic really, I don't like unraid personally, so didn't spend long with it... same for OMV but for different reasons, so can't help you with those.

Cheers Paddy, what do you use instead of UnRaid/OMV? I'm still looking into options. Do you use a NAS for Plex/Sonarr/Radarr?

[paddy-stone]

3 hours ago, leutcmdrdata said:

Cheers Paddy, what do you use instead of UnRaid/OMV? I'm still looking into options. Do you use a NAS for Plex/Sonarr/Radarr?

On my main server (not active right now), and my backup server, I use freenas... with plex plugin. On my main PC, which has taken over the duties from the main server, as well as it's normal duties, I just use windows folder shares right now and TBH it's done everything I can want of it, it's still very easy to network into for backing up files, sharing media etc... but I will most likely get my main server back up with some hardware changes when Zen 2 drops, as my Ryzen 1700 + board will be available - so it'll either be freenas, or might have it as an ESXi build, with freenas as a VM, as I can pass through the SAS card IIRC. But i'll try lots of stuff before actually switching anything, I have backups, but it's a PITA to move that much data more than once in a while, so proper testing is called for each time.

The main reason I stopped using my main server (still have the hardware), is that the i7 6700K even when idling with freenas was pulling down a surprising amount of watts, usually around 75 when idling, and upto around 150+ when transcoding. My 1700 build even doing a LOT of stuff, including mining on a 1060, sharing media and other stuff, still pulled less watts than that most of the time... so that's why the switch.

[Gershy13]

On 2/1/2019 at 2:35 PM, paddy-stone said:

On my main server (not active right now), and my backup server, I use freenas... with plex plugin. On my main PC, which has taken over the duties from the main server, as well as it's normal duties, I just use windows folder shares right now and TBH it's done everything I can want of it, it's still very easy to network into for backing up files, sharing media etc... but I will most likely get my main server back up with some hardware changes when Zen 2 drops, as my Ryzen 1700 + board will be available - so it'll either be freenas, or might have it as an ESXi build, with freenas as a VM, as I can pass through the SAS card IIRC. But i'll try lots of stuff before actually switching anything, I have backups, but it's a PITA to move that much data more than once in a while, so proper testing is called for each time.

The main reason I stopped using my main server (still have the hardware), is that the i7 6700K even when idling with freenas was pulling down a surprising amount of watts, usually around 75 when idling, and upto around 150+ when transcoding. My 1700 build even doing a LOT of stuff, including mining on a 1060, sharing media and other stuff, still pulled less watts than that most of the time... so that's why the switch.

Hi, it's me again reviving this thread once again.

 

Im now actually considering building the Nas pretty soon... So I'm first going to try and sort out drives... What config would you recommend? Mirror or parity? And how many drives? Should I have different drives for different things? Or one big drive/pool then partition/folders?

I'm thinking I need around 8-12tb.

[paddy-stone]

15 hours ago, Gershy13 said:

Hi, it's me again reviving this thread once again.

 

Im now actually considering building the Nas pretty soon... So I'm first going to try and sort out drives... What config would you recommend? Mirror or parity? And how many drives? Should I have different drives for different things? Or one big drive/pool then partition/folders?

I'm thinking I need around 8-12tb.

Parity is best IMO, but it doesn't replace the need for backups of anything important, so bear that in mind because parity only protects you so far... so anything important I would also back up to another external drive.

For 12TB of usable space, that'd be 4x4TB drives to get 12tb usable. If a drive fails you still have all the data, and can then add another drive and resilver to again have parity.

Well you have one big array. And then you can split the volume into folders/shares same as you would on a HDD really... I don't see any benefit of doing otherwise. You could have separate volumes, but to have parity you'd have to have many more disks, so think you'd be better off having 4x4TB and one volume with parity, also you create snapshots of the volume/shares so that if you accidentally delete something, you can roll back that deletion if you want. That's a pretty good feature.

 

[Gershy13]

1 hour ago, paddy-stone said:

Parity is best IMO, but it doesn't replace the need for backups of anything important, so bear that in mind because parity only protects you so far... so anything important I would also back up to another external drive.

For 12TB of usable space, that'd be 4x4TB drives to get 12tb usable. If a drive fails you still have all the data, and can then add another drive and resilver to again have parity.

Well you have one big array. And then you can split the volume into folders/shares same as you would on a HDD really... I don't see any benefit of doing otherwise. You could have separate volumes, but to have parity you'd have to have many more disks, so think you'd be better off having 4x4TB and one volume with parity, also you create snapshots of the volume/shares so that if you accidentally delete something, you can roll back that deletion if you want. That's a pretty good feature.

 

thanks... so whats the difference between mirror and parity? how does it work, because surely it cant store 12tb on a 4tb disk? 

 

Even if i went with mirrored i was going to have a backup on an external drive of the really important stuff...

[paddy-stone]

5 hours ago, Gershy13 said:

thanks... so whats the difference between mirror and parity? how does it work, because surely it cant store 12tb on a 4tb disk? 

 

Even if i went with mirrored i was going to have a backup on an external drive of the really important stuff...

Mirrored, raid 1, means you have the data twice, so you'd have 4 HDDs, and 2 for each, eg 4x4TB becomes 2x mirrored 8tb, so you're losing a LOT of space, because of the duplication. TBH most home users shouldn't have to use this as it's more for time critical stuff, so mirror 1 fails for example, and you can still use mirror 2 as the data is all still there.

Parity, it has parts from the other disks on each disk, so all the data is still there if 1 disk fails.. if 2 disks fail you've lost the raid array... unless you go for raid 6 which can lose 2 disks and still operate, but you also lose another disks worth of data capacity, so 5 disks at 4TB each, would only give you the 12TB capacity still. But IMO as long as you have backups and the data is non-critical (meaning you can waste some time copying from your backups, then even stripe (non-parity) would be OK (that's what I am using right now, but I do have a backup NAS with all the data from NAS 1 on it, and backups, plural, of all my most critical data). I will most likely change to raid 5 though once I have my NAS rebuild parts finalized. I think that gives you the best value for money Vs most handy way of having your data resiliency. Basically I will be going from 4x4TB and 16TB usable (roughly), to still having the same capacity, but having 1x4TB parity drive.

[Gershy13]

2 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

Mirrored, raid 1, means you have the data twice, so you'd have 4 HDDs, and 2 for each, eg 4x4TB becomes 2x mirrored 8tb, so you're losing a LOT of space, because of the duplication. TBH most home users shouldn't have to use this as it's more for time critical stuff, so mirror 1 fails for example, and you can still use mirror 2 as the data is all still there.

Parity, it has parts from the other disks on each disk, so all the data is still there if 1 disk fails.. if 2 disks fail you've lost the raid array... unless you go for raid 6 which can lose 2 disks and still operate, but you also lose another disks worth of data capacity, so 5 disks at 4TB each, would only give you the 12TB capacity still. But IMO as long as you have backups and the data is non-critical (meaning you can waste some time copying from your backups, then even stripe (non-parity) would be OK (that's what I am using right now, but I do have a backup NAS with all the data from NAS 1 on it, and backups, plural, of all my most critical data). I will most likely change to raid 5 though once I have my NAS rebuild parts finalized. I think that gives you the best value for money Vs most handy way of having your data resiliency. Basically I will be going from 4x4TB and 16TB usable (roughly), to still having the same capacity, but having 1x4TB parity drive.

Thanks... So parity is safe for my needs if I just backup the extremely important stuff (won't be everything because that will require lots of space) and as long as if a drive fails get a new drive asap and replace the failed one?

[paddy-stone]

Just now, Gershy13 said:

Thanks... So parity is safe for my needs if I just backup the extremely important stuff (won't be everything because that will require lots of space) and as long as if a drive fails get a new drive asap and replace the failed one?

Yeah, but remember that only the data that you backup also, is safe if the raid fails. That;s why I paranoid level my backups.

[Gershy13]

Just now, paddy-stone said:

Yeah, but remember that only the data that you backup also, is safe if the raid fails. That;s why I paranoid level my backups.

How likely is the raid to fail? Is there a higher risk of failure than a normal drive?