Help redarding server used for both nas and linux programming?

[jackslosi]

I'm looking to use some older hardware of mine as a NAS but also as a server to compile c++ code for Linux and I'm not sure what OS to use.  I've heard that freeNas is one of the best OS's for a home NAS.  How ever by what I've been reading I can't use it to compile c++ code that will run on Linux, or at least not perfectly.  In a perfect world I'd just have two servers but that's not currently an option.  What is my best option for OS to act as both a NAS and a system for visual studio to remotely connect to.

[Electronics Wizardy]

what code are you compiling? what complier?

 

How big is your nas need to be?

 

You can have basically 2(or more) server by using vms. Id use something like unraid or proxmox on the host, and then run a vms for other stuff. 

 

What hardware do you have laying around?

[jackslosi]

24 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

what code are you compiling? what complier?

 

How big is your nas need to be?

 

You can have basically 2(or more) server by using vms. Id use something like unraid or proxmox on the host, and then run a vms for other stuff. 

 

What hardware do you have laying around?

Sorry for lack of details.

 

For Linux I plan on using gcc.  On windows i believe I'm using msvc.  But I was thinking about swapping over to clang.

My current plan was to have 4 4TB hard drives.

How much would a vm affect performance.

It's going to be built using the old parts I have after my last upgrade.  Most notably I'll have an i5-7600k and a motherboard to use from the old system.

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 hours ago, jackslosi said:

How much would a vm affect performance.

 

Of the complier or the nas?

 

VM overhead is pretty small, so normally 3-5%

 

3 hours ago, jackslosi said:

It's going to be built using the old parts I have after my last upgrade.  Most notably I'll have an i5-7600k and a motherboard to use from the old system.

Should be more than enough

 

3 hours ago, jackslosi said:

My current plan was to have 4 4TB hard drives.

Id get 8tb drives these days unless you already have them.

[jackslosi]

22 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Of the complier or the nas?

 

VM overhead is pretty small, so normally 3-5%

Both?  I'm guessing by what you're saying it'll be minimal either way.  And by VM do mean mean like virtual box or Proxmox.

22 hours ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id get 8tb drives these days unless you already have them.

I haven't gotten them yet but by what I was seeing at the time of planning 4tb was more efficient for price to usable space (Raid 5).

Edit planned on using hardware raid btw.

Edit 2:  By what I've been reading now if I use FreeNas or UnRaid a hardware based raid solution may not work.  Is this true?

[Electronics Wizardy]

22 hours ago, jackslosi said:

Both?  I'm guessing by what you're saying it'll be minimal either way.  And by VM do mean mean like virtual box or Proxmox.

yea, a vm set up right won't hurt performance much at all, so I wouldn't worry about that.

 

22 hours ago, jackslosi said:

haven't gotten them yet but by what I was seeing at the time of planning 4tb was more efficient for price to usable space (Raid 5).

Normally 8tb drives are cheaper per tb, id get drives like these(take them out of the case) https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-easystore-8tb-external-usb-3-0-hard-drive-black/5792401.p?skuId=5792401

 

22 hours ago, jackslosi said:

Edit planned on using hardware raid btw.

What raid card? Id normally stay away from hardware raid here and use software raid, its better for this use.

[jackslosi]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

yea, a vm set up right won't hurt performance much at all, so I wouldn't worry about that.

I'm new to virtualization as I've only done it maybe once before, but would proxmox be a good choice for doing what I plan?

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Normally 8tb drives are cheaper per tb, id get drives like these(take them out of the case) https://www.bestbuy.com/site/wd-easystore-8tb-external-usb-3-0-hard-drive-black/5792401.p?skuId=5792401

I was looking at Wd Reds and right now on newegg the 8TB is just about twice the price as the 4TB.  And I figured nas grade drives would be better for my use case as I will most likely have frequent reads from it.

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

What raid card? Id normally stay away from hardware raid here and use software raid, its better for this use.

I was looking at this card:

https://www.newegg.com/adaptec-8405-sata-sas/p/N82E16816103111

However I've been leaning much more towards using ZFS RaidZ1/2 for software raid after doing some research.  And if I were to use RaidZ1/2 would it be better to plan to expand later via upgrading the capacity of the drives one by one as I've heard or by making a second set and striping data?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, jackslosi said:

I was looking at Wd Reds and right now on newegg the 8TB is just about twice the price as the 4TB.  And I figured nas grade drives would be better for my use case as I will most likely have frequent reads from it.

Id personally get the cheaper external hdds, there about the same as reds, and work fine is a nas.

 

1 minute ago, jackslosi said:

I was looking at this card:

https://www.newegg.com/adaptec-8405-sata-sas/p/N82E16816103111

However I've been leaning much more towards using ZFS RaidZ1/2 for software raid after doing some research.  And if I were to use RaidZ1/2 would it be better to plan to expand later via upgrading the capacity of the drives one by one as I've heard or by making a second set and striping data?

Software raid will be much better here, id probably do mirrors in zfs, and just add pairs of drives later on as you need more space.

 

2 minutes ago, jackslosi said:

I'm new to virtualization as I've only done it maybe once before, but would proxmox be a good choice for doing what I plan?

Thats what I use and it works well, unraid might also be good here if you want a simple to upgrade os and care less about advanced features.

[jackslosi]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id personally get the cheaper external hdds, there about the same as reds, and work fine is a nas.

Would those be just as reliable as reds or other nas grade drives?  I can sacrifice price/performance if they will be less likely to breakdown.

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Software raid will be much better here, id probably do mirrors in zfs, and just add pairs of drives later on as you need more space.

I was originally looking at mirrors but my concern is the fact that I end up using only 50% of the capacity I purchased.  Which would also be faster or Read/Write?

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Thats what I use and it works well, unraid might also be good here if you want a simple to upgrade os and care less about advanced features.

What makes proxmox harder to upgrade?

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, jackslosi said:

Would those be just as reliable as reds or other nas grade drives?  I can sacrifice price/performance if they will be less likely to breakdown.

yea there about the same as wd reds, sometimes those externals even have reds in them.

 

1 minute ago, jackslosi said:

I was originally looking at mirrors but my concern is the fact that I end up using only 50% of the capacity I purchased.  Which would also be faster or Read/Write?

Mirrors are faster, and easier to expand, but you lose the capacity. If you want easy to expand id go unraid.

 

1 minute ago, jackslosi said:

What makes proxmox harder to upgrade?

proxmox uses zfs which is kinda picks about adding drives(you want to add anouther vdev, so mirror or raidz)

 

with unraid you can just add a drive and get more space.

[jackslosi]

7 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

yea there about the same as wd reds, sometimes those externals even have reds in them.

 

Mirrors are faster, and easier to expand, but you lose the capacity. If you want easy to expand id go unraid.

 

proxmox uses zfs which is kinda picks about adding drives(you want to add anouther vdev, so mirror or raidz)

 

with unraid you can just add a drive and get more space.

So if I'm understanding correctly even if I only use proxmox to virtualize let's say FreeNas I can't just create another vdev and stripe when using RaidZ1/2?  Isn't that what Linus does for his 100TB?  I've also heard that you can just swap out one drive at a time for larger capacity and have that work.  Would that not work either with proxmox?

 

 

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

4 minutes ago, jackslosi said:

So if I'm understanding correctly even if I only use proxmox to virtualize let's say FreeNas I can't just create another vdev and stripe when using RaidZ1/2?  Isn't that what Linus does for his 100TB?  I've also heard that you can just swap out one drive at a time for larger capacity and have that work.  Would that not work either with proxmox?

 

 

 

so if you using proxmox id do zfs on proxmox, and not use freenas.

 

you can add anouther raidz, but then you need to add 4+ drives at a time

 

You can upgrade the drives to bigger ones, but you won't get any more space untill all in a vdev are replaced.

[jackslosi]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

so if you using proxmox id do zfs on proxmox, and not use freenas.

 

you can add anouther raidz, but then you need to add 4+ drives at a time

 

You can upgrade the drives to bigger ones, but you won't get any more space untill all in a vdev are replaced.

Ok thanks for all the help. I think I only have one more question.  If I want a nas and a system to remotely build on with visual studio I'd use proxmox for the nas with a virtualized version of lets say ubuntu?  I thought proxmox was only meant for the virtualization part and couldn't do anything like being a nas.

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, jackslosi said:

Ok thanks for all the help. I think I only have one more question.  If I want a nas and a system to remotely build on with visual studio I'd use proxmox for the nas with a virtualized version of lets say ubuntu?  I thought proxmox was only meant for the virtualization part and couldn't do anything like being a nas.

proxmox is debian under the hood so you can run whatever you want on it, but id run the file share using a container on proxmox.

 

 

[jackslosi]

3 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

proxmox is debian under the hood so you can run whatever you want on it, but id run the file share using a container on proxmox.

 

 

As I said I'm new to virtualization but wouldn't having the nas, build server, and anything else i need running separate be better?  Prevent things from interacting when unwanted?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, jackslosi said:

As I said I'm new to virtualization but wouldn't having the nas, build server, and anything else i need running separate be better?  Prevent things from interacting when unwanted?

Id just run everything in a vm or container, thats should work well here, and won't cause issues.

[jackslosi]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id just run everything in a vm or container, thats should work well here, and won't cause issues.

Ok so just everything has it's own vm?  A vm for the nas, a vm for the build server, etc?

 

Edit:  Or a container if it can run on debian?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, jackslosi said:

Ok so just everything has it's own vm?  A vm for the nas, a vm for the build server, etc?

Well Id use a container for the nas, but yea, thats the idea.

[jackslosi]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

Well Id use a container for the nas, but yea, thats the idea.

Well then, sorry for my ignorance but, why a container for the nas but a vm for the build server?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, jackslosi said:

Well then, sorry for my ignorance but, why a container for the nas but a vm for the build server?

container is lower overhead and easier to share storage, so it frees up space from deleted files.

[jackslosi]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

container is lower overhead and easier to share storage, so it frees up space from deleted files.

So if I use a container for the nas it'll run faster?  Wouldn't that make the builds run faster too?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, jackslosi said:

So if I use a container for the nas it'll run faster?  Wouldn't that make the builds run faster too?

A little bit, id just play with it when you install it.

 

Mostly less ram usage.

 

You can run builds in a container aswell.