NAS for private usage

[Ibubeta]

Hello everybody,

 

I'm looking into buying/building my own NAS for my home network.

It's main purpose would be data storage. We are taking family pictures with different phones but would like to access all of them without sending them to each other (so save them to the NAS).

Furthermore I'd like to digitalize some of my documents and save them on my storage (because of that I'm not into cloud storage like google drive).

I guess transcoding videos would be a nice plus.

 

There is just so much stuff to read online. I've found Synology and QNAP. Even those have so many different models which make it hard to chose.

And building my own? Is that worth it?

 

Are there "go to" NAS models for private users?

 

 

Edit: For example the QNAP 251b or SYnology 218?

[Jarsky]

Ready Builts are the best way to go for most home users. 

Synology & QNAP are great for most home users as they come with their own App Center's and have docker support as well. 

Essentially the difference between models generally comes down to number of drives, the type/power of the processor, and additional features that you probably wont need such as expansion for 10gbit network or m.2 nvme drive support. 

 

You'd probably just look at standard 4 bay appliances. 

For the Synology that would be a DS418 or DS418play (DS418j is the ARM model, and not compatible/suitable for heavy use like Plex). DS918+ is the quad core intel if youre considering running something CPU intensive on it like a VM or Plex. 

 

The equivelant for the QNAP range woul dbe the TS-431X2 & TS-451+ (TS-431P again is not suitable for heavy use)

 

The operating systems on these devices give you easy ways to share including Cloud sharing, GUI management, collaborative tools for documents etc...so are quite feature rich outside of *just storage* like on most custom builts. 

[Ibubeta]

Most Synology models only come with 2 GB of RAM. I've heard that 4GB would be better if you access with 2 users?

I feel like 2 bay models would be enough considering how much photos you would need to put on them to fill it up.

 

 

The TS-251b-4g and the TS-253BE with 2g cost almost the same. The 53 has a better cpu but the 51 more RAM. Makes it tough to chose

[Jarsky]

14 minutes ago, Ibubeta said:

Most Synology models only come with 2 GB of RAM. I've heard that 4GB would be better if you access with 2 users?

I feel like 2 bay models would be enough considering how much photos you would need to put on them to fill it up.

Yes the 918+ comes with 4GB. but it depends on what you're doing. 

4GB isnt required for 2 people to use the NAS, but you would require that memory if you're processing tasks and have like docker apps etc...running. 

Simple SMB/CIFS sharing, uses very little CPU/Memory resource. 

[phoenixflower]

On 8/4/2019 at 11:30 PM, Ibubeta said:

Most Synology models only come with 2 GB of RAM. I've heard that 4GB would be better if you access with 2 users?

 

To help with this process.  If you want an easy to use system that is easy to setup and will help you through most of the network drudgery then you should roll with Synology.  I can never recommend a QNAP device because of their list of security exploits and slow reactionary time on top of always somehow bottlenecking their lower end models in some dumb way (I'm sure it's not on purpose).

 

It doesn't take a terrible amount of RAM to run a NAS.  It's just shared file storage, and since you haven't specified the desired speed, I'll just assume you want 1 GbE.  Running 1 GbE is definitely feasibly on the synology platform with minimal storage.

 

You should look into the differences between a SAN and a NAS and decide which one you want and why.

 

Main differences:

a SAN has 3 things that will distinguish it from a NAS.  They support iSCSI, they provide de-duplication (if multiple files appear in different folders, it only appears once on the disk even though it appears multiple times in the filesystem), and it provides compression.  Those are the 3 major hallmarks of a SAN. 

 

A NAS provides a centralized location to access files.

 

When it comes to storage solution, the biggest factor that you will face is Instruction Operations Per Second (IOPS), this is what makes your filesystem on your SSD feel so snappy and why so many people had the "wowza" factor when going from HDDs to SSDs.  You'll definitely want to compliment your HDDs with some type of NVME or Optane Caching Mecanism.

 

If you want to do something like play video games off a NAS, you should just throw that idea out the window.  You'll never be able to get enough IOPS with the protocols involved.

 

If you want to do something like live edit videos on the NAS, this is also an idea you should throw out the window. 

 

These two workloads have something in common, which is what you'll have to look into.  The average file size they're reading off the disk in random work loads.  You'll find that 4 KB, 8 KB, and 16 KB are the most common file chunks read while using productivity applications and playing videos games.  In contrast 128 KB, 256KB, and sometimes 512 KB (depending on if you pre-fetching* enabled or not) are some of the average workloads associated with watching videos.

 

 

 

You'll definitely want to look into your workload.

You can upgrade the RAM on select Synology models to 16 GB if you really want.

 

If you're just using it for viewing random documents from time to time and watching videos without transcoding.  You'll find synology products will be perfect for you in the normal price ranges.  If you save videos with a video codec of h.264 and an audio codec of WAV in an MP4 container  you'll probably never need to transcode

 

If any of the workloads concerning video gaming/live editing pertain to you then you'll find your self stark in the middle of SAN territory.

 

As for the amount of bays for a synology model.  It really depends on how much you want to benefit from your hard drives in terms of TB/$.  4 Bays will have a decent return, but 6 or 8 bays are normally when you see higher margins.  As The recommended RAID for 4 bays is RAID 10 which will use 50% of your storage for parity while 6 bays and 8 bays open themselves up to RAID 6 where you only sacrifice two drives worth of storage for parity.