Consumer NAS or DIY NAS w/ Unraid/FreeNAS

[jacoporicci]

Hello everyone!

 

Preface: I love technology and I watch every single video of this stuff but I’m not a massive expert compared to some of you so please bear with me for incorrect stuff. Also, I’m Italian so my English might not be the best.

 

I'm in the process of updating the storage situation at home that also serves as an archive for all the past works.

 

On the personal stuff side: it’s the usual stuff, movies, family photos, documents and what not.

Work stuff: I’m a lighting designer so once a project is finished I usually make a folder with the project/artist name and store all the paperwork and also music and footage of the shows (this can’t get quite heavy as it’s full concerts recorded in 1080).

 

Little background: my solution now is a Lacie Big2 Nas with 2 x Enterprise WD Gold 4TB drives in Raid 1. (as pictured)

 

Now, first requirement is that I want access policies for work and personal stuff so I can also share the family stuff with the rest of the house (a media server like plex could be a plus).

For remote access I already have a VPN server running on my router but if I can run something on the new system to make it faster that would be cool.

Also, being a house it should be silent. (Yes, I f***d it up on the HDD choice I know)

 

Limitations: The space I have to put this system in is the one in the photo attached and each “module” measures w43 h33 d29 cm and I can get another module above if needed but it’s not very deep.

 

Reading a bunch on the forum I narrowed my option to these:
- Building a Unraid machine
- Bullding a FreeNas machine
- Buying a Synology (or another top of the line) NAS (maybe 4 or 6 bays) and fill it with 4 x 4TB drives in a Raid 10 so I can have a mix between speed and redundancy (I need advice here on best options, my knowledge is quite limited on this)

 

First option looks the most fun to me and probably easier but I know that Unraid sucks a lot of storage capacity and may not be the best option considering my physical space limitations. Also, is there even a case that fits in that space?

Second option will solve the Unraid problem of limiting the storage capacity but I heard that FreeNas is more complex (I don’t know if it’s more or less feature rich tho) and I’ll still need to find a case for that.

Third option would be the easiest one but, for the same capacity, is gonna be very expensive and I think the processors they use all seem very slow and outdated.

Also, which NAS? Synology alone has far too many options and I find it quite impossible to understand all the little nuances and differences between every model.

(Both the first two option will also draw more power from the wall I think but I won’t quote myself on this. There’s probably a proper way of building these machines without wasting resources)

 

Also to consider, I travel a lot for work. And by a lot I mean A LOT (like 170 flights a year) so I don’t have plenty of time to fix issues or to build the machine and tune it so I need something that’s as smooth as possible to setup without sacrificing performances because I don’t like compromises and I can go the extra mile if needed.

 

I think this is it for now, thanks to whoever will find the patience to deal with this and help me.

 

 

P.S. Please don't mess with me for my diy "server fan" type cooling solution lol

[WereCatf]

9 minutes ago, jacoporicci said:

Also to consider, I travel a lot for work. And by a lot I mean A LOT (like 170 flights a year) so I don’t have plenty of time to fix issues or to build the machine and tune it so I need something that’s as smooth as possible to setup without sacrificing performances because I don’t like compromises and I can go the extra mile if needed.

This alone is why I, personally, would recommend going with a commercial box; you get proper support in case you run into problems, you have warranty and all. Time is money and you really don't want to be losing days on trying to fix something. Also, buying a commercial box now doesn't mean you can't start practicing and learning about all the stuff underneath with parts picked off of eBay or whatever on the cheap -- if you one day outgrow your commercial box, you can then move to a DIY-solution with some skills and knowledge you've built up.

[jacoporicci]

3 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

This alone is why I, personally, would recommend going with a commercial box; you get proper support in case you run into problems, you have warranty and all. Time is money and you really don't want to be losing days on trying to fix something. Also, buying a commercial box now doesn't mean you can't start practicing and learning about all the stuff underneath with parts picked off of eBay or whatever on the cheap -- if you one day outgrow your commercial box, you can then move to a DIY-solution with some skills and knowledge you've built up.

Thanks for the input. And yes, I agree with you.

 

The thing that concerns me about getting a commercial box is scalability and expansion as my only way to expand my storage will just be getting bigger drives.

I don't know where I read that it's usually best practice to go with more drives of smaller capacity than with fewer high capacity drives but I might be wrong.

I think that thing said that usually higher capacity drives are more prone to failures but the technology has probably advanced on that side.

 

Also, I'm currently unable to pick a box because the options are too many while I roughly know what I should get to build a DIY solution.

Are you able to recommend a product or a category? Is there any website that compares this stuff?

 

DIY solution stops me because of the case, power draw and which OS to install. The actual build shouldn't take that long.

 

Thanks!

[WereCatf]

1 minute ago, jacoporicci said:

I don't know where I read that it's usually best practice to go with more drives of smaller capacity than with fewer high capacity drives but I might be wrong.

I think that thing said that usually higher capacity drives are more prone to failures but the technology has probably advanced on that side

I disagree with that notion: the more drives you have, the higher the chance that you'll failing drives.

 

3 minutes ago, jacoporicci said:

The thing that concerns me about getting a commercial box is scalability and expansion as my only way to expand my storage will just be getting bigger drives.

As far as I know, Synology does also sell expansion-boxes that are connected to the main NAS-box -- these expansion-boxes don't have much in them other than space for more drives, it's still the NAS-box itself that handles all the actual logic and software. This is to say, there is at least some scalability.

 

4 minutes ago, jacoporicci said:

Are you able to recommend a product or a category?

No, sorry. I have no personal experience with any commercial box, because I'm unemployed and have almost zero budget and thus have to go with DIY-route. Though, I would go with Synology just because they allow you to use Btrfs as the RAID-filesystem; Btrfs is more flexible than e.g. ZFS or other options and works fabulously in my experience. That said, for this question you should probably wait for other people to chime in. Like I said, I have no hands-on experience with any commercial box, so I don't feel particularly qualified to give any recommendations.

[Salacious B Crum]

I'll just say once my unRAID box was setup it's has never caused an issue in over 2 years running and is the most simple scalable solution I know of add a drive of any size up to your parity drive and done

[UrbanFreestyle]

I have to say i have had my FreeNAS box running flawlessly for a while now and upgared the OS as well as move to a new hardware build and it migrated with no issue at all!

Ad for complexity i think it is one of the easier systems to use. It can be as complex as you want it to be.

Web based control, or if you get fancy you can do it in shell etc.

[jacoporicci]

Thanks for all the responses guys. So, from what I undestand, there's no "best" solution that wins over the others.

 

In case I decide to go DIY, does anyone know of a case I can use for this build considering the space that I have?

[Salacious B Crum]

48 minutes ago, jacoporicci said:

Thanks for all the responses guys. So, from what I undestand, there's no "best" solution that wins over the others.

 

In case I decide to go DIY, does anyone know of a case I can use for this build considering the space that I have?

This looks like it may fit your needs:

Fractal Design Node 804 Black Window Aluminum/Steel Micro ATX  Cube Computer Case

 

[jacoporicci]

Thanks for this, definitely a solid option. The question now is: can you fit enough drives in a case this small?

 

Are you aware of any website that compares cases or where you can search by size/needs?

[Salacious B Crum]

1 hour ago, jacoporicci said:

Thanks for this, definitely a solid option. The question now is: can you fit enough drives in a case this small?

 

Are you aware of any website that compares cases or where you can search by size/needs?

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