48TB NAS Help!

[majicire]

Hey team, hoping this community can provide some high quality advise regarding my data storage problem.

 

What's the best solution for a digital movie collection of 48TB? Average file size of .mkv 4k blurays is 60GB.

 

Currently I have a total of four 12TB hard drives (two Western Digital Gold and two Western Digital Ultrastar drives, 3 of the 4 drives are completely full) installed via SATA to an Asrock Z390 Taichi motherboard which pulls double duty as my gaming PC. Note, nothing is currently in RAID, so I have zero redundancy, and I've been getting a lot of latency and stutters when playing back files via JRiver Media Center. Obviously this isn't ideal. Note, I do not have any experience with UnRaid or other similar programs.

 

I was thinking of buying a Synology DiskStation DS1819+ which has 8 drives bays and is expandable through additional external enclosures, and upgrading it with a 10GB add-in networking card (my Z390 motherboard also has a 10GB LAN port), 32GB of RAM, and an M.2 NVME cache drive. Probably going to pay around $1,500 for that. This could be populated with more 12TB drives in RAID 5.

 

Is this a good option, or should I try building a server? I can build PCs but I don't have any experience with choosing RAID cards or running RAID software.

 

Thoughts?? Thanks!

[Radium_Angel]

5 minutes ago, majicire said:

Thoughts??

Pre-builts are the way to go. Your Synology choice is solid. 

[SupaKomputa]

Prebuild nas is easier to manage, but for cost savings, upgradability and performance a pc server is probably better.

[majicire]

Just now, SupaKomputa said:

Prebuild nas is easier to manage, but for cost savings, upgradability and performance a pc server is probably better.

That sounds about right.  Unfortunately I have no experience choosing components or configuring software.  Is there a how-to guide for dummies on this topic?  I didn't see anything current on youtube.  

[SupaKomputa]

Look up Freenas or OpenMediaVault tutorials.

All you need is a working PC with anything your required (raid support, 10gbps etc).

here's a small comparison:

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/freenas-openmediavault-amahi-nas-software/

[Radium_Angel]

19 minutes ago, majicire said:

I have no experience choosing components or configuring software. 

Then go pre-built. A NAS is a "set it and forget it" device. You don't want to spend your time constantly having to tinker with it to get it "just right"

 

[HanZie82]

Also as a side question, is there any particular reason you keeping the file size at 60GB? (Would think that would put a great strain on the network when watching also.)

Im pretty sure you could halve that without to much visual loss. Hell if you could quarter it and im pretty sure 90% of the ppl wont see any difference. (Dont get me wrong, i've no clue how but i am curious.)

As for the NAS, putting drives into a Synology is pretty easy, and they work pretty well.

[majicire]

37 minutes ago, SupaKomputa said:

Look up Freenas or OpenMediaVault tutorials.

All you need is a working PC with anything your required (raid support, 10gbps etc).

here's a small comparison:

https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/freenas-openmediavault-amahi-nas-software/

Thanks.  I looked up the link you sent.  Its a very high level overview comparison.  The server build guide is just a PC build guide that's out of date and doesn't include a RAID card...  Not quite specific enough for what I need.

[majicire]

28 minutes ago, HanZie82 said:

Also as a side question, is there any particular reason you keeping the file size at 60GB? (Would think that would put a great strain on the network when watching also.)

Im pretty sure you could halve that without to much visual loss. Hell if you could quarter it and im pretty sure 90% of the ppl wont see any difference. (Dont get me wrong, i've no clue how but i am curious.)

As for the NAS, putting drives into a Synology is pretty easy, and they work pretty well.

Yeah, I've got a $20,000 home theater, so I'm quite confident I actually could tell a difference.  Keeping file size as is because I want to keep the digital info lossless.  

[mariushm]

You can buy a case with lots of 3.5" drive bays (or 5.25" bays, to use 5.25 to 3.5" adapters), buy a 8 port or 16 port hba adapter card if you don't have enough sata ports, and a 10g ethernet card and setup unraid or freenas and job done

 

 

[majicire]

1 hour ago, mariushm said:

You can buy a case with lots of 3.5" drive bays (or 5.25" bays, to use 5.25 to 3.5" adapters), buy a 8 port or 16 port hba adapter card if you don't have enough sata ports, and a 10g ethernet card and setup unraid or freenas and job done

 

 

So RAID cards aren't needed?  

 

Future Me: yup, a google search seems to confirm that a RAID card should not be used if running FreeNas.  Thanks, I didn't know that.  So the only difference between a regular gaming PC and a personal server is that the OS will be different (FreeNas/Unraid instead of Windows) and potentially an HBA add in card if I have more hard drives than my motherboard has SATA ports??

 

If so, this seems like something I could tackle.  The only learning curve would be learning how to configure the RAID OS?

[StDragon]

Freenas just enumerates all the drives and creates a software RAID via ZFS. So no, a RAID card isn't required.

 

I agree with the above, just go with a Synology. It's pretty rock-solid with DSM (the OS) always getting patched and updated.It's also a heck of a lot easier to work with.

Depending on the unit, Synology does allow for migration to newer units.

 

If you're hard set on trying FreeNAS, play around with the OS as a VM. Just create a bunch of virtual disks within the VM and then create a RAID array within FreeNAS. It's really for you to learn and become comfortable with. If it's not your thing, at least you know that ahead of time before sinking money in hardware that won't be of much good to you.

 

Bonus: After creating the array within the FreeNAS VM, go ahead and destroy one of the virtual disks. Now re-add a new one and figure out how to rebuild the array to full fault tolerance again. Should this had been a real scenario, at least you'll know how rebuild the array without worrying about messing something up. ZFS really is robust however.

[Killer2600]

RAID isn't a Backup!!!

I don't know how many movies you have on your hard drives or the amount of time you spent putting it there but RAID isn't a Backup. If your RAID-5, terrible choice for the amount of data btw - RAID-6 is recommended over 5 - goes belly up in a more than a simple hard drive dies way you could lose the entire array. If you don't want to or can't recreate the files/data you have saved, BACK IT UP!!!

[StDragon]

3 hours ago, Killer2600 said:

RAID isn't a Backup!!!

I don't know how many movies you have on your hard drives or the amount of time you spent putting it there but RAID isn't a Backup. If your RAID-5, terrible choice for the amount of data btw - RAID-6 is recommended over 5 - goes belly up in a more than a simple hard drive dies way you could lose the entire array. If you don't want to or can't recreate the files/data you have saved, BACK IT UP!!!

THIS! 

 

A backup implies an additional copy of the data elsewhere; be it in the cloud or on another storage unit.

 

RAID provides hardware fault-tolerance for high availability, that's it. But a true backup solution will provide document versioning that you can go back to in addition to a full recovery in the event of ransomware or a physical catastrophic failure. A natural disaster (fire, flood, hurricane, etc) won't help you if the primary storage unit is destroyed.

 

[Dutch_Master]

+1 on getting yourself a true backup solution.

 

One suggestion is to purchase a Storinator (from these guys), copy everything over locally then head off with the device to a local data centre which offers co-location. Takes a day or so for it to get 'live' but then you can access it remotely via the internet. (VPN, so secure)

 

Not cheap but if you're willing to drop 20k for a home theatre the cost of having piece of mind about a true backup for your data is probably priceless

 

Just me tuppence!