Best software for custom NAS

[HanZie82]

Hello wonderful fellow LTT forummers!

I am building a custom NAS, i will list all the parts i have. Even tho i dont think it matters much, but better safe then sorry.

Specs:

• Asus Prime X470 Pro
• AMD Ryzen 1700X
• G.Skill Aegis DDR4 16GB ^{(F4-3000C16D with Hynix chips)}
• PCIe 3.0 to SATA 3.0 6Gb/s Expansion Card ^{(cheapo chinesey stuff have not to much hope of it working correctly)}
• Ati Radeon HD 5750 (just for HDMI out, but needs an upgrade. Suggestions welcome)
• 120GB Dram SSD
• 4x 4TB WD red ^(new)

 

(Old drives, may or may not be used anymore)

• 500 GB Sata drive
• 2x 320GB Sata drive
• 1TB IDE drive ^{(will not be used anymore)}
• 160GB Sata

 

 

Now on to my actual question. Its just about which OS/software is best to run.

What i hope to get out of it;

I want a NAS thats easy to manage and stable. But also it need a Windows 10 enviroment (VM or direct dont care).

1. To run an OBS stream (using the file plugin to play files for 24/7).
2. I want the 4x 4TB drives to be used with a parity disk.
3. Maybe have the other disks added on non parity/non raid mode. (but thats a luxury not a necessity)

 

 

What i have already found;

As the NAS needs to be built yet (i'm lazy shoot me), i'm still open to see what the best OS is.

 

1. I have seen UnRaid which looks very nice, but i'm not willing to spend that kind of money. For my NAS. (Sorry but its just not in my budget, ie i CANNOT afford).
2. I have seen the Synology OS, which looks nice but i don't think might be robust enough for custom NAS whit some actual power. (also piracy so lets not mention it further).
3. I have read a little bit about btrfs but im not sure seeing all the talk about bugs and stuff.
4. I've also seen talk about SnapRaid but that feels more like an after tought backup solution then a stable base for NAS stuff.
5. Also there's OpenMediaVault but i feel like that is lacking features.
6. Checked out TrueNas, looks good not sure if it supports 4disks/1parity ^(edited)

 

 

 

But i dont know what to choose.

I want the power of the 1700X to be used well. Good part to the video streaming, and some for the NAS so its not slow.
I dont need the best speeds but around the diskspeed is nice.
I will however be using a lot of the storage on it.
Would be nice if adding storage later on is easy.

If all is well i will use it headless and only RDP (remote desktop) in when there is an error.

 

The hardware is unlikely to change, its stuff i had lying around (besides the motherboard i bought specificly for this (cus it had 6 SATA ports + nvme))

 

 

My appreciation will be great for the one pointing me in a direction i've not seen.
Or give me conclusive advice why i should use one over the other.
Im kinda lost because of all the options.

 

Any kinds of questions or things i missed in the post, please point them out. Thank you very much for all your efforts!

[tikker]

I know you said it's out of budget, which is completely fine, but just to mention I have been running Unraid Basic for 2 years or so know with 5x 4TB and a parity drive and I must say I do love its ease of use and flexibility. I can't really comment on the VM aspect other than that I played around a little bit with an Ubuntu VM a couple of times. It was straightforward to set up, but I didn't do much with it in the end, so no idea if e.g. streaming from a Windows VM would have associated oddities to take into account (it mostly does Plex duty). They offer 30 day trial keys, so you could check it out and judge the value that way perhaps. I don't know if it can do drives separate from the array though.

[HanZie82]

3 minutes ago, tikker said:

I know you said it's out of budget, which is completely fine, but just to mention I have been running Unraid Basic for 2 years or so know with 5x 4TB and a parity drive and I must say I do love its ease of use and flexibility. I can't really comment on the VM aspect other than that I played around a little bit with an Ubuntu VM a couple of times. It was straightforward to set up, but I didn't do much with it in the end, so no idea if e.g. streaming from a Windows VM would have associated oddities to take into account (it mostly does Plex duty). They offer 30 day trial keys, so you could check it out and judge the value that way perhaps. I don't know if it can do drives separate from the array though.

I DO NOT have the cash flow to keep paying that, so its kind out of the question...

It might be very nice and all, its just to expensive.

But thank you for your information.

[tikker]

1 hour ago, HanZie82 said:

I DO NOT have the cash flow to keep paying that, so its kind out of the question...

It might be very nice and all, its just to expensive.

But thank you for your information.

I see I missed the brackets behind the first point, and only interpreted the not willing to part. I guess you have everything tightly budgeted out already. Also as a side-note I see you mention "keep paying that"; Unraid is not a subscription, it's a one time payment per server/key.

 

1 hour ago, HanZie82 said:

My appreciation will be great for the one pointing me in a direction i've not seen.

Maybe have a look at TrueNAS as well? It's the successor of FreeNAS and from what I can see still free. No direct personal experience, but I've read nice things about it and seems to have a good and active community behind it. That's my 2 cents, I'll make way for the NAS big boys now

[HanZie82]

Even if someone can point me in the right direction for something like a comparison or whatever.

Its just to much to see what the actual differences are, and i dont know which is 'better' for my use case.

 

 

_{ps also added GPU which i forgot.}

[Curufinwe_wins]

5 hours ago, HanZie82 said:

Even if someone can point me in the right direction for something like a comparison or whatever.

Its just to much to see what the actual differences are, and i dont know which is 'better' for my use case.

 

 

_{ps also added GPU which i forgot.}

There isn't a single OS that would fail to meet your respective needs which is the hard part. I'm rather partial to FreeNas/TrueNas, just note that upgrading down the road can range from completely seemless to hours of headaches and you will have no idea which is which until you try.

[Electronics Wizardy]

7 hours ago, HanZie82 said:

Even if someone can point me in the right direction for something like a comparison or whatever.

Its just to much to see what the actual differences are, and i dont know which is 'better' for my use case.

 

 

_{ps also added GPU which i forgot.}

Id say unraid would work best here, easy to use, easy to expand. Easy to add vms to do those other tasks.

 

But since you dont' want to pay, your gonna have to tinker more. Id go something like proxmox on the host. Use zfs for storage, and create vms as needed.

[HanZie82]

1 hour ago, Curufinwe_wins said:

There isn't a single OS that would fail to meet your respective needs which is the hard part. I'm rather partial to FreeNas/TrueNas, just note that upgrading down the road can range from completely seemless to hours of headaches and you will have no idea which is which until you try.

Seeing the hardware (except GPU) is quite powerfull the only upgrades would be the harddrives.
It does seem Truenas might be the way to go. I've paroosed their community abit and it seems questions get answers most of the time. (almost like here. )
Thank you very much for your input.

36 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id say unraid would work best here, easy to use, easy to expand. Easy to add vms to do those other tasks.

 

But since you dont' want to pay, your gonna have to tinker more. Id go something like proxmox on the host. Use zfs for storage, and create vms as needed.

Its more a qeustion of possibilitys instead of what i want, unfortunatly.
Altho i've nly seen subscription based payments, i have been told there is also a 1time buy option, which is shall have to investigate.

Maybe i can manage that.

And to be honest that last thing i would do to get support is call them up. So to be fair i dont want/need to spend anyhting on that.
(I rahter spend hours googling and looking trough forums, maybe ask in a forum. But thats about it.)

I will for sure chekc out the Proxmox, Zfs combo.

Thank you very much for sharing your knowledge.

 

 

In all fairness, i have yet to really make up my mind.

As when i install it, it will most likely run a while.

So i'd rahter do the research now.

TrueNas does look really good for now. Has most the things i want.

 

But most important is the ability to have 4 drives and 1 of them a parity disk. The ability to add disks without needing to add them to the same 'pool'.
And the ability to pass trough a GPU to a VM would also be very nice.
Also i dont mind the OS it runs on to be Windows 10. I know howto make that stable without the hinderence of forced reboots and such. (Kinda is how the current install is, but no failure protection. (Just like a PC with many Disks.)

[Electronics Wizardy]

5 minutes ago, HanZie82 said:

Altho i've nly seen subscription based payments, i have been told there is also a 1time buy option, which is shall have to investigate.

 

Unraid is only a one time fee, $60 bucks for the lifetime of the system(not sure the exact length)

 

5 minutes ago, HanZie82 said:

It does seem Truenas might be the way to go. I've paroosed their community abit and it seems questions get answers most of the time. (almost like here. )
Thank you very much for your input.

Id probably stay away from truenas as it doesn't handle the vms well.

 

6 minutes ago, HanZie82 said:

But most important is the ability to have 4 drives and 1 of them a parity disk. The ability to add disks without needing to add them to the same 'pool'.

Unraid is really good at this. True nas doesn't do a single disk parity, and only does split parity, and doens't allow easy expansion.

 

6 minutes ago, HanZie82 said:

Also i dont mind the OS it runs on to be Windows 10. I know howto make that stable without the hinderence of forced reboots and such. (Kinda is how the current install is, but no failure protection. (Just like a PC with many Disks.)

You could just run windows 10. Storage spaces allows for parity with easy adding of a drive. Id do that if you know windows best

[HanZie82]

14 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Unraid is only a one time fee, $60 bucks for the lifetime of the system(not sure the exact length)

 

Id probably stay away from truenas as it doesn't handle the vms well.

 

Unraid is really good at this. True nas doesn't do a single disk parity, and only does split parity, and doens't allow easy expansion.

 

You could just run windows 10. Storage spaces allows for parity with easy adding of a drive. Id do that if you know windows best

Ah yes, i think i've not looked well enough, i tought it said pricing is on a per year basis. (its not its per server)
I might need to re-read stuff i read when tired, hahaha.

Thanks for the tip about VM's its kind of a deal breaker for me tbh.

Yeah thats also where im sometimes get stuck on, i dont always really understand the options some of the Nas OSs have.

 

Oh and good tip about the Windows thing, i do know it reasonably well. (Altho i have to admit the Storage Spaces stuff if kinda new to me.)
I will try that first, since i then dont have to install a new OS.