Pi5 NVME NAS Possibilities??

[mehtaman]

Hi,

 

I have an old HP N54L micro server that’s been ticking away since 2011-2012 which is due an upgrade.

 

It current has Windows Server 2019 installed with Storage Space setup for data storage.

 

I’m happy to sync the data over to a new NAS but my question is, can I build a decent NVME NAS using a Pi5 as the controller/OS?

 

If so what cases, boards, hats, OS etc are the best to go for to setup a NAS?

[Kilrah]

That server is long in the tooth, but it'll still run circles around a Pi.

 

There are much better mini PCs to use for that nowadays.

[mehtaman]

4 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

That server is long in the tooth, but it'll still run circles around a Pi.

 

There are much better mini PCs to use for that nowadays.

Can’t fault the N54L one bit, it’s been online 24/7 for over 10yrs only ever rebooting once a month for MS patching.

 

I guess I just have the itch to modernise my setup. Maybe a QNAP or Asustor off the shelf NAS is simpler to setup but I like the idea of building my own NAS to.

[Bersella AI]

The Raspberry Pis are extremely constrained in available ports or bandwidth for I/O, and would be of limited value for a Flash-only NAS. Alternatively, semi-custom motherboards from Minisforum, such as AD650i or AR650i, can be considered. Among those, the AD650i board has 3 M.2 ports built in, with expandability for 6 M.2 ports, but not for PCIe slots; while the AR650i has 4 M.2 ports & a PCIe slot available. Both are sized in mini-ITX, and can be fitted in the HP N54L chassis.

[Alex Atkin UK]

It just doesn't make much sense to use as a NAS, given a PC using slightly more power can handle more drives and faster ones.

eg https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/N100DC-ITX/ or a MiniPC.

[jaslion]

10 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

It just doesn't make much sense to use as a NAS, given a PC using slightly more power can handle more drives and faster ones.

eg https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/N100DC-ITX/ or a MiniPC.

Astock also has a matx version which can be very handy if needing more expansion too!

[Alex Atkin UK]

30 minutes ago, jaslion said:

Astock also has a matx version which can be very handy if needing more expansion too!

Not sure how that works though as the N100 has relatively few PCIe lanes, but a lot more than the RPi 5 which only has one.

[jaslion]

41 minutes ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

Not sure how that works though as the N100 has relatively few PCIe lanes, but a lot more than the RPi 5 which only has one.

9 lanes so good for a x4 and x1 slot or more

[Alex Atkin UK]

21 minutes ago, jaslion said:

9 lanes so good for a x4 and x1 slot or more

There's some nice NAS boards on Aliexpress too.

eg https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006384381683.html?

[jaslion]

3 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

There's some nice NAS boards on Aliexpress too.

eg https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006384381683.html?

Looks decent if all you need is 6 sata ports

[m9x3mos]

2 hours ago, jaslion said:

Looks decent if all you need is 6 sata ports

I like the 4 nic ports too. But you petri much need to 3d print a case for that. 

[Alex Atkin UK]

8 hours ago, m9x3mos said:

I like the 4 nic ports too. But you petri much need to 3d print a case for that. 

Not the case, its only an IO panel that isn't mentioned.  Otherwise it fits in any ITX case.

[digitalscream]

17 hours ago, Alex Atkin UK said:

It just doesn't make much sense to use as a NAS, given a PC using slightly more power can handle more drives and faster ones.

eg https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/N100DC-ITX/ or a MiniPC.

How fast does it need to be, given the fact that it's probably going to sit on a Gbe or 2.5Gbe network? Even a single SATA SSD could easily saturate that.

 

In fact, talking of SATA, I'd be tempted to go with one of those M.2 -> 4 x SATA adapters, and get a few ex-datacentre Intel S36x00 MLC SSDs in there. They usually show up with less than 10% endurance used, which means they've still got an order of magnitude more life in them than any consumer drive you could get hold of. Oh, and the 1.6TB ones are peanuts these days.

 

For what it's worth, I've currently got 8 of those drives running my main storage array, and they do the job perfectly...in fact, they'll probably outlive me if given the chance.

 

A Pi5 could easily handle a 4-drive ZFS array well enough to saturate a 2.5Gbe network link.

[Alex Atkin UK]

4 hours ago, digitalscream said:

A Pi5 could easily handle a 4-drive ZFS array well enough to saturate a 2.5Gbe network link.

While yes, a single PCIe 2.0 lane will easily max that out, you'll end up with a spider web of cables to hook up a 2.5Gbit NIC, the drives and power them.  I'd find that incredibly annoying to deal with and increases the chance of accidentally unplugging something while the system is live.

 

You also get much better performance the more RAM you have.  I recently upgraded my NAS/server to 128GB RAM as I don't just use it for file storage, I run other things on there too.  Its good to be able to expand as and when needed, rather than be limited to what you originally bought.  Being able to keep a ton of filesystem meta data in RAM lets me do things like generate thumbnails in RAM to save storage space, parse huge directory structures quickly, have web interfaces, potentially run a Windows VM with plenty of RAM, etc.

 

I just feel the price of the Pi5 is at the point where its not really worth it over a PC, unless you need the GPIO pins for something or are going to use it as-is as a tiny PC for really basic stuff, as 8GB RAM is the bare minimum IMO.

[mehtaman]

Some really helpful and interesting comments here, thank you all.

 

The idea of using a Pi and Flash storage was for low noise, as I’ve made my current setup pretty quite with silent fans in the case and PSU. 
There’s only a little noise from the drives when in use.

 

I’ll take a look into some of the boards suggested above. 

[digitalscream]

On 1/28/2024 at 5:00 AM, Alex Atkin UK said:

While yes, a single PCIe 2.0 lane will easily max that out, you'll end up with a spider web of cables to hook up a 2.5Gbit NIC, the drives and power them.  I'd find that incredibly annoying to deal with and increases the chance of accidentally unplugging something while the system is live.

 

You also get much better performance the more RAM you have.  I recently upgraded my NAS/server to 128GB RAM as I don't just use it for file storage, I run other things on there too.  Its good to be able to expand as and when needed, rather than be limited to what you originally bought.  Being able to keep a ton of filesystem meta data in RAM lets me do things like generate thumbnails in RAM to save storage space, parse huge directory structures quickly, have web interfaces, potentially run a Windows VM with plenty of RAM, etc.

 

I just feel the price of the Pi5 is at the point where its not really worth it over a PC, unless you need the GPIO pins for something or are going to use it as-is as a tiny PC for really basic stuff, as 8GB RAM is the bare minimum IMO.

I can't disagree with anything you've said there - I just personally find the Pi an intriguing bit of kit, especially now that the 5 is approaching desktop performance and capable of (finally) not being the bottleneck.

 

I've actually just downgraded from 256GB to 64GB RAM in my server, because it also let me upgrade the CPU from a Xeon E5-2696v2 to a Ryzen 3600 - the single-threaded performance was holding me back, and I was rarely using all 12 cores. Took a big of jiggery-pokery to make everything run nicely in 64GB, but it was definitely worth it.

 

In that context, the SATA SSDs do make sense, because 8 of them with a fast CPU gives NVMe-like performance with ludicrous endurance; having run a few SSDs to the end of their lives, and because it's my main data archive, I'm absolutely paranoid about failures.

[Alex Atkin UK]

2 hours ago, digitalscream said:

I've actually just downgraded from 256GB to 64GB RAM in my server, because it also let me upgrade the CPU from a Xeon E5-2696v2 to a Ryzen 3600 - the single-threaded performance was holding me back, and I was rarely using all 12 cores. Took a big of jiggery-pokery to make everything run nicely in 64GB, but it was definitely worth it.

I went with an i3 12400 as the idle power is lower than Ryzen.  It worked out well as it meant I could use all four RAM slots without any black magic incantations that Ryzen often needs for more than two sticks.

 

I do kinda wish I went with a bit higher to get the e-cores but it doesn't seem to pull any more power than the 8600k it had before.

I'm not a fan of RAID personally, I'd rather have the simplicity of doing 1:1 backups to identical sized drives.