Home storage

[Footy]

Hi

I am looking for a solution to my home storage needs.

 

I currently mainly use storage for backups of old computer installs that I cant be bothered to go through and clean up.

I need to reinstall my PC again soon and want to centralise all these into one place.

 

I am looking for software that can present over iSCSI, NFS and CIFS, perhaps has some VPN functionality for when I am not home.

 

I would like a mini server or a small chassis that can handle 4 x 8TB disks

 

Suggestions?

 

 

 

[kevink817]

Are you looking for a off-the-shelf solution, or trying to put something together yourself?

 

If off-the-shelf, take a look at both Synology's and QNAP's offerings in the 4-8 bay range as they mostly offer iSCSI, NFS, CIFS/SMB support with the ability to act as a VPN endpoint if you configure it.

 

If you are looking to set something up yourself, FreeNAS is an excellent open source FreeBSD distro designed specifically for something like this. And there are some excellent mini-ITX/mATX options for putting the hardware together out there.

[unijab]

Build what you want, run a Linux distro.

[Footy]

Are you looking for a off-the-shelf solution, or trying to put something together yourself?

 

If off-the-shelf, take a look at both Synology's and QNAP's offerings in the 4-8 bay range as they mostly offer iSCSI, NFS, CIFS/SMB support with the ability to act as a VPN endpoint if you configure it.

 

If you are looking to set something up yourself, FreeNAS is an excellent open source FreeBSD distro designed specifically for something like this. And there are some excellent mini-ITX/mATX options for putting the hardware together out there.

 

I want simplicity, I can easily setup linux to do everything I need.

However after work I don't want to have to mess about I just want something simple to work.

I was considering QNAP but I only really deal with enterprise storage and I don't much about brands like QNAP

FreeNAS is also an option I could build a micro PC to run it but do I get much advantage over a QNAP?

Another option I thought of was a USB Disk array and connect it to a Raspberry Pi 

 

Was looking for some opinions and perhaps some war stories to help in my decision making process

[kevink817]

Coming from enterprise storage myself (Netapp mainly), I appreciate the ease of setup and use of my Synology DS1515+. Currently its running 5x3TB WD Reds for ~12TB usable storage utilizing Synology's hybrid RAID. It hosts all of my movies, photos, and music and gives me near gigabit speeds on transfer to and from it. I have 2 of the NICs in a LACP aggregate on my home network VLAN for load-balancing connections from multiple devices, and the other two NICs also in a LACP aggregate on my storage VLAN where my ESX box connects to its datastore LUNs via iSCSI, and my software share via NFS. Its running 3 Windows Server VMs, A Windows 7 client VM, and a couple Linux VMs all as part of my home testing/study lab, and it hardly breaks a sweat.

 

I have heard a lot of good things about the QNAPs as well, but I ultimately went with the Synology because of the hybrid raid.

 

FreeNAS would provide all the same benifets, plus the self-satisfaction factor of putting it all together yourself. ZFS also provides additional features like deduplication, snapshots and clones, and a few others.  However, I would not recommend running FreeNAS/ZFS without ECC memory, due to its lack of error detecting ability or recovery tools.

[Footy]

Coming from enterprise storage myself (Netapp mainly), I appreciate the ease of setup and use of my Synology DS1515+. Currently its running 5x3TB WD Reds for ~12TB usable storage utilizing Synology's hybrid RAID. It hosts all of my movies, photos, and music and gives me near gigabit speeds on transfer to and from it. I have 2 of the NICs in a LACP aggregate on my home network VLAN for load-balancing connections from multiple devices, and the other two NICs also in a LACP aggregate on my storage VLAN where my ESX box connects to its datastore LUNs via iSCSI, and my software share via NFS. Its running 3 Windows Server VMs, A Windows 7 client VM, and a couple Linux VMs all as part of my home testing/study lab, and it hardly breaks a sweat.

 

I have heard a lot of good things about the QNAPs as well, but I ultimately went with the Synology because of the hybrid raid.

 

FreeNAS would provide all the same benifets, plus the self-satisfaction factor of putting it all together yourself. ZFS also provides additional features like deduplication, snapshots and clones, and a few others.  However, I would not recommend running FreeNAS/ZFS without ECC memory, due to its lack of error detecting ability or recovery tools.

Thanks,

I think Ill go take a look at Synology and QNAP.

Personally I come from the EMC, 3PAR storage world, used to work with netapps a few years back but stopped when I found the write cache bug.