Teach me!

[Beeeyeee]

I know don't really know too much about NAS's. I know about raid configurations and that they can connect to your wifi somehow. But teach me what makes a good one and other things I should know. What do you use yours for?

[Electronics Wizardy]

How much you wanna spend?

 

For a home user the best options is normally a 2 or 4 bay synology or qnap nas.

[ARikozuM]

I use my UnRAID for steam servers and file sharing.

Do you have any gear lying around gathering dust?

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, ARikozuM said:

I use my UnRAID for steam servers and file sharing.

Do you have any gear lying around gathering dust?

Why use unraid?

[Godlygamer23]

My NAS was one that I built, and it runs FreeNAS as its operating system. 

 

Specs are below:

CPU: AMD A8-7600

RAM: 16GB of G.Skill memory running at 1.3GHz effective

Motherboard: I don't remember what board I have at the moment.

Storage: Four 1TB WD Blue drives, two of them in one RAID 1 configuration, and the other two in another RAID 1 configuration.

Power Supply: Enermax NAXN 750W that I had laying around.

Case: Some Rosewill case. 

 

Currently I use my NAS for Plex streaming(including transcoding), file serving(which includes movies, pictures, backups, etc), and as a Minecraft server. It runs 24/7. 

[ARikozuM]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

Why use unraid?

What do you mean? I have it and it connects to the hospital, my phone, etc. It's been the most unified experience so far.

If you have another OS I could try that doesn't cost per month or is below 100 I'll give it a try.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, ARikozuM said:

What do you mean? I have it and it connects to the hospital, my phone, etc. It's been the most unified experience so far.

If you have another OS I could try that doesn't cost per month or is below 100 I'll give it a try.

Try centos

 

Its free

 

You can do storage with snapraid+unionfs for pool

or md/btrfs/zol for storage

 

Use nfs/iscsi/samba for shares

 

Use kvm for virtualization

 

Use webmin for webinterface.

[ARikozuM]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Try centos

 

Its free

 

You can do storage with snapraid+unionfs for pool

or md/btrfs/zol for storage

 

Use nfs/iscsi/samba for shares

 

Use kvm for virtualization

 

Use webmin for webinterface.

Does it allow passthrough of individual cores and GPU's? Is it picky with NIC's?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, ARikozuM said:

Does it allow passthrough of individual cores and GPU's? Is it picky with NIC's?

With vm's you don't pass through a core. They work more like a process so you can share cores. 

 

You can do gpu passtrhgough and vgpu. You can also do virtual gpu's with 3d.

 

You can use any nic that works with linux(most of them). you can also use IPoIB or IPoFC if you want.

[Beeeyeee]

17 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

How much you wanna spend?

 

For a home user the best options is normally a 2 or 4 bay synology or qnap nas.

Honestly I just want it to work, I want a RAID 5 with at least 8TB redundant storage. 

 

But i I know how networking is, so whatever I have to pay to make it work, that's all I want! Haha:) reliability man. 

 

Ill just use it to render videos to and upload videos from. As well as keep pictures and music on it. I have a spare gigabit LAN port on my PC, so I was wondering if I can use a 250Gb SSD as a cache for faster transfers?

[Beeeyeee]

17 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

I use my UnRAID for steam servers and file sharing.

Do you have any gear lying around gathering dust?

As a matter of fact I do! A 4790k in fact.

Also a mobo, CPU cooler, pSU, ram And a case. Haha! Just need some storage!

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, Beeeyeee said:

Honestly I just want it to work, I want a RAID 5 with at least 8TB redundant storage. 

 

But i I know how networking is, so whatever I have to pay to make it work, that's all I want! Haha:) reliability man. 

 

Ill just use it to render videos to and upload videos from. As well as keep pictures and music on it. I have a spare gigabit LAN port on my PC, so I was wondering if I can use a 250Gb SSD as a cache for faster transfers?

Id get a basic nas like this.

 

No use for a ssd in a basic nas. You limited by gig eth anyways

 

Don't use the spare etherent port on your computer, plug it into your switch.

[ARikozuM]

2 minutes ago, Beeeyeee said:

As a matter of fact I do! A 4790k in fact.

Also a mobo, CPU cooler, pSU, ram And a case. Haha! Just need some storage!

Although I usually don't recommend i7's for NAS use, if you have it, work it.

Don't use an SSD as you'll likely use 10% of what it could do. I'd look into a dual NIC for faster speeds if you need it provided your RAID tramples the single port. Make sure your motherboard supports "wake on LAN" unless you want it on all day (I wouldn't).

[ARikozuM]

8 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id get a basic nas like this.

 

No use for a ssd in a basic nas. You limited by gig eth anyways

 

Don't use the spare etherent port on your computer, plug it into your switch.

You didn't post a NAS. Are you finding a Synology or something?

[Electronics Wizardy]

10 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id get a basic nas like this.

 

No use for a ssd in a basic nas. You limited by gig eth anyways

 

Don't use the spare etherent port on your computer, plug it into your switch.

This https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Station-Diskless-Attached-DS416j/dp/B019ZUR5WQ

[Electronics Wizardy]

6 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Although I usually don't recommend i7's for NAS use, if you have it, work it.

Don't use an SSD as you'll likely use 10% of what it could do. I'd look into a dual NIC for faster speeds if you need it provided your RAID tramples the single port. Make sure your motherboard supports "wake on LAN" unless you want it on all day (I wouldn't).

Second port won't help at all.

[Carlos1010]

I have the same question. Is there like a good video on YouTube that explains NAS? Thanks

[Beeeyeee]

18 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id get a basic nas like this.

 

No use for a ssd in a basic nas. You limited by gig eth anyways

 

Don't use the spare etherent port on your computer, plug it into your switch.

Like what?

is gigabit really that limiting? And why not?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Beeeyeee said:

Like what?

is gigabit really that limiting? And why not?

Its easy to use a switch so you don't have to setup ip config on the second port.

 

A single 3.5 is faster than gig, so no use for a ssd

 

https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Station-Diskless-Attached-DS416j/dp/B019ZUR5WQ

[ARikozuM]

9 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Second port won't help at all.

Is there a point in me having a dual 10-gig NIC?

[Beeeyeee]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Its easy to use a switch so you don't have to setup ip config on the second port.

 

A single 3.5 is faster than gig, so no use for a ssd

 

https://www.amazon.com/Synology-Station-Diskless-Attached-DS416j/dp/B019ZUR5WQ

Okay cool thanks! But I just wanna know how this whole thing works. So if I plug this into a switch, can I simply plug in the drives and access it like a regular drive from my PC? Will it always be on using power or only when it needs to be? Can I access it from outside my house like at college? I've just never had one.

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, Beeeyeee said:

So if I plug this into a switch, can I simply plug in the drives and access it like a regular drive from my PC?

You plug it in

 

Run a little program that finds it

 

Then you manage it with a web interface.

 

Then you can map a drive.

 

It will always be on, but it only pulls about 10-15w and will spindown drives when not needed.

 

You can access it anywhere if configured to do so.

[Beeeyeee]

23 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Although I usually don't recommend i7's for NAS use, if you have it, work it.

Don't use an SSD as you'll likely use 10% of what it could do. I'd look into a dual NIC for faster speeds if you need it provided your RAID tramples the single port. Make sure your motherboard supports "wake on LAN" unless you want it on all day (I wouldn't).

Okay. Well do you think I should pick up one of those NAS's people have linked or just buy the storage for this build? I feel like there will be too much power used for such a simple process. I'd rather save power honestly

[DragonTamer1]

1 minute ago, Beeeyeee said:

Okay. Well do you think I should pick up one of those NAS's people have linked or just buy the storage for this build? I feel like there will be too much power used for such a simple process. I'd rather save power honestly

If you are concerned about power you can simply drop in a lower power processor. Something along the line of an i3 or pentium would probably be fine for a NAS.

[ARikozuM]

Just now, Beeeyeee said:

Okay. Well do you think I should pick up one of those NAS's people have linked or just buy the storage for this build? I feel like there will be too much power used for such a simple process. I'd rather save power honestly

Get the one that @Electronics Wizardy mentioned. Always take the option that best fits your needs.