[HN Gopher] The Cheapest NAS
___________________________________________________________________
The Cheapest NAS
Author : henry_flower
Score : 123 points
Date : 2024-07-03 16:45 UTC (6 hours ago)
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(TXT) w3m dump (sigwait.org)
| leros wrote:
| That's pretty cool. Fits their use case for sure. I would
| probably opt to spend a little more for a gigabit port. From what
| I've seen watching Jeff Geerling, you can setup a pretty
| reasonable performing NAS on something on these small SBCs.
| geerlingguy wrote:
| Any of the latest generation Arm SBCs is actually pretty
| adequate for NAS purposes, especially if that's _all_ you want
| to run on it.
|
| If you get a Pi 4 or Pi 5, or one of the Rockchip boards with
| RK3566 or RK3588 (the latter is much more pricey, but can get
| gigabit-plus speeds), you can either attach a USB hard drive or
| SSD, or with most of them now you could add on an M.2 drive or
| an adapter for SATA hard drives/SSDs, and even do RAID over 1
| Gbps or sometimes 2.5 Gbps with no issue.
|
| Some people choose to run OpenMediaVault (which is fine),
| though I have my NASes set up using Ansible + ZFS running on
| bare Debian, as it's simpler for me to manage that way:
| https://github.com/geerlingguy/arm-nas
|
| I would go with Radxa or maybe Libre Computer if you're not
| going the Raspberry Pi route, they both have images for their
| latest boards that are decent, though I almost always have
| issues with HDMI output, so be prepared to set things up over
| SSH or serial console.
| Scene_Cast2 wrote:
| Note that it doesn't look like it has ECC, so make sure to have
| backups. Fancy file systems like ZFS don't remove the need for
| ECC.
| risho wrote:
| been using zfs on my home nas without ecc for well over a
| decade and never had any problems. i've seen people claiming
| this since before i started using zfs and it seems so
| unnecessary for some random home project.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Unless you've verified hashes of your files over time you may
| be having problems and not realizing it.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| If a single byte flips in a 4-10GB video file, nobody will
| ever notice it.
|
| There aren't that many cases where it actually matters.
| loeg wrote:
| I believe ZFS does periodic checksuming (scrubbing).
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Strictly speaking I don't think ZFS itself does, but it
| is very common for distros to ship a cronjob that runs
| `zpool scrub` on a schedule (often but not always default
| enabled).
| ratboy666 wrote:
| They did mention ZFS, so verified hashes of each file
| block. I hope they are scrubbing, and have at least one
| snapshot.
| mmh0000 wrote:
| ZFS does nothing to protect you against RAM corrupting
| your data before ZFS sees it. All you'll end up with is a
| valid checksum of the now bad data.
|
| You can Google more, but, I'll just leave this from the
| first page of the openZFS manual:
| Misinformation has been circulated that ZFS data
| integrity features are somehow worse than those of other
| filesystems when ECC RAM is not used. This is not the
| case: all software needs ECC RAM for reliable operation
| and ZFS is no different from any other filesystem in that
| regard.[1]
|
| [1] https://openzfs.readthedocs.io/en/latest/introduction
| .html
| mafro wrote:
| Why would one snapshot help?
| risho wrote:
| i've heard people say this, like i said, since before i
| started using zfs and i've never had an issue with a
| corrupted file. there's a few things that could be
| happening: i'm the luckiest person who has ever lived,
| these bit flip events don't happen nearly as often as
| people like to pretend they do, or when they do happen they
| aren't likely to be a big deal.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I have some JPEGs with bit flips. I could tell because
| they display ugly artifacts at the point of the bit flip.
| (You can see the kind of artifacts I'm talking about
| here: https://xn--andreasvlker-cjb.de/2024/02/28/image-
| formats-bit...)
|
| I'd happened to archive the files to CD-R's incidentally.
| I was able to compare those archived files to the ones
| that remained on my file server. There were bit flips
| randomly in some of the files.
|
| After that happened I started hashing all of my files and
| comparing hashes when I migrate files during server
| upgrades. Prior to using ZFS I also periodically verified
| file hashes with a cheapo Perl script.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| If all you have on your Nas is pirated movies, then yes
|
| > when they do happen they aren't likely to be a big
| deal.
|
| But with more sensitive data it might matter to you. Ram
| can go bad like hdds can, and without ecc you have no
| chance of telling. Zfs won't help you here if the bit
| flip happens in the page cache. The file will corrupt in
| ram and Zfs will happily calculate a checksum for that
| corrupted data and store that alongside the file.
| jnovek wrote:
| > so make sure to have backups
|
| Can you (or someone) suggest a backup scheme? I have a 28TB
| NAS. Almost everything I've looked into is expensive or
| intended more for enterprise tier.
|
| Are there options for backup in the "hobbyist" price range?
| Dxtros wrote:
| if your talking cloud backup Wasabi (which uses S3) is the
| cheapest i could find it's pay as you go and they don't
| charge for upload/download. The pay as you go is $6.99 per TB
| which would be pretty pricey at 28 TB, but it's super cheap
| for my 4tb NAS.
| vunderba wrote:
| I have a NAS that has 18 TB effective storage, 36 TB
| mirrored. It all gets backed up to a B2 back blaze which is
| about six dollars per terabyte - but I'm currently only using
| about 8 TB at the moment so it's only about 50 bucks a month.
|
| So this might be on the higher end of the price range if
| you're using up all 28 TB uncompressed since that's about
| $168 per month though...
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| AWS, GCP, and Azure all offer cold storage for about $1 per
| TB per month. If you want any cheaper you need to build a
| second NAS.
|
| You could also take the awkward route and add one or two
| large drives to your desktop, mirror there, and back that up
| to backblaze (not B2).
|
| The other suggestions you got for hot storage strike me as
| the wrong way to handle this, if you're considering $80 per
| year per TB for _backups_ then just make another NAS.
| vunderba wrote:
| For the OP - be careful with AWS, the closest pricing to
| one dollar per terabyte is S3 Glacier Deep Archive and
| you'd be surprised how expensive a full restore can be in
| the event that you need to do so in terms of restore
| pricing, egress cost, etc.
|
| Another NAS isn't really a good solution (unless you can
| place it in a different house) - the goal of a cloud back
| up is that it's offsite.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| While true that it is something to be wary of, if you
| restore the entire backup at full cost every two years
| it's still cheaper than B2.
|
| The egress is only super high when you compare to how
| cheap $1 per month is.
|
| And I bet you can find somewhere offsite for a NAS for
| free or a tiny fraction of $150/month.
| barnabee wrote:
| I use Glacier alongside RAID with 4 drives so that I can
| recover from any single drive failure (which _will_
| happen) just by swapping in a new drive.
|
| Had this setup ~10 years and have had to replace a drive
| on two occasions but never needed to restore from
| Glacier.
|
| At this point even if I do need to do a Glacier restore
| one day it's still going to work out to be pretty
| economical.
| criddell wrote:
| The low-tech and not super resilient method is to buy a
| second 28TB NAS, put it in a different location and sync them
| periodically when you know your primary is in good shape.
|
| Back in the days of DVDs, I used to backup my 20GB drive onto
| DVDs. I wonder if you could do something similar today but
| instead of a bunch of 4GB optical disks, you would use 4 x
| 8TB drives?
| jjrh wrote:
| There is 'amanda'. It will split your data up if and you
| can rotate a bunch of disks.
|
| Used it years ago, we rotated disks every week or something
| and periodically would take one out of commission and get a
| new one.
|
| I believe you can mix and match storage mediums - like have
| your monthly snapshot write to tape.
| frutiger wrote:
| `zfs send --raw` of encrypted datasets to
| https://www.rsync.net/products/zfsintro.html.
| ahofmann wrote:
| That would cost at least 336 EUR per month.
| mmh0000 wrote:
| Yeah, rsync.net is pricey, but in reliable.
|
| I been using Interserver[1] + borg[2] for the last 3
| years. With the 10TB plan comes out to $25/mo, but if you
| prepay a year there's discounts.
|
| For the OPs use case, they have a 40TB plan for $84/mo.
| Still pricey, but, cheap compared to most other cloud
| storages. If you have data you care about, off-site
| backups are required.
|
| [1] https://www.interserver.net/storage/
|
| [2] https://borgbackup.readthedocs.io/en/stable/
| ssl-3 wrote:
| A cheap backup scheme:
|
| Buy the hardware to make a lightweight backup server. Make
| backups work with it. Take it to your friend's place along
| with a bottle of scotch, plug it in, and then: Use it.
|
| Disaster recovery is easy: Just drive over there.
|
| Redundancy is easy: Build two, and leave them in different
| places.
|
| None of this needs to happen on rented hardware in The Clown.
| mmh0000 wrote:
| https://www.interserver.net/storage/
| toast0 wrote:
| You pretty much need a second, similar system, hopefully not
| physically nearby. Tape doesn't scale down to home use, and
| optical is too small.
|
| My home NAS has several roles, so I don't have to backup the
| full capacity. The family shared drive definitely needs to be
| backed up. The windows desktop backups probably don't,
| although if I had a better plan for offsite backups, I would
| probably include desktop backups in that. TV recordings and
| ripped optical discs don't need to be backed up for me, I
| could re-rip them and they're typically commercially
| available if I had a total loss; not worth the expense to
| host a copy of that offsite, too; IMHO.
|
| You might do something like mirrored disks on the NAS and
| single copy on the backup as a cost saver, but that comes
| with risks too.
| yair99dd wrote:
| Check Storj distributed storage. Fraction of aws Storage*
|
| $0.004 Per GB/month
| hitsurume wrote:
| I know ECC is a special type of ram, but how does it help a
| NAS/Raid setup?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Data that's about to be written to disk often resides in ram
| for some period of time - bit flips in non-ECC ram can
| silently corrupt the data before writing it out. ZFS doesn't
| prevent this though it might detect it with checksumming.
|
| https://jrs-s.net/2015/02/03/will-zfs-and-non-ecc-ram-
| kill-y...
| eric__cartman wrote:
| If you're unlucky enough to experience memory errors in one
| of the intermediate buffers files go through while being
| copied from one computer to another an incorrect copy of the
| file might get written to disk.
|
| When running software RAID, memory errors could also cause
| data to be replicated erroneously and raise an error the next
| time it's read. That said if the memory is flaky enough that
| these errors are common it's highly likely that the operating
| system will crash very frequently and the user will know
| something is seriously wrong.
|
| If you want to make sure that files have been copied
| correctly you can flush all kernel buffers and run diff -r
| between the source and destination directory to make sure
| that everything is the same.
|
| It's probably way more likely to experience data loss due to
| human error or external factors such as a power surge than
| bad ram. I personally thoroughly test the memory before a
| computer gets put into service and assume it's okay until
| something fails or it gets replaced. The only machine I've
| ever seen that would corrupt random data on a disk was
| heavily and carelessly overclocked (teenage me cared about
| getting moar fps in games, and not having a reliable
| workstation lol)
| barnabee wrote:
| I wonder whether something like Syncthing would notice a
| hash difference with data corruption caused by such a
| memory error? And whether it'd correct it or propagate the
| issue...
| theshrike79 wrote:
| I've had non-ECC NAS systems for over 20 years and I've had
| exactly zero cases where memory corruption was an issue.
|
| It's OK for corporate systems, but complete overkill for
| personal setups.
| jjav wrote:
| > It's OK for corporate systems, but complete overkill for
| personal setups.
|
| My personal files are ultimately a lot more important to me
| and much more irreplaceable than any files at work.
|
| I'd never run a NAS without ZFS and ECC.
| mmh0000 wrote:
| As for my anecdote, I had a computer with 3 HDDs in a raid5,
| it had some of my very early programming projects and other
| various things which I wish I still had. But, I don't have
| any longer because something, I'm assuming memory, was
| silently failing and over 40% of the files were turned into
| jibberish and random binary bytes.
|
| I now use ECC EVERYWHERE now. My laptop, my desktop, my
| little home server. All ECC. Because, ECC is cheap and
| provides a lot of protection for very little effort on my
| part.
| transpute wrote:
| Which laptops support ECC?
| mmh0000 wrote:
| If you just want to buy something that'll "just work",
| The Lenovo P16[1], is ECC capable from the factory.
| Basically anything AMD "should" support ECC, it may need
| to be turned on in the bios. The problem with "should" is
| the trail-and-error you'll have to do to find a working
| combination, though, I personally I've never had many
| issues getting ECC working.
|
| [1] https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/laptops/thinkpad/think
| padp/th...
| ndiddy wrote:
| Note that AMD APUs prior to the 5000 series only
| supported ECC on the "PRO" models. For example, the Ryzen
| 3 PRO 3200G supports ECC, but the Ryzen 3 3200G doesn't.
| singron wrote:
| This is only 1 disk, so you are way more likely to lose all
| your data due to an ordinary single disk failure than to some
| ram errors.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| ECC for nerds is like gear heads arguing about motor oil.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Only if one set of gear heads was arguing that you don't
| really need it.
| jstanley wrote:
| When people set up these NAS's, how are they accessing the files?
| NFS? SFTP?
|
| And how are you accessing it when away from home? A VPN that
| you're permanently connected to? Is there a good way to do NAT
| hole-punching?
|
| Syncthing kind of does what I want, in that it lets all my
| computers sync the same files no matter what network they're on,
| but it insists on always copying all the files ("syncing")
| whereas I just want them stored on the NAS but accessible
| everywhere.
|
| Nextcloud kind of does what I want but when I tried it before it
| struck me as flaky and unreliable, and seemed to do a load of
| stuff I don't want or need.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Mostly CIFS, I use tailscale to put my laptop inside of my home
| network wherever I go.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Depends on your use case. I just use scp and access the NAS box
| through Tor when traveling, so I don't have to open up any
| ports.
| universa1 wrote:
| Regarding the connectivity: tailscale... So far I am happy with
| them and the free plan hasn't been kneecapped afterwards (so
| far).
| stavros wrote:
| Even if it is, you can run Headscale on a server somewhere
| (or just pay).
| BXlnt2EachOther wrote:
| IIRC they have improved the free plan over time, and even
| mailed users suggesting the relaxed limits might enable
| moving from paid to free tier [1].
|
| I barely use my tailnet now, might have more of a case for it
| later, but they are near the top of my "wishing you success
| but please don't get acquired by a company that will ruin it"
| list.
|
| [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35615848
| nomius10 wrote:
| An easy solution for the VPN part would be Zerotier /
| Tailscale. IIRC Zerotier uses chacha20 for encryption which is
| faster than AES, especially for a power-strapped SBC.
| jnovek wrote:
| I tried to build a setup like this with OpenVPN years ago and
| OMG.
|
| Tailscale/Wireguard has been such a big leap forward.
| Vrondi wrote:
| I usually just use SMB shares within my LAN. It serves my
| modest needs. I have used WebDAV or FTP in the past. Depends on
| the specific use. Away from home, VPN is essential. Too risky
| to just forward ports these days.
| jnovek wrote:
| Answering your questions in order: - On mine I
| use NFS and SMB which covers most possible clients.
| - I use an ssh bastion that I expose via Tailscale to connect
| to mine remotely. So a VPN but it's wireguard based so it's
| not too intrusive. I have a gig up, though, YMMV. -
| My NAS has 28TB of space. I'm still working on backup
| strategy. So far it just has my Dropbox and some ephemera I
| don't care about losing on it. - Regarding other
| services: I use Dropbox pretty extensively but these days 2TB
| just isn't very much. Plus it gets cranky because I have more
| than 500,000 files in it.
|
| This is my personal setup but I think it's a bit different for
| everyone.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| Wow! What kind of data are you generating that 2TB 'just
| isn't very much'? (Video editing?) All my personal files take
| up around 10GB in my Google Drive.
| Koffiepoeder wrote:
| One example: If you take picture with a decent camera in
| raw format, your storage gets filled ridiculously fast. A
| short travel with a mere 200 pictures can easily be like
| 25M*200=5G. Another example: if you're doing any kind of AI
| training (especially picture based), the training materials
| can easily amount to many terrabytes.
| galkk wrote:
| Google takeout of my personal pictures from Google photos
| takes 600gb+ alone. And I'm not avid picture taker (that's
| the archive since 2000s, I did upload a lot of my old dslr
| photos to google photos when it was unlimited). I guess if
| people make more personal videos, they will use more space
| easily
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| I think we probably have different definitions of 'not an
| avid picture taker' :D
| generalizations wrote:
| Depends on what you need. I have a NAS with syncthing, and it's
| a combination.
|
| - I use a lot of different folders within syncthing, and
| different machines have different combinations to save space
| where they aren't needed; the NAS has all of them.
|
| - on the LAN, sshfs is a resilient-but-slower alternative to
| NFS. If I reboot my NAS, sshfs doesn't care & reconnects
| without complaint...last time I tried to use it, NFS locked up
| the entire client.
|
| - zerotier + sshfs is workable-but-slow in remote scenarios
|
| Note I'm mostly trying to write code remotely. If you're trying
| to watch videos....uh, good luck.
| sockaddr wrote:
| > And how are you accessing it when away from home?
|
| I usually just use zerotier for this, it's extremely
| lightweight
| aborsy wrote:
| I use Tailscale, but I'm amazed that the size of the ZeroTier
| app is 2.6 MB versus 23MB for Tailscale.
|
| How come ZeroTier is 10X smaller?
| avtar wrote:
| Tailscale uses Go https://tailscale.com/security#tailscale-
| is-written-in-go which might explain the larger sizes.
|
| A cursory look through
| https://github.com/zerotier/ZeroTierOne shows more C++ and
| some Rust. Not sure how much static linking is involved
| here.
| system2 wrote:
| NFS + SMB.
|
| Also I use SonicWall VPN to connect to my house to be in the
| network so it covers most of it. I also use Synology
| QuickConnect if I need to use the browser without VPN which
| also covers most urgent needs. Haven't failed me over a decade
| and my NAS also syncs with Synology C2 cloud which is also
| another peace of mind. I know it might sound unsafe a little
| having files stored on the cloud but it is what it is.
|
| I won't play with half-baked library dependent homebrew
| solutions which cost way more time and cause headache more than
| commercial solutions. I won't open ports and forget them later
| either.
| 486sx33 wrote:
| Synology does all that. I run two one at home one at the
| office, my only complaint is that it's a bit "idiot proof"...
| both other times the web based GUIi is great. Also has free
| software that punches through NAT and dynamic IPs works great
| (quickconnect.to) I use sftp, media server, primarily
| tgv wrote:
| Synology can even serve as a macOS Time Machine.
| jll29 wrote:
| I second that wholeheartedly, and I also run two 19" Synology
| NAS units, one at home and one at the office. All smooth
| sailing so far.
|
| A colleague uses a QNAP instead, which he claims is better
| price/storage ratio at the expense of lesser software
| usability, and I'm okay paying a bit more of my own money (at
| home) as well as taxpayers' money (at work) on better
| usability, because it will likely pay off by saving time in
| the long run, as I currently don't have a dedicated sysadmin
| in my team.
|
| The only question mark to date was when installing with non-
| Synology (enterprise SSD) drives I got a warning that mine
| were not "vendor sourced" devices, and decided not to take
| any risk and replace all drives with "original" Synology ones
| just because I can. This may be just disinformation from
| Synology to make their own customers nervous, and it reminds
| me of the "only HP toner in HP laser printers" discussion,
| but it would have been a distraction to investigate further,
| and my time is more valuable than simply replacing all
| drives.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/synology/comments/zhwif2/my_new_na
| s...
| kstrauser wrote:
| Beefier models (I have a DS923+ with the RAM bumped up to
| 32GB) can run Docker containers, too. I have all kinds of
| things running on mine.
| pmontra wrote:
| SFTP for my other Linux devices, SMB by Samba for the rest of
| the world (mainly Android.)
| joeyrobert wrote:
| Seafile + Samba + OpenVPN is my stack. I use Seafile for a
| dropbox style file sync on my devices, and Samba for direct
| access. OpenVPN for remote access on all devices. Works quite
| well.
| ein0p wrote:
| I'd replace OpenVPN with WireGuard at this point - WireGuard
| is a lot faster and the client software is pretty good. All
| of my Apple devices are set up to use VPN 100% of the time
| automatically if I'm not on home WiFi.
| accrual wrote:
| Has anyone compared Seafile with Syncthing? I'm quite happy
| with Syncthing but always interested in trying out new
| setups.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Tailscale works perfectly for remote access, I do "backups"
| with rsync over VPN nightly to an offsite location.
|
| Syncthing over Tailscale is running smoothly too, it doesn't
| matter where my machines move, they find each other using the
| same internal address every time.
| loeg wrote:
| I just use NFS on the LAN. No remote access.
| rcarmo wrote:
| SMB + Tailscale and SyncThing for me. Both combos just work,
| although admittedly SMB over mobile connections _and_ a VPN can
| be iffy.
| ssl-3 wrote:
| I use Syncthing to synchronize my smaller datasets between my
| laptop, my phone, and my NAS. This covers all of my productive
| and creative scenarios.
|
| On the LAN, I just use SMB. It is adequate for my needs.
|
| For remotely accessing my collection of Linux ISOs, I use Plex.
| accrual wrote:
| This is pretty much my setup as well!
|
| Syncthing for a small collection of files I want available
| from all my machines - commonly used documents, photos, stuff
| I want quickly backed up or synced automatically.
|
| Samba for my long term mostly-read rarely-write storage with
| larger files, ISOs, etc.
| xiwenc wrote:
| Same here. I have wireguard vpn for the few times i need it
| to tunnel my traffic through home or need to access larger
| files not sync'ed with syncthing.
|
| My nas is a Synology. Vpn is also used so that i can continue
| sending timemachine backups back home when i'm traveling.
| lizknope wrote:
| I use sshfs. If you can login via ssh then you can mount the
| remote server through ssh as a local drive.
|
| https://github.com/libfuse/sshfs
|
| For added security I limit my home ssh access to a handful of
| trusted IPs including my cloud VM. Then I set up an ssh tunnel
| from my hotel through the cloud VM to home. The cloud VM never
| sees my password / key
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Is there any NAS software that just lets you add disks whenever
| you want, while using them for redundancy if they aren't full? I
| wish something was as easy as adding another disk and having the
| redundancy go up, then removing a disk and having the redundancy
| go down.
| loeg wrote:
| Windows Storage Spaces kinda works like this.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| If you just want a mirror, that's easy (I like ZFS but any
| software RAID should let you add/remove mirrored disks easily).
| If you mean mirror until it's full then automatically convert
| to striped, I don't think anyone does that and I don't think
| anyone would want that, because people who care enough about
| protecting their data to use a mirror don't want it to
| automatically stop being a mirror.
| pwg wrote:
| Mergerfs plus SnapRAID comes close to your ask:
|
| https://perfectmediaserver.com/02-tech-stack/mergerfs/
| kcb wrote:
| Unraid is probably the closest to that.
| woleium wrote:
| The image builder for this board looks dodgy af:
|
| "The distribution builder is a proprietary commercial offering as
| it involves a lot of customer IP and integrations so it cannot be
| public."
|
| Seems like a supply side injector to me!
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Yeah, reading through the linked
| https://hub.libre.computer/t/source-code-git-repository-for-...
| really sours my opinion of Libre Computer - shipping with UEFI
| so you can just use generic images is a huge advantage, but
| creating your default images (and firmware! which is worse,
| IMO) with a proprietary process is such a big red flag that it
| makes me question the whole thing. _If_ the firmware is FOSS
| and you can build it yourself using only FOSS inputs (which isn
| 't obvious to me from that discussion), then you could do that
| and any old image (again, UEFI to support generic images is a
| huge win) and it would be fine, but the fact that that's not
| the default really makes me question the values/culture of the
| company.
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| My secret protip: old Fujitsu desktop/nuc PCs. At least in
| Germany (Europe?) they are cheap on ebay since a lot of
| businesses use them and upgrade on a regular schedule.
|
| If you care about power consumption like I do, you can Google
| "$model energy consumption white paper" which contains very
| accurate data about idle usage, for example
| https://sp.ts.fujitsu.com/dmsp/Publications/public/wp-energy...
|
| In one case I had a nuc where on Linux after enabling power
| saving features for the sata controller, idle usage even fell to
| 5W when the pdf claimed 9.
|
| Having an actual pc instead of a random sbc ensures best
| connectivity, expandability, and software support forever. With
| almost all sbcs you're stuck with a random-ass kernel from when
| the damn thing was released, and you basically have to
| frankenstein together your own up-to-date distro with the old
| kernel because the vendor certainly doesn't care about updating
| the random armbian fork they created for that thing.
| djupblue wrote:
| Parkytowers is site about repurposing thin clients of various
| kinds, it's a goldmine for finding out power consumption, Linux
| compatibility, possible hardware mods, etc:
| https://www.parkytowers.me.uk/thin/hware/hardware.shtml
| jtwaleson wrote:
| I'm looking for a machine like this (affordable, small, low
| power usage) with 64GB memory. If anyone has any
| recommendations I'm all ears.
| transpute wrote:
| Some Lenovo Tiny models,
| https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/lenovo-
| thi...
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Old business laptops work well
| k8sToGo wrote:
| I have a nuc but how do I connect 6 hdds to it?
| edmundsauto wrote:
| Add a disk shelf :). Basically supplies power and data
| cabling for just a rack of drives. Those get interfaced with
| the NUC via a host based adapter.
| justin_murray wrote:
| Can you elaborate? What's the economic way to do this?
| inhumantsar wrote:
| Used PCIe HBA cards pulled from retired servers can be
| found on eBay for ~$50. They have external facing ports
| and/or internal facing ports. External is the way to go
| if you're using a small form factor PC like a business
| class Lenovo. These are almost all low profile cards, so
| they will fit in any SFF PC with a PCIe slot. There are
| special cables which will connect one port on the card to
| four SATA- or SAS-based disks.
|
| The PC's PSU will need SATA power on its cables or else
| you'll need to scavenge a separate PSU and use the paper
| clip trick (or better yet, a purpose built connector) to
| get it to power things on without a motherboard
| connected.
|
| Once you have all of that, then it's just a matter of
| housing the disks. People have done this with everything
| from threaded rod and plastidip to 3D printed disk racks
| to used enterprise JBOD enclosures (Just a Bunch Of
| Disks, no joke).
|
| Total cost for this setup, excluding the disks, can
| easily be done for less than $200 if you're patient and
| look for local deals, like a Craiglist post for a bunch
| of old server hardware that says "free, just come haul it
| away".
|
| Check or r/DataHoarder on reddit or ServeTheHome's blog
| transpute wrote:
| Thunderbolt/USB4 -> NVME enclosure -> M.2-to-SATA OR M.2-to
| PCIe to HBA-to-SATA.
| stragies wrote:
| I was under the impression, that for most (popular) chip
| families, like RockChip, Allwinner, Amlogic, some assorted
| Broadcoms, .. the Mainline linux kernel support has mostly been
| sorted for, and it's only the stragglers like Hisilicon,
| Huawei, Most Broadcom, Qualmcomm where mainline support is not
| on their priority list?
| numpad0 wrote:
| Maybe, but regular distros on x86/x64 thin clients are even
| more sorted out. GPIOs are better handled through an Arduino
| clone over USB than with scripts running on inherently laggy
| desktop OS.
| shadowpho wrote:
| Depends what you mean by "kernel support". In general it does
| not really include decent idle power optimizations even on
| say raspberry pi.
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| I've also heard the same advice with Dell/HP SFF PC's. BTW,
| your link requires a username/password login.
| mech422 wrote:
| ODroid H-series SBC's are standard Intel CPUs with (at least
| for the H2+) Linux supported hardware for pretty much
| everything (haven't tried running X on them though :-P )
|
| they are my favorite 'home server' currently...cheap, standard,
| and expandable - oh! And SILENT! :-)
| green-salt wrote:
| My local electronics resale shop had the Dell versions of
| these, they make great hypervisors!
| loeg wrote:
| The _cheapest_ NAS is usually just taking some old desktop PC and
| repurposing it headless. :-)
| rasz wrote:
| or even better - old laptop
| criddell wrote:
| Or a Raspberry Pi you have kicking around:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l30sADfDiM8
| derekdahmer wrote:
| Assuming power is free. Even small wattage differences add up
| quickly for a server running 24/7 and those older CPUs can be
| very inefficient.
| rasz wrote:
| >total 43
|
| So the price of used Sandy Bridge or newer laptop (optionally
| cracked screen) with 1Gbit ethernet, USB3, couple SATA, couple
| PCIE lanes (ExpressCard and mpcie slots) and build-in UPS.
| haunter wrote:
| Personally I like the Dell/HP/Lenovo Micro PCs. For ~200EUR you
| can get one with an i5-10500T, 16GB DDR4, and 256GB NVMe SSD and
| it can be upgraded to 64GB RAM with lot of storage (1x NVMe + 1x
| 2,5")
| cchance wrote:
| I mean you can get one for 50$ on ebay with similar ram and hd,
| just with a 6700 or 8700 which is more than enough for a NAS
| lol
| dariosalvi78 wrote:
| I had an old RaspberryPi model 2 around, installed
| OpenMediavault, a couple of USB HDs and off I went [1]. Amazing
| what you can do with old hardware!
|
| [1] https://bochovj.wordpress.com/
| cchance wrote:
| I mean wtf wouldn't you just buy a G1 Elite Slice, or any of the
| various NUC's you can buy for 50$ and get you a full Intel
| computer with a 6700 or 8700 cpu 4-8gb of ram and a full drive
| slot, and normally extra space for a m2 and a gbit nic lol
| nfriedly wrote:
| My NAS is just my old gaming PC - I swapped out the GPU with a
| more basic one, and I add another hard drive or two every time
| storage gets low. It works great and costs me very little in both
| money and time.
|
| I'm currently at 46TB or storage, and I recently threw in a
| 2.5Gbps NIC when I upgraded the rest of my home network.
|
| (Mine certainly uses more electricity than the one in the
| article, but I pay $0.07/kwh, and run a few docker images that
| take advantage of the added performance, so I'm happy with it.)
| superkuh wrote:
| The entire concept of network attached storage is kind of cargo-
| cult in the vast majority of personal use cases. Just put the
| drives in your computer. Fewer abstraction layers, fewer
| problems, cheaper, faster, less fragile, easier to debug and fix
| if problems do happen. It's just not as hip or cool sounding as
| "NAS".
| transpute wrote:
| _> Just put the drives in your computer_
|
| NAS works with phones, tablets and laptops with egregiously
| expensive, non-expandable storage.
|
| On iOS/iPadOS, use SSH/SFTP to workaround business-model-
| challenged "Files" client.
| superkuh wrote:
| A NAS is not magical. It is just a rather limited computer.
| Anything a NAS can do so can a normal desktop, and it'll do
| it better. Sharing files over a network is one of these
| things. Managing the files is way, way, better since you just
| use your normal desktop file manager rather than some NAS web
| stuff that'll break due to CA TLS issues in a few years.
| transpute wrote:
| Among many features, ZFS offers storage snapshots,
| deduplication and file integrity.
| ac29 wrote:
| Desktop computers are becoming increasingly uncommon. I'm a
| pretty technologically inclined person and I havent owned a
| desktop in years. For most people, laptops have been more
| than capable enough for their needs for a long time. And
| for general purpose computing, smartphones are pretty
| heavily used too.
| k8sToGo wrote:
| Good idea to put your backup on the same machine! /s
| superkuh wrote:
| Or just put drives in all your computers and back-up between
| instead of buying a limited (potentially proprietary) NAS
| computer just for the purpose and having it being one central
| point of failure.
|
| I just don't understand the reluctance of people to put
| storage in their actual computer(s).
| senkora wrote:
| A NAS is nice for serving local media files to a smart TV.
| That's my main use case.
| ajkshfkjsh wrote:
| The thing I don't get is, why do I need to drop $1000 on a
| Synology machine just to do this? Let's say I want to create
| a setup with 8x18TB drives or something, do I really need to
| spend $1000 just to make this accessible to a couple clients
| at once (say a smart TV + another machine in the house)?
|
| Right now I have Plex running on a raspberry pi hooked up to
| an 8tb external HDD. Works fine, but I want to scale up to
| the 100-200TB range of storage, and it feels like the market
| is pushing me towards spending an inordinate amount of money
| on this. Don't understand why it's so expensive.
| kstrauser wrote:
| This is my rationale for my specific circumstances:
|
| With my NAS, I pay for the box, install the drives, and it
| Just Works with basically no maintenance other than me
| clicking the upgrade button every few months when it emails
| me that an OS update is ready.
|
| I could build a similar system myself, but the hardware
| isn't _that_ much cheaper. Cases, PSUs, hot swappable drive
| mounts, and all that add up quickly. And when I 'm done, I
| have to install the OS, read the docs to see how the
| recommended configuration has changed since last time I did
| this, and periodically log in to look at it because it
| doesn't have nearly as much monitoring set up out-of-the-
| box.
|
| Given the choice between the small amount of money I'd save
| vs the amount of time I'd have to invest in it, I'd rather
| pay the money and outsource the hassle to the NAS maker.
|
| As to why I don't just hang a bunch of drives off the
| computer I'm already using:
|
| - Backups. If my Mac dies, I can restore it from the Time
| Machine on my NAS.
|
| - Noise. The NAS has busier fans than my Mac. It's in a
| different room from where I spend most of my time.
|
| - I run Docker stuff on it. I don't want those things
| running 24/7 on my desktop.
|
| - Availability. I want to reboot my desktop occasionally
| without worrying if it'd interrupt my wife watching
| something on Plex.
| ac29 wrote:
| 2 bay Synology NAS' are less than $200, 4 bay are less than
| $400. Yes, if you need 144TB of storage the NAS unit is
| going to be more expensive, but the drives themselves are
| the majority of the cost.
| test6554 wrote:
| Everyone is an expert at storage as long as everything is working
| great. It's when stuff fails that you feel like an idiot and
| wished you had one extra hdd in your RAID array or a secondary
| NAS you were backing up to or one extra site you offloaded your
| data to.
|
| I don't do cheap any more. But I can see the appeal.
| rovr138 wrote:
| These are all strategies and the price point of the unit
| doesn't affect it.
|
| Need extra drives, buy extra drives. Need extra NAS for
| backups?, buy an extra NAS. Need an offsite copy?, buy space
| and get an offsite NAS and drives for an offsite copy.
|
| Price point of the unit doesn't change anything here.
| dudus wrote:
| Synology sure provides an expensive but complete package for
| home office and enthusiasts.
|
| Just buy it and be done with it. It's certainly more
| expensive than DIY it yourself using off the shelf components
| and things bought out of online classifieds. But for most
| people that have no interest in tinkering or don't know what
| to do, just paying the price of a complete solution might be
| worth it.
| MobileVet wrote:
| Totally. If you enjoy the config and have the time, by all
| means.
|
| If you just want it to work, by a Synology. Mine has been
| running strong for several years now and has docker images
| for my unify controller, pi hole and Plex. Took minimal
| time to setup and none since that day. Love it
|
| Edit: And my encrypted cloud backup in Backblaze B2 was
| equally as easy to setup and costs a whopping $2 a month
| for every family pic, video and doc.
|
| I have triple backup, with mirrored RAID for one of those.
| No effort, maximum peace of mind.
| russdill wrote:
| Kids today have no idea just how often drives failed back in
| the day.
| earleybird wrote:
| IBM deathstar[0] drives in a collection of RS6000's is still
| too fresh in my memory :-)
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deskstar
| brnt wrote:
| I sync a few single external drives every week or two over good
| old USB. In house sneaker net. Tools like Freefilesync make
| this easy and fast (and give me a manual check so accidental
| deletes are visible too).
|
| Very cheap, has served me for more than a decade now. Highly
| recommended. I dealt with dataloss through drive failing, user
| error and unintentional software bugs/errors. No problem.
| szundi wrote:
| Do 2x cheap then, you need backup anyway.
| p1necone wrote:
| I think this depends on what you're storing though.
|
| Business documents, accounting records, family photos - sure
| you probably want to keep them safe.
|
| But if my NAS is just 20TB of pirated movies and TV shows (not
| that I'm saying it is...) then I'm much more comfortable buying
| the cheapest drives I can find and seeing how it goes.
| squarefoot wrote:
| I'm happy with XigmaNAS (BSD) on a used mini-pc and a multiple
| USB3.1 HDD enclosure. Speed is excellent as is stability. Having
| some memory and CPU cycles to spare, I also am playing with Home
| Assistant Supervised run as a Virtualbox VM inside of it.
|
| Regarding that LaFrite board, I mailed a while ago LoverPi, which
| appears to be the only one selling it, to ask them if they accept
| PayPal, but got no reply. Does anyone know of a distributor in
| the EU or a different worldwide seller?
| rullopat wrote:
| Ignorant person question here: "why they make NAS servers without
| ECC memory?"
| dylan604 wrote:
| non-ECC is cheaper. i can't think of any other possible reason.
| anything else would be a lie to cover up being cheap
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Because they barely do anything. It's like like there's 4TB of
| RAM in there churning away at multiple databases. It's
| debatable if you even need it in enterprise servers.
| kstrauser wrote:
| You absolutely, positively, 100% need it on anything that
| carries data you care about. I personally consider it a hard
| requirement for a NAS. I don't want to lose data just because
| a cosmic ray flipped a bit somewhere.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > 100Mb may seem like a joke nowadays, but the main purpose of
| such a toy NAS for me is to keep a copy of a directory with ~200K
| small files. Having 1Gb would only marginally improve the syncing
| speed even if the SBC supported USB 3.0.
|
| He's wrong here. The most important thing with small files is
| latency, and a 1000M network will have _significantly_ less
| latency than a 100M network.
|
| Anyone running TimeMachine over network knows what I mean - local
| attached storage is blazing fast (particularly SSDs), wired
| network storage is noticeably worse performing, and wifi is dog
| f...ing slow.
| 0cf8612b2e1e wrote:
| So I am a network dummy, but why would 100M vs 1000M have a
| difference in latency unless the pipe was saturated?
| jamesy0ung wrote:
| It's ironic they call themselves Libre Computer, but don't
| release the tools to allow users to create their own images
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