DIY NAS advise

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boland

475 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1124206 8-Sep-2014 12:33

Also, keep in mind that a HTPC has much higher requirements regarding CPU / GPU, increasing the power consumption.
Therefore 2 boxes will most likely decrease your electricity bill.

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gundar

488 posts

Ultimate Geek

Trusted

#1124266 8-Sep-2014 13:23

paulmilbank: Depends on what you are expecting your nas to do. If you just use it for a basic file share, then a simple shared folder/drive on your HTPC is probably fine. If you are installing an out of the box NAS OS to get more advanced features, then you won't be able to have an HTPC with it.

But if your HTPC and 80% of your storage requirements were in the same physical chassis, that would make life a lot less complex and a lot cheaper. I did this for a few years. I had to use XBMC on Ubuntu to get what I wanted (great storage, good share, heaps of service options, low power, good hardware support etc.) and it worked well, but all that hardware in the HTPC box made for a loud box. Of course, these days: 6GB disks, rather then my old HTPC into which I tried to fit 3 x 2TB disks.

Based on my experience, I suggest you look at why the NAS is slow and see if fixing that one thing will save you a lot of time and money. I use diskbench to work out why and where in terms of performance, if the NAS allows for a terminal or shell, it may be worth your while to look through it logs...

I do believe that most NASs allow you to remove a mirror and this process leaves one disk behind, but please don't try this unless you are sure and you have a backup someplace of everything.

If you are in Hamilton, I have a 3TB USB external drive I can lend you for a week for a box of Kingfisher.

TL;DR A new NAS might not solve your problem, cheaply.

boland

475 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1126145 10-Sep-2014 21:50

gundar:
paulmilbank: Depends on what you are expecting your nas to do. If you just use it for a basic file share, then a simple shared folder/drive on your HTPC is probably fine. If you are installing an out of the box NAS OS to get more advanced features, then you won't be able to have an HTPC with it.

Based on my experience, I suggest you look at why the NAS is slow and see if fixing that one thing will save you a lot of time and money. I use diskbench to work out why and where in terms of performance, if the NAS allows for a terminal or shell, it may be worth your while to look through it logs...

I do believe that most NASs allow you to remove a mirror and this process leaves one disk behind, but please don't try this unless you are sure and you have a backup someplace of everything.

If you are in Hamilton, I have a 3TB USB external drive I can lend you for a week for a box of Kingfisher.

TL;DR A new NAS might not solve your problem, cheaply.

It's just slow, because a high CPU load. CPU load is constant 100%, load is at minimum 3 (everything works smooth), increases to 7 (still works okay) to >10 (really slow). Load increases, because I run sabnzbd and sickbeard and e.g. a scan,search, extract, unrar, or whatever is running.

I live in Wellington, but thanks for the offer!

I will not try the "remove mirror"-option, I'll back up everything to local storage.

And I'm not going for Freenas, but OpenMediaVault. My configuration is not recommended by Freenas, because Freenas recommends server hardware with ECC memory; it's aimed at larger companies. OMV is more aimed at personal use.

dcole13

534 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1126170 10-Sep-2014 22:31

boland:
gundar:
paulmilbank: Depends on what you are expecting your nas to do. If you just use it for a basic file share, then a simple shared folder/drive on your HTPC is probably fine. If you are installing an out of the box NAS OS to get more advanced features, then you won't be able to have an HTPC with it.

Based on my experience, I suggest you look at why the NAS is slow and see if fixing that one thing will save you a lot of time and money. I use diskbench to work out why and where in terms of performance, if the NAS allows for a terminal or shell, it may be worth your while to look through it logs...

I do believe that most NASs allow you to remove a mirror and this process leaves one disk behind, but please don't try this unless you are sure and you have a backup someplace of everything.

If you are in Hamilton, I have a 3TB USB external drive I can lend you for a week for a box of Kingfisher.

TL;DR A new NAS might not solve your problem, cheaply.

It's just slow, because a high CPU load. CPU load is constant 100%, load is at minimum 3 (everything works smooth), increases to 7 (still works okay) to >10 (really slow). Load increases, because I run sabnzbd and sickbeard and e.g. a scan,search, extract, unrar, or whatever is running.

I live in Wellington, but thanks for the offer!

I will not try the "remove mirror"-option, I'll back up everything to local storage.

And I'm not going for Freenas, but OpenMediaVault. My configuration is not recommended by Freenas, because Freenas recommends server hardware with ECC memory; it's aimed at larger companies. OMV is more aimed at personal use.

I've heard that FreeNAS uses a lot of ram, so probably better to use something different.

Home ADSL: School:

ubergeeknz

3344 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Vocus

#1126181 10-Sep-2014 22:42

After a long time trying to have a one-box backend solution, I've ended up with a dedicated NAS (although with only a single 4Tb USB 3.0 drive for now) and another low-powered box (an old PIII) for all the other crap.

When it needs to drop files to storage, it does so over NFS.

This setup works pretty well I must say, and now the NAS can focus on what it is meant to do which is share files quickly. The other box does the donkey work.

Given you already have a perfectly good NAS, why not just stand up a low powered box for the other stuff with a small amount of local storage (even an rPi will do the job nicely for what you've listed).

Hammerer

2444 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1126193 10-Sep-2014 23:03

boland: And I'm not going for Freenas, but OpenMediaVault. My configuration is not recommended by Freenas, because Freenas recommends server hardware with ECC memory; it's aimed at larger companies. OMV is more aimed at personal use.

Of course FreeNAS recommends ECC and other NAS products should too. The risk of memory problems corrupting your disk data drops dramatically with ECC so that is a sensible recommendation. OpenMediaVault would benefit from ECC in the same way.

dcole13: I've heard that FreeNAS uses a lot of ram, so probably better to use something different.

FreeNAS can use a lot of RAM but that tends to be for high-end features like ZFS.

boland

475 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1126893 12-Sep-2014 07:08

ubergeeknz: After a long time trying to have a one-box backend solution, I've ended up with a dedicated NAS (although with only a single 4Tb USB 3.0 drive for now) and another low-powered box (an old PIII) for all the other crap.

When it needs to drop files to storage, it does so over NFS.

This setup works pretty well I must say, and now the NAS can focus on what it is meant to do which is share files quickly. The other box does the donkey work.

Given you already have a perfectly good NAS, why not just stand up a low powered box for the other stuff with a small amount of local storage (even an rPi will do the job nicely for what you've listed).

Hmm, thanks for the new insight.
rPi will probably be not enough for sabnzbd (unrar / par2) and sickbeard, but a low powered old CPU would be able to do the trick.

E.g. a P4 3.0 GHZ should do the trick? http://www.trademe.co.nz/computers/desktops/no-monitor/auction-776583851.htm
I'm not sure which older CPU is the best in terms of low power usage? Or is every P4 or older good enough in terms of power usage?
If I compare this: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-cpu-power-consumption,1750-9.html and this: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/cpu-performance-comparison,3370-17.html the current CPU's require less watts, but a Core2Duo comes closest?

This is a lot cheaper, stupid I didn't think of this myself :)

Thanks!

boland

475 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1126894 12-Sep-2014 07:09

Hammerer:
boland: And I'm not going for Freenas, but OpenMediaVault. My configuration is not recommended by Freenas, because Freenas recommends server hardware with ECC memory; it's aimed at larger companies. OMV is more aimed at personal use.

Of course FreeNAS recommends ECC and other NAS products should too. The risk of memory problems corrupting your disk data drops dramatically with ECC so that is a sensible recommendation. OpenMediaVault would benefit from ECC in the same way.

dcole13: I've heard that FreeNAS uses a lot of ram, so probably better to use something different.

FreeNAS can use a lot of RAM but that tends to be for high-end features like ZFS.

Yeah, ECC is better, but requires server boards.

FreeNAS has minimum of 8GB. OMV only 1GB. So, Freenas requires more RAM.

macuser

2120 posts

Uber Geek

#1126906 12-Sep-2014 08:01

If you want a relatively cheap NAS build, I wouldn't go with FreeNAS. FreeNAS' ZFS file structure requires ECC RAM (server board) and because its a soft raid, you won't easily be able to recover it if things go bad.

Because it's a soft raid, you need far more ram (1GB for every TB).

For simplicity, in my build I'm using a raid card, in raid 10, and a Windows install (with the windows install going on a RAID 1 motherboard raid).

Yes Windows can be more unstable than FreeBSD, but I know how to fix windows problems, plus I won't be installing any unneeded software so it will be fine, it also means I don't need ECC RAM.

If you have not already bought the hardware, I would suggest a mobo with at least 1 PCIe-16x, at 2 PCIe-1x slots

1X slots are great for NIC cards, which you can team together, increasing your network throughput via LACP.

I would also recommend finding a cheap managed switch (second hand) that has plenty of ports and LACP support.

boland

475 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1126910 12-Sep-2014 08:05

I have changed plans, I'm keeping my QNAP and going to find a 2nd hand desktop to host sabnzbd, sickbeard and couchpotato.
I found this list with all TDP's for all CPU's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CPU_power_dissipation_figures

A lot cheaper, for less than NZD 30 I can buy one on Trademe.

ubergeeknz

3344 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

Vocus

#1126996 12-Sep-2014 09:16

P4 always used a lot of power and produced a lot of heat. A PIII would be adequate, otherwise go for one of the newer CPUs.. that chart will give you a good idea

hio77

'That VDSL Cat'
12982 posts

Uber Geek

ID Verified

Trusted

Voyager

Subscriber

#1127068 12-Sep-2014 10:42

if your still up in the air about cpu/board to use..

Ild consider an Asrock C2750D4I, im looking to get one to replace my Athlon X2 NAS..

#include <std_disclaimer>

Any comments made are personal opinion and do not reflect directly on the position my current or past employers may have.

markg1275

24 posts

Geek

#1128272 14-Sep-2014 13:11

Hi,

Have you thought about a little HP Microserver? I have 2 - an N36L which only has a 1.3 AMD CPU but was fine for running my Sage TV setup. When I started using Plex and a Chromecast I found that I needed a bit more CPU grunt so picked up the N54L which has a 2.2Gz CPU and this zips along. As far as raid just treat it as a SAS expander so its software raid in windows only. You can fit a half height raid card if needed but they can be pricey like the HP P410. And if your looking at a freeNAS solution its going to be software raid that you want anyway.

They have 4 non hot swap disk bays but with a BIOS update you can enable a few extra features. I've ran everything from Win7, Server 2003, Server 2012, ESX 5.1 and ESX 5.5 on mine and they are great for my needs. Super quite and very cheap to run. I've seem some people install a 4x2.5" disk bay in the top bay so they can run 9 drives in one box.

It has an internal USB port so my ESX builds just run off that.

I see they have a port of Synology dsm working for them too now which I'm tempted to try myself.

I was lucky and picked up my 1st one when I was in the UK for only $220 as they had a cash back deal and only a few months ago in NZ PBTech had them for $350 or so. You can run ECC or standard DDR3 which is a nice plus.

Wiseguys might have some available to order by the looks of it too - http://www.wiseguys.co.nz/hp-proliant-microserver-ultra-micro-tower-server-1-x-amd-turion-ii-neo-n54l-2-20-ghz-251439

I have my older N36L not in use at the moment at work so let me know if you want me to try out an OS build before you commit to anything to see if it does what you want.

Thanks
Mark

boland

475 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1128872 15-Sep-2014 10:58

I've bought an old 2.3GHz Intel Core2Duo for $32 and will install Ubuntu Server to become my web server + download server :)
I still like my QNAP NAS, and this is the cheapest option. Of course it will take more power than 1 machine, but I like to have it split up in two machines.

But thanks anyway.

boland

475 posts

Ultimate Geek

#1129862 16-Sep-2014 12:52

ubergeeknz: After a long time trying to have a one-box backend solution, I've ended up with a dedicated NAS (although with only a single 4Tb USB 3.0 drive for now) and another low-powered box (an old PIII) for all the other crap.

When it needs to drop files to storage, it does so over NFS.

This setup works pretty well I must say, and now the NAS can focus on what it is meant to do which is share files quickly. The other box does the donkey work.

Given you already have a perfectly good NAS, why not just stand up a low powered box for the other stuff with a small amount of local storage (even an rPi will do the job nicely for what you've listed).

Thanks again for this insight, stupid I didn't think about it.
I installed Ubuntu Server on the HP DC7800p, the Core2Duo can handle it all easily. It runs super fast with SB, Sab and CP!
And, it only costed me NZD32 :)

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