Which NAS for manually-managed BTRFS

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › Which NAS for manually-managed BTRFS

eddiewould

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#198093 26-Jun-2016 15:31

Hey,

Wondering which NAS box (2-bay) you'd recommend. Here's what I want:

- It's going to store movie files for HTPC use only, so don't care about data loss. At the same time, I'd prefer that a given file is only stored on one disk or the other (if one disk dies, there's no point losing all my movies, just half)

- I don't care about performance (so no striping)

- I'd like a single volume (BTRFS)

- I'd like to be able to expand it easily in the future as follows:

1) Buy new disk. Install in USB enclosure temporarily. Run btrfs-replace to copy the data from one of the internal disks to the USB disk.

2) Remove disk from USB enclosure, install in NAS (replacing the appropriate disk)

3) Run btrfs filesystem resize max /dev/sda to increase the capacity available to my single volume.

Which off-the-shelf NAS will let me do this without fighting me? (Netgear? Synology)? Or do I need to install Linux from scratch and set up everything myself? If so, which box do you recommend for running vanilla (say Debian) linux on?

Cheers

Eddie

deadlyllama

1283 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 476

Trusted

#1580545 26-Jun-2016 16:10

What OS will your HTPC be running? Why not let it do double duty as a NAS?

eddiewould

6 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1580570 26-Jun-2016 17:08

The HTPC is a Intel NUC (Braswell, Celeron) running Ubuntu 16.04 w/ Kodi 16.1. Currently it's just got a 2Tb drive plugged into an external USB enclosure.

The main reasons I want a NAS:

- New toy

- Keep (noisy) storage away from TV area

- Perhaps it will have better performance (tuning of SAMBA, that kind of thing) than a USB (3.0) disk enclosure

- I've run out of space on my 2Tb disk so I'm going to have to buy a new disk anyway. Might as well utilise the space from the 2Tb disk in addition to the new disk

- Hopefully, provides a pathway to increase capacity (as I described in the original post) in the future

- Hopefully, things will "just work" a bit better - I've been having issues with SAMBA from OSX and it would be nice if the configuration was automatically supported.

- Maybe I'll change my mind in the future about not caring about redundancy etc

driller2000

936 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 374

ID Verified

#1580597 26-Jun-2016 17:25

If you wanted to build your own....I believe unRAID does what you are looking for?

I have been running my unRAID server for close on 4 years now - has not missed a beat - so I am well happy with it.

michaelmurfy

meow
13579 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 10910

Moderator

ID Verified

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#1580599 26-Jun-2016 17:33

I personally use a HP Microserver (from 2010) as my NAS, I run Debian on mine with some LXC containers running too. It is old now and there is a new Microserver out there but they're great units since they've got the ability to do far more than act just like a NAS.

Michael Murphy | https://murfy.nz
Referral Links: Quic Broadband (use R122101E7CV7Q for free setup)

Are you happy with what you get from Geekzone? Please consider supporting us by subscribing.
Opinions are my own and not the views of my employer.

JimmyH

2898 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 1554

#1580609 26-Jun-2016 18:06

I know that you say you only want a 2-bay, with no striping, but I would strongly urge you to reconsider this.

If you get a 4-bay it won't cost you dramatically more than a 2-bay. You can populate 3 bays for RAID5 (so you only lose 1 drive for the parity). Then use the empty bay for expansion at a future date - simply pop in another disk and expand the volume. As a bonus, you will get faster transfer rates. Useful when copying files, or when multiple people may be trying to stream at once.

I went with an 8-bay myself, because I managed to get a good model at a good price. I populated 3 bays with 6TB drives (12TB usable) initially. I have just populated the fourth bay to take that to 18TB, which will do me for some time. And I Still have 4 more bays for simple and painless future expansion.

Even thought it's only media, losing a disk and the data on it is still a PITA. Been there, done that. IMO it's worth taking steps to reduce the risk, even if it does push the budget up a bit.

deadlyllama

1283 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 476

Trusted

#1580647 26-Jun-2016 19:02

My home server is a second hand mini-ITX HTPC I bought off Geekzone. Works a treat. 3 drives: 1x80GB boot, 2x3TB SATA, in a BTRFS raid-1. Did a btrfs replace on a failing (5 year old) disk a week ago, went smoothly.

If you've got Cat5e from the TV to where you'd put the NAS, you could use HDMI extenders and put everything away.

Note that most NASes have quite weedy CPUs. You'll have better performance from a normal PC, and when it breaks down, you can buy normal PC parts rather than special NAS parts.

Quic Broadband

Move to New Zealand's best fibre broadband service (affiliate link). Free setup code: R587125ERQ6VE. Note that to use Quic Broadband you must be comfortable with configuring your own router.

Benoire

2878 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 681

#1580664 26-Jun-2016 19:27

You could always build a custom pc with a single 4 in 3 or 5 in 4 unit in a 5.25" bay and then install Synology DSM using the boot image from Xpenology on USB to give you the latest DSM 5.2 version (they're waiting on the GPL kernel chains to release a boot loader for DSM 6). I have been using this for over a year now with my 12 bay unit and it works just as well as a real synology device except that you sometimes have to wait for updates if they change security on the files.

KShips

153 posts

Master Geek
+1 received by user: 15

#1605546 6-Aug-2016 16:59

No experience on off the shelf NAS but I currently use unRaid and it works very well, upside is that as of today I also have a VM running Win10-MediaPortal on top of unRaid for HTPC. HDMI and USB cabled from office to Lounge.

With unRaid can use pretty much any old PC and throw any sized HD's in it and will be added to storage array. FreeNas is another option but much more strict hardware requirements.

timmmay

20858 posts

Uber Geek
+1 received by user: 5350

Trusted

Lifetime subscriber

#1605549 6-Aug-2016 17:06

I use Windows 10, ReFS, and storage spaces. Cheaper than a NAS and works great from Kodi on my R.Pi.