Recommend a 4-6 disk NAS / FreeNAS box with flexibility and ZFS/BFRFS/etc

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#1206904 1-Jan-2015 16:11

Thanks Mark, Gozer, will check out the boards in detail when at a proper computer. Ecc is sounding important for super reliability, though at a significant price. Will do some reading.

Could the Thecus meet my requirements, including a reliable error checking file system?

Mark

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#1206912 1-Jan-2015 16:43

timmmay:
Could the Thecus meet my requirements, including a reliable error checking file system?

Mmmm .. not really for the Linux based units, they did have ZFS as a fuse module but it was so bad and slow they took it out. It does support EXT3/4 and XFS but from memory neither of them have any form of bitrot detection.
The Windows based units (like the W4000) though do support ReFS amongst a heap of other nice things ... price is about $450US ... not bad to be honest! (I only just read about them myself, going to go look them up myself :-)

Mark

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#1206913 1-Jan-2015 16:44

Sideface:
It's still going unti ...

Lucky 99% of the data is stuff I "found" on the internet ;-)

Sideface

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#1206921 1-Jan-2015 17:21

Mark:
Sideface:
It's still going unti ...

Lucky 99% of the data is stuff I "found" on the internet ;-)

Finding is fun.
But can you find it again?
And how long would it take you?

Sideface

timmmay

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#1207273 2-Jan-2015 18:25

Ok I'm home now and can type. Thanks for all the suggestions so far, very helpful they are.

I'm still thinking FreeNAS and ZFS are a good solution for me. Overkill? Maybe, but I have no problem with that. I'd say I'm 70% likely to go that way, with ECC. I'll have a good read about the SuperMicro boards soon, but I won't buy until I have a really good idea about the whole solution.

Seems like I'd need 3 disks for ZFS with 1 parity bit. For 2 bits of parity I'd need 5 disks, which seems like overkill. 1 bit is fine, though I have a bunch of reading to do. I don't need massive amounts of space for my highly protected storage, 2TB would be heaps. I'll use other file systems for less important data - even NFS or similar for stuff I can easily replace. Of course everything will be backed up, but only to NTFS/FAT32 disks. I may go for some kind of incremental backup system rather than the mirrors I have now, which will protect against some things.

Further thoughts are very welcome - how to do FreeNAS, not to do FreeNAS/ZFS, anything really.

JaseNZ

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#1207281 2-Jan-2015 19:19

How about one of these.

All the reviews I have seen have been great , I would not mind getting one of these myself.

http://www.drobo.co.nz/products/drobo-fs

Ding Ding Ding Ding Ding : Ice cream man , Ice cream man

timmmay

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#1207303 2-Jan-2015 20:31

Presso: How about one of these.

All the reviews I have seen have been great , I would not mind getting one of these myself.

http://www.drobo.co.nz/products/drobo-fs

Drobo = NAS for dummies. Downsides including lack of compatibility. As I said in my first post, not interested in DROBO. Thanks for the suggestion though :)

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JaseNZ

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#1207305 2-Jan-2015 20:42

timmmay:
Presso: How about one of these.

All the reviews I have seen have been great , I would not mind getting one of these myself.

http://www.drobo.co.nz/products/drobo-fs

Drobo = NAS for dummies.

Would be perfect for me then :) , Sorry did not see you mention it at the bottom of your original post.

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#1208355 5-Jan-2015 10:30

Currently thinking I might go with
- SuperMicro X10 1150 motherboard. US $179 (this one is cheaper at $136 but has 5 instead of 6 SATA ports and 2 DIMM slots)
- i3-4150 dual core (faster than the 8 core Atom) US $119 (can go quad core Xeon for US$80 but unlikely to be worthwhile)
- 8GB ECC RAM (have to find the right stuff, US$100)
- A random case from ascent as shipping from the USA is too expensive, $100 say.
- A decent modular power supply from ascent - much cheaper in the US but probably expensive to ship as heavy. $140.

Total price around $750 for a good server. Kinda expensive given I'll need to spend say $600 on drives too. Any thoughts?

Ragnor

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#1209863 7-Jan-2015 12:53

timmmay:

Total price around $750 for a good server. Kinda expensive given I'll need to spend say $600 on drives too. Any thoughts?

Sounds about right for a decent DIY build.

The question is do you really need/want ZFS?

I tend to think the issue of "bit rot" with traditional file systems is over hyped, a typical 4 bay Ext4 RAID10 from Synology, Qnap, Netgear is actually very reliable.

timmmay

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#1209865 7-Jan-2015 12:57

I do want bit rot protection, as I mentioned I'm experiencing it. I suspect it's drive dependent, not device.

Right now I'm very likely to use Windows 10, ReFS and Storage Spaces with 4TB mirrored rather than FreeNAS and ZFS. If I needed a NAS that'd be one thing, but all I really need is reliable data storage. I haven't really worked out how to do offsite backups though, given I want them to have similar protection - maybe a second mirror but that's kinda expensive.

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#1209867 7-Jan-2015 13:05

Ah right just read your other data integrity thread.

If you have the physical room in your current PC... upgrade to Win 8.1 or 10 and add a few new drives setup as ReFS/Storage Spaces Mirorred would be a cheap and easy option for now.

You can always build a stand alone NAS later.

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#1209919 7-Jan-2015 14:03

Yeah that's what I'm thinking, my computer can take something like 7 drives. I wouldn't buy 8.1 now with W10 coming along soon, I figure the W10 beta should be fine. Data will all be backed up anyway. Parity spaces sound a bit slow so mirrored with 4TB drives should do me fine - I have an HGST 4TB on the way now, another one coming a week or so later.

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#1210463 8-Jan-2015 11:40

timmmay: Yeah that's what I'm thinking, my computer can take something like 7 drives. I wouldn't buy 8.1 now with W10 coming along soon, I figure the W10 beta should be fine. Data will all be backed up anyway. Parity spaces sound a bit slow so mirrored with 4TB drives should do me fine - I have an HGST 4TB on the way now, another one coming a week or so later.

Windows Beta is very much a beta, some builds have had explorer crashing multiple times a day. Either use the windows 8.1 enterprise evaluation (90days) for experimenting / validating your proposal, or wait for consumer release of W10.

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#1210498 8-Jan-2015 12:40

Good to know, thanks. A friend of mine has it working fine, not with ReFS or storage spaces though. I have no problem buying 8.1, but with W10 so close it would seem to be a waste to buy now and then have to pay again for what Windowss 8 should've been in 6 months.

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