NAS on AsRock DeskMini 110 - All SSD Plan & OMV or UnRAID

[infernuz]

I purchased a second hand Asrock Deskmini 110 for cheap because I plan to use it for a simple NAS server since it can accommodate 2 x 2.5 SATA SSD and 1 Nvme SSD. I wanted my NAS to have parity. Later on, I found out about using SSDs not ideal in UnRaid because of TRIM issues with parity which will degrade the SSD? (please correct me). I am now thinking of using OMV with SnapRaid + MergeFS instead. I understand that Unraid offers real time parity while OMV w/ Snapraid MergeFS will run on command. I am good either so I am now more confused.

My use case: The data will be mostly long term media (photos, videos) and game storage by SMB. Later down the road after I move to our new house, I plan to install maybe Immich and NextCloud, and storage for security camera footage so this may involve more read/write on disk right? With this, should I still pursue on the SSD setup or it will be just waste? I have storage on my cloud (1TB only in OneDrive) and 2 x 1 TB external HDD for backup. I can re-sell the deskmini if the plan proves to be not useful and want to know before I buy the SSDs.

TIA.

 

[A Computer Guy]

I purchased a second hand Asrock Deskmini 110 for cheap because I plan to use it for a simple NAS server since it can accommodate 2 x 2.5 SATA SSD and 1 Nvme SSD. I wanted my NAS to have parity. Later on, I found out about using SSDs not ideal in UnRaid because of TRIM issues with parity which will degrade the SSD? (please correct me). I am now thinking of using OMV with SnapRaid + MergeFS instead. I understand that Unraid offers real time parity while OMV w/ Snapraid MergeFS will run on command. I am good either so I am now more confused.

My use case: The data will be mostly long term media (photos, videos) and game storage by SMB. Later down the road after I move to our new house, I plan to install maybe Immich and NextCloud, and storage for security camera footage so this may involve more read/write on disk right? With this, should I still pursue on the SSD setup or it will be just waste? I have storage on my cloud (1TB only in OneDrive) and 2 x 1 TB external HDD for backup. I can re-sell the deskmini if the plan proves to be not useful and want to know before I buy the SSDs.

TIA.

For a simple NAS do you really need parity? Would a simple mirror be sufficient if you are concerned about redundancy in case of 1 drive failure?

 

[infernuz]

For a simple NAS do you really need parity? Would a simple mirror be sufficient if you are concerned about redundancy in case of 1 drive failure?

Oh yeah I forgot I can just simply mirror. So in that case, I don't have to worry for any sss degradation right?

 

[A Computer Guy]

Oh yeah I forgot I can just simply mirror. So in that case, I don't have to worry for any sss degradation right?

There is always an endless rabbit hole of worries which I am told ZFS and ECC are the cure but I'm still not sure about that and that unit isn't optimal for that anyway.

As far as SSD's go just get something that doesn't have a history of being unreliable.
From what I read these days it seems controller or firmware seems more likely to fail than the NAND.
I would just go for the OS on the NVMe and 2 SATA SSD's for capacity for a simple setup using some good software for incremental backups.
Mirror the SSD's if your worried about drive failure but keep in mind you can't hot swap the drives with that unit anyway like Synology, QNAP, etc... and then you would still need to be able to logically and physically identify the broken drive to replace. So if you do setup a mirror you need to resolve that so replacement and rebuilding the mirror isn't a guessing game. Even if you setup some sort of parity scheme you will still need to know what drive to replace in case of a drive failure.

With non-mirrored and non-parity setup if you are really worried about bit-rot or nand failure then create hashes of all your files and you will be able to detect broken files by verifying hashes periodically. Then you can recover broken files from some point back in time from your incremental backups.

If you decide to use the DeskMini setup come can join our Club and share your experiences.

ASRock Deskmini Owner's Club

Asrock Deskmini Owner Club - A place to share your love for these neat SFF PC's from ASRock. Discuss things regarding various Deskmini models: - News - Usage - Configuration - Benchmarks - Accessories - Wishful thinking for future models - Overclocking Tips - Issues - Other fun stuff So some...

www.techpowerup.com

 

[infernuz]

There is always an endless rabbit hole of worries which I am told ZFS and ECC are the cure but I'm still not sure about that and that unit isn't optimal for that anyway.

As far as SSD's go just get something that doesn't have a history of being unreliable.
From what I read these days it seems controller or firmware seems more likely to fail than the NAND.
I would just go for the OS on the NVMe and 2 SATA SSD's for capacity for a simple setup using some good software for incremental backups.
Mirror the SSD's if your worried about drive failure but keep in mind you can't hot swap the drives with that unit anyway like Synology, QNAP, etc... and then you would still need to be able to logically and physically identify the broken drive to replace. So if you do setup a mirror you need to resolve that so replacement and rebuilding the mirror isn't a guessing game. Even if you setup some sort of parity scheme you will still need to know what drive to replace in case of a drive failure.

With non-mirrored and non-parity setup if you are really worried about bit-rot or nand failure then create hashes of all your files and you will be able to detect broken files by verifying hashes periodically. Then you can recover broken files from some point back in time from your incremental backups.

If you decide to use the DeskMini setup come can join our Club and share your experiences.

ASRock Deskmini Owner's Club

Asrock Deskmini Owner Club - A place to share your love for these neat SFF PC's from ASRock. Discuss things regarding various Deskmini models: - News - Usage - Configuration - Benchmarks - Accessories - Wishful thinking for future models - Overclocking Tips - Issues - Other fun stuff So some...

www.techpowerup.com

Thank you very much for teaching me and I appreciate it. After reading it, I got a direction on my plan with the file server.

Would you recommend me installing OMV to USB as compared to installing in the nvme? I already tested installing directly to the ssd on a different unit before (to learn OMV stuff). I read that you can download a certain plugin to reduce the wear on the flash drive. For Unraid, I am aware that it is via usb and requires one time purchase.

If Omv OS via USB is feasible, my plan will be: 1x1tb nvme ssd and 2x1tb 2.5 sata ssd. Doing mirror for the 2 sata drives will give me 1tb of storage right? Can the nvme be like cache drive or no need?

If via USB is not advisable, then I will go for the cheapest nvme drive of 256gb or less then 2 1tb sata.

Sorry for the long post.

 

[A Computer Guy]

Thank you very much for teaching me and I appreciate it. After reading it, I got a direction on my plan with the file server.

Would you recommend me installing OMV to USB as compared to installing in the nvme? I already tested installing directly to the ssd on a different unit before (to learn OMV stuff). I read that you can download a certain plugin to reduce the wear on the flash drive. For Unraid, I am aware that it is via usb and requires one time purchase.

If Omv OS via USB is feasible, my plan will be: 1x1tb nvme ssd and 2x1tb 2.5 sata ssd. Doing mirror for the 2 sata drives will give me 1tb of storage right? Can the nvme be like cache drive or no need?

If via USB is not advisable, then I will go for the cheapest nvme drive of 256gb or less then 2 1tb sata.

Sorry for the long post.

Generally the larger capacity SSD's will have better endurance and QLC type SSD's you may want to avoid even though they may be significantly cheaper at the high capacity end. There will be no need to use the NVMe to cache the SATA SSD as you are going to be bottlenecked by the 1Gbps NIC anyway. NVMe caching as far as I'm aware is done for HDD's for obvious reasons and you probably wouldn't want to do that without a good battery backup for your system.

I'm not familiar with OMV or Unraid.

You could just take some modern flavor of Linux that knows about SSD's & TRIM with some online help and setup a mirror and SMB file shares.

If you like pain and want to punish yourself with periodic updates that reboot your machine setup Windows 10 and use disk management to create the mirror then setup a shared folder.

If you really wanted to make to simple just get one 2TB/4TB NVMe focus on a good backup 2TB/4TB option and forget about the mirror.
The Deskmini 110 is so old now that unit will probably fail before your SSD does.

 

[infernuz]

Generally the larger capacity SSD's will have better endurance and QLC type SSD's you may want to avoid even though they may be significantly cheaper at the high capacity end.

This I was not aware of and thank you for the advise. Will definitely check when purchasing. Since I will have certain files backed up to cloud and my external drives for offsite, I will just forego the mirror based on my acceptable risk judgement. As for the drive, I believe mine has only 1NVME slot so maybe I just go for 2x 2TB 2.5 SATA drives. Then OS on the NVME as you have mentioned earlier.

If you decide to use the DeskMini setup come can join our Club and share your experiences.

ASRock Deskmini Owner's Club

Asrock Deskmini Owner Club - A place to share your love for these neat SFF PC's from ASRock. Discuss things regarding various Deskmini models: - News - Usage - Configuration - Benchmarks - Accessories - Wishful thinking for future models - Overclocking Tips - Issues - Other fun stuff So some...

www.techpowerup.com

Thank you and definitely will!