NAS build

[Aquinus]

I was looking at NAS cases. Ran across this company in Tulsa OK http://www.u-nas.com/xcart/home.php

Hot-swappable bays come with a price premium. If you're not planning on keeping a spare drive handy to quickly switch one out in case of a failure, it's probably not worth the cost because you'll have to wait for a replacement drive in which case, you have more than enough time to remove the drive and replace it because you're already waiting days otherwise.

 

[Hockster]

Yeah, but they look cool.

 

[phill]

So I ran both NASs thru a power draw meter from the wall to check the power use

My NAS build was 55 watts idle and 70 watts transferring files

My Synology DS216 Play was 23 watts idle and 32 watts transferring files

I'll do some 1080 streams later my guess is the build will handle much more

That's kinda high for the idle.. Is everything set to power saver settings in your bios? Mine idles around the 35w area, load is about 65w I think with all the drives ticking over... How many drives do you have in the system? I think I have also about 5 fans (mixture of 120mm and 140mm..)

With the 1080 streams, what software do you use (or will you use) for that?

 

[Jetster]

At this time just three drives, I haven't touched the BIOS except for the boot order and to turn off fast boot. It boots to a USB flash drive with FreeNAS. I stream moves with Kodi but I map the drive. I did another stream test this time I did 4 at 1080. With two playing the file right from the network location on WiFi

Today Im switching the motherboard. I doing a build for the neighbor and I'm giving him the Z97 and puting a H81+ i3 in this. I figure he can benifite fromt better board and this will be fine.

I looking to buy another four - 3 Tb drives

 

[phill]

Sounds impressive then, so would be good to see how much of the Network is being used whilst your running 4 1080 films

I am using something similar for my build, I find it very stable What NAS software did you go with in the end?

Would you use them in Raid 1 I take it from the raid card?

 

[John Naylor]

When faced with the same option, after much back and forth, we just decided to go with a 4 Bah stand alone NAS... build cost was really not an issue, but the T, E & AC (time, effort and associated costs) of maintaining another box was the deciding factor. Recently however, we have even dropped that. Just added two SSHDs to a CAD workstation and set them up in RAID to serve as office data server ... minimal cost, no additional admin, and 0 impact on file access (5 desktops / 5 laptops) on the system. After 3 months tho ... broke the RAID 1 and just set up one as the primary drive and the other as a secondary backup. Initially had the system mirror the primary to secondary twice a day (free FBackup) , but now just once. Drive is partitioned with each partition having permitted access by certain personnel. Also a HD Docking bay with a 3rd and 4th SSHD swapped out for off-site storage weekly. Nightly backups take about 30 seconds to 2 minutes, weekly off site < 5 minutes.

 

[Jetster]

Ive been down the road of adding drives to a board and sharing them on a network. It works but it causes problems. A NAS is the way to go if you have any amount of significant traffic.

I'm not done with my testing but for now I'm using FreeNAS.

With three drives now I'm using RAIDZ (RAID5) When I get more I'll use RAIDZ-2 (RAID6) and so on. FreeNAS even has RAID 10 now. There is definitely pros and cons with using a bought NAS box and building your own. Right now I have both running. The Synology is in RAID0 so it keeps up with the FreeNAS box fairly well but if you stream more than two at 1080 it starts to struggle.

 

[phill]

I use Raid 1 in my Synology box, it seems to be fairly decent but I must admit I've not tried streaming anything from my NAS. Is the hardware in your FreeNAS box the same as what's in the Synology box? I see the drives are set up differently but the physical hardware, is that much different? If it is, it would be an easy way to find out which NAS software is working better

That said what about your network setup? Could that be limiting the NAS at all? Just trying to figure out some information and understand

 

[Jetster]

My build NAS
i3 CPU
8 Gb ddr3
LSI HBA
RAID 5

My Synology NAS
Cortex-A9 1.5 GHz Dual core CPU
1 Gb DDR3
RAID 0

Router
TP link Archer C5400
Netgear GS108 Switch

So the Built NAS maxes out the network. The Synology NAS not so much but works suprising well

 

[phill]

I think the Cortex A9 CPU is definitely going to be the limiting factor, its definitely not going to be as powerful as the i3 CPU. With that the drive performance might suffer a bit as well. Noticed it on lower CPU powered systems that hard drive performance can sometimes be lower.

Are there any drive benchmarks you can run on both systems to get an idea of what sort of speeds the drives are getting?

 

[Jetster]

Because Im running only FreeNAS on the machine Ill have to look into how to check drive speed. There is no OS drive or OS other than the FreeNAS Usb flash
I will work on it though

 

[phill]

Same as the Synology I love the fact it runs off of USB sticks....

 

[Jetster]

Update: new parts coming. I have 3 more 3 tb drives on there way and 8 gb more of ram. For a total of 6 - 3 tb drives with 16 gb of ram. I've been learning more about FreeNAS and I like it. It works flawlessly so far.

 

[Solaris17]

Wow im so sorry! I never got that ping. Looks like your settled?

 

[phill]

I've yet to try FreeNAS but as you run Synology as well, ignoring any hardware configurations what do you think of it?

 

[Jetster]

Wow im so sorry! I never got that ping. Looks like your settled?

No problem, I still will read anything you may have regarding Linux servers. I still would like to try other options eventually.

@phill what do I think of what? Synology or FreeNAS?

 

[phill]

Both of them my good sir I wondered if you had a preference?

 

[Jetster]

Ok, so a bought NAS by Synology or any other manufacturer is a great option, simplistic, quite, reliable and great support. However if you have high traffic and above say 4 users ( depending on which unit) it's going to struggle with the bandwidth. Plus the more expensive units with 4 core and large number of drive bays are $500 plus. Most don't have ecc ram either. Not that I'm running ecc ram. It comes down to am I willing to learn or do I just want a plug and play. Me I'm willing to do the work

 

[phill]

Fair points Pretty happy with my built one since it's doing everything.. I think the only thing it lets down is the bandwidth for streaming many files.. Not sure that my 1Gb network would be so great for multiple streams of 1080P (blu ray stuff..) I would have thought that the PC it was streaming to would do the de-coding? But I am guessing that might not be the case??

 

[Jetster]

Honestly I think the CPU and ram is the bottle neck. Not the network. I added ram from 8 to 16 because it maxes it out. I was reading on FreeNAS website that it likes ram and use as much as you can. But like I said it works great, just when I add three more drives I want it to still work great

 

[Hockster]

Watching this thread has me convinced to build my own now. I've got a 6600K and an Asus Z170 A unused right now. Just need a case that can accommodate 6+ 3.5 drives and a 280 radiator.

 

[Jetster]

Watching this thread has me convinced to build my own now. I've got a 6600K and an Asus Z170 A unused right now. Just need a case that can accommodate 6+ 3.5 drives and a 280 radiator.

That CPU will do the work without a sweat. I dont think you need to worry about heat from the CPU. The drives? yes

Its been cool when the light goes on. The first 2 or 3days of the build was frustrating not gonna lie. Until I figured a few things out. I'm still excited about learning more. I want to learn how to log in from outside my network and running VMs from it

 

[phill]

Honestly I think the CPU and ram is the bottle neck. Not the network. I added ram from 8 to 16 because it maxes it out. I was reading on FreeNAS website that it likes ram and use as much as you can. But like I said it works great, just when I add three more drives I want it to still work great

I think that the 16Gb I have in mine is complete overkill but it was laying about so I just installed it and never thought twice about it. I'm not sure what the Synology specs are, but I can't really fault mine. Last few days I've been having one niggle with it as it seems a little slow when trying to access a file or something but I'm not sure what is going on there.. Maybe a virus scan of some sorts... I'll have a look into it as I'll have a little more time as my daughter isn't with me for a few weeks

Watching this thread has me convinced to build my own now. I've got a 6600K and an Asus Z170 A unused right now. Just need a case that can accommodate 6+ 3.5 drives and a 280 radiator.

Air cooling would be probably best, no need to worry about leaks or anything and most of the time the CPU is sat pretty much at idle. I only use a G3258 in mine and I don't remember seeing it above 50% at any point (might have to check the logs) so a 6600k would make it breeze through anything you throw at it The OS's are so lightweight, it's not Windows for sure

 

[Hockster]

It's parts I have just sitting on a shelf here. And I don't really need a case, I was just hoping to find an inexpensive one that can take a 280 rad, but there doesn't seem to be a lot available.

 

[phill]

I'd just stick to air cooling even with a basic Intel cooler, it would be more than enough Water cooling in a NAS, bit over kill