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Previously on "Is it worth buying a NAS with a 'proper' CPU?"

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  • Zigenare
    replied
    Originally posted by FreakShow View Post
    I've toyed around with Pi's acting as a NAS and watched plenty of videos of running Unraid.

    Now that I've started contracting, I definitely think that I'll purchase a Synology 920+ with a proper CPU for the business stuff. The others are great for hobby/tinkering around with, but for reliability and dependability, you can't beat paying the money for the proper thing.

    I just need to figure out how I can expense it.
    Ask your accountant.

    Leave a comment:


  • FreakShow
    replied
    I've toyed around with Pi's acting as a NAS and watched plenty of videos of running Unraid.

    Now that I've started contracting, I definitely think that I'll purchase a Synology 920+ with a proper CPU for the business stuff. The others are great for hobby/tinkering around with, but for reliability and dependability, you can't beat paying the money for the proper thing.

    I just need to figure out how I can expense it.

    Leave a comment:


  • wattaj
    replied
    Originally posted by eek View Post
    The ability to tinker is why I switched back to Unraid from FreeNAS. All tinkering (and I do offload stuff onto the server fairly often) is done in a VM or container.
    Chapeaux Sir, if it had not been for your suggestion of Unraid, I would not have found this chappie: How to Install & Configure an Unraid NAS - Beginners Guide - YouTube

    *salutes you*

    Leave a comment:


  • unixman
    replied
    I do the backup with a script I put together. The systems being backed up are all Linux.

    There's no automatic re-sync. If a file is lost it can be restored. If an entire disk is lost in one of the backup clients, the client would have to be re-built with a new disk, then a restore performed to recover the data. If one of the backup targets was lost, it would have to be replaced, then backup "sets" (collections of backups) copied to it from another target.

    A couple of times I've tried a home "DR" excercise. I pretend the main PC is completely lost, along with the password archive, then try to recover from there. In the real scenario you would probably start by buying a new PC or disk. For testing I've recovered into a Raspberry Pi and got a usable desktop with all my data present. Throws up some interesting issues eg. with passwords. No PC, no password manager/archive available. Even the backups are password protected, so at least one password has to be remembered some how.

    Leave a comment:


  • d000hg
    replied
    Originally posted by unixman View Post
    For backups I have two "targets": an old NAS box and 2 USB drives that go offsite. The NAS box therefore has no RAID. Mind you "offsite" just means "the car" these days.
    How do you actually do the backup? Some scheduled script you put together or something that's running constantly in the background? Does it have the ability to reverse-sync i.e. if your drive breaks, you don't have to do anything to get data back on the new one?

    Leave a comment:


  • AtW
    replied
    H.267 ...

    Leave a comment:


  • Hobosapien
    replied
    Originally posted by AtW View Post
    For Plex you'd want good CPU with iGPU that can compress/decompress modern formats.:
    What do you call modern, h.265, mobile/tablet retina/4k resolution mp4?

    I've converted my favourite videos that aren't still on dvd/blu-ray to h.264 mp4 so no transcoding required when watching on my TV via plex server on my piNas and Roku streaming device attached to my TV.

    Will try a h.265 conversion when I get around to it (now I've got an AMD 3900 based PC with 12c/24t that does a VOB to h.264 conversion in handbrake in under 15 mins, so h.265 shouldn't take 'a long time' ), to see how much disk space saved over h.264, but may only be worthwhile for HD/4k formats, then a beefy cpu is required to handle those, but for now my piNAS is coping fine with my average needs.

    Just hope they stop re-inventing the wheel in terms of video compression formats, requiring more cpu power to watch the same crappy videos that started out on VHS.

    Leave a comment:


  • eek
    replied
    Originally posted by b0redom View Post
    I use a Lenovo TS140 that I got off whilst they were doing cashback. It has a baby Xeon which is enough for transcoding stuff on Plex if needs be.

    You need to decide if you want a NAS or a server. Personally I would go for separation of duties. I *can* run loads of stuff on my NAS, but every time I tinker there's a possibility that I could break it, and for a NAS which is actually serving media content/backups/general storage, I can just live without the risk.

    I stuck a USB stick in the front running FreeNAS and it's as bullet proof as anything I've ever used to be honest.
    The ability to tinker is why I switched back to Unraid from FreeNAS. All tinkering (and I do offload stuff onto the server fairly often) is done in a VM or container.

    Leave a comment:


  • b0redom
    replied
    I use a Lenovo TS140 that I got off whilst they were doing cashback. It has a baby Xeon which is enough for transcoding stuff on Plex if needs be.

    You need to decide if you want a NAS or a server. Personally I would go for separation of duties. I *can* run loads of stuff on my NAS, but every time I tinker there's a possibility that I could break it, and for a NAS which is actually serving media content/backups/general storage, I can just live without the risk.

    I stuck a USB stick in the front running FreeNAS and it's as bullet proof as anything I've ever used to be honest.

    Leave a comment:


  • unixman
    replied
    Regarding NAS data speeds, the raspberry Pi4 has enough grunt to saturate your gigabit network for reading, and push it to about 65% for writing. Well fast enough for backups, say. Raspberry Pi 4 Real World Tests | Unix etc.

    Good question re NAS. I pondered it and came down on the side of quiet, low current home made solutions instead. Sorry to bore you with my setup, but here it is:

    For TV I use OSMC on a Pi2 connected to the main telly, which allows TV/Recording viewing on remote devices and even over the Internet. The "yahtse" add-on is useful for throwing Internet videos to the main TV.

    For backups I have two "targets": an old NAS box and 2 USB drives that go offsite. The NAS box therefore has no RAID. Mind you "offsite" just means "the car" these days.

    The NAS might soon be replaced by just attaching a USB disk to my router (Netgear D7800, dual CPU). Tests how it can read at 90 MB/s and write at 45. Not quite as fast as the Pi4 but 3 times faster than the old NAS. Testing shows router power consumption increases by only 1.6W with the disk attached (varying to 1.2 W on spin-down to 4.4 W when copying a large file). So its pretty "green".

    Leave a comment:


  • AtW
    replied
    It’s for personal home use, I’ve got this one - TVS-872XT | Breakthrough performance and outstanding connectivity with 10GbE, Thunderbolt™ 3, and M.2 PCIe NVMe SSD slots | QNAP (UK)

    It’s a bit of an overkill, but that’s the way I like it when it comes to storage...

    Leave a comment:


  • d000hg
    replied
    What model AtW? I'm assuming higher end than I'd justify - don't you have multiple petabytes available at work though?

    Leave a comment:


  • AtW
    replied
    Originally posted by eek View Post
    Unraid is a better solution - just add decent memory and a cpu and you can run various VMs or bits off it.
    Maybe, but for lazy people like myself QNAP seems to do the job (at a price, but with 18 TB disks cost of HDDs make up majority of the thing anyway) - it can run VMs also, but not interested in that (at the moment at least)

    Leave a comment:


  • eek
    replied
    Originally posted by AtW View Post
    For Plex you'd want good CPU with iGPU that can compress/decompress modern formats.

    Just got QNAP NAS for myself actually, not a cheap game especially with lots of 18 TB disks involved

    Unraid is a better solution - just add decent memory and a cpu and you can run various VMs or bits off it.

    Leave a comment:


  • AtW
    replied
    For Plex you'd want good CPU with iGPU that can compress/decompress modern formats.

    Just got QNAP NAS for myself actually, not a cheap game especially with lots of 18 TB disks involved

    Leave a comment:

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