Current NAS recommendations

[TheFaQQer]

What's the current thinking?

After a power cut, my NAS didn't start up cleanly for some reason - I switch off and back on again did the trick, but it got me thinking about whether I need to backup my backups and stuff that are on the NAS.

Currently I have an HP Microserver with 5x4TB disks and 16GB RAM running Freenas, and I'm looking at any of:

1) Buy a "cheap" off the shelf NAS, keep the current one as the main one and replicate to the new one as a backup

2) Buy a microserver / mini ITX and build it myself to the same kind of spec as the current one, and replicate to the new one as a backup

3) Buy a microserver / mini ITX, install Freenas and spec it up a lot more. Use that as the primary NAS and replicate from there to the old one

4) Buy a 20TB pre-build Freenas box and use that as the primary NAS since it's bigger

5) Something else

I'm not short of space on the existing one - I've used around 10TB and have 4TB free - but if I'm going to have another box doing stuff, I'm inclined to go with option 3 so that I get the box that I want to the spec I want, rather than being stuck with something that I can't use.

My Qnap doesn't even start properly any more - I had considered using some of that space but it's so old and unloved that I think I'm better off just taking the hard drives down to Cex and getting £2 for them.

[ladymuck]

I have one of these
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

And chucked in a couple of 4TB drives and have them mirrored. They do larger ones with more bays and obviously you can buy whatever size drives you need.

Easy to set up, just sits in the background doing not a lot. Initial slow load time on opening a folder or getting music/video started but once launched it streams fine both over wire and wireless.

[eek]

How much of that data do you actually need?

A lot of what I have is nice to have and I would curse if I lost it but I could live without series X of GoT / lost / suits....

The things that matter are then backed up to Amazon Glacier which costs peanuts unless I need to recover it....

[SimonMac]

How much of that data do you actually need?

A lot of what I have is nice to have and I would curse if I lost it but I could live without series X of GoT / lost / suits....

The things that matter are then backed up to Amazon Glacier which costs peanuts unless I need to recover it....

Just noticed my NAS has an option to backup to Amazon S3, might just turn that on for a bit of extra backup, but all the important stuff is up up in Dropbox, this stuff is mainly media files/ISO's/Time Machine backups it's not the end of the world if it goes, guess it just depends how cheap peace of mind is

[ladymuck]

My NAS just holds junk - software installation files I've collected over the years, photos, movies and tv, MP3s.

It would be annoying if I lost it but not the end of the world. More important stuff is stored on someone else's PC (aka the cloud)

[sal]

1. Is pointless, giving the fact you already have experience with the Microserver/FreeNAS combo, HP gen.8 is less than £100 w/o VAT post cashback, that kind of money can hardly by even the crappiest of 4 bay NAS. If you are after a different "dedicated" NAS OS, put xPenology on a microserver, which is essentially Synology DMS

2/3. By spec do you mean CPU/Memory or raw disk space? For anything else than Plex transcode and/or VMs running on the same box the base Celeron G1610 of the HP gen.8 is more than what's in the £800+ dedicated NAS devices. If you want more than 4 drives you will have to depart from the microserver and go for HPE ML10 / Dell T20 towers.

4. This is just pissing money away. You are paying a premium for something that you can do yourself in an hour.

5. Like others have already mentioned how much critical data you actually have? Most NAS are full of media that can be easily downloaded again, and backups that you already have 1 copy of the original data on the source device + 1 copy on your healthy NAS, if something is that critical, better put the 3rd copy on a cloud backup. Amazon glacier or backblaze are good cheap options. If you want the extra copy, but are paranoid of the cloud, get a 8TB external drive for £200ish, you don't need disk redundancy for that.


Speaking of Microserver, HPE gen.10 was a huge disappointment with the sub-par AMD CPUs they decided to go with. On the other hand if you are after a NAS/HTPC combo it's much better option that the gen.8

[TheFaQQer]

1. Is pointless, giving the fact you already have experience with the Microserver/FreeNAS combo, HP gen.8 is less than £100 w/o VAT post cashback, that kind of money can hardly by even the crappiest of 4 bay NAS. If you are after a different "dedicated" NAS OS, put xPenology on a microserver, which is essentially Synology DMS

2/3. By spec do you mean CPU/Memory or raw disk space? For anything else than Plex transcode and/or VMs running on the same box the base Celeron G1610 of the HP gen.8 is more than what's in the £800+ dedicated NAS devices. If you want more than 4 drives you will have to depart from the microserver and go for HPE ML10 / Dell T20 towers.

4. This is just pissing money away. You are paying a premium for something that you can do yourself in an hour.

5. Like others have already mentioned how much critical data you actually have? Most NAS are full of media that can be easily downloaded again, and backups that you already have 1 copy of the original data on the source device + 1 copy on your healthy NAS, if something is that critical, better put the 3rd copy on a cloud backup. Amazon glacier or backblaze are good cheap options. If you want the extra copy, but are paranoid of the cloud, get a 8TB external drive for £200ish, you don't need disk redundancy for that.


Speaking of Microserver, HPE gen.10 was a huge disappointment with the sub-par AMD CPUs they decided to go with. On the other hand if you are after a NAS/HTPC combo it's much better option that the gen.8

Ta - I'd read on the FreeNas forums that some people were having problems with the gen 10. I might look at a mini-ITX that I've seen with 6 bays and stick a load of RAM in there as well.

Part of my reluctance to put anything in Glacier or similar is that I'd have to actually look at what I've got on the NAS in the first place and work out what I need to keep I found 1TB in my personal folder the other day, which includes VMWare images that I've never used and will never use again, and backups of my laptop that I took in 2011. I could probably afford to lose some of those, I guess.

So it's easier to just copy the whole lot and then have the problem in two places rather than just one

[eek]

Ta - I'd read on the FreeNas forums that some people were having problems with the gen 10. I might look at a mini-ITX that I've seen with 6 bays and stick a load of RAM in there as well.

Part of my reluctance to put anything in Glacier or similar is that I'd have to actually look at what I've got on the NAS in the first place and work out what I need to keep I found 1TB in my personal folder the other day, which includes VMWare images that I've never used and will never use again, and backups of my laptop that I took in 2011. I could probably afford to lose some of those, I guess.

So it's easier to just copy the whole lot and then have the problem in two places rather than just one

You really need to sort that out but to be honest I'm a fine one to talk

Would it be worth actually going for a full size server and using it for actual development. The server in the garage now has 32gb RAM (all the machine will take) and a gtx 1080 running for a VM for machine learning fun?

[radish2008]

Why not just get a decent UPS ?

[Hobosapien]

I had two HP microservers, one mirroring the other.

One day the secondary one failed to start up, kept freezing while loading the OS, so I just removed the drives and got a USB 3.0 SATA docking station and some silicon storage cases. Cost about 30 quid for the lot.

So still have the ability to backup my backups. Decided not to bother getting another Microserver, cheap as they are, as this solution is just as good for my purposes. One day I may bother to dismantle the faulty one to see if it's an easy/cheap fix.