Live data from Hacker News

A modular, extensible DIY NAS

blog.georgovassilis.com

81–90 of 113 posts

Re: A modular, extensible DIY NAS

#81
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Synology produces excellent devices, Sorry but had quite the opposite experience even with the professional lines. The only NAS i trust is a Server (at least HP mini server) and ZFS. Stuff like unraid is for Windows mindsets, i don't trust HW-Raid and i especially don't trust Closedsource Software BS for stuff like that, exceptions are Enterprise stuff like EVA's or NetApp and EMC.

Synology OS is a modified Linux and it uses mdraid for RAID. There is no hardware RAID, and very little closedsource bullshit. This is how you'd mount a synology array in a Linux server: https://www.synology.com/en-us/knowledgebase/DSM/tutorial/St... - it's basically two terminal commands after all the preparation stuff. I believe QNAP uses mdraid as well but I haven't had any experience with those.

>Synology OS is a modified Linux and it uses mdraid for RAID.

Yes and that raid destroyed itself many times which btw never happened to me on a self-installed Linux.

Re: A modular, extensible DIY NAS

#82
post #56
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Synology produces excellent devices, Sorry but had quite the opposite experience even with the professional lines. The only NAS i trust is a Server (at least HP mini server) and ZFS. Stuff like unraid is for Windows mindsets, i don't trust HW-Raid and i especially don't trust Closedsource Software BS for stuff like that, exceptions are Enterprise stuff like EVA's or NetApp and EMC.

Opensuse with btrfs is my drug of choice. Btrfs is on the kernel and just works.

I have to say OpenSuse makes a great job, have tumbleweed on my laptop and it's running great, a really great Distro.

Re: A modular, extensible DIY NAS

#83
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you link to any or provide model names?

Asus one is PN50. 4300U - 4800U Unsure about asrock. I think they maybe have pivoted to a non renoir cpu

Thanks, this looks like a really small form factor PC, not a server/nas.

Re: A modular, extensible DIY NAS

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there is also the LUKS encryption overhead which caps transfer rates from the RAID. I also run boinc (giving back to the community) which limits available CPU.

LUKS is capable of using AES-NI, and most CPUs are faster at AES-NI than two-lane NVMe drives at delivering that data. It should be absolutely no problem with SATA.

His CPU has no AES-NI, then it is a bit of a problem. But i was really astonished that a celeron supports ECC...quite nice ;)

https://ark.intel.com/content/www/de/de/ark/products/71074/i...

EDIT: He upgraded to a XEON..so forget all above.

Re: A modular, extensible DIY NAS

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Moral of the story: If you are depending on certain hardware features, you need to have a cold spare available with identical hardware and firmware. If you cannot afford one, it's better to either use a software implementation, have a really good service contract with the vendor or just let a VM provider take care of your infrastructure. +1 for this. Hardware raid absolutely has its place, but if you expect to be a…

> Also, RAID is not a backup. You are absolutely right, but there are use-cases where backup is too expensive, so investing into robustness and availability is the only option left.

>backup is too expensive, so investing into robustness and availability is the only option left.

No please don't say something like that if you love your data. Raid is for the availability of your data, a Backup is the secure storage/versioning of you data, two completely different things.

Re: A modular, extensible DIY NAS

#86
post #46

Read "DIY NAS" and was thinking...sure a HP Mini and Freenas or pure FreeBSD or Xigmanas and what do i see, Ubuntu...but that's probably just because of the Bitcoin mining....with a Celeron... :)

I upgraded to a Xeon because of LUKS encryption; Celeron doesn't have hardware support for encryption. Indeed I run a computationally heavy workload - boinc with protein folding and TB prevention :)

Ah nice...because of AES-NI! Being a longtime user/giver to World Community Grid.

Re: A modular, extensible DIY NAS

#87
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, RAID is not a backup. You are absolutely right, but there are use-cases where backup is too expensive, so investing into robustness and availability is the only option left.

>backup is too expensive, so investing into robustness and availability is the only option left. No please don't say something like that if you love your data. Raid is for the availability of your data, a Backup is the secure storage/versioning of you data, two completely different things.

My love for my data has a price tag :-) If I afford backup with this amount, I need to cut down on other expenses in my life.

Re: A modular, extensible DIY NAS

#88
post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they fixed that in a firmware upgrade.

Can you please post(or send me over email) your BIOS/iLO versions? I plan do do a NAS build with a Gen8 and it would greatly help me to know what versions don't have the fan noise issue. Thank you in advance!

J06 04/04/2019

Re: A modular, extensible DIY NAS

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is true: I have an almost silent gen8 and I'm not using the built-in raid

I have 3x Microservers Gen8 and they are all dead silent.

You're _that_ louwrentius? I read your posts when I tried to replace the case fan!

Re: A modular, extensible DIY NAS

#90

I don't understand why anyone would do this instead of running FreeNAS. It comes with everything you need including ZFS pools.

Better range of hardware support in Linux than FreeBSD. Also note that the FreeBSD implementation of ZFS has been replaced and ported from OpenZFS (formerly ZFSonLinux).

On paper. In practice FreeBSD has support for the great hardware you should be using anyway. The sketchy stuff, and the oddball only one person even has it in their personal museum Linux has better support for. (Also the latest and greatest linux will generally get support for first, but if it is worth using FreeBSD will get support)
Post reply on HN