Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

mtlynch.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 316 posts

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#61

Post by loeg »

sascha_sl wrote: post #36

>If you’re new to the homelab world or have no experience building PCs, I recommend that you don’t build your own NAS. >Before building this system, I had zero experience with ZFS, so I was excited to try it out. Sorry, but this is amusing to me. ZFS on TrueNAS is probably fine, but you're building your production NAS, to replace the Synology device you've become "so dependent on". Don't become dependent on ZFS witho…

My tiny NAS is still using ext4 + md raid1. It’s the third incarnation of essentially the same design (previously used raid10 when drives were smaller).

When it fills up, I delete some files rather than adding disks.

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#62

Post by Jhsto »

Tomdarkness wrote: post #46
Jhsto wrote: post #41

What is the technical upside of using TrueNAS instead of samba? If you want to optimize for control, it seems a bit weird to me to settle for an "all in one" software stack.

Not really sure the comparison is valid. TrueNAS uses Samba to provide SMB network shares.

I see, so I assume the upside is that it's a time saver. Thanks! I personally wen't with samba on Linux and with btrfs. I was wondering if there's something non-obvious in TrueNAS that I'm missing out on.

And to my account, I think my upsides are that:

- ability to choose the kernel

- no need for SSD for base OS since running off of RAM is rather easy on Linux

- samba can run in a container thus a bit more control security-wise

- server may run something else as well

Of course, this comes with a lot more technical hurdles. More like a side-project than utility really. That's why I was wondering does TrueNAS provide non-obvious upsides that would be lacking in self-rolled one.

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#64

Post by fuzzy2 »

I have to say, I'm put off by the power benchmark. I have a way older system with way more stuff (6 3.5 inch HDD, 2 2.5 inch HDD, 2.5 inch SSD, 8-port SAS controller, Intel NIC card) and it idles (all drives spun down) at ~30 watts.

When I first bought the system over 10 years ago, ZFS on Linux wasn't really a thing, so I used FreeBSD. I later switched and with the switch came substantial power savings.

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#65

Post by vladvasiliu »

Macha wrote: post #37
eminence32 wrote: post #9

Nice build. I recently built my second NAS (from a used R720 from ebay). The total (without disks) is pretty similar to the build documented in this article. Having a large NAS has had an interesting (though predictable) impact on all the computers around it: Pretty much every bit of data lives on the NAS (accessed either by CIFS, NFS, or iSCSI). When I had to reinstall Windows, it was mostly painless because all my…

How is performance, especially with regards to load times, if your steam library is mounted remotely? I ask because the difference between a SSD and a hard drive can be massive in this regards, so I'd be really interested to know if the network latency is also a comparable hit.

I'm not a hardcore gamer by any means, but I really wonder how much influence drives actually have on games.

My gaming computer had an old SATA SSD (Samsung 840 Evo IIRC). Some games took ages to load (particularly Fallout 4). I switched to a much faster NVME drive, and subjectively, it's not any faster loading games. I'd say this was a very underwhelming purchase.

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#66

Post by tenken »

eminence32 wrote: post #11
hddherman wrote: post #6

> I see people talking about snapshotting, but I haven’t found a need for it. I already have snapshots in my restic backup solution. They’re not especially convenient, but I’ve been using restic for two years, and I only recall needing to recover data from a snapshot once. The ease at which you can revert mistakes using ZFS snapshots is much better compared to restic. You can pretty much navigate to the correct snaps…

I have personally been saved by ZFS snapshots (multiple times!) because sometimes I do dumb things, like running: rm -rf tmp * Instead of: rm -rf tmp*

I never do "rm prefix" in a dir. I always do "rm ./aDir/prefix" for example. This assures I'm not globbing outside a directory (or just a directory) and tries to help assure I'm not shooting my own foot.

Yea, i love up 1 directory before I delete anything.

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#67

Post by aborsy »

kstenerud wrote: post #60

I set up my most recent NAS using a TerraMaster unit. It's basically a nifty case (9x5x5 inches) around a low power Intel board with a USB stick for a boot device (which I replaced with a mini 100gb USB SSD). I don't know and don't care about TerraMaster's software (it might be awesome - I have no idea). I just rolled my own NixOS install with ZFS so that I could have a deterministic installation (I've heard good thi…

Can you install TrueNAS on it?

It’s unclear if one could install TrueNAS on a Synology, QNAP, Teramaster etc. Sometimes hardware is not supported.

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#68

Post by mmastrac »

> I purchased the same model of disk from two different vendors to decrease the chances of getting two disks from the same manufacturing batch.

I prefer mixing brands/models instead. Two vendors _might_ get you a different batch, but you could be choosing a bad model. I ended up building mine from three different WD models and two Seagate ones. I'm paranoid and run with two spares.

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#69

Post by kstenerud »

aborsy wrote: post #67
kstenerud wrote: post #60

I set up my most recent NAS using a TerraMaster unit. It's basically a nifty case (9x5x5 inches) around a low power Intel board with a USB stick for a boot device (which I replaced with a mini 100gb USB SSD). I don't know and don't care about TerraMaster's software (it might be awesome - I have no idea). I just rolled my own NixOS install with ZFS so that I could have a deterministic installation (I've heard good thi…

Can you install TrueNAS on it? It’s unclear if one could install TrueNAS on a Synology, QNAP, Teramaster etc. Sometimes hardware is not supported.

I don't know, but if I could install NixOS without difficulty, it should be possible. I installed Ubuntu server on it at first and that also worked fine. No tweaking necessary at all. You just flash the standard x64 installer on a USB stick, plug it in, and install like you would on any PC (because it basically is a PC - it even has a working HDMI port).

Edit: Looks like someone did a writeup for TrueNAS on a TerraMaster: https://joelduncan.io/freenas-on-terramaster-f2-221/

Also: https://mightygadget.co.uk/how-to-upgrade-the-terramaster-f4...

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#70

Post by vladvasiliu »

magicalhippo wrote: post #42
mrslave wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I occasionally look at the PCIe-to-SATA market and find it confusing. It appears polarized into either cards from a reputable brand and very expensive, even with few SATA ports, or cards from an unknown brand and relatively affordable. What's your experience with this and what can you recommend (2-port or 4-port)? Are the cheap cards safe & reliable or are they to be avoided?

I've been running older SAS cards for years and it's been doing just fine. They go for cheap on eBay. Each SAS port serve four SATA drives, using SAS-to-SATA cables. Just make sure to get one that runs in IT mode or you have to mess with the firmware.

> Just make sure to get one that runs in IT mode or you have to mess with the firmware.

In case some people wonder what "IT mode" is, as I used to some years ago, what you basically want is a card that will expose the drives directly to the OS, as opposed to "volumes".

In other terms, if the card is a RAID controller, it may insist on you creating arrays and only expose those. You can circumvent it by creating single-drive arrays, but it's a pain.

Some cards can do both, but it's usually not advertised. Non-RAID cards also tend to be cheaper. Others (usually LSI) can be flashed with a non-RAID firmware, but again, it's less of a hassle to not have to do it.

Post reply on HN