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Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

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Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#271

Post by eatbitseveryday »

barrkel wrote: post #165
AviationAtom wrote: post #119

This article seems right up my alley, so here are some thoughts: - ZFS is pretty amazing in it's abilities, with it ushering in the age of software RAID over hardware RAID - ZFS shouldn't be limited to FreeBSD. The Linux port has come quite a long way. I'd advise you to use PPA over repo though, as many key features are missing from the version on repos. - TrueNAS is more targeted towards enterprise applications. If…

Raidz (or preferably raidz2) is good for archival / media streaming / local backup and has good sequential read/write performance, while striped mirrors - raid10 - are better for random access read and write and are a little bit more redundant (i.e. reliable), but costs more in drives for the same usuable space. Raidz needs to read all of every drive to rebuild after a drive replacement while a striped mirror only ne…

> Raidz needs to read all of every drive to rebuild after a drive replacement while a striped mirror only needs to read one. However if you're regularly scrubbing zfs then you read it all regularly anyway.

Not quite. Each vdev rebuild uses disks within it. A pool with multiple vdev each being raidz does not need to read all disks to rebuild a single raidz vdev. Your statement compares one vdev vs many vdevs. It just happens to be the case folks assume one large vdev with raidz and multiple vdev with mirroring.

If you have a 3- or 4- way mirror wouldn’t ZFS read from all disks in the vdev to rebuild any added disks to the mirror (there can be more than one)?

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#272

Post by aqfamnzc »

DarylZero wrote: post #230
1500100900 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- "RAID is not a backup" primarily because "you could rm -rf". ZFS snapshots cover that failure mode to the same extent that synchronization with offsite does, but cheaper. ZFS snapshots obviously don't cover other failure modes like natural disasters or a break in, so RAID is still not a backup. - for ZIL to do its work properly, you need the disks not to lie when they claim that the data has been truly saved. This…

> - "RAID is not a backup" primarily because "you could rm -rf". ZFS snapshots cover that failure mode to the same extent that synchronization with offsite does Not really. You need to be synchronizing to a _write-only_ backup archive. A local ZFS snapshot can be deleted locally. (Also fire, compromise, police confiscation, etc.)

> You need to be synchronizing to a _write-only_ backup archive.

For my write-only backup needs, this free service known as S4 works wonderfully:

http://www.supersimplestorageservice.com/

(This is a joke.)

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#273

Post by fomine3 »

loeg wrote: post #52
zekica wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can use pcie switches on pcie x4 to 4xM.2x4 drives.

The active pcie switches are a lot more expensive than the passive splitters that only work on systems with pcie bifurcation.

Nowadays some recent consumer platforms supports PCIe x16 to x4/x4/x4/x4 bifurcation that should be enough. For RAID, switching (dynamically shares bandwidth between SSDs) is nonsense, isn't it?

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#274

Post by Anthony-G »

foobarian wrote: post #266
Anthony-G wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m in the process of setting up a home server after buying a pair of matching 3TB Western Digital “Red” disks. I plan on installing them in a HPE ProLiant MicroServer G7 Server / HP Micro G7 N40L that I was gifted a couple of years ago. Even though it comes with a hardware RAID, I was considering setting up RAID 1 using Linux software RAID. However, according to the Linux Raid Wiki ¹, Hardware RAID 1 is better than…

Funny, I have the identical setup with a small SSD for /, and two of the 3TB Reds for my media/music/files. I have seen enough pain from HW Raid controller setups (custom drivers, configs, long recovery) that HW Raid was right out. Then, for soft raid I had bad experiences in the past where the system refused to come up with one disk in the mirror pair bad. I'm sure there is a way to configure this properly but at th…

Thanks so much for sharing your experience. I look after a couple of server in my current job that have hardware RAID (Dell) but they were set up by my predecessors and they’ve never given any trouble since I started working there (touch wood). I have also not had any problems with Linux Software RAID, e.g., I was pleasantly surprised to discover that I could move the RAID 1 disks from my previous home server (a repurposed Dell workstation) to the Proliant microserver and my Debian OS had no problem recognising them.

The consensus seems to be that RAID isn’t particularly useful for a home server. Backup would be more useful as I would be more likely to accidentally delete or over-write a file than for a disk to fail catastrophically) so I think I might use the second disk, similar to how you use yours. I would also be better served by using ZFS; its de-duplication would also be useful – so I’m going to try it as an experiment.

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#275

Post by 6ak74rfy »

mobilio wrote: post #232
RobLach wrote: post #229

If you're going for budget, decommissioned data center rack servers work well. I purchased a dual xeon (24 cores total) with 64gb of memory, 12 3.5" bays, dual power supplies, for about $250 from a liquidator. Filling it with HDDs was pricey but you can expand as you need it to spread the expenditure.

Same here - 32 cores/64G ram/4 3.5" bays, dual power 460w for $300. Results: - idle - 55W - full usage - 200W Not bad for 10 years old server.

(Cross-posting from another comment of mine.)

I am a newbie with server builds. Can you share an Ebay or Amazon link that can be a good/cheap starting point? Also, will these servers contain everything I need to get up and running (with the exception of hard drives, of course)?

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#276

Post by gigel82 »

js2 wrote: post #113

New drives are around $16-$20/TB depending on if you catch a sale and are willing to shuck. You can pick up used SAS drives in 3-4TB capacity for around $5/TB. I'm a crazy person, so I built this to hold 11 3TB SAS drives: https://imgur.com/a/JqbBN1p https://pcpartpicker.com/list/dLhNvf I used a Supermicro MB and ECC RAM. It's not much more expensive and it's nice having IPMI. I personally think it's crazy to forego…

The pictures inside your case give me anxiety for some weird reason. That's the cleanest* inside of a PC I've seen in my life, almost artificial looking; are you building in a clean room?

*Clean in terms of dust, not cable management

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#277

Post by sandreas »

marius_k wrote: post #200
sandreas wrote: post #72

Building your own NAS Server by hand may be a nice project, but if you would like to get something up and running quickly, you should consider prebuild servers like Dell T* series or HP Microserver. It is real server hardware, supporting ECC RAM and by far less work to build, often providing (semi-)professional remote management. If you plan to build a budget NAS and enough room is not a problem, I personally would r…

what would you recommend for power efficient hdds (when idle)? I have recently built a truenas box with 2x4TB ssd's. But I think I will want to expand it. Currently it runs at 14W idle. If I add 2hdd I expect it to increase to 40W(?). How can I optimize this?

To answer your question: You could buy WD Red, to save a little noise and power.

BUT: You should always consider, that optimizing Power Consumption would mean to buy new hardware. I hardly ever do this. Buying new hardware in many cases is vastly more expensive than keeping your old hw, even if it consumes more power.

I'll try to give you an example:

- My Dell T20 consumes 33W Idle

- There is HW out there, that consumes 14W - diff (19W)

- Let's say my Dell costs 150$ vs 600$ (for new hardware) - diff: 450$

- How long can I run my Dell T20 for 450$, without investing in new hardware

Calculation:

- Dell additional power per year: 0,019kW * 24h * 365 = 166kWh

- Estimated cost per year (in germany): 166kWh * 0,30$ = 49,80$

- Means I can run it about 9 years to the break even point

Advice: Buy a newer cheap used server consuming 12W in 5 years, and you save a ton of money. AND buying used hardware is better for the environment...

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#278

Post by K0SM0S »

barrkel wrote: post #165
AviationAtom wrote: post #119

This article seems right up my alley, so here are some thoughts: - ZFS is pretty amazing in it's abilities, with it ushering in the age of software RAID over hardware RAID - ZFS shouldn't be limited to FreeBSD. The Linux port has come quite a long way. I'd advise you to use PPA over repo though, as many key features are missing from the version on repos. - TrueNAS is more targeted towards enterprise applications. If…

Raidz (or preferably raidz2) is good for archival / media streaming / local backup and has good sequential read/write performance, while striped mirrors - raid10 - are better for random access read and write and are a little bit more redundant (i.e. reliable), but costs more in drives for the same usuable space. Raidz needs to read all of every drive to rebuild after a drive replacement while a striped mirror only ne…

Side note, since it's probably a niche use-case, but using NVMe's in Z1 was both pretty effective with VMs and cheap enough on usable capacity (4×1TB for ~3TB usable).

I feel SSDs are in a totally different category that makes Z1 an actual option, whereas I don't trust it for spinners. Key difference being that a failed SSD can usually be read (only) whereas a failed spinner is usually as good as bricked.

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#279

Post by zaarn »

semiotic1 wrote: post #254
zaarn wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They likely use XATTRs to store the ACL (that is an option in Samba), but it's not native like it's on the TrueNAS systems with the kernel. I bet if you log into the Syno's via SSH you don't get the ACLs enforced on the shell. With the NFSv4 ACL patchseries, they would and you could benefit from the better options that the NFSv4 ACLs give you. Storing them in metadata is not the same as having them natively.

They maintain their own kernel module to handle ACLs (synoacl_vfs) and they are indeed enforced locally as well. They can be read and modified by using the `synoacltool` cli. $ synoacltool -get .config ACL version: 1 Archive: is_inherit,is_support_ACL Owner: [semiotic(user)] --------------------- [0] user:semiotic:allow:rwxp-DaARWc--:fd-- (level:1) [1] group:users:allow:r-x---a-R-c--:fd-- (level:1)

Is that kernel module open source? One of the advantages of what TrueNAS did is that I can patch it into my own kernels if I'd need to. Plus being compatible to the NFSv4 ACL binary format, so it works via NFS too. Also handling Active Directory would be important there.

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#280

Post by sandreas »

6ak74rfy wrote: post #250
sandreas wrote: post #72

Building your own NAS Server by hand may be a nice project, but if you would like to get something up and running quickly, you should consider prebuild servers like Dell T* series or HP Microserver. It is real server hardware, supporting ECC RAM and by far less work to build, often providing (semi-)professional remote management. If you plan to build a budget NAS and enough room is not a problem, I personally would r…

May I use your help? Background about my situation: I've only ever used laptops and Raspberry Pis in my life. Currently, my home server is a couple of RPis but I've outgrown them and need to upgrade. Point being, I've never built a server from scratch or even opened one up. I am planning to go with this for now: https://pcpartpicker.com/list/bzYZcb What you are suggesting seems a better way for me to go about it. Can…

Well, the question is, what are your real needs and what part of you is asking for MORE POWER? :-)

I personally think, that the Dell T20 is more than enough for a ONLY NAS Server and even for a small homelab.

You could go for something similar to this (ebay) but I had MUCH more success in looking at "garage sale" websites (I don't know, what sites to use in the US):

https://www.ebay.com/itm/175291934211?hash=item28d036a603:g:...

https://www.ebay.com/itm/284831417242?hash=item425146839a:g:...

Dell T20 - but I would not invest more than 150$ incl. >= 16GB ECC RAM.

HP Microserver Gen8 is more expensive, but not more than 350$ incl. >= 16GB ECC RAM.

You could also consider FUJITSU PRIMERGY TX1310 M3 and better. More modern Machines include the DELL T40, but it is much more expensive.

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