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Build a Raspberry Pi CM4 4-Bay NAS with Wiretrustee Carrier Board

cnx-software.com

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Re: Build a Raspberry Pi CM4 4-Bay NAS with Wiretrustee Carrier Board

#11

Post by pmiller2 »

znpy wrote: post #7

I wouldnt trust my data with this kind of devices. There's nothing wrong per se, but I have my doubts about how easy you can find replacement parts if something breaks in, say, a year or two. If you really depend on your data and want it to be safe, i'd recommend spending the extra money and either getting a proper nas (synology/qnap) or go the proper diy way (aka an x86 box and truenas/unraid). you really don't want…

If you're concerned about availability of parts, why not just keep some cold spares around? It's not like we're talking about expensive and specialized hardware here.

Re: Build a Raspberry Pi CM4 4-Bay NAS with Wiretrustee Carrier Board

#12

Post by dsr_ »

znpy wrote: post #7

I wouldnt trust my data with this kind of devices. There's nothing wrong per se, but I have my doubts about how easy you can find replacement parts if something breaks in, say, a year or two. If you really depend on your data and want it to be safe, i'd recommend spending the extra money and either getting a proper nas (synology/qnap) or go the proper diy way (aka an x86 box and truenas/unraid). you really don't want…

As a household backup device, rather than a NAS, this is actually pretty good.

Use mdadm RAID-10 across four spinning disks, or RAID-1 across a pair and have two slots free. If the board fails, you can plug them into any other Linux box with SATA ports available.

Most people have no better than 1Gb/s ethernet available in their house anyway. One expects a backup or restore to take a while, but also not to be interactive.

It's probably cheaper to repurpose an old desktop, but this will probably use less power, even when both are asleep.

Re: Build a Raspberry Pi CM4 4-Bay NAS with Wiretrustee Carrier Board

#13

Post by fogihujy »

magicalhippo wrote: post #5
EwanToo wrote: post #4

You can have a lot of fun with Pi's, but I'm not sure I want to build a multi-TB NAS using a Raspberry Pi with a pretty rare addon board.. If you do want something like this, I think the ODROID-HC4[1] is probably a better option. 1 - https://ameridroid.com/products/odroid-hc4

Or just use USB3 - SATA connectors...

Yeah, USB drives with their own power supplies work very well with the Pi, but I can imagine high workloads could quickly run into problems and/or bottlenecks.

Re: Build a Raspberry Pi CM4 4-Bay NAS with Wiretrustee Carrier Board

#14

Post by manuel_w »

Damogran6 wrote: post #10

A quick google shows eMMC flash memory for the compute module...do you need to mindfully control writing to flash to keep something like this from nuking the boot device? Could be my choice of storage (whatever $4 buys at Microcenter) but the failure mode on my RPi weather station was SD card death. I'd hate to rely on that for a NAS.

Since some firmware update released in September 2020 it's possible to boot Raspberry Pi 4s from USB. It's a bit cumbersome to piece the info together, but it's there: https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/hardware/raspberry...

Re: Build a Raspberry Pi CM4 4-Bay NAS with Wiretrustee Carrier Board

#15

Post by IgorPartola »

dsr_ wrote: post #12
znpy wrote: post #7

I wouldnt trust my data with this kind of devices. There's nothing wrong per se, but I have my doubts about how easy you can find replacement parts if something breaks in, say, a year or two. If you really depend on your data and want it to be safe, i'd recommend spending the extra money and either getting a proper nas (synology/qnap) or go the proper diy way (aka an x86 box and truenas/unraid). you really don't want…

As a household backup device, rather than a NAS, this is actually pretty good. Use mdadm RAID-10 across four spinning disks, or RAID-1 across a pair and have two slots free. If the board fails, you can plug them into any other Linux box with SATA ports available. Most people have no better than 1Gb/s ethernet available in their house anyway. One expects a backup or restore to take a while, but also not to be interact…

ECC and zfs/btrfs I think are a must for any data you care about. RAID 1 isn’t going to save you when you can’t tell which copy of the given block is the corrupted one.

Re: Build a Raspberry Pi CM4 4-Bay NAS with Wiretrustee Carrier Board

#16

Post by KaiserPro »

As a cheap offsite destination for backup,(assuming you have multiple destinations) this looks quite compelling.

Although I don't think ZFS is stable on the pi just yet[1], so perhaps 4 sata drives is overkill.

I would be interested in a single sata/cm4 carrier board though.

[1]citation needed, I've not really looked...

Re: Build a Raspberry Pi CM4 4-Bay NAS with Wiretrustee Carrier Board

#17

Post by smarx007 »

Nothing against cool RPi projects but be aware that a motherboard with a NAS-grade Celeron, like ASRock J4105M, sells for $85 or so (but needs RAM, $20 for 4GB roughly). At $105, this leaves this carrier board around $35 of budget if you can get RPi CM4 4GB for $70. Plus all the doubts about reliability mentioned above.

Re: Build a Raspberry Pi CM4 4-Bay NAS with Wiretrustee Carrier Board

#19

Post by geerlingguy »

There are a few people currently working on NAS boards based on the CM4. A few different approaches in terms of chipsets used and performance targets.

I'm trying to track them in this GitHub issue [1] but a couple people have remained more or less anonymous as they don't want to attract attention too early.

The single PCIe lane is the biggest limitation if you're looking for raw speed (350 MB/sec is kind of the upper real-world sustained transfer limit), though since the gigabit Ethernet port is on a different interface, you can still expect to get 80-100 MB/sec network transfer speeds.

Something like this, with the right case and OMV or other adequate software would be a relatively competitive replacement for low-end NASes.

I'm also exploring building a 2.5G NAS with a CM4, but the PCIe bus speed limitation is what kinda hamstrings that. Hopefully the next Pi revision has a 4x (at least) lane, like the RockPro64.

[1] https://github.com/geerlingguy/raspberry-pi-pcie-devices/iss...

Re: Build a Raspberry Pi CM4 4-Bay NAS with Wiretrustee Carrier Board

#20

Post by 88 »

smarx007 wrote: post #17

Nothing against cool RPi projects but be aware that a motherboard with a NAS-grade Celeron, like ASRock J4105M, sells for $85 or so (but needs RAM, $20 for 4GB roughly). At $105, this leaves this carrier board around $35 of budget if you can get RPi CM4 4GB for $70. Plus all the doubts about reliability mentioned above.

Presumably that board will need a separate PSU, RAM, storage for a boot drive, etc?

Also it only has two SATA ports so would need a PCIe expansion card to match the four ports offered by the Pi board?

I suspect the Pi is also significantly more power efficient?

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