The Cheapest NAS • Hacker News Board

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#11

Post by generalizations » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 5:59 PM UTC

jstanley wrote: post #4

When people set up these NAS's, how are they accessing the files? NFS? SFTP? And how are you accessing it when away from home? A VPN that you're permanently connected to? Is there a good way to do NAT hole-punching? Syncthing kind of does what I want, in that it lets all my computers sync the same files no matter what network they're on, but it insists on always copying all the files ("syncing") whereas I just want t…

Depends on what you need. I have a NAS with syncthing, and it's a combination.

- I use a lot of different folders within syncthing, and different machines have different combinations to save space where they aren't needed; the NAS has all of them.

- on the LAN, sshfs is a resilient-but-slower alternative to NFS. If I reboot my NAS, sshfs doesn't care & reconnects without complaint...last time I tried to use it, NFS locked up the entire client.

- zerotier + sshfs is workable-but-slow in remote scenarios

Note I'm mostly trying to write code remotely. If you're trying to watch videos....uh, good luck.

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#12

Post by geerlingguy » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 6:01 PM UTC

leros wrote: post #2

That's pretty cool. Fits their use case for sure. I would probably opt to spend a little more for a gigabit port. From what I've seen watching Jeff Geerling, you can setup a pretty reasonable performing NAS on something on these small SBCs.

Any of the latest generation Arm SBCs is actually pretty adequate for NAS purposes, especially if that's all you want to run on it.

If you get a Pi 4 or Pi 5, or one of the Rockchip boards with RK3566 or RK3588 (the latter is much more pricey, but can get gigabit-plus speeds), you can either attach a USB hard drive or SSD, or with most of them now you could add on an M.2 drive or an adapter for SATA hard drives/SSDs, and even do RAID over 1 Gbps or sometimes 2.5 Gbps with no issue.

Some people choose to run OpenMediaVault (which is fine), though I have my NASes set up using Ansible + ZFS running on bare Debian, as it's simpler for me to manage that way: https://github.com/geerlingguy/arm-nas

I would go with Radxa or maybe Libre Computer if you're not going the Raspberry Pi route, they both have images for their latest boards that are decent, though I almost always have issues with HDMI output, so be prepared to set things up over SSH or serial console.

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#13

Post by jnovek » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 6:01 PM UTC

nomius10 wrote: post #8

jstanley wrote: post #4

When people set up these NAS's, how are they accessing the files? NFS? SFTP? And how are you accessing it when away from home? A VPN that you're permanently connected to? Is there a good way to do NAT hole-punching? Syncthing kind of does what I want, in that it lets all my computers sync the same files no matter what network they're on, but it insists on always copying all the files ("syncing") whereas I just want t…

An easy solution for the VPN part would be Zerotier / Tailscale. IIRC Zerotier uses chacha20 for encryption which is faster than AES, especially for a power-strapped SBC.

I tried to build a setup like this with OpenVPN years ago and OMG.

Tailscale/Wireguard has been such a big leap forward.

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#14

Post by sockaddr » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 6:02 PM UTC

jstanley wrote: post #4

When people set up these NAS's, how are they accessing the files? NFS? SFTP? And how are you accessing it when away from home? A VPN that you're permanently connected to? Is there a good way to do NAT hole-punching? Syncthing kind of does what I want, in that it lets all my computers sync the same files no matter what network they're on, but it insists on always copying all the files ("syncing") whereas I just want t…

> And how are you accessing it when away from home?

I usually just use zerotier for this, it's extremely lightweight

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#15

Post by coconut08 » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 6:06 PM UTC

Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #3

Note that it doesn't look like it has ECC, so make sure to have backups. Fancy file systems like ZFS don't remove the need for ECC.

been using zfs on my home nas without ecc for well over a decade and never had any problems. i've seen people claiming this since before i started using zfs and it seems so unnecessary for some random home project.

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#16

Post by jnovek » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 6:08 PM UTC

Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #3

Note that it doesn't look like it has ECC, so make sure to have backups. Fancy file systems like ZFS don't remove the need for ECC.

> so make sure to have backups

Can you (or someone) suggest a backup scheme? I have a 28TB NAS. Almost everything I've looked into is expensive or intended more for enterprise tier.

Are there options for backup in the "hobbyist" price range?

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#17

Post by hitsurume » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 6:09 PM UTC

Scene_Cast2 wrote: post #3

Note that it doesn't look like it has ECC, so make sure to have backups. Fancy file systems like ZFS don't remove the need for ECC.

I know ECC is a special type of ram, but how does it help a NAS/Raid setup?

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#18

Post by system2 » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 6:09 PM UTC

jstanley wrote: post #4

When people set up these NAS's, how are they accessing the files? NFS? SFTP? And how are you accessing it when away from home? A VPN that you're permanently connected to? Is there a good way to do NAT hole-punching? Syncthing kind of does what I want, in that it lets all my computers sync the same files no matter what network they're on, but it insists on always copying all the files ("syncing") whereas I just want t…

NFS + SMB.

Also I use SonicWall VPN to connect to my house to be in the network so it covers most of it. I also use Synology QuickConnect if I need to use the browser without VPN which also covers most urgent needs. Haven't failed me over a decade and my NAS also syncs with Synology C2 cloud which is also another peace of mind. I know it might sound unsafe a little having files stored on the cloud but it is what it is.

I won't play with half-baked library dependent homebrew solutions which cost way more time and cause headache more than commercial solutions. I won't open ports and forget them later either.

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#19

Post by 486sx33 » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 6:11 PM UTC

jstanley wrote: post #4

When people set up these NAS's, how are they accessing the files? NFS? SFTP? And how are you accessing it when away from home? A VPN that you're permanently connected to? Is there a good way to do NAT hole-punching? Syncthing kind of does what I want, in that it lets all my computers sync the same files no matter what network they're on, but it insists on always copying all the files ("syncing") whereas I just want t…

Synology does all that. I run two one at home one at the office, my only complaint is that it’s a bit “idiot proof”… both other times the web based GUIi is great. Also has free software that punches through NAT and dynamic IPs works great (quickconnect.to) I use sftp, media server, primarily

Re: The Cheapest NAS

#20

Post by pmontra » Wed, Jul 03, 2024, 6:12 PM UTC

jstanley wrote: post #4

When people set up these NAS's, how are they accessing the files? NFS? SFTP? And how are you accessing it when away from home? A VPN that you're permanently connected to? Is there a good way to do NAT hole-punching? Syncthing kind of does what I want, in that it lets all my computers sync the same files no matter what network they're on, but it insists on always copying all the files ("syncing") whereas I just want t…

SFTP for my other Linux devices, SMB by Samba for the rest of the world (mainly Android.)