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Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

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Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#181

Post by AviationAtom »

gjulianm wrote: post #167
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…

> - TrueNAS is more targeted towards enterprise applications. If you want good utility as a home user then give Proxmox or the like a look. Then you can make it into more than just a NAS (if you're open to it). I have questions about this. I'm thinking of building my own NAS server, and I don't know which OS to use. On the one hand it looks like people recommend TrueNAS a lot, which is nice now that they have a Linux…

If you want it to be strictly a NAS then TrueNAS should suffice. If you want to do anything more then I'd consider Proxmox or Ubuntu.

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#182

Post by aborsy »

gjulianm wrote: post #167
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…

> - TrueNAS is more targeted towards enterprise applications. If you want good utility as a home user then give Proxmox or the like a look. Then you can make it into more than just a NAS (if you're open to it). I have questions about this. I'm thinking of building my own NAS server, and I don't know which OS to use. On the one hand it looks like people recommend TrueNAS a lot, which is nice now that they have a Linux…

What you miss with raw Debian compared to TrueNAS is compatibility. TrueNAS makes sure that all pieces are compatible with one another so that when you update each piece or OS, the storage doesn’t break. The whole package is tested throughly before release.

Also, TrueNAS makes setup painless: users, permissions, shares, vdevs, ZFS tuning, nice dashboard etc. With Debian, you get a lot of config files and ansible playbooks that become hard to manage.

Ideally you won’t run other stuff on a NAS, outside Docker.

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#183

Post by KennyBlanken »

zamalek wrote: post #125

> Power usage A 500W PSU won't necessarily draw more than a 250W PSU, that is merely its maximum sustained load (what the rest of the system asks for) rating. The Bronze 80+ rating is likely part of the problem here, that indicates what the power draw from the wall is compared to what is being provided to your system. Titanium 80+ would net you about 10% reduction in wall power usage. Keep in mind that manufacturers…

Switch-mode PSUs are very inefficient at the low end of their duty cycle.

A 250W 80-bronze PSU for a 60W load will be operating at 25% capacity and 82% efficiency or better.

A 500W 80-titanium PSU at 60W will be at around 12% and 90% efficiency or better.

So, an 8% difference in minimum required efficiency...for a huge increase in cost.

It's much better to buy a high "tier" PSU (for reliability and safety), sized so that it spends most of its time at or above 20% duty cycle (which in OP's case would indeed be 250W.)

80-gold is very common in the marketplace and where most people should probably be buying.

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#184

Post by GekkePrutser »

AviationAtom wrote: post #126
vetinari wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd advise you to use PPA over repo though, as many key features are missing from the version on repos. I would advise using ZFS only with distros that come with it (i.e. Ubuntu, Proxmox), especially if you plan to have your / on it. I wasted too much time on CentOS with ZFS, would not do it again.

ZFS on Root just sounds like pain to me. I opt for MD RAID on root and then ZFS my other volumes. I would also say Ubuntu is probably the better choice for Linux ZFS, as CentOS seems to be lacking good support.

ZFS on root is really amazing on FreeBSD and the advantage is that you can snapshot your boot drive.

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#185

Post by AviationAtom »

aborsy wrote: post #171
AviationAtom wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think for me I am more concerned about trying to get the OS bootable again, if something becomes corrupted on the OS level. Even with MD RAID it came be a bit of a struggle to recover, but ZFS on Root seemed much harder to troubleshoot and repair. Perhaps I am mistaken in this belief though?

Isn’t ZFS there precisely to address your concern?! If OS doesn’t boot, you boot from the latest snapshot! Every time you run apt-get upgrade, a system snapshots is taken automatically and an entry is added to boot menu.

I guess I was referring to more to corruption resulting in an unbootable system. If you can't boot in then how would you roll it back?

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#186

Post by GekkePrutser »

AviationAtom wrote: post #185
aborsy wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn’t ZFS there precisely to address your concern?! If OS doesn’t boot, you boot from the latest snapshot! Every time you run apt-get upgrade, a system snapshots is taken automatically and an entry is added to boot menu.

I guess I was referring to more to corruption resulting in an unbootable system. If you can't boot in then how would you roll it back?

That's where backups come in. Any filesystem can get corrupted. Though for ZFS it's less likely than with something like ext4. Even though both have journalling, only ZFS has copy on write.

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#187

Post by GekkePrutser »

AviationAtom wrote: post #157
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…

I also forgot to mention, your guidance on ZFS memory requirements is outdated. From what I have heard recent releases have drastically reduced the size of ARC cache necessary. One person reported it working phenomenally on a newer Raspberry Pi.

True but COW is even harder on an SD than ext4 is so I would really not use it on a pi unless it's not using SD storage :)

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#188

Post by anarcat »

1500100900 wrote: post #168
KennyBlanken wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not missing anything. They're completely wrong. In RAID-Z, you can lose one drive or have one drive with 'bit rot' (corruption of either the parity or data) and ZFS will still be able to return valid data (and in the case of bit rot, self-heal. ZFS "plays out" both scenarios, checking against the separate file checksum. If trusting one drive over another yields a valid checksum, it overwrites the untrusted dri…

They mean: lose one drive and have another with bit rot.

ah. right. that's the bit I was missing (pun intended).

thanks for the clarification.

in that sense, yes, of course, if you have bit rot and another disk failing, things go south with just two disk. ZFS is not magic.

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#189

Post by GekkePrutser »

AviationAtom wrote: post #160
simonjgreen wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would go as far as to say "hardware raid" these days is limiting, expensive, and less performant that can be achieved with software RAID.

I think the worst point is vendor lock-in. If your controller fails, and a replacement isn't available, then you may be dead in the water. That kind of goes against the very point of RAID.

But this is why businesses spend so much on their RAID controllers. To make sure they're in warranty and that kind of thing doesn't happen.

Incidentally its also pretty great because no business buys them second hand without warranty. So they're usually available for half nothing.

I don't use raid cards right now but I do use fibre channel which is also dirt cheap second hand

Re: Building a Budget Homelab NAS Server

#190

Post by aborsy »

AviationAtom wrote: post #164
aborsy wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, Ubuntu has done a pretty good job with ZFS on root installation. Zero setup, works out of box. Highly recommend ZFS and Ubuntu with ZFS!

I think for me I am more concerned about trying to get the OS bootable again, if something becomes corrupted on the OS level. Even with MD RAID it came be a bit of a struggle to recover, but ZFS on Root seemed much harder to troubleshoot and repair. Perhaps I am mistaken in this belief though?

In Ubuntu’s implementation, root and boot are separate pools (bpool, rpool). Both are (and can be manually) snapshoted. So if boot is corrupted, you roll back. I should say I haven’t tried it though, to see how boot selection works (rolling back rpool is straightforward though).

The boot corruption could occur with the default file system ext4 also, except with ext4 there l is no recourse.

Needless to say, you can always boot from a live USB and mount your ZFS pool (and perhaps roll back).

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