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Installing FreeNAS on my QNAP TS-459

humaidq.ae

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Re: Installing FreeNAS on my QNAP TS-459

#31

Post by Hamuko »

moreorless wrote: post #23
nicolaslem wrote: post #2

I was surprised that there are very few PC cases made for small NAS. So this solution of buying a consumer product and installing FreeNAS on it makes sense.

These things are great for small NAS. https://buy.hpe.com/us/en/servers/proliant-microserver/proli...

Seems rather interesting. I've been thinking of buying a Synology DS918+, since I want a NAS and a Plex server, but that's like 530 euro at the very cheapest. However, I can find HPE Microservers starting at 350 euro. That's like the price of a 4 TB NAS drive saved there already.

Re: Installing FreeNAS on my QNAP TS-459

#32

Post by [deleted] »

zenonu wrote: post #19
FullyFunctional wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not support the company that actually supports the development of ZFS instead? I don't know anything about Qnap but FreeNAS has a wealth of robust functionality. I'd be curious as to why people would prefer Qnap?

Looking at FreeNAS's page, it's all "Get Quote" nonsense for anything rack mounted. Needs a system configuration page with prices to play around with.

[deleted]

Re: Installing FreeNAS on my QNAP TS-459

#33

Post by aquaticsunset »

This is timely!

I have a QNAP TS-251 (two drive bay model) that has been collecting dust for roughly two and a half years. Somebody was able to install a ransomware program on it, I suspect using the QSnatch[1] vulnerability. I triple pass zeroed the system storage and mothballed it.

Two months ago decided I wanted to do something with this machine again, so I bought two new Seagate IronWolf drives and installed FreeNAS (it can boot to and run from the USB 3.0 port on the back).

Is it the perfect hardware for FreeNAS? Nope - barely meets the minimum 8GB RAM requirements. But it's running as a media backup and Plex server, and doing a fantastic job at it. When I outgrow this hardware I'll certainly replace it with something I can also install FreeNAS on - consider me a happy convert.

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/qnap/comments/dvh7n2/qsnatch_malwar...

Re: Installing FreeNAS on my QNAP TS-459

#34

Post by cure »

linsomniac wrote: post #20

RAID drive fails, "I regretted installing ClamAV". Don't regret it! It allowed you to find a drive failure before a second drive failed, and allowed you to recover your data while it was still recoverable! This is a good thing! Archival data is a tricky problem. If you don't regularly read it, you may find that when you do need to read it, that the sector has suffered some bit rot. What's one of the most likely cases…

But if you ZFS, avoid the crappy WD red SMR drives! Cf. https://www.servethehome.com/wd-red-dm-smr-update-3-vendors-...

Re: Installing FreeNAS on my QNAP TS-459

#35

Post by funkaster »

podge wrote: post #29
funkaster wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used a rockpro64[0] with an off the shelf PCIe SATA card for my home NAS (4x4TB disks). So far I'm extremely happy with it (using it for almost 8 months). The rockpro is running debian/ZFS. [0]: https://www.pine64.org/rockpro64/

Interesting! I've been thinking of building a NAS and hadn't considered the rockpro64. Have you found that 4GB RAM has been sufficient for ZFS? I'm currently running a small ZFS array with 12GB RAM and the box never seems to use anything close to that amount, but ZFS has a reputation as something of a RAM hog.

I'm not using de-duplication, so that might affect if you only have 4GB RAM. Right now the box has 2GB free, and I'm always running a few extra things in it. Overall, for my use case it works just fine. The SATA card is plenty fast as well. I had a similar setup with an rpi3 and a USBSATA to host 2x1TB disks and doing a scrub in that pool took over 4 hours. The scrub in my current pool (4x4TB) took 22 min.

Re: Installing FreeNAS on my QNAP TS-459

#36

Post by ncrmro »

nicolaslem wrote: post #2

I was surprised that there are very few PC cases made for small NAS. So this solution of buying a consumer product and installing FreeNAS on it makes sense.

I’ve got this case and it works pretty great. 5 3.5 hot swap drives.

Although the drives come out the left side. So you would need to access that without moving the case for true hot swap.

Re: Installing FreeNAS on my QNAP TS-459

#37

Post by locusm »

ksec wrote: post #13

Qnap actually has a new OS called Hero Edition that uses ZFS by default, coming in Q3. https://www.qnap.com/quts-hero/en/

Hadn't heard of their new OS - interesting. Ive always wanted Synology to license their OS out as their hardware is all low power stuff and useless for virtualisation.

Re: Installing FreeNAS on my QNAP TS-459

#38

Post by flarg »

joshgachnang wrote: post #21
amenod wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious: why? Can't you simply shut down the NAS^wmicroserver and replace the failing drive then? (assuming the downtime is not a problem, which is probably the case with most home NAS installations)

One fear I've heard from Sys Admin friends is that you'll have another drive failure when the machine tries to boot back up (and possible data loss if you're only running RAID5). As I understand it, there's a nonzero chance the drive is fine while it's still running, but will disappear or have trouble spinning back up after a reboot, so you want to rebuild your array before rebooting.

Spot on, because the rebuilding process stresses drives that are likely as old as the one that failed

Re: Installing FreeNAS on my QNAP TS-459

#39

Post by comboy »

linsomniac wrote: post #27
humaid wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for the advice. Will keep it mind when setting it up with the new drives!

Oh, my other advice is: Avoid Seagate drives. Historically, I've found Hitachi to be the most reliable, and the BackBlaze hard drive stats seem to confirm that, though they tend to have small numbers of Hitachi drives. This is because they optimize for price not reliability. I've had good luck with other brands, but I've pretty much had universally bad luck with Seagate. Last year I replaced the last of our Stagate 1…

> have small numbers of Hitachi drives

25,000+ drives according to 2020 Q1 report in case anyone is wondering

Re: Installing FreeNAS on my QNAP TS-459

#40

Post by BLKNSLVR »

locusm wrote: post #37
ksec wrote: post #13

Qnap actually has a new OS called Hero Edition that uses ZFS by default, coming in Q3. https://www.qnap.com/quts-hero/en/

Hadn't heard of their new OS - interesting. Ive always wanted Synology to license their OS out as their hardware is all low power stuff and useless for virtualisation.

Xpenology[0] may fit your needs. I'm not sure where in the grey area it fits, but it seems to get mentioned in polite company without inviting floods of copyright issues

That Xpenology exists may explain why Synology don't license their OS.

[0]:https://xpenology.org/

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