Raspberry Pi holds its own against low-cost ARM NAS • Hacker News Board

Re: Raspberry Pi holds its own against low-cost ARM NAS

#41

Post by psz » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 5:58 PM UTC

Lownin wrote: post #12

mikece wrote: post #2

After watching Geerling's video on YouTube about building an ARM NAS I almost went that direction -- but opted for a Synology DS918+ instead because my need for a NAS is not just experimental but something that needs to work reliably.

What happens when the Sinology dies? Do I have to buy another Synology to mount my array again? Does it have to be the same model, or family of models?

Yeah. You can pull drives out and mount them in regular Linux. Synology uses standard Linux tools.

https://kb.synology.com/DSM/tutorial/How_can_I_recover_data_...

Re: Raspberry Pi holds its own against low-cost ARM NAS

#42

Post by throwaway743 » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 6:06 PM UTC

geerlingguy wrote: post #19

lunfard000 wrote: post #4

Raspberry is not really cheap anymore. The start package (rp4 4gb + charger + sd + ethernet/hdmi cables) is 100 euros in my country. Meanwhile you can get a GK3V mini pc on Aliexpress with a j4125, 8gb LPDDR4 and 256GB SSD for 180 euros, which probably has 3x-4x the performance of the pi.

The kits are always going to be marked up—and even more so today, since it's so hard to find individual Pis in stock anywhere. Here in the US, the only way for many people to get a Pi 4 is in a kit that's at least $100 (sometimes scalped and marked up to $150-200 on Amazon or eBay). Until about 3 months ago, though, I could reliably find a model I wanted from Micro Center or one of the official Pi online resellers fo…

Any reason why this is the case? Chip shortages? Backing up of imports?

I just noticed this the other day when looking to get a Pi 4 as a gift for my brother. It's crazy to think just a year or two ago I bought two at normal price, and now one can't find any individual boards anywhere really

Re: Raspberry Pi holds its own against low-cost ARM NAS

#43

Post by Hamuko » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 6:22 PM UTC

mikece wrote: post #2

After watching Geerling's video on YouTube about building an ARM NAS I almost went that direction -- but opted for a Synology DS918+ instead because my need for a NAS is not just experimental but something that needs to work reliably.

My Synology has been anything but realiable in the past month or so. I've twice had to hard reboot it because it stops working. I think it stops writing all data, which means that even something as simepl as "echo "" > out" will hang forever. Can't even turn it off because DSM stops responding and "sudo reboot" hangs.

I have no idea whether it's a disk going bad, the file system going bad or the entire device going bad. It did give a warning that an I/O command timed out on one of the disks, but I've yet to get a S.M.A.R.T. extended test completed on the disk.

Re: Raspberry Pi holds its own against low-cost ARM NAS

#44

Post by lunfard000 » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 6:26 PM UTC

wila wrote: post #29

lunfard000 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

idk, maybe you get it a bit cheaper if you look around. This is from a offical store though: https://www.raspberrystore.nl/PrestaShop/complete-sets/245-r...

It's the rest of the kit that makes it expensive. If you don't need all the parts, then you can shave some off. https://www.kiwi-electronics.nl/nl/merk-raspberry-pi

I mean, at the very least you always need a charger and a sd card, the barebone price is kinda misleading

Re: Raspberry Pi holds its own against low-cost ARM NAS

#45

Post by rcpt » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 6:32 PM UTC

FpUser wrote: post #33

Pi 4 is unobtanium now. One of my projects is screwed at the moment because of that

What do you need the pi for? The size? Intel NUC is substantially more powerful and after power bank, SD, case etc you end up paying about the same

Re: Raspberry Pi holds its own against low-cost ARM NAS

#46

Post by liuliu » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 6:35 PM UTC

@geerlingguy, in the post, do you use RAID5 as in madam or RAIDZ1 as in ZFS? Is this bcache setup in front of madam or ZFS?

I am actually interested in hearing downsides if bcache used in front of ZFS besides obvious data implications (single copy v.s. multiple).

Re: Raspberry Pi holds its own against low-cost ARM NAS

#47

Post by MR4D » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 6:36 PM UTC

timbit42 wrote: post #24

Arcuru wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have a reference for that? I setup a Synology very recently with non-Toshiba drives.

Reference: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29596179

THIS is a reference, not that crappy link you had.

https://www.synology.com/en-us/compatibility?search_by=categ...

Re: Raspberry Pi holds its own against low-cost ARM NAS

#48

Post by geerlingguy » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 6:48 PM UTC

liuliu wrote: post #46

@geerlingguy, in the post, do you use RAID5 as in madam or RAIDZ1 as in ZFS? Is this bcache setup in front of madam or ZFS? I am actually interested in hearing downsides if bcache used in front of ZFS besides obvious data implications (single copy v.s. multiple).

I documented everything in excruciating detail in this GitHub issue [1] — but in summary it was RAID5 created by mdadm (to replicate what the Drivestor 4 Pro does via ADM—it doesn't have ZFS as an option), and bcache set up on top of that with an EXT4 filesystem.

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

Re: Raspberry Pi holds its own against low-cost ARM NAS

#49

Post by frampytown » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 6:52 PM UTC

lunfard000 wrote: post #4

Raspberry is not really cheap anymore. The start package (rp4 4gb + charger + sd + ethernet/hdmi cables) is 100 euros in my country. Meanwhile you can get a GK3V mini pc on Aliexpress with a j4125, 8gb LPDDR4 and 256GB SSD for 180 euros, which probably has 3x-4x the performance of the pi.

I'd be interested if anyone can comment on commercial bulk procurement of Pis. Any idea what the volume discounts are? And also would be interesting to know what the supply has been like for the past year(s) for commercial customers.

I've heard anecdotally that most Pis sold are used in industry, so wouldn't be surprised if they're being prioritized.

Re: Raspberry Pi holds its own against low-cost ARM NAS

#50

Post by geerlingguy » Wed, Dec 22, 2021, 6:52 PM UTC

throwaway743 wrote: post #42

geerlingguy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The kits are always going to be marked up—and even more so today, since it's so hard to find individual Pis in stock anywhere. Here in the US, the only way for many people to get a Pi 4 is in a kit that's at least $100 (sometimes scalped and marked up to $150-200 on Amazon or eBay). Until about 3 months ago, though, I could reliably find a model I wanted from Micro Center or one of the official Pi online resellers fo…

Any reason why this is the case? Chip shortages? Backing up of imports? I just noticed this the other day when looking to get a Pi 4 as a gift for my brother. It's crazy to think just a year or two ago I bought two at normal price, and now one can't find any individual boards anywhere really

Mostly the chip shortages—Raspberry Pi has pulled out all the stops but couldn't come anywhere close to meeting demand over 2021. And they even decided to focus production only on the BCM2711-based devices for the latter part of this year.

They posted a blog post with some detail behind what's going on: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/supply-chain-shortages-and-...