How to do NAS?  - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 01, 2016, 01:03:41 pm
content: The household network is in need of some community accessible storage.Currently one of the computers on the network is holding a lot of media files and these are shared to other machines on the network - but it relies on this computer being switched on. This (and a couple of other developments) has brought the idea of a NAS solution to the discussion table - but the question is ... which way to go?Current requirements are pointing to 8TB capacity, half of which can be filled up immediately. Gigabit transfer speeds are nice, but not really necessary. Obviously, I don't want anything too slow or it will take forever to get anything onto the storage. The NAS solution will ideally need to handle 24x7 availability, but the occasional reboot would not be a problem. Hot swap drive capability is not necessary.Current solutions include the classic NAS box with plug in drives - but this can get expensive. Next in line is the 'personal cloud' option, but the ones I've seen are a fixed capacity. To do 8TB, you could be looking at a couple of units, but even these are getting pricey, especially when they're not much more than an external HDD with an ethernet port.I was then wondering about barebone computers - or even a Raspberry Pi setup....So, my question is: What can you suggest?

author: legacy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 01, 2016, 01:12:05 pm
content: I'd say a little miniATX board inside a little PC cabinetin this way you have all the space and comfort that you neede.g. AMD Geode miniATX, they are very cheap and they work finewith x86 you can also choose freeBSD, which is a superb OShere I don't like SAMBA, so it's not installedI prefer NFSv3, it has troubles with IRIX in diskless configurationsome work is needed in this case (hack and fine tuning)but it's ok out of the box for sharing thing along PC networksometimes I also use sshfs which makes possible to mount thingsbut it requires "kernel.fuse" and it works only on linux,the downside: it has some troubles e.g. if you want to sharea repository through sshfs then inotify doesn't work properly

author: Scrts
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 01, 2016, 01:14:05 pm
content: I would highly suggest a company, that knows what they do. QNAP, Synology or some others NAS suppliers. They know what's needed for performance and how to get things done properly. Most of the RPi systems or "I will use my old PC for that" ended up being painfully slow, difficult to maintain and wasted more time than expected. Especially spending days and weeks setting it up. You want this device to be plugged in and forgotten.

author: 2N3055
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 01, 2016, 01:16:47 pm
content: FreeNas or NAS4Free on a PC platform will give you performance and features... If you want to make it yourself..Or look into small NAS, they are not that expensive..

author: Kalvin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 01, 2016, 01:20:00 pm
content: Banana Pi vs Raspberry Pi:http://www.htpcguides.com/raspberry-vs-banana-pi-benchmarks-sata-gigabit-matter/The Banana Pi has a Sata interface and a Gigabit Ethernet port which are clear advantage.

author: Kalvin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 01, 2016, 01:24:58 pm
content: If you have a Gigabit Ethernet network, you can build a physically distributed, physically redundant system using two cheap servers. The first one is the primary server and the second one is the backup server mirroring the primary server.

author: AndyC_772
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 01, 2016, 01:28:24 pm
content: Quote from: Scrts on November 01, 2016, 01:14:05 pmI agree with this. I have a couple of QNAP boxes which have been as close to 'fit-and-forget' as any modern computing equipment, and that's exactly what they need to be.Please remember to factor a reliable strategy for taking and checking regular backups into whatever solution you end up with.

author: 1design
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 01, 2016, 01:57:58 pm
content: I usethis but the 2015 modeland I am very happy with it.No noise, very reliable, runs 24/7, has a very intuitive interface and works right out of the box with a huge amount of features.Inside, 2x3TB WD Red drives in Raid 1, no issues in the first year of use. Hope it helps.BR

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 01, 2016, 02:54:25 pm
content: All suggestions are welcome. I like to see what other people have done and/or recommend ... and why.I will admit I've looked at QNAP gear which seems quite functional and reasonably priced - but there's always that little voice that likes to nudge me into a bit of DIY. A Banana Pi with ethernet and SATA on board is interesting - but the information I found only shows 1 SATA port available and with a 4TB limit.The low-end computer box is an idea I've also thought about - but when I look at that option, ideas of a fully fledged server keep muddying up the thinking. I've not finalised my thoughts on whether the things I might like to throw on a server are actually worth the effort, let alone whether it would be on a local server or from a hosted service.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 01, 2016, 02:59:44 pm
content: Even with modern drives, the idea of using a Raspberry Pi or the like for 8TB+ is sheer lunacy.Have you considered something like a Microserver? £120 after cashback, just add drives:http://www.ebuyer.com/722189-hpe-proliant-gen8-4gb-ram-microserver-ebuyer-com-819185-421Only takes four, but you can add an eSATA controller and external enclosure if needed, it also has USB3. Fits the bill for 'real server', too, run the OS of your choice. Replace the optical drive with a 2.5" SSD ideally. There's also an internal USB port and microSD slot you can boot from.

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 01, 2016, 03:10:47 pm
content: You can find mini-ITX chassis with 4 hot-swappable SATA drive bays.You can get mini-ITX server motherboards from ASRock or Supermicro, put a lower-end Xeon and some ECC RAM on it, and a RAID card if you want hardware-based redundency. As of the software side, stock Ubuntu Server always worked for me.

author: andersm
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 01, 2016, 03:40:54 pm
content: (This isn't the right forum)I've got a QNAP TS-453A, with 4*4GB WD Reds and expanded to 16GB of RAM. The QNAP software is pretty clunky, but I like the ability to easily set up VMs and containers. Before buying I did consider setting up a FreeNAS system, but in the end I decided I didn't have the time or energy to hunt down suitable parts or learn how to configure everything from scratch.

author: Scrts
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 01, 2016, 06:26:19 pm
content: Quote from: andersm on November 01, 2016, 03:40:54 pmAnd I bet that QNAP can update its software with one button click on the web interface? Good luck updating your DIY system every time... I remember the days when a major linux update ended up in crashed system and half to full day bringing it up again. No data lost, but lots of time wasted.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 01, 2016, 06:38:05 pm
content: Quote from: Scrts on November 01, 2016, 06:26:19 pmDon't need luck, have experience and knowledge..

author: f1rmb
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 01, 2016, 07:08:08 pm
content: Hi,As @2N3055 mentionned, FreeNAS is a really nice solution. It also permit to create many jails, running various services/systems, just check the website.I personnaly running that on an old Gateway GR320F1 server blade, with 4*1Tb in RAID-Z1. Soon I will upgrade the array to 4*3Tb.Cheers.---Daniel

author: julianhigginson
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 01, 2016, 07:56:04 pm
content: gosh, that's a lot of bytes!first question is, how much of this storage is for critical data that needs to have redundant copies? and do you have other solutions (like, say, offsite/cloud backup) for the critical data?

author: f1rmb
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 01, 2016, 08:23:21 pm
content: Quote from: julianhigginson on November 01, 2016, 07:56:04 pmWell, I'm running an ownCloud jails which holds all the familly accounts (7 souls), source code repository, tons of friends data, local Hamradio club library, and *lot* of media (in an Emby jail).At the moment, I'm getting short in storage (~500Gb free on 3Tb space) ;-)Cheers.---Daniel

author: C
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 01, 2016, 08:33:50 pm
content: Think of the basics here. Do you want to just have a common storage area or do you want more.If you have a Raid 1 mirrored drives, is your data safe?If the Raid controller dies will a different controller work with the data?At the basics a drive is a block device, how does a Raid controller know that this block is good and that block is bad?A disk drive is a computer, an error in the program could easily cause the wrong block to be changed. You have a mirrored file with a block with different data on the two drives, which is correct?Note here that no error from drive is sent to the computer.If you have a 3 drive mirror, is the matching two the good block or the one.These and other problems is what file systems like ZFS is there to try to prevent. ZFS adds a checksum to add protection from ram to drive and back to find these errors and correct them.Current FreeNAS & FreeBSD use ZFS as the file system. As every time, when you add more, more computing power is needed to maintain the same speed.Need to think of the foundation you are building on. An error at foundation level can remove safe from higher levels.

author: rsjsouza
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 01, 2016, 09:09:46 pm
content: I have aNetgear NAS RN10400with 4x 3TB Western Digital Green HDDs in RAID 5 and it has been working like a charm for quite a few years. It is not the top performer out there, but it is pretty power savvy and I did not have a hiccup in many years of use.I thought about using a true embedded solution (RPi, BBone, Hawkboard, etc.) but I couldn't be at peace in trusting my data with them.I also thought about building a larger PC with a bunch of drives on it, but at the time I couldn't find something as low power as the NAS.

author: Dielectric
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 01, 2016, 09:19:30 pm
content: I've been happy with my Synology DS212j, two drives, mirrored. It will serve all kinds of media and they provide an IP redirecting service if you want to fool with that. Quiet, small, basically just does its thing over there all day long. You can set up any number of auto-sync methods, pretty flexible overall. I don't feel like admin-ing that kind of stuff anymore so the appliance route was most attractive.

author: julianhigginson
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 01, 2016, 10:37:58 pm
content: Quote from: f1rmb on November 01, 2016, 08:23:21 pmHmm.. OK sounds like this storage needs to be protected.so you want redundant RAID at the very least.And for everything that's not easily replaceable, you probably want offsite backup, because a RAID NAS is no good if someone steals it, or if the house burns down.I don't think you're going to do much better than a dedicated Qnap or Netgear NAS in terms of power efficiency and ease of setup. you should only need 1 extra drive over the base requirement here (so 5x2T drives, or 4x3T drives, etc..) Just make sure if you do have a disk error, that you get the replacement in fast. My sister's partner had a big NAS setup with redundant storage, and after a year, one drive failed... he figured he should replace it someday.. unfortunately after about a month another drive failed (he got a bunch of HDDs from a not so great batch, apparently) and the data recovery process was expensive.The real question becomes - how are you going to back all the critical info up offsite?

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 01, 2016, 10:48:08 pm
content: Quote from: rsjsouza on November 01, 2016, 09:09:46 pmI am a fan of the Netgear ReadNAS. Instead of ZFS, it uses btrfs (pronounced ButterFS) which is now very solid and is directly integrated into linux. Under the hood, it is running Debian or Ubuntu linux, so you can do all the normal linux commands or load new linux programs with apt-get.Both ZFS and btrfs allow snapshots and the ReadNAS allows you to have all the snapshot folders mounted and you can browse back to any date any time you want. The snapshots take no time or noticeable disk space so you can snapshot daily or hourly if you want. Old automatic snapshots automatically expire when the drive needs to make new space for new data, so the snapshot from a year ago may vanish if the drive needs to free up space. Manual snapshots never are deleted unless you delete them manually.I do not have the Windows share (SMB) enabled at all. One of the clients I look after got a cryptovirus and it found the NAS box SMB shares and started encrypting the files there, even though the infected PC did not even have the share mapped. Recovery was no problem, as I only had to recover from yesterdays snapshot.I sync data from the PC using cygwin rsync (very fast and efficient) and use something like WinSCP to access the files on the NAS box. I also use rsync to daily sync things like websites and mail on the website. Daily synching a 2.2G wordpress site takes about 1 minute on an ADSL connection.The thing about NAS boxes is you really want two in different locations, and I use daily rsync to sync the 2 NAS boxes. Again, it only has to sync the compressed file differences between yesterday and today, so even ADSL is often good enough to sync terabytes. Once the sync is set up, it is very reliable so you can even put the second NAS at your mother-in-laws.You can run Owncloud from the readyNAS if you want.One of the reasons I have gone with btrfs instead of ZFS is ZFS should have 1G or ram per terabyte of physical disk space. So if you want 8T in a raid, that is at least 10T of disks and so you need 16G ram. btrfs will happily work with 500M of ram.With long term storage and raid, bit-rot is really important to consider as the backup data on a second disk may not even be tested until the first disk fails. With the ReadyNas, you can schedule the drive to do a background SCRUB weekly that checks all the data on all drives, and this will also allow the drive to swap a failing sector to a replacement sector before there is a problem.I also have a NAS running at home as a virtual machine on a old 4G Ram PC running Proxmox VM server. I have about 5 other servers running on the same free Proxmox. There is no need to use NAS specific software - I am just using a btrfs system running on Archlinux. I have the Arch-btrfs VM directly accessing the physical NAS drives. Works great. Don't really need any of the other NAS bells and whistles. Add OpenSSH and rsync (perhaps OpenVPN) and you are set.

author: voltsandjolts
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 02, 2016, 10:06:05 am
content: Quote from: amspire on November 01, 2016, 10:48:08 pmWell, almost. BTRFS will be great but some RAID modes are broken at the moment:https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Statushttps://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/RAID56Edit:Apparently the above BTRFS problems don't affect ReadyNAS:https://community.netgear.com/t5/Using-your-ReadyNAS/btrfs-unsafe-news/m-p/1123549#U1123549

author: Kilrah
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 02, 2016, 11:25:49 am
content: The only NAS I've used was a Synology and was really nice, quick and easy setup (nearely too much, not challenging enough!) and I was surprised by the features/flexibility. It can also act as full fledged server for most common services with either built-in or downloadable apps.I used to use it with only one of the drives fitted, with the 2nd bay usually empty unless once a week or so to make a backup (using the built-in backup system).Ended up selling it since in my use case a NAS is actually pretty pointless, I had gotten it mostly for experimentation and to see how much of my previous server (netbook-based) I could reproduce on it, ended up being pretty much everything. I'm much better off with just internal storage in my main PC (2x 6TB in RAID0), and have migrated my web stuff to commercial hosting.But yes as usual thinking of an appropriate backup method may be more complicated than the choice of the main storage solution, and may influence it as well. How will you backup your NAS?

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 02, 2016, 12:08:01 pm
content: Quote from: voltsandjolts on November 02, 2016, 10:06:05 amThe use of btrfs in a commercial product at this stage is.. well, just what I'd expect of Netgear: Stupid.Don't get me wrong, I like btrfs, but.. it's not ready for that sort of application.

author: legacy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 02, 2016, 12:10:17 pm
content: Quote from: voltsandjolts on November 02, 2016, 10:06:05 amCerberus is running kernel 2.6.39I guess it's time to update it

author: jnz
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 02, 2016, 06:06:48 pm
content: I love engineers, but some of you guys go out of your way to make future headaches for yourselves.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 02, 2016, 06:22:47 pm
content: Quote from: jnz on November 02, 2016, 06:06:48 pmLike what?

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 03, 2016, 02:35:41 am
content: Quote from: Monkeh on November 02, 2016, 12:08:01 pmI don't get your point. Who uses btrfs raid56 anyway? Netgear doesn't use any btrfs raid. Netgear froze btrfs at version 0.2 for years until they were confident with the latest updates, so I believe they have been intelligently managing the reliability of their btrfs. They obviously had done a lot of testing on btrfs 0.2.The really important thing is to get people using NAS boxes with a totally solid daily snapshot option as it is the best way to protect against cryptoviruses and accidental file corruption or deletion. A btrfs NAS is a million times better then a daily data sync to a ntfs/ext4 disk system, a USB drive, or a cloud storage lacking snapshots.ZFS was great on Solaris, but it is not nearly as stable on linux and freebsd. The ZFS license is incompatible with the Linux GPL license so ZFS can never be fully integrated into Linux. It is vulnerable to powerfail issues on linux or freebsd just like btrfs raid56 is. It is vulnerable to metadata corruption just like btrfs. The solution is to have a proper UPS so the system always shuts down properly and also to provide multiple data backups including off-site backup.Nothing is perfect, so it is all about managing risks. Every time you update software in an operating system, a disaster could happen, no matter how "production ready" the software is.What is your "production ready" solution?

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 03, 2016, 03:15:24 am
content: It's not feature complete yet. It's still a moving target with new issues appearing and old ones not disappearing.Compression apparently still has some issues (although I'll be honest, I haven't encountered any lately), quotas have interesting quirks (actually, the entire filesystem has interesting quirks which don't quite align with standard tools), apparently it requires underwear changing when encountering bad sectors (what is this, Windows?).In its current state I would much rather use ZFS (on Linux or say, FreeBSD) or a more traditional setup over a normal RAID array (no hardware please, I value being able to access my data) and LVM for substantial storage (that is, bulk storage I literally cannot afford duplicates of, which is a reality I'm afraid, as much as people love to deny it).QuoteSnapshots are not backups! They're a convenient way of providing history. If the data actually gets corrupted on the disk, you're boned. As for cryptoviruses, the average user of a cheap NAS box has admin access to it: Snapshots won't save you.btrfs is the future: right now it's an ongoing experiment (one I'm quite impressed with in my usage).

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 03, 2016, 05:35:18 am
content: Quote from: Monkeh on November 03, 2016, 03:15:24 amI hope I have never suggested in any way a snapshot is a backup. I personally use my NAS boxes as a backup, but if you use it as your working drive, a single NAS box is not a backup. That is why I keep pushing for multiple synched NAS boxes so you do have backups. I do not think one backup is enough. Snapshots mean that there is only one copy of a file but that is the way snapshots are meant to work. The difference of a btrfs file (with snapshots) from a NTFS file is you have one file that contains every daily (or hourly) change to the file and none of the sectors containing the file will ever be deleted until you start deleting snapshots. Even deleting the file does not touch the snapshot copies in any way. The snapshots cannot be changed or deleted through a Windows share access.Netgear NAS boxes with snapshots do keep previous days/weeks/months data completely safe even when a cryptovirus finds a share for which it has full rights and encrypts the NAS share - I know from direct experience. It is the best solution for cryptoviruses.We have also had unhappy sacked staff deliberately deleting all their files before being shown the door. No problem - go to an earlier snapshot and get them all back.

author: legacy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 03, 2016, 06:53:03 am
content: Quote from: Monkeh on November 03, 2016, 03:15:24 amwhich kernel version, which configuration and on which system ?I am really tempted to rebuild my stage4 for Cerberus

author: legacy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 03, 2016, 07:09:46 am
content: yesterday I bought a pair of tulip 1000BASE-T Twisted-pair cabling Cat-6and a pair of fiber optic Gigabit Ethernet 1000BASE-SX over multi-mode fibermade by Phobos using a 770 to 860 nanometer, near infrared light wavelengthevery node in Cerberus comes with a limited bandwidth due to the PCIwhich is 32 bit (instead of 64 bit) and 32 Mhz (instead of 66 Mhz)Code:32 MHz × 32 bits × 1 byte / 8 bits = 128 Mbyte/stherefore the bandwidth is strictly close to the bandwidth of the controllerwith is close to 100Mbyte/secfiber optic Gigabit cards are faster than Twisted-pair when they comewith larger ethernet buffer along with smarter controller aboardand this is the lucky case, 10% faster, if you buy cards from Phobostherefore I can reduce the bottleneck of the 100Base-T cards(Digital is the best producer, in this case) currently used in CerberusThis standard is highly popular for intra-building links in large office buildings,co-location facilities and carrier-neutral Internet exchanges.In my case it's used only for its property of being 10% faster (as controller)than every 1000Base-T I have ever tried.I will used a couple of them inside the main nodes of cerberus, node0 and node2giving them the possibility to "resync" each to the otherexternally, to connect Cerberus to the home-lan …well I don't have Cat5 cablesin my house, therefore I am limited to Ethernet 100Base-T (~10Mbyte/s)but it's Cat6 in the white room where Cerberus silently works,therefore NFS and CIFS rock, actually faster than a FSCKit's a shame that laptops don't come with a fiber optic plug

author: legacy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 03, 2016, 07:11:43 am
content: with a "network attached storage"a part of the property of being fast implieshow fast the network can gohow fast do you expect your NAS should be ?

author: ChunkyPastaSauce
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 03, 2016, 07:17:18 am
content: Quote from: legacy on November 03, 2016, 07:09:46 amhttps://www.transition.com/products/network-adapters/nec-gxe-xx-01/

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 03, 2016, 02:52:11 pm
content: Quote from: amspire on November 03, 2016, 05:35:18 amCurrent cryptoviruses are essentially unaware of this. How long before they correct that? If the machine is compromised and admin credentials were stored on it, they can quite happily go around deleting snapshots. They may handle accidents and malicious users, they are not the best solution to external attacks.

author: Bicurico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 03, 2016, 04:12:28 pm
content: I have had the same considerations as the OP.I tried FreeNAS (great in general, but could not put USB connected HDD's into standby and uses a filesystem unknown to Windows - in case of problems you are doomed to read the data).I tried a LACIE NAS (original firmware did not included PnP service, which I need for TV's - so I used an alternative firmware fromhttp://plugout.net/.This is not bad, the authors did a great job, but it is still not satisfactory. The NAS shuts itself down occasionally, the PNP service is primitive, etc.).I tried a dedicated Atom based PC in a small box, but that meant to have a second PC turned on all the time.In the end I am using my regular home PC, which is always turned on. This way I can do RDP, have Samba, PNP, etc. I can run servers for HTTP, FTP, etc. HDD's are correctly put into standby. Everything works.If you want a propper solution: either purchase a propper NAS like the ones from QNAP or build a propper PC.Do NOT go the route of building some Raspberry Pi or similar NAS! They are not robust and stable. Speed is an issue (even with the Lacie NAS I have).Regards,Vitor

author: legacy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 03, 2016, 04:35:31 pm
content: Quote from: ChunkyPastaSauce on November 03, 2016, 07:17:18 amthanksdo you know if they also exist for pcmcia || cardbus ?

author: Dave
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2016, 04:13:34 pm
content: I recently had to figure out this exact problem.We previously had a WD Mybook Live NAS, which was a complete piece of shit. The transfer speeds were downright awful, you always had to wait for the disk to spin up when you tried to access the files, terrible UI and on top of that, it bricked itself when I tried updating the firmware.I ended up pulling the HDD out of the enclosure and had to jump through a bunch of hoops to recover the files from the disk (many thanks to the good people on #eevblog for helping me with that).We finally ended up buying a HP Gen8 Microserver (the exact model that someone already linked in this thread). I added 8GB of RAM for a total of 12GB, a 32GB microSD card for booting the OS (freeNAS) and 4x 3TB hard disks. Two WD Reds and two Seagate NAS. I put them in RAID 10, configured them so that the mirrors are done between different brands. My logic behind it is that if the disks came off the assembly line one after the other, they are going to behave very similarly and likely die at approximately the same time, so you'd want to avoid mirroring data between two of the same model, because if one disk fails, the second one might die during a rebuild and you'd lose your data.I've had it for a month now and so far it has been working very well. I'm getting around 90 MB/s on a wired connection, but that is very likely the router capping the transfer speed. I'm fairly certain it could saturate the gigabit ethernet connection if the router could handle the load.It does make a little bit of noise (the disks spinning and a slight fan hum), but you could quite comfortably sleep next to it if you wanted to.

author: legacy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 04, 2016, 04:49:59 pm
content: Quote from: Dave on November 04, 2016, 04:13:34 pmimpressed by your GigaE throughput

author: NiHaoMike
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2016, 04:41:34 am
content: If you just need one drive, take a look at Pogoplug. You can often find one for $10 or less and it's pretty easy to hack it to add a SATA port and install OpenWRT or Arch Linux.For multiple drives, an Atom based board is probably going to be the most cost effective. (Only because all the affordable ARM platforms I know of only have at most 2 SATA ports.) Make sure it has AES-NI if you need encryption (probably not a concern for home use) and PCIe to add another SATA controller if you decide to expand it later on.If you also want to do video transcoding, then you'll have to think beyond a NAS and go with a full fledged server.

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 05, 2016, 05:24:55 am
content: At the outset, my question was really feeling out the DIY ideas as the content is just media files that can be recovered from other sources. As such, posting it on this forum was more appropriate than on any computer oriented one - but, in this day and age, I was expecting a lot of additional experience and opinion would also be offered. I was not disappointed - but that is good.I also appreciate the various input on backups. While this was not particularly criticalfor my immediate task, the topic of backups cannot be stressed enough. I've been involved in DRP with a couple of corporate environments - and they take this very seriously.As I expected, the extra information offered has been extremely useful in not only establishing the practicality of DIY options, but of the wisdom of doing so ... and that once venturing out into this arena, extending my thinking to take in ideas like a fully blown server have given me a broader outlook and visions of selecting a direction that is not only going to fulfill the current requirements, but put me in an advanced standing for the future.I am very happy for anyone to offer their experiences. It is so much more helpful than reading the marketing spiel or specification sheets. Those are useful - but they rarely tell you about the 'gotchas'.

author: Fsck
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2016, 05:57:04 am
content: You can get a used server for ~400-450$ USD with 12-16 bays using DP westmere or sandy bridge and enough ecc memory (>24GB) to cache. Add 30$ for a connect-x 2, chelsio or other old PCIE gen 2 card and you have a system that can push 10G onto your lan and enough memory to write-cache most personal transfers.The real question is budget and scalability. Anything short of a "modern" PC-type thing will not be able to push 10G or 40G.note: I use array to refer to a zpool. (I use 1 vdevs per zpool)I have 2 NAS boxes, both using freenas and both in 4U 24-bay chassis, (I live alone, but move a ton of data around) and I use 10G connections for the server and my primary/secondary desktops. Laptops and other things are still on old gigabit.1: i3 2120, 32GB ECC, in a Norco chassis with a normal ATX PSU, kind of struggles with 50TiB of usable storage over 3 arrays under heavy load. Got it in 2012 and it has served faithfully since then.2: 2*E5-2670 v1, 256GB ECC, in a Supermicro chassis w/ redundant PSUs, got it a few months ago, it's not populated with drives yet, but I have a 16-bay expander chassis that it is hooked up to, migrated from NAS 1.The hard drives will probably be your largest cost in any given setup.If you were going dirt cheap. A 200$ old SP sandy bridge/ivy bridge era server will give you 6-8 sata ports and ecc memory. 3TB drives in canada are about 110$ a piece, so 6*110$ for 12TB of storage using raidz2. Or a single 8TB for 350$.There really isn't any better bang for buck performance than the SB/IVB era servers right now, sometimes you can find a C2750 for cheap but they're quite rare. If your arrays are not too large in capacity and you have enough arrays, you can still push 10G out with an SB/IVB server, and you get ECC to boot.There's also a crashplan plugin for freenas which makes backup kind of easy for bulk storage. Obviously, if you care about your data, you should mirror it in as many places as you can put it.So, how much do you care about performance, the availability of your data and future scalability?

author: Kilrah
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 05, 2016, 08:36:37 am
content: Quote from: Fsck on November 05, 2016, 05:57:04 amIndeed... The lack of real progress and price reduction (I swear prices have actually gone up over the past couple of years) is disappointingI usually would completely replace my drives when needing more space every 3-4 years to start with fresh, unworn ones but this time I've had to think a bit more on a way to cleverly reuse the current ones I have for the upgrade.My setup was a single 6TB HDD in my main PC, plus 2 of the same (different variants to avoid the batch effect) as external backups with one stored offsite, with both being rotated every week. Given that I have a "main PC" in 2 locations (spending summer/winter in different places due to work) I actually own 4 6TB drives.I need more space and will stop the 2 location thing, so instead of ditching all 6TB drives and buying 3 10TB ones or so I'll just group them and make RAID0s. I buy 2 new 6TB drives which will be the (now single) main PC's internal 12TB RAID0 array, and the existing 4 will get put in 2 external RAID0 enclosures for the rotating backups. So 2 drives and 2 external cases to buy, which is still a bit more than $1k...

author: Kalvin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2016, 11:14:15 am
content: I am worried about physical or electrical failure of the NAS device, you know like power supply failure or something else which will destroy the disks. Also, I have a limited budget to spend. That is why I am thinking about using a physically distributed NAS so that the data is being mirrored and duplicated across few cheaper devices. One of the devices will be the main server, but there will be one or more cheaper servers [with less performance] which will be used as redundant backup device(s). The cheap backup devices could be as simple as Banana Pi with Gigabit Ethernet and a Sata hard disk. With two Banana Pi based, cheap backup devices there would be quite good redundancy should any other device fail. The network is not a business environment but only a home environment with modest need for the throughput but I'd like to see that my data is safe and it will survive major hardware failures. Any comments on this?

author: Kilrah
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 05, 2016, 11:17:21 am
content: As said what's currently expensive is usually the hard drive itself more than whatever you use to access the data on it. If you want (and you DO) want backups it's going to cost, no miracle.

author: Bicurico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2016, 11:45:25 am
content: Kalvin: What you describe is not a backup solution and makes no sense at all.A NAS provides storage spare. It should be fast and reliable.To have backups, you need to periodically save the data to a storage which is kept in a safe place. These storages, tapes or HDD, are cycled. Depending on your work, you make a new daily backup, cycling through 5 different takes or disks. After rotating a storage a given amount of times it should be permanently stored.Sounds too complicated? Give each worker an external HDD to do their own backups.But remember that a backup is never permanently hooked up.Regards,Vitor

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2016, 12:18:37 pm
content: Any form of copy is a backup whether online or not.Having a single backup or onsite backups only is a dangerous strategy.For individuals or small businesses, multiple Nas including one off site backup can be a good strategy. You can be continually monitoring the health of all the Nas boxes so you can fix problems as soon as they happen. It is also easier keeping the technology up to date over time.It all comes down to having a good strategy. For some people, offline backups with backup media taken offsite is the best solution. For other people, it may not be the best choice

author: Bicurico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2016, 12:55:13 pm
content: Latest ransomware encrypting networkshares have proven how bad a NAS is as a backup strategy.Regards,Vitor

author: Kalvin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2016, 12:57:03 pm
content: Quote from: Bicurico on November 05, 2016, 12:55:13 pmWhat do you think, would the ZFS file system with snapshots have helped?

author: Kilrah
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 05, 2016, 12:58:53 pm
content: Quote from: Bicurico on November 05, 2016, 12:55:13 pmWell nothing says that the backup NAS has to be be constantly online.

author: Kalvin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2016, 01:08:53 pm
content: Quote from: Kilrah on November 05, 2016, 12:58:53 pmOr, nothing says that the backup NAS has to be accessable by the users. The backup NAS could operate without user access, using a file system with snapshot capabilities.

author: Kilrah
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 05, 2016, 01:16:20 pm
content: The snapshot capabilities go against the "limited cost" option though, since you need significantly more storage space than the actual data when doing that i.e. more/bigger drives.

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2016, 02:03:11 pm
content: Kalvin, when the Nas has read-only snapshots and no network drives?

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2016, 02:08:15 pm
content: Quote from: Kilrah on November 05, 2016, 01:16:20 pmYou need more space, but it is usually not that much extra space.

author: Kalvin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2016, 02:30:54 pm
content: Quote from: amspire on November 05, 2016, 02:03:11 pmOf course there are network drive(s), otherwise it wouldn't be NAS. The NAS can have a file system such as ZFS providing snapshots and ability to restore accidentally deleted files. The NAS will be mirrored so that the user cannot access those backup devices directly, instead the backup devices will just incrementally mirror the NAS's contents as backup purposes only. Should the NAS have a mechanical or electrical failure, the data is still available on the backup devices. The backup devices will be used to rebuild the NAS again. During the rebuild phase the backup devices can be mounted read-only, but the data is still available to the user. When the data has been restored from the backup into the repaired/replaced NAS, the system is fully operational. Typically a NAS has a RAID system built in using multiple hard disks, but instead of multiple hard disks I would like to use multiple, physically distributed backup devices providing the redundancy and recovery ability should the NAS experience any failure.

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2016, 07:44:08 pm
content: If I am using a nas as a backup, I don't have any network drives. If you are using a nas as an on line working storage, it is not the backup. I use rsync to sync files to the backup and and winscp with no stored password to access files on the bad boxes. I initiate sync from the offsite nas to the onsite nas so that is impossible for a virus that has total control of the network to touch the offsite nas.I have had experience with cryptoviruses attacking a nas with a network drive and it could not touch the snapshots or the offline backup. But following this experience, I have disabled all network shares anyway. I do not allow users to browse the backup nas boxes.It is all about strategy. As I have said, traditional rotational backup is worse unless you realise immediately that files have been encrypted, corrupted or deleted. This is often not the case. With rotational daily + monthly backups, if you don't detect the damage (virus, accidental or deliberate) within 7 days, you can loose files from the current month. A good nas backup with zfs or btrfs snapshots does not have this problem at all.Anyone who thinks a rotational backup is a total backup is as deluded. No single method is perfect.You have suggested a different architecture. Fine, it is all strategy. Just stop suggesting that there is only one way to use a nas.

author: edavid
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2016, 08:09:57 pm
content: Quote from: Dave on November 04, 2016, 04:13:34 pmFunny, I am completely satisified with my WD MB Live Duo:1. Transfer speeds are around 30MB/s, good enough for my use (it's a low power, fanless device)2. Disk spindown time can be configured, or it can be turned off3. UI seems OK to me, but I never use it, so who cares4. No trouble with firmware updates, but I doubt I will apply any more of them, since I can just use apt-get for any updates I actually wantHowever, it obviously wouldn't meet the OP's needs, so why even mention it

author: legacy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 05, 2016, 08:10:57 pm
content: LTO Ultrium tape backup ?during the weekend ?

author: Kalvin
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2016, 11:25:56 am
content: Quote from: amspire on November 05, 2016, 07:44:08 pmMaybe this is a language issue as English is not my native language, but my intention was not suggest anything per se, only present an idea what I have had in my mind and wanting feedback and criticism from other members about pros and cons.The idea I am thinking of is similar to what Google is doing ie. using cheap hardware and distributed redundancy:http://www.techworld.com/storage/googles-storage-strategy-467/Quote

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2016, 12:08:37 pm
content: Quote from: Kalvin on November 05, 2016, 02:30:54 pmNAS is network attached storage, but you can choose how you want to attach. That is why NAS boxes usually have a number of available protocols including SMB (Windows shares) and NFS that you can enable or disable. I use rsync and ssh and I have SMB and NFS disabled for my backup NAS boxes.I do this because I know the cryptoviruses definitely do scan the local network for Windows shares, and there is no need to have Windows shares enabled on a backup NAS. At the moment, they do not try rsync connections. They could but right now they don't.There is no law that says you must have windows shares enabled on a NAS box.

author: legacy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2016, 02:08:35 pm
content: and no tape backup? anyone?

author: legacy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2016, 02:23:54 pm
content: well, LTO2 costs 150-180 euro brand newit's wide-SCSI band, it means 40Mbyte/secand a box of five cartridges costs 50 euro(1)10 euro per cartridge and you have 200Gbyteat least per cartridge (400Gbyte compressed)(1) IBM original cartridges

author: legacy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2016, 02:27:07 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on November 06, 2016, 02:15:54 pmvery; thoroughly, both false

author: legacy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2016, 02:39:31 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on November 06, 2016, 02:33:14 pmand a tape lasts longer (and with less troubles)than an electromechanical hard drive

author: madires
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2016, 03:09:45 pm
content: Tape backup for SOHO applications doesn't make much sense nowadays. One thing people forget is the increasing amount of data to backup. When you do a few full backups per year as recommended, you'd become a tape jockey. The better way is to buy current hard disks plus decent USB-HDD boxes. When they become too old or small, simply get new ones.

author: legacy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2016, 04:01:44 pm
content: it depends on your needshere I am happy with my LTO2, DLT and DATthey are good when you have to send/receivedata to/from abroad through a paper postage(super cheap price through UPS/Fedex)can you do it with mechanical hard drives ?I am also experimenting CompactFlash cartridgesthrough FireWire 400/IEEE 1394a interface (by Lexar)the bandwidth is not good, 20Mbyte/secbut I can stack two units in parallela better option should be ATA Flash CompactFlashand PCMCIA Cards Internal interface made by Delockand then interfacing it to a pATA to sATAora pATA to Ultra Wide SCSI interfacethe bandwidth will be ~ 50 Mbyte/secthe cost, for a qty=10 of 64Gbyte eachit's 25 euro per CF-cartridge (by Kingston)something like 250 euro per yearthey are super marvelous for my own monthly repositoryand I can ship a CF-cartridge to colleagues in case of need(or get a backup back from them)comfortable and nice, also supported by my NAS

author: legacy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2016, 04:17:15 pm
content: my last purchase confirms you are right about prices:I got eight hard drives, 40 euro each, for a qty=8 sATA2Barracuda 7.2K rpm, with 64Mbyte of data buffer, 1Tbyte

author: SeanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 06, 2016, 04:36:21 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on November 06, 2016, 02:15:54 pmDo not forget the tapes have a limited life, and you will need a cleaning tape as well for the drive. Interesting RFID tag they put in there though, and a really intricate tape mechanism as well, with all those pivot points and the integrated spool brake as well.

author: ericloewe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 07, 2016, 04:47:59 pm
content: I'll take this opportunity to plug FreeNAS.Let's start by addressing some issues raised here:Ransomware - With ZFS snapshots, you're laughing in the face of the moron who thought he could hold your data hostage. It's trivial to rollback to an earlier state and FreeNAS even provides integration with Windows' Previous Versions feature, for easy access to specific files in old snapshotsData integrity - ZFS is pretty much proven in this regard, with much more real-life experience than btrfs. ZFS goes to immense lengths to providew reliable storage (If it's worth storing, it's worth storing properly)Transfer speeds - ZFS may sound like a resource hog, but it's anything but slow outside of pathological workloads. Real-life performance for file-sharing workloads is in the multi-gigabit region with slow, low-TDP processors. Fast systems can easily saturate 10GbENow, FreeNAS and ZFS are not forgiving of hacked-together systems with little though put into them. Additionally, the community strongly pushes proper hardware choices that are uncommon among enthusiasts - no gaming rigs over there, the servers are really servers.A common misconception is that cost for FreeNAS recommended hardware is much higher - this isn't true at all. Cost is higher than for crap consumer stuff that's held together by a prayer and bloated Windows-only drivers, but it's on par with good consumer desktop components.Some research is required and it involves work input, but the results are much better than what you can expect from typical NAS boxes. The community has made an effort to compile all the required information, and most of the important information is now centralized in the forum's Resources section. Members there will happily nudge new users in the right direction, but hand holding is not provided.Full disclosure: I'm a mod at the FreeNAS forums.Edit: Useful links:https://forums.freenas.orgResources section of the forum:https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/

author: Scrts
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 07, 2016, 07:35:35 pm
content: Quote from: ericloewe on November 07, 2016, 04:47:59 pmI was always thinking, that the power consumption of the PC server is significantly higher than a dedicated NAS. Will check that forum if somebody made any comparisons.

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 08, 2016, 04:06:10 pm
content: Quote from: Scrts on November 07, 2016, 07:35:35 pmPC server does have much greater flexibility even though it is being used as a NAS. I have a NAS/router combo server that have all those features:Quad-core Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300, 8GB DDR2-800 ECC memory9TB of hot-swappable storage with RAID-6 hardware redundancy (tolerates the failure of 2 drives)6 1000BASE-T with 802.3ad LACP link aggregation, 802.1Q Ethernet VLAN, PPPoE and PPPoEoVIPv4 and IPv6 dual stack gateway with IPv6 tunnellingDynamic DNSDNSCrypt with cache for local networkCan be accessed through SMB/CIFS (Windows), AFP (macOS, supports Time Machine backups), NFS and rsyncKVM virtual machines for hosting long tasks I don't want to mind on my own workstation

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 08, 2016, 04:16:28 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on November 08, 2016, 04:11:58 pmI used the Asus P5BV-C. It is a LGA775 one with Intel 3200 MCH intended for those Xeon 3300 series, but since it uses the same socket as consumer Core 2 Quad, and back then the memory controller is in the north bridge instead of the CPU itself, I can get a consumer CPU on this server motherboard and still get working ECC memory.

author: ericloewe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 08, 2016, 09:27:34 pm
content: Quote from: Scrts on November 07, 2016, 07:35:35 pmNot really. Crap low-end NAS boxes will use less power, but the mid-range stuff is using Intel CPUs these days, so it's going to be very similar to full-fledged servers. Both of my servers (Haswell or Skylake i3, 16GB RAM, few fans, 6 WD Red hard drives) idle below 50W (each, obviously), measured by the UPS). Note that this is with the drives spinning - general consensus is that the longevity hit from spinning down the drives (or even just parking the heads aggressively, like WD Greens / New Blues do) eliminates any power savings.You could optimize this down with some tradeoffs: Cut the IPMI (remote system management and remote console) and shave a few watts, go with a PSU that's closer to your requirements, with less room for growth, to try and optimize for efficiency...

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 09, 2016, 03:20:06 am
content: Just looking at a second hand QNAP TS-859 Pro....From what I can gather, it has:1.66Ghz dual core Atom CPU1GB DDR2 RAMThoughts anyone?

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2016, 03:52:53 am
content: Quote from: Brumby on November 09, 2016, 03:20:06 amNormal RAM can bite if you left it on for long enough...

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 09, 2016, 11:06:17 am
content: http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/262697664438Missed out.I was a bit apprehensive and went low on a snipe. I was thinking to shoot for something around the $1200 mark, but lack of knowledge caused me to not be as forthright as I would normally be, so I tried for something under $1000. I don't know if even $1200 would have secured it ... the winning bid was a classic snipe: Only 1 bid and that was in the last 5 seconds. They could have put a much higher number in.

author: Kilrah
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 09, 2016, 11:10:17 am
content: Wow that was cheap. Recently paid about the same for just 2 6TB drives and a simple USB3 dual drive RAID box. Half the capacity and no smarts. But portability which I require...

author: Brumby
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 09, 2016, 11:28:18 am
content: Yes. I was half expecting it to get closer to $1.5K at least - but the more I wondered, the more I realised I didn't know enough to bid confidently.The capacity was there for not only storing the original media file intention - but also to have some backup and RAID capability.Should have thrown it in here for some opinion a few days ago. Was only a half hour away, too - so pick up would have been easy.Oh well.

author: technix
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2016, 02:39:39 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on November 09, 2016, 03:59:56 amI live on the top of what is one of the highest building around the local area so ionizing radiation can be a concern, and since my motherboard supports it and second-hand ECC sticks are fairly cheap anyway why not just go ahead and use it?

author: macboy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2016, 03:08:02 pm
content: Quote from: Scrts on November 07, 2016, 07:35:35 pmI have a PC based server (built ca. 2009) and use ZFS for NAS. The PC has 8 disks internally (all disks spinning 24/7) and uses 80 W at the plug, idle. The CPU is an AMD Phenom II x4 which is throttled back to 1 GHz (at 0.75V Vcore!) when idle for minimum power consumption. I chose the Phenom II at the time because of its excellent support for multiple power states, and it has exceeded my expectations. The video is on-board which also saves a few Watts compared to a video card. I use an Antec EarthWatts 80+ power supply with PFC, which in 2009 was a big deal. That efficient power supply has easily paid for itself in $kWh savings over the years.This PC is also my main Windows PC, so whenever I need to use the PC to work from home all day or just to quickly check e-mail, it is there running. The way I manage this is that I run Windows 7 on the PC, and OpenSolaris within a virtual machine (via VMware Player). The virtual machine has direct access to five physical disks that it uses for the ZFS RAIDZ storage pool. Using a server within a virtual machine in this way makes the server itself portable to any other physical computer running any host O/S. I could also connect and use the zpool on a machine running OpenSolaris (or other ZFS O/S) directly on bare metal. I chose OpenSolaris originally because its ZFS and CIFS(SMB) are completely in-kernel and therefore more secure and performant than on alternatively of the time such as Linux. I chose ZFS at the time for reasons obvious to anyone who knows ZFSNAS performance is quite good. I can read from the shares at 65 MB/s. Writes are about 20% slower, not entirely unexpected as there is more work to be done to put data into ZFS that to take it out. A ZFS scrub runs at about 250 to 300 MB/s, which is not bad since 4 of the 5 disks are connected to a single on-board SATA controller which is probably saturating its PCIe link.This system is now over 7 years old. I am currently building an ultra low budget dual Xeon system (dual 8-core E5-2670 CPUs, 64 GB ECC RAM) which will replace it if I can get the power consumption low enough, though I am not hopeful that i will.I haveneversecond-guessed my decision to use ZFS. My data has survived hardware failures (entire dead or dying disks), bit rot and/or bad sectors, and accidental deletions or modifications. Despite all those things having happened over the years, I have never yet had to go to a backup to restore data.IMHO, hard drives are the only economically and practically viable solution for home backup. I usually maintain two extra copies of important data. One is "online", i.e. a 2nd copy on another disk on the system, usually external so its power supply isn't in common. This protects against disk failure or accidental deletion, which is probably 95% of all data loss. The other is "offline", on a hard disk that normally lives in a drawer and is plugged into a docking station when it is backup time. This protects against catastrophic hardware failure (e.g. lightning cooking all disks) or crypto-virus attacks, since the backup is tucked safely away. Really important data can also be put onto archival DVD-R or yet another hard disk and locked up offsite (in a drawer at work). That would protect against house fire or theft.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2016, 03:19:12 pm
content: Quote from: Scrts on November 01, 2016, 01:14:05 pmI fully agree. I have a NAS from Buffalo which has been working flawlessly for several years. It also supports Rsync so making backups without transferring all data is easy.

author: ericloewe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 09, 2016, 04:31:28 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on November 09, 2016, 03:59:56 amIn the FreeNAS community, the philosophy is that ECC is trivially more expensive than a non-ECC system, so it makes little sense to use anything but ECC RAM. At the very least, ECC allows you to have confidence in your RAM - it either works or it doesn't, and any errors are logged.Unfortunately, validating that ECC is working is hard and software solutions are unreliable. That means that sticking to known, supported configurations is a necessity.

author: ericloewe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 09, 2016, 06:36:25 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on November 09, 2016, 06:00:26 pmBeing mobile parts doesn't make them crap. Most of the real crap on the market is using decidedly desktop parts - think 50 buck motherboards. As for crashing workstations, if it's the hardware, a fix would probably be simple but a pain to identify. I once replaced most of a desktop's internals in part because it was getting rather unstable. Two months later, I realized it was the barely year-old graphics card that had been causing it.Quote from: blueskull on November 09, 2016, 06:00:26 pmThat's a discussion we've had in the FreeNAS community. There was a distinct fear of massive data corruption, should a DIMM develop a consistent fault (as opposed to an occasional random bit flip), as ZFS might then "correct" everything it reads with garbage. It was always a bit of a stretch (where would it get the "correct", actually garbage, data that matches the checksum? Wouldn't it stop after a few MB and throw a warning that something major is up?), and the general consensus is that ZFS is no more dangerous without ECC than traditional filesystems.

author: legacy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2016, 06:36:47 pm
content: here I am on XFS (by SGI)

author: ericloewe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 09, 2016, 07:49:31 pm
content: Oh, fellow ASRock X99 WS user. That's what I'm running now for my workstation, with a Xeon E5-1650 v3. I spent several hours the other day trying to boot Windows after updating to the latest BIOS. I had to give up and downgrade to an older release.Memtest86 is another pain in the ass. Memtest86+ is stuck on an ancient version, with no development in years. Memtest86 (non-plus) is dubious, doesn't do what it advertises (ECC error injection - it failed on all sorts of hardware) and is a sleazy product derived from OSS.Do you happen to run disk cleanup every month? I've found that its enthusiasm is far too great and it almost always deletes important system files, effectively crashing the system because new processes can't be started and rebooting is impossible without repairs.

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2016, 07:52:13 pm
content: ASRock. Say no more.

author: legacy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2016, 08:29:55 pm
content: back tobtrfs, which linux kernel do you suggest me?I'd like to give it a try on my cerberus NAS (PowerPC)

author: voltsandjolts
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 09, 2016, 09:14:08 pm
content: Quote from: legacy on November 09, 2016, 08:29:55 pmKernel 8.0

author: ericloewe
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 09, 2016, 09:41:18 pm
content: Quote from: Monkeh on November 09, 2016, 07:52:13 pmYeah, they've been stalling on a major BIOS/IPMI bugfix release for their C2x50D4I boards for a few months now:Basically, whenever the watchdog is patted, the BMC writes to its configuration (stored on a Winbond W25X40CL serial flash chip). Since the watchdog is frequently patted in some OSes (on the order of 1-2 minutes in most OSes), the flash quickly wears out. Once writes start failing, the BMC's Linux kernel panics, bringing down IPMI, VGA output, fan control, system error logging, etc. Future boots will fail because Intel's ME firmware refuses to boot without the BMC's cooperation.tl;dr - the board is bricked there and thenSo far, the only workarounds involve disabling the watchdog in one way or another. Real pity, since they used to be very engaged with the FreeNAS community's needs, supplying odd firmware versions for some boards and making niche boards that filled interesting market segments.The whole saga can be followed here:https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/dead-asrock-c2750d4i-and-poor-customer-service.45762/

author: Monkeh
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2016, 09:43:46 pm
content: Quote from: ericloewe on November 09, 2016, 09:41:18 pmAnd that sort of amateur design is why I'd never buy an ASRock board.

author: legacy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2016, 09:56:48 pm
content: Quote from: voltsandjolts on November 09, 2016, 09:14:08 pmoh, well, humorI am still on linux kernel v2.6.39( LoL)

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2016, 10:14:17 pm
content: Quote from: legacy on November 09, 2016, 08:29:55 pmDepends what you want to do. If you want to try and use an experimental feature like raid56 (not recommended), you need kernel 4.7 or 4.8. If you are using raid 1 or 10 (or like Netgear installing btrfs on top of raid provided by other software), then I would just get the Linux long term distro you trust and use the kernel that comes with the apt-get updates. I haven't updated my Netgear Readynas NAS boxes for about 6 months, but just looked at one and it is only on kernel 3.0. Ubuntu 14.04 is on kernel 3.13 and 16.04 is on 4.4. Not sure about 15.04.

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 09, 2016, 10:40:14 pm
content: Quote from: blueskull on November 09, 2016, 06:51:01 pmDefinitely sounds like a hardware issue. Could be the motherboard bios, but the first thing I always do in cases like this is trying a different power supply no matter how good the one I have is. Just a basic Corsair will be good enough to see if the problem is still there or if it goes away.I have been using an Asrock E3V5 WS MB with a E3 1230-v5 Xeon for about 3 months now and it has been rock solid. Using it as a Virtualbox VM server running on Windows 7. Running Virtualbox as a service on Windows 7 is not my choice and is not easy to get right (have to use the php web interface written for Virtualbox instead of the Virtualbox GUI), but that is what the client wanted. So far the combination has not had a single glitch.

author: voltsandjolts
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 17, 2016, 09:19:41 am
content: Quote from: legacy on November 09, 2016, 08:29:55 pmLooks like the btrfs raid56 problem wasn't as serious as first thought and a 200 line patch has been submitted. Might turn up in the next kernel. If you dare!https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Btrfs-RAID5-RAID6-Fixedhttps://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-btrfs/msg60595.htmlEdit:Not everybody agrees its fixed, there are still issues:https://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-btrfs/msg60684.html

author: legacy
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 17, 2016, 10:47:15 am
content: well, currently I am cooking(1) a new stage1 for AMCC 405GPthat is definitely the proof that .. I am a daring dude(1) gentoo terminology, it means building linux from scratchthrough a tool called "Catalyst", the stage1 is the first resultwhile a system is able to compile by itself when it gets stage3which sounds like a daring crime @_________@

author: 3db
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 17, 2016, 02:15:48 pm
content: Quote from: Monkeh on November 09, 2016, 09:43:46 pmI have a few of whose boards running freenas for more than three years.3DB

author: 3db
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 17, 2016, 02:26:57 pm
content: HP Microservers used to make a decent Freenas box.I have a couple of the Gen7 models running Freenas.One of them has been running 27/7 for years only restarting when I update the software.The Gen 8 model is selling in the UK with a £60 cashback.These severs represent great value for money.3DB