[ale] [OT] Home nas

Sun Sep 16 21:06:49 EDT 2012

I'd like to know more about performance with Atom, since I imagine using
ZFS and FreeNAS can be CPU-intensive.

I'm definitely not looking for more than 2 SATA plugs to do RAID 1
mirroring, but i'll check out the Supermicro boards.

--Cameron <http://ghostfreeman.net>

On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 8:51 PM, Greg Clifton <gccfof5 at gmail.com> wrote:

> One problem with many of the Atom and Hudson A350 boards is a minimal
> number of SATA ports ( often only 2). If you are interested in an Atom
> board with more SATA ports, check out Supermicro's embedded product line,
> they have some with 4 or more SATA ports, but they ain't cheap. I recently
> came across a nano board that VIA is evidently producing in response to
> the Raspberry Pi and similar such products. It has 2 SATA ports and a quad
> core processor. Looks like it would make an adequate board to base a
> mirrored pair of drives off of, when it is available. I could envision such
> a device with a pair of hard drives "living" in the same case as a desktop
> system that might be your "main" computer. The article says the price is
> not yet set, but surely it will be less than $100:
> http://www.geek.com/articles/chips/via-launches-tiny-quad-core-x86-epia-p910-board-2012097/
>
>
> I would love to hear anybody's experience that has used an Atom, or esp.
> an A350 board for a NAS box, because that is an idea that I have been
> kicking around.
>
> GC
>
>
> On Sun, Sep 16, 2012 at 4:59 PM, JD <jdp at algoloma.com> wrote:
>
>> Backups don't need RAID. You want RAID on the main storage, if that is a
>> requirement.
>>
>> For simple backups, buy a USB3 dock and connect it to a router with USB
>> ports
>> for storage.  Using a dock means he has "unlimited storage", just swap in
>> a new
>> 2TB hdd when the old one fills up.  If performance isn't good enough,
>> newer
>> routers should support USB3 soon.  Even some of those $50 media streaming
>> devices will share USB HDD storage on the network.  I'm positive that a
>> WD-TV
>> Live HD does.  At 100base-tx, it is painfully slow compared to everything
>> else
>> that is GigE connected here.
>>
>> USB3 is not a good idea for anything other than backups or streaming
>> media,
>> IMHO. There has been a queuing issue with USB for years. It handles 1 or 2
>> different requests at a time nicely, but not 5-20 like a full OS will
>> make.
>> There are eSATA docks for that, but then he needs to leave a PC on all
>> the time.
>> eSATA behaves just like internal disks. Same performance, same command
>> set.
>>
>> I wouldn't completely knock out building a NAS-PC either.  The AMD APUs
>> and Atom
>> APUs can use 20W of power + however many HDDs are inside.  Last month if
>> saw
>> (and purchased) a Slickdeal E-350 MB+APU+case for $100. That's hard to
>> beat on
>> the price.  Drop in 1-2G of old RAM and an old HDD means a new system is
>> ready
>> and will be stingy on electricity.  I am not using it as a NAS, but might
>> in the
>> future.
>>
>> I have a home-built NAS with an external 4 disk array currently. That is
>> primary
>> storage running Linux software RAID.  To back it up, a USB3 WD external
>> disk is
>> used. Simple, cheap and effective.  If the backup disk fails - oh well.
>>  That
>> same disk array has been moved between systems and Linux installs multiple
>> times. It was a non-event every time, extremely flexible.  Software RAID
>> can be
>> slower than HW-RAID.  The RAID5 here is much less speed than a single WD
>> Black
>> drive for writes. The OS disk cache is about 4G on that box, so the first
>> 4G of
>> transfer is always 65-75MB/s. Writing large files (10-22G HD recordings)
>> to the
>> single Black drive achieves about 40MB/s over the network, after the
>> cache is
>> full.  Going to the RAID5 storage might get 10MB/s after the cache is
>> full.
>> Same client, same server, same network, just the storage being written
>> onto is
>> different. Guess which drive I transfer new files onto over the network?
>>  To be
>> fair, the Black drives are fairly new and the disks in the array are 5.5+
>> yrs
>> old.  I'm burning in replacement HDDs as I write this.
>>
>> With purchased NAS devices, much flexibility is gone. There are limits
>> set by
>> the maker. I guess that is what you are asking - about those limitations?
>>
>> Anyway, I hope these ideas are helpful to finding the best answer for his
>> needs.
>>
>>
>> On 09/16/2012 12:56 PM, John Anderson wrote:
>> > I guess the issues other than the basic one of price would be:
>> > reliablility.
>> >
>> > raid 1
>> >
>> > Ability to pop a drive out and read it if the unit fries. Are there
>> > systems with software versus hardware raid? My understanding is that
>> > software is easier to recover if the hardware fails.
>> >
>> > Transfer speed is probably not an issue. This is more for the first
>> > layer of backup for multiple pc's in the household. It probably won't be
>> > getting hammered on a regular basis.
>> >
>> > On 09/16/2012 12:39 PM, JD wrote:
>> >> On 09/16/2012 12:02 PM, John Anderson wrote:
>> >>> Any recommendations/cautions about picking up a home nas? It's for my
>> >>> brother in law so he probably won't want a re-purposed PC. Looking to
>> >>> spend <$500
>> >> You usually get what you pay for.
>> >> http://www.smallnetbuilder.com/nas/nas-charts/view will get you (or
>> him) started.
>> >>
>> >> There are many other caveats, but without requirements or use
>> scenarios, I can't
>> >> begin to make any suggestions.
>> >>
>> >> If he wants low price over all else, there are cheap 1 or 2 disk
>> options without
>> >> any advanced capabilities. However, these have pretty poor
>> performance, but that
>> >> may not be an issue.
>> >>
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