Can you ever have [i]too many[/i] NAS units?

[VirtualLarry]

Just curious. I have... five. Plus, the remains of my unRAID server, that died this morning when I tried to power it on, to copy the remaining data to my biggest NAS unit. So I guess I'll have to re-build it sooner, rather than later. I have a new 8-bay case, and an A85X mobo with 8 SATA ports, and an FM2 dual-core APU to go in it, and some RAM, etc.

So, once that's done, I'll have 20 drives online.

(Yes, I know that some of you have that many drives in one of several unRAID and FreeNAS servers. Hey, I'm still a server n00b.)

I do own a brand-new Norco 20-bay 4U rack-mount case, but I have no place in my small apt to put it. (If anyone's in the Boston / MW area, and wants it cheap, make me an offer and pick it up.)

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Only if power costs and disk replacements/management overhead overtake usefulness of the data being stored. I wouldn't build a half-dozen NASs with 250GB drives in it, for instance, instead of just buying a pair of 4TB disks and Raid1'ing them.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah, I've got 4x5TB, 4x2TB, 2x3TB, 1x3TB, 2x1TB, a 1TB external, and 6x2TB left in the dead unRAID server, that I'm going to match up with 2x2TB of the same drives, to make 8x2TB, for the new unRAID server.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

If you're 1) using them for stuff, and 2) can afford to replace all those drives when they inevitably die, then you're fine.

If you're just storing data cold, it might be worth it to look at some other archival tech.

The reason some of us have those big arrays in big servers is because it's usually simpler/easier to do that, as opposed to a bunch of tiny arrays on different platforms. Raid overhead is often a concern too.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Yeah, I've got 4x5TB, 4x2TB, 2x3TB, 1x3TB, 2x1TB, a 1TB external, and 6x2TB left in the dead unRAID server, that I'm going to match up with 2x2TB of the same drives, to make 8x2TB, for the new unRAID server.

If you're actually making use of all that data, then go nuts I guess. If you're using it as more of 'cold storage' (which I suspect, this is what most people use it for) then it may be worthwhile to create some kind of offline solution, even if it's just manual mounting of external disks with labels on them. One NAS with bulk movies/family crap/documents/whatever on some kind of raid1 is enough for 99.9% of people.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah. My original plan was to have a nice big juicy unRAID server, and I bought 8x2TB 7200RPM Hitachi drives, and 5x2TB 5400RPM ("CoolSpin") Hitachi drives. Two spares for the 7200RPM array, and one spare for the 5400RPM array. Though, with unRAID, it's all just one big pile, so I could have used those drives interchangeably as spares.

But I never ended up paying for an unRAID license, so I never used more than 2x2TB for data, and 1x2TB for a parity drive. The other drives sat unused, and presumably (?) spun down.

I forget how I ended up getting them, but I got a single-drive 3TB Seagate NAS, and I got a good deal on a 2-bay QNAP (an older one), which I filled with 2x1TB Seagate consumer drives, which I'm really worried about the longevity of right around now. (3+ years in service? Seagate? Ugh!). Picked up a 2-bay iomega (discontinued) NAS for like $50 bare, new, so I put in 2x3TB that I had. Then I ordered a TS-431 QNAP from Newegg's ebay store, and after I placed the order, and started reading reviews, it became apparent, that it had a 16TB logical volume size array limit. Not good. So I (tried) to cancel the ebay order (within like 15 minutes), and ordered a TS-451 (based on an Intel 64-bit Atom CPU, rather than a 32-bit ARM, so no limitation). Well, the cancel didn't go through, so I ended up with both of them. I already had been purchasing 5TB Seagate Expansion Desktop External 3.5" USB3.0 HDDs, so I had 4x5TB ready for shucking, and putting into the TS-451, which I did. Then, like usual, I read about those drives being really horrible for NAS. (I may have gotten a later firmware revision, as mine are, so far, fine.)

And just this morning, I tried to fire up the unRAID server, and it died while booting (PSU? mobo? drives seem OK), with the floppy drive light stuck on, for some reason, and BIOS boot hung. So I removed the unused 4x2TB 5400RPM HDDs, and put them into the TS-431, and it's initializing the RAID-5 array right now.

I guess I have several different "groups" of data. Collected data archived from my PCs, sort-of a backup, sort-of a historical archive. That's my "Personal" data. Then I have my collection of ISOs, Windows and Linux. Then, I was planning on ripping my DVDs and BRs and putting them onto the unRAID server. Then I have the web pages and image files I serve up to the internet. (The QNAP OS has a web-server functionality.)

I would like to segregate the web-serving from the personal data archive, and I need a bunch of room for my Linux ISO collection. I currently have duplication of the ISOs and personal data. I wasn't planning on any duplication of the ripped DVDs, relying on unRAID's parity drive.

I was also using the unRAID server as a backup dump for various things.

I do have "cold" backups too. Which is a good thing, as I was recently compromised, and I question whether some of my ISO images were tampered with and trojaned.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Yeah. My original plan was to have a nice big juicy unRAID server, and I bought 8x2TB 7200RPM Hitachi drives, and 5x2TB 5400RPM ("CoolSpin") Hitachi drives. Two spares for the 7200RPM array, and one spare for the 5400RPM array. Though, with unRAID, it's all just one big pile, so I could have used those drives interchangeably as spares.

But I never ended up paying for an unRAID license, so I never used more than 2x2TB for data, and 1x2TB for a parity drive. The other drives sat unused, and presumably (?) spun down.

I forget how I ended up getting them, but I got a single-drive 3TB Seagate NAS, and I got a good deal on a 2-bay QNAP (an older one), which I filled with 2x1TB Seagate consumer drives, which I'm really worried about the longevity of right around now. (3+ years in service? Seagate? Ugh!). Picked up a 2-bay iomega (discontinued) NAS for like $50 bare, new, so I put in 2x3TB that I had. Then I ordered a TS-431 QNAP from Newegg's ebay store, and after I placed the order, and started reading reviews, it became apparent, that it had a 16TB logical volume size array limit. Not good. So I (tried) to cancel the ebay order (within like 15 minutes), and ordered a TS-451 (based on an Intel 64-bit Atom CPU, rather than a 32-bit ARM, so no limitation). Well, the cancel didn't go through, so I ended up with both of them. I already had been purchasing 5TB Seagate Expansion Desktop External 3.5" USB3.0 HDDs, so I had 4x5TB ready for shucking, and putting into the TS-451, which I did. Then, like usual, I read about those drives being really horrible for NAS. (I may have gotten a later firmware revision, as mine are, so far, fine.)

And just this morning, I tried to fire up the unRAID server, and it died while booting (PSU? mobo? drives seem OK), with the floppy drive light stuck on, for some reason, and BIOS boot hung. So I removed the unused 4x2TB 5400RPM HDDs, and put them into the TS-431, and it's initializing the RAID-5 array right now.

I guess I have several different "groups" of data. Collected data archived from my PCs, sort-of a backup, sort-of a historical archive. That's my "Personal" data. Then I have my collection of ISOs, Windows and Linux. Then, I was planning on ripping my DVDs and BRs and putting them onto the unRAID server. Then I have the web pages and image files I serve up to the internet. (The QNAP OS has a web-server functionality.)

I would like to segregate the web-serving from the personal data archive, and I need a bunch of room for my Linux ISO collection. I currently have duplication of the ISOs and personal data. I wasn't planning on any duplication of the ripped DVDs, relying on unRAID's parity drive.

I was also using the unRAID server as a backup dump for various things.

I do have "cold" backups too. Which is a good thing, as I was recently compromised, and I question whether some of my ISO images were tampered with and trojaned.

Sounds like a bit of a mess Odds are good a lot of that data can be cleaned out/gotten rid of (how many OS ISOs do you 'need'?). I def advise segregating data when possible, sometimes that just gets cumbersome though.

Have you considered just doing a JBOD array of all this crap in some super-enclosure (not recommending buying more crap, just saying), and just swap out disks as they die with something better? Your IO would probably be crap with this mix but you aren't hosting a SQL DB or anything so I doubt it'd matter.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Well, I access the Personal as well as the ISOs from multiple different machines on my LAN, both Windows 7, 10, and Linux. So keeping them on a NAS, rather than an eSATA or USB3.0 multi-drive enclosure is pretty-much a must.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I like how the disk setup page says "this may take a few minutes", and it's been going since 7AM this morning, and it's now 8PM.

Edit: Now it's 2:30AM, on Tues the 8th, and it's been at "Formatting: 64%" since 8PM yesterday. What's going on here?

When I set up my TS-451 (Intel Atom 64-bit CPU based), it has deferred RAID re-build, so it formatted, but it was still doing the RAID re-build in the background, for most of the day, but it was still usable, and finished the Quick Setup routine in maybe an hour or two.

This one (TS-431) is still going, and won't let me login to the Admin interface yet.

Edit: Hmm, my Hitachi CoolSpin 5K3000 drives aren't on the compatibility list for this NAS.

Edit: Of course, neither were my 5TB Seagate desktop HDDs shucked from externals, but that didn't stop my TS-451 from initializing with four of them. Hmm.

http://us1.qnap.com/Storage/TechnicalDocument/20160811-QNAP_Turbo_NAS_Hardware_Manual_EN.pdf

Says that a flashing alternate red and green System light, means the HDDs are initializing or raid rebuilding or firmware is updating.

Guess I'll just let it continue to do its thing.

 

[XavierMace]

Didn't we have this conversation last time you tried to setup a RAID 5 array of large, slow drives?

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Pretty sure we did.

In retrospect, this "NAS Farm" thing is pretty much your approach to everything, isn't it? Nickel and diming yourself to death buying a bunch of "cheap" units on sale instead of actually saving money by getting one good widget that meets all your needs?

 

[VirtualLarry]

In retrospect, this "NAS Farm" thing is pretty much your approach to everything, isn't it? Nickel and diming yourself to death buying a bunch of "cheap" units on sale instead of actually saving money by getting one good widget that meets all your needs?

I'm really not sure that's true. I started with the single-drive Seagate, because it was 3TB, and 5-6 years ago, that was a lot. I had a 500GB IDE Gigabit NAS that died, that I had been using, at my old place. But I noticed some 4KB corruption in some text files while using it, unsure if the unit or drive was defective, or just firmware bugs.

Then I had an opportunity to upgrade to a dual-bay QNAP 212 for like $130, nearly $100 off list. Then I picked up the Lenovo for $50, which was a steal for a 2-bay, and it has a lot of features and is pretty snappy. So I thew in two 3TB drives, and used that for my Linux ISOs, and using the QNAP for personal files and web hosting.

I wanted to get rid of my huge tower server, because it takes up so much room, so I tried ordering a 4-bay NAS to use with my collection of 5TB drives. I first ordered the TS-431, but then found out about the array limitation, so I ordered the TS-451.

I then installed the TS-451 with the 4x5TB, and then backed-up the tower server to the 15TB NAS, and then copied the Linux ISO collection too, and my personal stuff, so it was all on one unit. Mostly, I copied the personal stuff, because I was concerned that the 2x1TB Seagate consumer drives in the 2-bay QNAP were going to fail soon. I would prefer to keep my personal stuff on its own NAS, and then my bulk data on the bigger one, and then set up the 2-bay QNAP again for web-serving. So now I'm setting up the TS-431 with 4x2TB to use for personal data.

Good security principles dictate separation of duties. I don't think that's "going cheap" at all.

 

[VirtualLarry]

https://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?t=65817

This kind of explains why, nearly two days later, it's stuck on "Formatting".

Apparently, plugging in disks that were previously used, even though the NAS says it will clear them, is a no-no.

 

[XavierMace]

Good security principles dictate separation of duties.

Doesn't really apply in this case, you have one duty, file serving and splitting your files between two devices isn't more secure from a security perspective.

More importantly unless you've got custom ACL's setup and different logins for both devices you might as well put them on the same box. Especially if you've got drives mapped on both NAS units.

Or have an already compromised device on your network.

 

[VirtualLarry]

you have one duty, file serving and splitting your files between two devices isn't more secure from a security perspective.

Even when you are web-serving on the same box as your personal files? That makes me nervous.

Or have an already compromised device on your network.

I actually suspect one of my NAS units had some sort of security hole.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Dave, contemplating pricing on drives, between using bigger drives, or using smaller drives, and multiple smaller NAS units:

Here's a 10TB Seagate NAS drive, the top of the line, pretty-much. Over $500.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...835&cm_re=10TB_HDD-_-9SIA2F851C8835-_-Product

When you consider the Seagate Expansion Desktop 5TB external HDDs, that I "shucked", cost me only $110 ea., that's a fairly significant savings. Even if my NAS costs are double for the bare NAS units. ($295 + $349, for my TS-431 and TS-451 units, respectively.)

Then again, I just filled the TS-431 with 4x2TB 5400RPM Hitachi HDDs, which gave a RAID-5 volume size of 5.04TB (why not 6TB? Hmm.). So, I could have conceivably just purchased an additional Expansion 5TB unit for $110, and slaved it to my 2-bay or 4-bay NAS, instead of even getting the TS-431 and the 2TB HDDs (which were actually relatively unused from my unRAID server). But then I wouldn't have the redundancy.

Does anyone have any recommendations for the "sweet spot" of HDDs, to use in NAS units like the TS-431 or TS-451? 10TB would sure be sweet, but at $525 a pop, kind of pricey. I see "new" (but with 1-year vendor warranty) Hitachi CoolSpin 5K3000 3TB drives for under $70 shipped. Those seem like a good deal, but they don't offer much more capacity than the 2TB Hitachi 5K3000 2TB drives I already have in there. (Sounds like they are shucked from externals?)

Any 5 / 6 / 8 TB HDDs available, for a reasonable price? I think I saw some Toshiba X300 5TB drives for $140 ea. at Newegg semi-recently.

 

[poofyhairguy]

The sweet spot is shifting always. Now it's probably 4TB drives as good ones have dropped in price a lot. That or 3TB drives.

I don't touch anything without Backblaze data though.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Dave, contemplating pricing on drives, between using bigger drives, or using smaller drives, and multiple smaller NAS units:

Here's a 10TB Seagate NAS drive, the top of the line, pretty-much. Over $500.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...835&cm_re=10TB_HDD-_-9SIA2F851C8835-_-Product

When you consider the Seagate Expansion Desktop 5TB external HDDs, that I "shucked", cost me only $110 ea., that's a fairly significant savings. Even if my NAS costs are double for the bare NAS units. ($295 + $349, for my TS-431 and TS-451 units, respectively.)

Then again, I just filled the TS-431 with 4x2TB 5400RPM Hitachi HDDs, which gave a RAID-5 volume size of 5.04TB (why not 6TB? Hmm.). So, I could have conceivably just purchased an additional Expansion 5TB unit for $110, and slaved it to my 2-bay or 4-bay NAS, instead of even getting the TS-431 and the 2TB HDDs (which were actually relatively unused from my unRAID server). But then I wouldn't have the redundancy.

5.45 TB raw, formatted capacity of UFS and/or ext4 volumes is lower.

Depending on what you mean by "redundancy" you probably don't need to worry about it. Having multiple NAS appliances is usually silly - short of using one to back up the other, anyway. But in most cases it's cheaper to buy a Crashplan subscription and a virtual web host for a few bucks a month to do your server-type workloads. Probably should just set up the TS-451 with 5TB drives and sell the rest of your gaggle on eBay or something. Get money.

Does anyone have any recommendations for the "sweet spot" of HDDs, to use in NAS units like the TS-431 or TS-451? 10TB would sure be sweet, but at $525 a pop, kind of pricey. I see "new" (but with 1-year vendor warranty) Hitachi CoolSpin 5K3000 3TB drives for under $70 shipped. Those seem like a good deal, but they don't offer much more capacity than the 2TB Hitachi 5K3000 2TB drives I already have in there. (Sounds like they are shucked from externals?)

Any 5 / 6 / 8 TB HDDs available, for a reasonable price? I think I saw some Toshiba X300 5TB drives for $140 ea. at Newegg semi-recently.

I usually just hit up pcpartpicker and sort by $/GB.

 

[XavierMace]

Even when you are web-serving on the same box as your personal files? That makes me nervous.

You shouldn't be using a NAS for web serving at all. That's why it's called Network Attached Storage, not a web server.

 

[XavierMace]

I usually just hit up pcpartpicker and sort by $/GB.

Pretty much this. I've got a total of 20 spindles between my two SAN's at the house. A total of 2 drive failures, both drives with over 50k hours on them. I'm more than happy with that rate.

 

[Carson Dyle]

The sweet spot is shifting always. Now it's probably 4TB drives as good ones have dropped in price a lot. That or 3TB drives.

I don't touch anything without Backblaze data though.

Hard drive prices have fallen _very_ little in the last couple of years. Ever since SSDs took over the consumer market as the primary drive in most systems, it seems. I've been looking to add a few more 4TB Reds to my storage server, but the price hasn't fallen more than $5-$10 in the last two years.

 

[Carson Dyle]

I see zero advantage to littering your home with a bunch of little storage boxes. I suppose it makes adding additional storage easy (which was the original purpose of NAS when it was introduced), but the expense and the hassles have to be much greater than having fewer systems and fewer drives. As with many things, the best approach is to plan for the future, by building a system that can be easily expanded. IMO.