Help select a NAS

[SamMaster]

Greetings.

The title says it all, but before I will explain the situation.

A family who is a friend of mine (me, wife, child) recently came upon a storage halt. Specifically, the second eldest daughter filled her Macbook Pro's 500gb HDD as well as an external one of same size, as she is studying in graphic design. This is a home with 2 Macbook Pros, and 2 Windows laptops (one Vista, one brand new 7), as well as an old XP desktop I Frankensteined together. I figured that a basic NAS would be the best option as everyone could backup their stuff.

Now this kind of thing I am not experienced with (limited resources and no personal need). I found several options, from NAS enclosures, to a WHS 2011, including building a rig. This is where you guys come in.

I would like to know which of the following would be best for them. They are not the most computer savvy but they could manage with some training. Money spent kept to a minimum would be preferable of course. We live in Canada too, so all those awesome US stores do not apply sadly.

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Netgear ReadyNAS RND4000-200NAS NV+ V2 NAS SATA RAID 0/1/5 4BAY Diskless HOME/SOHO [/FONT]
http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=68260&vpn=RND4000-200NAS&manufacture=Netgear

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Patriot Javelin 4 Four Bay SATA2 Hard Drive Storage Array eSATA 12TB Storage Capacity & USB2.0 [/FONT]
http://forums.ncix.com/forums/?mode..._id=60865&msgcount=2&overclockid=0#msg2556492

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Synology Disk Station DS411J 4-BAY SATA NAS RAID Server JBOD RAID 0/1/5/5+ SPARE/6/10 White [/FONT]
http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=56532&vpn=DS411J&manufacture=Synology+Inc.

[FONT=Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif] Acer Revo RC111-ER10H Home Server Intel Atom D525 2GB 2TB GbE 4 Bay Windows Home Server 2011 [/FONT]
http://www.ncix.com/products/?sku=69334&vpn=DT.SGVAA.001&manufacture=Acer&promoid=1346

I like the idea of the cheap WHS box that I can add drives hot-swap style, but how would the macs fare with it? The Synology box states they can do Time Machine, which would be a plus, and RAID 5+HS/6 is a plus.

I would use 2TB WD Red drives in those.

Here is what I came up with for the rig:

ASUS F1A55-M/CSM mATX AMD A55FCH FM1 APU DDR3 SATA2 USB3.0 2PCI-E16 1PCI-E HDMI DVI VGA Motherboard

AMD A4-3400 APU w/ AMD Radeon HD 6410D GFX Dual Core Processor Socket FM1 2.7GHZ 1MB 65W Retail Box

Fractal Design Core 1000 mATX Computer Case

Seasonic SS-350ET 350W ATX12V 20/24PIN ATX Power Supply Active PFC 80PLUS 120MM Fan OEM

Kingston KHX1600C9D3B1K2/8GX 8GB Kit 2X4GB 1600MHz DDR3 240PIN DIMM Unbuff Hmp HyperX CL9

Western Digital Red 2TB SATA3 64MB Cache 3.5IN Internal Hard Disk Drive HDD x2

Crucial M4 SSD Micron C400 128GB 2.5IN Solid State Disk Flash Drive SATA3 6Gbps

It all comes to $580 before taxes and shipping.

I could use WHS or FreeNAS for the OS, unless another one is suggested. The hardware is not set in stone. I could go the cheap Intel route also. Its just that this versus E-450 is a few bucks difference.

 

[SamMaster]

bump

 

[KentState]

I have a Synology DS1511+ and it's been the most worry free device I've owned.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

If you just want a basic NAS look no further then Synology. They can do all you specified and properly more...

Just remember to put some quality hard drives in it, and you should be good to go...

If you want to do-it-yourself, a WHS-box would be the best bet. But that is a completely different discussion...

 

[blastingcap]

Build your own. I'm running Nas4Free off a USB drive on a Fujitsu MX130 S2 I that I bought for about $140 on a newegg sale. I upgraded the CPU and RAM but even without an upgrade it should be able to give good performance... On my Win7 box over gigabit ethernet, I'm hitting sustained speeds of 80 MB/s on the 250GB HDD that came with the Fujitsu, which is probably the top sustainable speed for that drive. You don't need to buy "compatible" drives like you'd need to do with hardware RAID and many pre-built NAS boxes. With Nas4Free, you get software ZFS mirror/RAID capability, which may be more robust than most affordable hardware RAID controllers anyway.

I would avoid WHS as it has some forward compatability issues last I heard.. re: UEFI BIOSes and hard drives over 2TB. Plus it doesn't have as robust of a file system as BTRFS/ZFS/ReFS.

The new Windows Server Essentials 2012 looks interesting and has ReFS, but it costs over $400. No thanks, Microsoft. If it were $40 I'd use it instead of Nas4Free just for the backup features, but $400+ is a ripoff.

If you must stick with Windows, maybe you can install Win8 with Storage Spaces on one of your PCs and use that as a file server. Last I heard Win8 doesn't use ReFS though, at least not for now.

P.S. If cost is an issue, this would be a cheap build if you can wait for a sale:

$140 Fujitsu MX130 S2 goes as low as $140 after coupon on newegg sometimes; the Sempron 145 is enough for file transfers (even with multiple users you will barely hit the Sempron 145's limits for realistic use scenarios). Remember go to BIOS and set it to AHCI, as it has "fakeRAID" that is not true hardware RAID (it's only compatible with certain OSes, none of which you will be running). You won't need hardware RAID for a ZFS setup anyway, so who cares.

$55 I would upgrade the RAM with DDR3 of at least 1333MHz speed (unbuffered ECC) and 1.5V or lower. I use this but there are other brands that will work, and don't worry if the BIOS complains that you aren't using Fujitsu-branded memory: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820139262 So that's 8GB of ECC DDR3, plus another 2GB if you retain the stick it came with. Plenty to run ZFS with. Rule of thumb is you want one GB of RAM for every TB of ZFS space, plus another 2GB for overhead/OS. 8GB will give you room for 6GB without taking a performance hit.

-$?? You can sell the 250GB HDD that comes with the MX130 S2 and replace it with whatever you want. Or keep it and use it as an OS drive. If you have a spare SSD to use as an OS drive, that's even better as it draws less power.

+$?? The cost of your replacement.

+$? The cost of any decently sized USB drive. This will be your OS drive. I have a bunch of spares so the cost to me was basically zero.

$0 - Nas4Free is free open-source software http://sourceforge.net/projects/nas4free/ And yes it works with Macs, among other things.

-----
Total is basically $195 + the cost of the storage drives (you mentioned WD Reds but that is not necessary for software RAID; you can get away with using ANY decent hard drive when using ZFS pools... plenty of people use WD Greens with RAIDZ1/2)

I'm pretty new to file server building myself, but I have to say that building my own NAS was very easy, and a heck of a lot cheaper than buying one. Plus it can be used if necessary as something else like a HTPC or torrentbox or webserver, has better robustness (thanks to ZFS), and is much more powerful (AND upgradeable) than anything you're likely to see in pre-built affordable NAS boxes.

Note that the HP Proliant N40L is more popular than the Fujitsus and in some ways easier to work with (HDDs more accessible); plus is marginally more power efficient; but it also has an adequate but non-upgradeable CPU and RAM only goes up to 8GB max, unlike the Fujitsu's 16GB max. For the same price I'd probably get the Proliant just for the energy savings, but N40Ls typically cost way more than MX130 S2's. Like $100+ more.

Of course the cheapest option is to repurpose an old PC you have lying around, if the file server doesn't need to be on 24/7. But for 24/7 I would recommend ECC. If you have an energy-efficient (idle power, not load; nobody cares about load for file servers since they are idle 99% of the time) AMD CPU and ASUS mobo (7 series or higher), that would do great as that combo supports ECC.

 

[SamMaster]

I'd look into your recommendation if I was sure that NAS4Free would be easy enough for non-techies. If I needed one, I would go for that for sure. The most tech savvy person in the family (as I can tell) still needs my help to reinstall the OS on her laptop, so I need something with an easy enough interface so I don't have to come back every other day (though sometimes we do anyway). I rather have something I can install and forget.

 

[tweakboy]

Go to iTunes.com get Nas singles. JK JK...

I know a friend who is using Nas4Free and he says its great. no problems. I think he has a older version too. gl

 

[blastingcap]

I'd look into your recommendation if I was sure that NAS4Free would be easy enough for non-techies. If I needed one, I would go for that for sure. The most tech savvy person in the family (as I can tell) still needs my help to reinstall the OS on her laptop, so I need something with an easy enough interface so I don't have to come back every other day (though sometimes we do anyway). I rather have something I can install and forget.

The installation is admittedly far more involved than a non-techie may like. However, once installed, it's almost invisible. I have my Win7 boxes connected to my Nas4Free box mapped to Z: drive.

If you want to not to worry about even the installation, then you may find it okay to spend the extra few hundred dollars. You'll lose ZFS (and the data integrity that entails) and sheer horsepower/upgradeability but gain user-friendliness, commercial tech support rather than forums, and possibly shave off a little bit of idle power.

Btw don't use FreeNAS. The pre-8 stuff uses an outdated version of ZFS and the FreeNAS 8 stuff is more for commercial users. What you want, should you decide to go down this road, is Nas4Free which is the spiritual successor to FreeNAS.

 

[murphyc]

I second the suggestion for NAS4FREE. For Mac users, it also has Netatalk included for AFP support. Another option is to check out Nexentastor Community Edition, which also uses ZFS v28 as the file system, and is free up to 18TB of storage. It's Illumos based, and is pretty sweet especially if you're a Solaris fan. It does, however, lack prebuilt Netatalk.

If you want a low impact test drive of what it's like to install the software, and use it, you can download VirtualBox for free. And setup a VM to run either of these NAS suggestions in. Within the VM, you can create virtual disks matching how many real disks you're thinking of getting, and actually configure a fully functioning system. Be sure to configure the VM networking to bridge mode instead of NAT (default) so that the VM gets it's own IP address from your router - that IP address is what you'll point your web browser to to see the web configuration interface.

All of these have rather clunky text based installers that are like working on a computer from the 1980's. But your contact with this portion is pretty limited. Once it's installed and the system reboots, you will see on-screen the IP address it's been assigned by your router, and you point any web browser on the local network to that IP. The browser is your main interaction.

 

[blastingcap]

Nexentastor Community Edition, which also uses ZFS v28 as the file system, and is free up to 18TB of storage.

Once it's installed and the system reboots, you will see on-screen the IP address it's been assigned by your router, and you point any web browser on the local network to that IP. The browser is your main interaction.

OP, I think NexentaStor ticked off some of their users who were poor nonprofits or something, so if you think you might use your NAS for any sort of production in the future, you may want to avoid Community Edition: http://www.zfsbuild.com/2012/09/04/nexenta-community-edition-license-changes/ However it doesn't sound like the case for you.

Yes it's like administering to a router or something, pretty easy. Murphyc do you have an opinion of Solaris/OpenIndiana + Napp-It and whether it's better or worse than Nas4Free?

 

[murphyc]

OP, I think NexentaStor ticked off some of their users who were poor nonprofits or something, so if you think you might use your NAS for any sort of production in the future, you may want to avoid Community Edition: http://www.zfsbuild.com/2012/09/04/nexenta-community-edition-license-changes/ However it doesn't sound like the case for you.

Yeah good point. Kindof annoying.

Murphyc do you have an opinion of Solaris/OpenIndiana + Napp-It and whether it's better or worse than Nas4Free?

I haven't used Napp-It. I prefer the UI of Nexentastor. But NAS4FREE there are no licensing concerns, or size limits, and it has Netatalk already built in. Performance wise I think they are comparable. I'm not sure if FreeBSD has more hardware support, but I'd suspect that's the case compared to Illumos.

 

[blastingcap]

I haven't used Napp-It. I prefer the UI of Nexentastor. But NAS4FREE there are no licensing concerns, or size limits, and it has Netatalk already built in. Performance wise I think they are comparable. I'm not sure if FreeBSD has more hardware support, but I'd suspect that's the case compared to Illumos.

Ah thanks for your input. I've been pretty happy with Nas4Free so far but the grass always looks greener on the other side....

 

[murphyc]

I see it as an appliance. We hopefully interact with it as little as possible!

 

[SamMaster]

Just noticed the following from the NAS4Free forums:

It doesn't support RLM, RAID Level Migration. Taking a 3 drive RAID, adding a drive and turning it into a 4 drive RAID, while online.

This can be a deal breaker as that means I will need to do some complicated dancing around the expand the RAID when the need comes, unlike the premade one.

 

[blastingcap]

Just noticed the following from the NAS4Free forums:



This can be a deal breaker as that means I will need to do some complicated dancing around the expand the RAID when the need comes, unlike the premade one.

I guess you are reading

http://forums.nas4free.org/viewtopic.php?f=66&t=823

If I'm reading that right, you could use bigger drives (replacing smaller ones with bigger ones) and expand total storage space that way... but yeah going from 3 to 4 physical hard drives may be difficult unless you sliced one of the original hard drives into partitions to begin with, but then you'd lose a lot of space in the process.

It wasn't a big deal to me since I have a four-bay microserver and am going to have two pools in ZFS mirror, that is, 1+1 = pool1, and 1+1 = pool 2. You get less storage space, but there is no waiting on resilvering and it's easy to identify and replace a drive when it goes down. Plus mirroring can give you faster read speeds, though in my case I'm limited by Gigabit Ethernet anyway.

 

[murphyc]

ZFS doesn't let you add disks to a RAIDZ array, you have to recreate it. You can have a RAIDZ array in a pool, and then expand the pool by adding either a disk (no redundancy), or a mirrored pair, or a RAIDZ array.

md raid does have the ability to add disks one at a time, with a required reshape. I'm pretty sure Synology's can do this, but they aren't using resilient file systems (I think either ext4 or XFS).

One of these days in the near future, we'll have btrfs storage in commercial products, and there it's possible to add 1 device to a btrfs volume, with an optional rebalance (but ideally you do rebalance).[1] At that point we'll have resilient file system and the ability to grow a pool one disk at a time.

[1] This is possible today with a home brewed system, e.g. one based on Fedora. 'btrfs device add /dev/sdf /mystorage' for raid0, 1 or 10. The raid5/6 code is still in development and not release in a kernel yet, although I think raid5 is slated for 3.7.

 

[blastingcap]

I'm pretty sure Synology's can do this, but they aren't using resilient file systems (I think either ext4 or XFS).

Wow really? I took one look at prebuilt NAS prices and decided to build my own, but it's sad if they aren't using btrfs or ZFS or ReFS or something better than ext4/XFS.

Speaking of ReFS, ReFS is also able to add one drive at a time to a RAID array, but IIRC you need a Windows Server 2012 license at >$400 for the privilege... yeah no thanks, Microsoft.

Some division in Oracle declared or implied btrfs production ready recently, but until it's actually native in a major distro like Ubuntu, I won't touch it, and I know others who feel the same way. Why be a beta tester when ZFS already exists?

 

[murphyc]

Wow really? I took one look at prebuilt NAS prices and decided to build my own, but it's sad if they aren't using btrfs or ZFS or ReFS or something better than ext4/XFS.

btrfs is stable on a stable system, but still in development. I think it's asking a lot for them to support something labeled experimental in a commercial product. And ReFS is closed source, Microsoft. And ZFS is BSD/Solaris/OpenIndiana based. Synology is using linux so it's pretty much ext4, XFS or btrfs are the options.

Speaking of ReFS, ReFS is also able to add one drive at a time to a RAID array, but IIRC you need a Windows Server 2012 license at >$400 for the privilege... yeah no thanks, Microsoft.

I think it's Storage Spaces that provides the RAID and logical volume capability, but I could be wrong.

Some division in Oracle declared or implied btrfs production ready recently, but until it's actually native in a major distro like Ubuntu, I won't touch it, and I know others who feel the same way. Why be a beta tester when ZFS already exists?

It's a different story for Oracle though, because their customers are more likely to use it for non-critical data because it's not yet certified by the database group. For boot disks, OK, use btrfs if you want. They are OK with pushing people to become familiar with it. And there's a greater chance they'll be using it in conjunction with UPS, and backups.

 

[blastingcap]

No, you are right it's Storage Spaces... what I meant was that SS doesn't have the checksumming and other features that ZFS/ReFS/btrfs have. ReFS is only available on Windows Server 2012 IIRC which costs like $400+.

So, you are right I should have been clearer, especially since my original plan was to get a cheapo HTPC build and stick Win8 on it and use Storage Spaces (which would fix the add-one-drive-to-RAID-array problem). In fact, SS even has thin provisioning. But I read up on alternatives to Storage Spaces and concluded that I'd rather have the security of ZFS than the ease of use of SS. Plus I didn't want to pay a Win8 license fee just for SS.

btrfs is stable on a stable system, but still in development. I think it's asking a lot for them to support something labeled experimental in a commercial product. And ReFS is closed source, Microsoft. And ZFS is BSD/Solaris/OpenIndiana based. Synology is using linux so it's pretty much ext4, XFS or btrfs are the options.



I think it's Storage Spaces that provides the RAID and logical volume capability, but I could be wrong.



It's a different story for Oracle though, because their customers are more likely to use it for non-critical data because it's not yet certified by the database group. For boot disks, OK, use btrfs if you want. They are OK with pushing people to become familiar with it. And there's a greater chance they'll be using it in conjunction with UPS, and backups.

 

[delonm]

I apologize for digging up an old thread, but I thought it would be better than starting a new one...

I am considering picking up a Fujitsu MX130S2 to use as a NAS4Free server, however I am seeing conflicting reports on the number of 3.5" drives that it will support internally (without modding). Fujitsu's site indicates the MX130 supports 4 3.5" drives, but several reviews and forum posts seem to indicate it only has mounting brackets for 2 drives. Can anyone clear this up? Do I need to get a separate adapter bracket from Fujitsu for it to support 4 drives?

I know that I can get an adapter for the 5.25" bay that will allow another 3.5" drive, but I would really like to go with 4X3TB drives if possible and since the machine has 6 SATA ports it seems like a waste to only install 2 or 3 drives.

Thanks!

David

 

[KentState]

From their documentation:

Max 4 (2+2) x 3.5-inch (2 x Easy Change, 2 x screw-in)

 

[delonm]

Thanks KentState. As I mentioned in my post, the documentation from Fujitsu's site and the reports from end users I have read do not seem to jive. I was hoping to get feedback from someone on the forum that has built one out.

Thanks,

David