Budget 71-90K Anyone who's into building NAS server?

[shadowD]

i have a spare PC , 8gen i5. 16gb ram. samsung 250gb for boot ssd and 8tb*2 HDD. wanted to go expenology ways , only catch is that i might need to pull to put data when travelling. . unraid etc are too much for me and paying 40k for that old propritory synology hardware is something i dont want to.

NAS will be used for data backup and mostly mobile pics and videos backup. but i need to find way to backup NAS too . Any Guide on that ?

It's a good idea to run Xpenology on free operating systems like Free NAS as a VM and then operate from there on, get a static IP, and maybe a domain (pretty cheap, try namecheap). To make backup of NAS, Separate your data as sensitive and not so painful if lost. Backup sensitive data in cold storage (maybe external HDDs on regular intervals (you can decide based on sensitivity)). Another thing along with backup is to provide your NAS with data redundancy by adding a Parity drive which will recreate your data if a drive in your NAS fails. look at different RAID types to learn more. Though you mentioned about unable to use unraid system, you can still look at the way it stores information and protects data.
To summarize, Get Free NAS > Run VM > Run Xpenology > Separate data > Take backups. You can also save configs and other things to cloud services like Mega, Google drive etc... Xpenology provides various ways to connect.
P.S.: If you like my advice do give me a thumbs up. will help me with my reputation on the platform. I was mostly dormant on this platform, but now that I have the hardware, (and money to buy more) I would like to be more active. Thanks!

 

[Party Monger]

From my experience, If you can spare at least 4GB ram, and a few cores to your Synology, it should work fine. All features except for Synology's proprietary features like quick connect and other services that require authentication, will not work. Though, I've never had any pressing need for those, since there are alternatives available to those services. You can't get it working at all, unless you own the original serial number of the DSM model you're trying to install. Resource consumption depends on what you're trying to do with your NAS, running VMs inside it, Using CCTV cam feeds with AI recognition is definitely going to put a strain on the system, probably not even possible on a simple NUC. It should be fine for basic operations as long as your NUC's processor is capable enough and doesn't belong to celeron, atom or Pentium series, all low-powered processors are no-no. Too much overhead!

Thanks that helps. Its NUC11 I5. Quad core. 64gb ram. 1tb samsung 970 NVME and 1TB mx500 sata

 

[shadowD]

Thanks that helps. Its NUC11 I5. Quad core. 64gb ram. 1tb samsung 970 NVME and 1TB mx500 sata

Oh, you're good to go! see if you can find a way to add HDDs, if there's any PCIe ports available that you can utilize, quick hack would be take off wifi module and use that port, and use LAN for internet.
PS: If I helped you, It would help me build my rep if you give me a thumbs up!

 

[Party Monger]

Oh, you're good to go! see if you can find a way to add HDDs, if there's any PCIe ports available that you can utilize, quick hack would be take off wifi module and use that port, and use LAN for internet.
PS: If I helped you, It would help me build my rep if you give me a thumbs up!

I guess adding disks will have to be done through docks. It does have an extra m2 port header I think. People use it to attach 10gbe cards.

 

[shadowD]

I guess adding disks will have to be done through docks. It does have an extra m2 port header I think. People use it to attach 10gbe cards.

yeah, either use a dock, though it would limit the speed, or you can look at m.2 to multi-port sata adapters, or m.2 to pcie adapter to sata adapter.