71-90K Anyone who's into building NAS server?
- Thread starter shadowD
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I'm going to try to build one tomorrow. Though unraid seems interesting and user friendly, I'll be starting out with mergerfs and snapraid in vanilla Debian. Have got a 3.2TB enterprise SSD, so I want to try tiered caching too.
A lot of people swear by unraid. But I wanted to try configuration via ansible too, so will probably go the mergerfs+snapraid route.
I've used mergerfs for around 3 years in the form of a VM that just handles storage and shares the data with other VM/containers/computers via Samba.
Hardware I'm planning to use:
i7 8700
32 GB crucial ballistix RAM
MSI Z390 gaming plus
Samsung Oracle F320 for SSD storage
2 x 8 GB, 3 x 2 TB SATA hard drives for storage,
And Kingston SSD Now E100 for boot drive.
A lot of people swear by unraid. But I wanted to try configuration via ansible too, so will probably go the mergerfs+snapraid route.
I've used mergerfs for around 3 years in the form of a VM that just handles storage and shares the data with other VM/containers/computers via Samba.
Hardware I'm planning to use:
i7 8700
32 GB crucial ballistix RAM
MSI Z390 gaming plus
Samsung Oracle F320 for SSD storage
2 x 8 GB, 3 x 2 TB SATA hard drives for storage,
And Kingston SSD Now E100 for boot drive.
Try Xpenelogy if your H/W is compliant with Synology DSM requirements and you will not go back to anything else.
shadowD
Contributor
Yes, that's what I was thinking, I had a Synology NAS before, it Died on me in 2 years, just as the warranty expired! Now, I am building one that will be cheaper and a lot more powerful. There's only one trouble, Actually, I bought a Nvme SSD to use as a cache last week, it is PCI Gen 4, my hardware is Gen 3 compliant, and It seems ADATA SSDs are not working well with Unraid as cache. People on other forums suggested using a different brand than ADATA, there are a few people having the same issue. Now I am planning on selling my brand-new SSD and buying either WD or some other brand.
Alucard1729
Forerunner
That's a good catch, TLC with 5 DWPD. Was this imported and what were the damages?
Heard these drives run hot and with my experience with pm983 the controller goes to 85c even with a small heatsink over it XD. For a NAS I believe it would be a bit overkill and then there is the power consumption also...
It was brought in from across the globe, yes. I'll be getting my hands on it this evening, so I guess I'll know then.
It does run hot, but I think they're built to work fine even when a bit toasty.
I also got a PM983 DCT which I forgot to add above. No idea how hot it'll run; need to try it today.
Idle power consumption for each is ~7W IIRC.
Overkill for a NAS, probably yes. But I want to try tiered caching where the SSDs should service most data super quickly and the hard drives can be spun down.
How does your experience of using unraid compare to Synology?
Party Monger
Juggernaut
shadowD
Contributor
I am trying to adapt to it, though there are no major problems since Unraid supports everything or provides alternatives to whatever Synology does. I liked Synology because of its photo service Moments. You can always use Xpenology with the latest DSM 7 on it. No problem. Performance-wise, I would say it is supercharged Synology. It outperforms Synology in everything! It does have a different kind of UI than Synology's super easy interface, but I guess we can get used to it! It offers a unique kind of Raid array system which is pretty unique even among other NAS available in the market today. Data is not stripped in it and it still retains all the good features of RAID, Hence the name Unraid. I would recommend giving it a try.
yes, it will work well. google arpl, easiest and fastest way to get it working on any hardware and VM (works on windows 11 VM too)
Actually it offers you the exactly same Synology DSM interface once installed. That is the single most reason why you would want it.
shadowD
Contributor
shadowD
Contributor
yes, which is worth every penny. Though I tried first before buying. It outperforms because you use your own hardware instead of the proprietary Synology one. Also, even with Xpenology, since it is pirated version of DSM, there are services which are blocked on it. Unraid offers the flexibility of adding, modifying, and updating hardware as you go. Backed with hundreds of apps in their app store. The community is old and quite big which provides good support.
Well I trialled out Unraid for some time but did not find the interface and usage as easy or intuitive as DSM. Maybe I am biased and spoiled by how easy to use it is. You can do bare metal installs for your own hardware and you can inject drivers for any exotics. Better yet you can install on hypervisors. Whether it is pirated or not, I have no idea but I have not encountered any limitations on services. Image recognition and transcoding works fine. All apps are available. I agree that there is some DIY involved and you need to be proficient enough to diagnose and fix issues. The forum itself is enough. I also trialled OMV and Truenas, both free and open source and pretty powerful as well. I liked OMV and used that for a while before transitioning to Xpenelogy.
shadowD
Contributor
I know, felt the same at first when I transitioned to Unraid, that's why I had Xpenology installed on Unraid and most of my services ran on it until I slowly phased it out. Though I still use it for photos. That's the best! For everything else, Unraid does the job for me.
Party Monger
Juggernaut
Is there any idea of its feature set on a VM ? Any restrictions etc? Anyway to get everything working with/out paying.
Does it take too much resources?
I can try on my NUC server. 8-16gb ram wont be an issue.
shadowD
Contributor
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!
Jaspreetrattan
Discoverer
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 ?
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 ?
shadowD
Contributor
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!
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