Storage Solutions NAS with independent access to disks

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When I was considering storage servers I even considered this. Not high on features but if you can get it, the warranty should be pretty good. These were half the price of my qnap but seem pretty good. Again not sure about India prices and availability.
http://www8.hp.com/in/en/products/proliant-servers/product-detail.html?oid=5379860.

One issue with NAS and speed is upgrading to a proper network solution. I would not recommend any NAS to be on a wireless network. A tiny device tucked in behind the router is not that bad.

The major brands QNAP, Synology, Asustor and Thecus all have great interfaces which can be accessed via all platforms. Offer personal cloud services.

Regarding your requirements
1. 4 bay would be more flexible as theoretical max can be 24 TB capacity. Can start with single drive and you can expand later based on your requirements. You can select JBOD which will mean any capacity hdd anywhere.
2. You can share with the apps available on most vendors. Custom nas solutions (freenas) will need to have ftp file access as far as what I did. I used Turbo FTP on android.
3. Would advice to keep nas on wired lan.
4. Download mangers can do this in all. Can be monitored remotely.
5. Personal cloud is possible.
6. These devices are pretty weak in terms of power so VM need to be very light. But should not be a buying factor anyway considering the requirements.

Currently I am trying to increase the network performance by upgrading the networking of the house as I plan to get a switch and router. pfsense, mikrotik or ubiquiti. Still not decided yet.
 
Most of the decent 4 bay NAS seem to be priced way too high in India. The WD/Seagate ones seem to be around 27~30k without HDD. I could not find any synology ones listed anywhere. The QNAP boxes look fantastic from software angle and they have everything that I could ask for, but still, I would be paying 47k for what's basically a Celeron J1800 based custom computer.

It looks more and more meaningful to build a custom NAS around a Pentium G4400 or Celeron G1840 and a compatible mATX board. Seem to be popular choices for NAS. They might not have the lower power consumption of J1800/1900 or the N3150, but they seem to cope fine with a bit more power and the boards will have 6 SATA ports. It will cost be between 10~15k and I already have a Stacker 830 + PSU lying around idle.
 
Oddly enough, you still get better performance from a NAS with lower specs than a computer with higher specs. Having the software optimized to the hardware seems to give an edge. Plus, at least with Synology you get tons of cool plugins that you'd have a hard time setting up to work on a computer converted to be a NAS.

Need it to be a DVR for a security system - there's a plugin for that
need an Apache webserver - there's a plugin for that
need a plex server - plugin
need a apple time backup destination - plugin
and it just keeps going.

I used to do the custom NAS with FreeNAS software. After buying a Synology, I'll certainly never go back. Now I've got two of them I'm running.
 
I am with @JaredDM. I went from a custom machine (with lots of RAM and a powerful processor) with FreeNAS to a Synology DS1515 and I saw a lot better performance and a lot fewer disconnects. I have the Synology serving various Windows folders with different credentials, an iSCSI target and a full drive. Love the software too.
 
^^ Did you buy it in India?. I guess probably not. I could not find the Synology 4 bays listed anywhere. The problem in India is the poor availability and that too only outdated models are dumped in India and the relatively high cost compared to other markets.
 
whatsinaname said:
We were thinking about buying one in India but someone was traveling so I was able to send one from the US. These were the people we were thinking about contacting.

https://www.synology.com/en-us/wheretobuy/India
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Yeah saw that myself and got some quotes today.

Synology DS-1515+ Five Bay NAS Diskless, 2GB Memory, Quad 1G LAN @ Rs.90,000/-
Synology DS-1515 Five Bay NAS Diskless, 2GB Memory, Quad 1G LAN @ Rs.80,000/-
Synology DS-416 Four Bay NAS Diskless @ Rs.49,000/-
Synology DS-415+ Four Bay NAS Diskless @ Rs.63,000/-
Synology DS-415 Play Four Bay NAS Diskless @ Rs.57,000/-
Click to expand...

Those prices are absurd IMO. 90% premium over the US prices. I will be going to US in Sep myself, but I cant wait that long.
 
Sale on in Aliexpress now. If you can order from there and build your own. I would not also pay double for something just cause its India.

Example.
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/HCIP...2480583654.html?spm=2114.40010208.4.81.JLBVpG

Types of motherboards.
http://www.aliexpress.com/category/...dQuery=n&pvId=1134-5853,19049-5822&isrefine=y

Although if you want encryption choose a processor which has hardware AES NI.

Put it in the case of your choice.
http://www.aliexpress.com/category/...needQuery=n&pvId=506-5853,577-5851&isrefine=y

And you should have your nas in lot less. You can you use freeNAS to manage the storage.
 
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^^ That's kind of risky IMO. I have imported stuff via aliexpress in the past, but I have limited myself to items less than 2k to avoid any customs hassles. Also there is the question of how to deal with DOA just in case.

In any case, I am contemplating this build

http://www.technikaffe.com/anleitung-332-nas_advanced_2.0_mit_skylake_pentium_prozessor_und_6x_sata

https://www.theitdepot.com/details-Asus+B150M-K+32GB+DDR4+Intel+Motherboard_C13P25919.html
https://www.theitdepot.com/details-Intel+Pentium+G4400+3.30+GHz+Processor_C30P25562.html

Include 8 GB RAM and I should be able to put it together for 15k. I already have a Stacker 830 lying around and a 5TB HDD as well.
 
Woo itdepot site has improved quite a lot. Last time I bought from them was 6 years ago i think.

I think that mobo is overkill. Since its gonna run 24/7 I would advise mobo with soldered CPU. Less power consumption and plenty to run a NAS.

Best mobo for DIY if you can find it, is this Intel Avoton series.8 cores. http://www.amazon.in/ASRock-Motherboard-C2750D4I-COLOR-BOX/dp/B00HIDQG6E

http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=C2750D4I#Specifications

8 Cores. This thing has 12 Sata ports and supports ECC ram. So great as a normal data server mobo. :O

On a bugdet i can see these options
https://www.theitdepot.com/details-Asus+J1800I-C+8GB+DDR3+Intel+Motherboard_C13P21671.html

Although it has a 2 SATA ports. It has a pci 1x slot. So you can put a SATA card on it and connect as many HDD as you need.

This is a better option I think http://www.amazon.in/Motherboard-MI...=UTF8&qid=1459321427&sr=1-1&keywords=mini+itx
6 sata and dual intel NIC (not the cheap realtek nic)

These will consume less than 60w power and no need to buy an extra processor.

Find similar mini ITX single board solutions and you should be golden.
 
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ronnie_gogs said:
Woo itdepot site has improved quite a lot. Last time I bought from them was 6 years ago i think.

I think that mobo is overkill. Since its gonna run 24/7 I would advise mobo with soldered CPU. Less power consumption and plenty to run a NAS.
Click to expand...

That setup doesn't seem to take a lot of power compared to the Mini ITX boards which is why I am considering it. If you see the link that I posted and compare with the N3150 platform, there is barely 10W difference in power consumption in idle without HDD installed. The N3150 idles at 9W and the G4400 system idles at 18W. The power consumption for the G4400 system with 6 HDD active is 57W. The power consumption for a N3150 Mini ITX platform with 4 HDD is 41W.

ronnie_gogs said:
Best mobo for DIY if you can find it, is this Intel Avoton series.8 cores. http://www.amazon.in/ASRock-Motherboard-C2750D4I-COLOR-BOX/dp/B00HIDQG6E

http://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=C2750D4I#Specifications

8 Cores. This thing has 12 Sata ports and supports ECC ram. So great as a normal data server mobo. :O
Click to expand...

That costs $400+ in US itself. I can see it listed on ebay for 40k+
 
Sorry i clicked through only the online retail links. The NAS link is quite a good guide. Should be a fun build. :)
 
I have 6x 2TB WD Red drives and an Adaptec 6805 RAID card with Flash cache protection (instead of battery). I am willing to give it for free if you buy the HDDs from me. I strongly recommend you go RAID 5/6. The card will give 500/400 MB/s sustained write speeds for RAID 5/6 unlike FreeNAS. But if you wish you can still access the drives independently.
 
Torch said:
I have 6x 2TB WD Red drives and an Adaptec 6805 RAID card with Flash cache protection (instead of battery). I am willing to give it for free if you buy the HDDs from me. I strongly recommend you go RAID 5/6. The card will give 500/400 MB/s sustained write speeds for RAID 5/6 unlike FreeNAS. But if you wish you can still access the drives independently.
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Just out of curiosity, what do you guys need such speeds on a NAS for?
 
superczar said:
Just out of curiosity, what do you guys need such speeds on a NAS for?
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Anything less than 500 MB/s is painfully slow once you get used to SSDs and have to deal with huge files. Two users cannot stream large files from a single mechanical HDD reliably.
 
Torch said:
You can work locally on the system to get full speed. Windows will also automatically use multiple Ethernet connections for file transfers thanks to SMB Multichannel (you don't need hardware NIC teaming for this).
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Yeah, I know. However, it's not something the average joe is going to have at his disposal. Secondly, it does not always work 100% - we have tried it in our office both ways - NIC teaming and multiple NICs (we used 3) to no avail. Finally, we just gave up!
 
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