Low powered NAS

[+BudMan MVC]

^ sounds like a plan.. I am the same way.. I had 2 older drives showing possible signs of failure via smart - OLD, like 4+ years each, was getting close to storage limits anyway.. Not saying you should not leave yourself some room for quick expansion if you happen to come across a media cache you forgot to rip get a lot of movies for a holiday, etc. etc..  Figured good time to do an upgrade of those older 750GB disks..  So was looking at a 2TB to replace them and get a bit more room, but then found a 3TB for $10 more, so figured sure why not its only $10 difference and move into the new 4k sector disk, etc..  Kind of wish I would of went with the 2TB, ran into some issues with the 3 -- windows not reporting size, had to spend time with support of my scanner software so could get scans.

 

See windows still having cosmetic issues with it.

 

 

See doesn't show size says - unallocated space, etc.  Weird, but it works just fine.. stablebit did some work on their scanner to pull the info from the disk itself vs windows reporting info and scanner sees the whole disk, etc.  Might be something to do with the controller, its a raw map in esxi, etc.  But its odd for sure - but not worth too much effort because it clearly works just fine and in linux on esxi shows up correctly.. Just something odd with windows and support of 4k sectors I think.  But could of saved my time some of that effort if would of went with 2TB vs the 3.. And would what only have 1.46TB free vs 2.46TB.. To me I have good TB of wasted space sitting there - but hey it was $10 ;)

 

And after pulled the older drives, doing some testing on them - rescanning them, wiping them clean, etc.  Scans show good - they are OLD, but they seem ok for storing 1 copy of my multiple copy backup solution, etc.  So still using them in a way.

 

By time your needs grow to 4x4TB if space its quite possible 20TB disks will be common and cheap ;)  So why spend money on space that is not going to be used in the foreseeable future is my take on it.

 

See - at that nickel really fast ;)

[Praetor]

HELLO TO ALL! (sorry for the caps!)

 

So, i've got some news: i've done lots of tests and finally come to a decision: i've bought a N54L today! why? here's why:

- low power: only 150W versus a crap old computer that i was using as a NAS (it at an 350W PSU but it was so inefficient that it was consuming 245W almost all the time).

- silent: that was a must and this server is really silent (from the tests i've done and from seeing the server in place); also there's some mods for exchanging the fans for ultra silent and coolness.

- efficiency: so i want not only a NAS (so i can use it for backups of my important stuff and as repository of my media with Plex) but also a host of VMs for my home lab, so i can just load Hyper-V on it (i'm an Hyper-V guy, in spite i do use VMware occasionally), some VMs and that's it. So far i have media (CD's DVD and lots of digital media like photos and home made movies) that require almost 2TB; 1,5TB is stuff that i can reproduce again, but those almost 500GB of data is something i can not afford to lose.

- scalability: because the price of this servers are low, if i need more space and my current one is saturated i can buy another one, ram more disks on it so i can use it as a NAS (with iSCSI) or even i can use it as a clustered system, without killing my wallet or bill.

- price: that really ticked me; in my country this server costs at least 250? + taxes (and it was a model stripped of disks); in most of big IT distributors i know they couldn't sell this server more cheaper than that so i went into online sites; even those couldn't sell this server under 200?, so i went into amazon.es and they had this server for 175? (in the UK this server had 100? cashback for several months, so it cost less then 100? but they wouldn't ship into another country :/). Because i had to make tests so i could justify the purchase of this server in the meantime amazon.es increased the price of the server into 187?; still i purchased with taxes for 202?, far less then what it could had cost me in my own country.

 

So, as soon as this new toy arrives i'm going install Windows Server 2012 R2 on it (it's officially supported), drive pooling the space i need (no RAID at all) and create some VMs. As far as the tests i made go, i can stream movies in plex into my Android TV via wireless (either Direct Play or Transcoded), up to 1080p without a problem; since its a single stream i guess the CPU in the N54L is capable.

 

Question: using Plex do you guys use Windows or Linux as a host for the PMS? From what i read resource wise Linux is better so there's more resources for the PMS to use (important for transcoding).

[Praetor]

Budman i agree with you

 

The server i got the other day

 

I plan on eventually having 4*3Tb or 4*4tb

 

but just now i loaded my external drives i had into the server

 

so i have a 1Tb drive and 500Gb drive and the original 250Gb drive that came with it

 

i am using about 300Gb of the 500Gb and about 200Gb of the 1Tb

 

 

Once these start to get full i will purchase a 3tb or 4tb drive and load it in alongside the other 3

 

once it start to become full i will replace the 500gb drive with another 3 or 4 tb drive and so one

 

 

 

also i was looking at a ssd for os but i dont really see the point or the need for it

 

yeah but that server (N54L) with some mods one can use the optical drive bay with two more disks; but an SSD just for the OS? unless it's for cache or ZFS cache...

[+BudMan MVC]

I wouldn't use a ssd for just the OS of the host no. Now you can store your VM's on this SSD, and if your using esxi could leverage host caching, or vflash, etc. I finally pulled the trigger on ssd for my esxi box (N40L) because at $109 for 240GB Crucial M500 was well below my threshold in cost for impulse purchases ;) Looking forward to setting it up tonight actually.

Now I don't really have need of even 240GB of space for my VMs OS drives - so part of that will be yes the host OS installed on the SSD. Yes everyone says just use USB for the esxi OS, its loaded to ram then barely touches the disk.. But since I have plenty of room to spare, and when I do reboot the host will be nice to have it back online asap why not. Say for next upgrade of esxi.

Now if your limited to space, and spent $$$ on your SSD then sure why not use every GB for your VM's -- but in my home setup that space would just be sitting there unused so might as will install esxi too it, and yes going to enable prob 16GB for host caching. And might even play with vflash with some of the space. My current 250GB disk the N40L came with datastore shows 120GB free currently. So I will have all kinds of room to work with, and plan on still using the 250 HDD for my less used VMs - could always just switch vms in and out of the SSD datastore if going to play with one for a while, etc.

[Praetor]

well i do have a 64GB SSD just for the OS in my desktop; plenty enough for loading Windows (the rest is loaded in a 1TB HDD) and still have some space.

 

Now for caching (vflash, ZIL) or simply using for your VM's then it's great to have as much as possible.

[philcruicks]

I'm using Windows for Plex, only because its the only OS I have on there, its running Server 2012, I've not got any virtualisation set up. but it handles Plex just fine, 30GB 1080p file I just tried worked flawlessly streamed to my laptop, I even tried it over my phones 3G connection as well and worked OK, a few stutters in the 1st 30 secs, and then seemed OK, but I suspect that's more 3G speed issue than the server.

 

However yes I suspect your right, Linux would be less resource heavy if your going to be going a fair bit with the server.

[srbeen]

I use FreeBSD as part of the NAS4free suite and it does everything and more I want it to, is stupidly stable, really simple and handles ZFS like a champ. It runs on an 8GB USB3 with plenty of space to spare for any installs (most just link to the internal storage). Everything loads into RAM, so reboots can be timely until everythings loaded up - but other than that its a great free well supported OS that runs everything I need it to on virtually any hardware from a 500MB RAM celeron 800MHz to a 8-core with 24GB ram. Programs can be ran inside 'jails' as well, a VM of sorts to prevent you from screwing with things and botching your server.

 

My only suggestions are to use a system with ECC RAM if its anything important as I have got data rot before, scrub volumes weekly-to-monthly depending on grade drives and data throughput, and keep a backup of your configuration and the whole USB key (dd it to another identical stick) when fully configured. Also get a Smart UPS of sorts as it HATES an unorganized shutdown and will most likely corrupt the USB key in a power outage.