Is it possible to build a near silent NAS for Xpenology?

Goose · 26 Sep 2015 at 17:25

I bought an HP Microserver Gen8 to run Xpenology and i'm rather disappointed with the noise levels since it will be situated in my very small front room.

I was wondering if it's possible to built my own NAS with similar performance and physical dimensions as the HP using good quality low noise fans without having to spend hundreds of pounds?

iraiguana · 26 Sep 2015 at 20:33

Could you put quieter fans in the HP gen 8?

Goose · 26 Sep 2015 at 20:35

Apparently the stock fan has a bizarre 6pin connection and so takes some modding to use a regular pwm fan. I've never really been one to mod things so i'm not really confident in modding a new server that i may ultimately want to send back.

BlizzardX · 26 Sep 2015 at 20:59

Have you tried the CPU governor scripts on the xpenology forum? Before giving up with the unit, you might want to try and get those running as Xpenology/DSM keeps the cpu at 100% speed rather than throttling back and that might help?

Otherwise, for possibly slightly more you might be able to make a Celeron/A4 based mitx system in one of those 8 bay cases, effectively any of the new tech with built in SoCs will work; I was running xpenology on an Supermicro X7SPA-HF (low powered atom) and it worked great, all I needed was case, memory and psu.

BlizzardX · 26 Sep 2015 at 21:14

http://www.u-nas.com/xcart/product.php?productid=17617&cat=0&featured=Y ( 131.089 GBP ) could be a good start, I just can't find any of the integrated cpu/motherboards on the oc website... haven't used it for years since moving to NZ...

Zefan · 26 Sep 2015 at 21:55

There is a way of reducing the fan sound, I can't remember where I read it but it was on a forum and it involved some BIOS flashing. It's something about when you replace the fan with another, the system doesn't receive the correct feedback from the fan do assumes it's not working, and shuts down.

Goose · 27 Sep 2015 at 11:14

BlizzardX said:
Have you tried the CPU governor scripts on the xpenology forum? Before giving up with the unit, you might want to try and get those running as Xpenology/DSM keeps the cpu at 100% speed rather than throttling back and that might help?

Do you mean this? I'll be honest, I didn't understand a word

Zefan said:
There is a way of reducing the fan sound, I can't remember where I read it but it was on a forum and it involved some BIOS flashing. It's something about when you replace the fan with another, the system doesn't receive the correct feedback from the fan do assumes it's not working, and shuts down.

This is all i've found in regards to changing the fan but I dont actually know what it is you're meant to do to get it to work.

BlizzardX · 27 Sep 2015 at 11:26

Goose said:
Do you mean this? I'll be honest, I didn't understand a word

Yeah that was it, try a search for the gen8 model or just ask the question in the post and explain that you're new and have trouble following the instructions... There are some kind people on that forum that should help you.

BlizzardX · 27 Sep 2015 at 11:31

As an aside to this, but perhaps of value (we'll see during the beta how it turns out) but the author of Flexraid and t-raid has developed another product called standards which from what I can tell is block based storage on windows with raid levels AND jbod spanning is 'x' parity, with x being a number of parity discs... I've tried to tease out of him the release details but from what I can glean it might be the windows equivalent to LVM2/MDADM on Linux (SHR is built from this with a funky gui over the top).. It will cost (unlike this) and it won't have a complete interface, but perhaps for those that want to us their box for other things as well in a normal environment but want block based storage (NFS, torrents, full speed read/write with parity) it might be useful...

Anyway, as I said watch this space.. It won't be the Xpenology killer but it might be quite good...

Goose · 27 Sep 2015 at 14:58

I thought i'd try and record the noise my system makes to see what people think. I recorded this with iLo reporting the fan speed to be 12% and after a 7 or 8 seconds you should be able to hear a high pitched buzzing sound. I have a feeling that sound is being produce not by the system fan but by the PSU. Although it isn't especially loud the room it's going in is really very small and the buzzing is very noticeable and extremely annoying.

Anyone have any thoughts?

Goose · 27 Sep 2015 at 16:40

Would something like this do for the basis of a NAS?

BlizzardX · 27 Sep 2015 at 19:11

If you only need a maximum of 4 drives then it will be fine, as I said I ran xpenology off a Supermicro X7SPA-HF which was a much much older D510 based Atom, ran fine with 4GB ram and 6 SATA slots.

Goose · 27 Sep 2015 at 20:15

Aye, i'm only after simple DSM NAS for a modest amount of media, backup of photo's and such, really nothing terribly demanding.

BlizzardX · 27 Sep 2015 at 20:43

Then yeah, those are the all in one SoCs I was talking about. Coupled with either a true NAS case like the one I posted (http://www.u-nas.com/xcart/product.php?productid=17610&cat=249&page=1 - 4 bay this time) and memory and usb stick would get you an equiavelent 4 bay xpenology build for quite a cheap price I think.

Goose · 27 Sep 2015 at 21:11

The u-nas looks good but i think i'd rather buy a case with no fan or PSU so i can choose them myself and make sure i get ones as quiet as possible.

BlizzardX · 28 Sep 2015 at 05:51

Fair point, I was looking at the hotswap ability

Steveocee · 28 Sep 2015 at 06:37

Just to throw it out there. What about getting a G7 N54L? They are quiet in the first place and if the noise offends you it's an easy swapout for the main case fan and PSU fan if you want to swap them, there's even a tutorial link on here somewhere how to do it.

crinkleshoes · 28 Sep 2015 at 11:03

You could always just build your own with quiet fans... that's what I did for my first home server, before things like the Gen8 were available.

Goose · 28 Sep 2015 at 11:16

Steveocee said:
Just to throw it out there. What about getting a G7 N54L? They are quiet in the first place and if the noise offends you it's an easy swapout for the main case fan and PSU fan if you want to swap them, there's even a tutorial link on here somewhere how to do it.

Yeah I did actually think about that, if one comes up 2nd hand for a reasonable price I'll probably go for it. Is the N54L upgradeable like the Gen8?

crinkleshoes said:
You could always just build your own with quiet fans... that's what I did for my first home server, before things like the Gen8 were available.

This would be my proffered option, just need to find out how much it will cost.

crinkleshoes · 28 Sep 2015 at 11:34

Cost depends entirely on what spec you want, if you're only using it for NAS functions, then you only need the cheapest of the cheap hardware.

If you want to run VMs... then it's a bit more pricey.

Also size of unit can make a difference...

It's not very expensive for a cheap build, as you can see below.

I picked this case as it was the cheapest one I could find with more than 3x 3.5" hard drive bays... this case can support 6 HDDs as standard, or quite a few more with the right expansion parts (you could probably fit 12 HDDs in this case pretty easily).

Also, it comes with relatively quiet fans by default and has decent airflow.

Downside: It's a full-size case... so if size is one of the reasons you got a Gen8, then you'd want to look for a different case.

The other specs are vaguely comparable to the Gen8. The motherboard can be expanded with PCI cards for extra sata ports in future, if you want... otherwise there are other motherboards available with more slots and sata ports by default, but they're more expensive.