NAS Choice

noobftw

noobftw

noobftw

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31 Jul 2011
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Can someone recommend me a decent 3.5 inch 8 bay NAS that is capable of 10Gbp/s speeds (RJ45 preferred, but SFP is ok also), and that can actually hit those speeds and not just 500-600Mbp/s due to an under-powered CPU?



Also, are there any options out there for an 8 bay external drive enclosure (cold storage as such - NAS features not absolutely required) that has a high speed data connection of some-sort onboard.
 
What's you budget for the 8 bay NAS without drives?

For your second point I think your talking about DAS - there are loads of options out there for those with connectivity ranging from USB though to SAS and more so depends what your looking to do really.
 
BongoHunter said:
What's you budget for the 8 bay NAS without drives?

For your second point I think your talking about DAS - there are loads of options out there for those with connectivity ranging from USB though to SAS and more so depends what your looking to do really.
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Thanks for the reply, would want to keep it under (or at) £1000 for the NAS, for the DAS, I would need it to have a data connection of at least 10Gbp/s (USB C Gen 2/Thunderbolt) or a DAS that has an SFP connection on it, also must support RAID.
 
Looking at Synology and Qnap prices online I think your going to struggle to get something in budget that doesn't have a big compromise in someway on cpu/ram, or no space to add caching SSDs.

Might be worth looking at slightly older models and at least upgrade the ram yourself possibly (but choice still quite poor!)

At least if you go with something like a synology or Qnap you could get a proper matching expansion unit (though might be just cheaper just looking at 16 Bay NASs with the prices of some of the expansion units that come up)

Would you consider building something yourself? Or buying a short depth server with a lot of bays that you could just put unraid or something similar on?

Are you looking for any special features like virtualisation, streaming etc or want any other apps/services?
 
It's just for backups, that's it. Need it to have high throughput though. It doesn't really have to be turned on all the time, which is why I was thinking of a DAS. I don't have a server rack/or want one tbh, no room for it.
 
For a DAS, you might be better off looking at an external SAS enclosure, and a SAS RAID/HBA card with External connection
 
PiKe said:
Build your own.
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I'd second that, I do love the look of some of the high end NAS's but if you break down the hardware cost you're paying high end prices for mid range equipment. I guess if you can afford it then why not but that goes against my enthusiast/bang for buck genes ;)

I built an XPenlogy NAS around a Gen8 Microserver 3 years ago and it's not missed a beat since, unfortunately there doesn't seem to be such a compelling choice atm, the Gen10 Plus looks interesting but isn't exactly cheap (if there is a rebate deal then I will probably bite).
 
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The Synology 1219+ is quick enough, but you’ll need to add a combo 10GbE and NVME cache card. And 16Gb RAM so you’re looking at more like £1300 plus disks for what is, in effect, a 2016 Celeron PC with 16Gb RAM and no hard drives. Put in those terms it looks REALLY expensive.

Given you can buy a SuperMicro barebones AMD EPYC server in a 2U or mini-tower case from about £900 that has NVME slots and 10GbE already installed, you’re paying a very hefty premium for the software on the Synology or QNAP equivalent.
 
8 bays and wanting to be able to saturate 10Gbps or approx (1.2GB/sec) is going to need some decent individual disk through put with only 8 drives. How big is the data set to be backed up?
 
ecksmen said:
8 bays and wanting to be able to saturate 10Gbps or approx (1.2GB/sec) is going to need some decent individual disk through put with only 8 drives. How big is the data set to be backed up?
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I'm aware I am not going to saturate the full 10GB, i just want a setup that in the future, if I was to go all SSD's, it would have the ability to do so and hit the peak speed. This system I am building now will have 8x 14tb drives, with a couple of cache drives to help speed things up, not sure what type of RAID setup I will use, might be ZFS or just plain Windows RAID 5-6 or 10. I currently have around 30TB of data to be backed up.

TBH, I have re-looked over the components in those NAS enclosures, and your right, they are way underpowered, even the ones at £2000 - £3000 :/. Been looking at some SuperMicro ITX boards that have 4-8-16 core Xeon's in them, seem way better value. Some of them also come with dual 10GB NICS built-in, 8x SATA ports, 4 through OCuLink. However, i would probably use that for a 4TB NVME Drive and use an LSI HBA or a RAID card for expansion.

Or I could get an X570 I AORUS PRO WIFI, a 3700x, i would have to get a M.2 SATA expansion card to get 4 extra SATA ports though, and use the one on the back as a cache drive, a USB dongle for FreeNas or Unraid, and a separate card for 10GB network, but what about video? ahhhhhhh haha
 
noobftw said:
I'm aware I am not going to saturate the full 10GB, i just want a setup that in the future, if I was to go all SSD's, it would have the ability to do so and hit the peak speed. This system I am building now will have 8x 14tb drives, with a couple of cache drives to help speed things up, not sure what type of RAID setup I will use, might be ZFS or just plain Windows RAID 5-6 or 10. I currently have around 30TB of data to be backed up.

TBH, I have re-looked over the components in those NAS enclosures, and your right, they are way underpowered, even the ones at £2000 - £3000 :/. Been looking at some SuperMicro ITX boards that have 4-8-16 core Xeon's in them, seem way better value. Some of them also come with dual 10GB NICS built-in, 8x SATA ports, 4 through OCuLink. However, i would probably use that for a 4TB NVME Drive and use an LSI HBA or a RAID card for expansion.

Or I could get an X570 I AORUS PRO WIFI, a 3700x, i would have to get a M.2 SATA expansion card to get 4 extra SATA ports though, and use the one on the back as a cache drive, a USB dongle for FreeNas or Unraid, and a separate card for 10GB network, but what about video? ahhhhhhh haha
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Some boards will boot headless, you'll have to check which.
 
PiKe said:
Some boards will boot headless, you'll have to check which.
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Thanks, I will look into that. Just realised, the SuperMicro boards come with built-in video output, it's the older VGA standard, but it will work fine until remote access is set up then there's no need for it :).
 
noobftw said:
Thanks, I will look into that. Just realised, the SuperMicro boards come with built-in video output, it's the older VGA standard, but it will work fine until remote access is set up then there's no need for it :).
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Unraid doesn't need a GUI at all because it's all based in a browser.

I use a B450 board with a 2600 and no VGA card.
 
BongoHunter said:
I had the same issue building servers from Ryzen bits - you can't go APU as they only have half the lanes (and only ECC on Pro model if you car about that), headless does not work with all boards and can be a real pain to deal with.

Best solution I could find was to use a PCIEx1 GFX card like this https://www.anandtech.com/show/10269/zotac-quietly-releases-pcie-x1-gt-710-graphics-card
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I think it will be less stressful if I go with a server board, built-in video.

PiKe said:
Unraid doesn't need a GUI at all because it's all based in a browser.
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It must need some setting up before you get an IP though right?
 
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BongoHunter said:
I had the same issue building servers from Ryzen bits - you can't go APU as they only have half the lanes (and only ECC on Pro model if you car about that), headless does not work with all boards and can be a real pain to deal with.

Best solution I could find was to use a PCIEx1 GFX card like this https://www.anandtech.com/show/10269/zotac-quietly-releases-pcie-x1-gt-710-graphics-card
Click to expand...
Could you not have just used a normal graphics card, or am I missing something? i.e. space in the case, other PCI slots taken?

PiKe said:
Gets an IP by DHCP.
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Do you know if FreeNass is the same? Thanks
 
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