Suggestions for NAS solution?

[RavenLunatic]

I need to replace my aging Drobo5n as it is no longer supported.

In the meantime, I have just been using an old X99 PC running TrueNAS Scale which is working great but consumes 100W at idle and the HDD’s are slowly beginning to fail as they are over 5 years old.

My Case a Thermaltake Core W200 has as space for loads of HDD’s but they are difficult to remove on the secondary chassis as they don’t have backplane resulting in a mess of tangled wires and inaccessible drives.

I have been looking at the QNAP TS-932PX-4G 9 Bay (5 + 4) Desktop NAS Enclosure as it ticks most of the boxes however it does not use ZFS but EX4. I like ZFS as it has detected 3 failing drives before even SMART noticed it so far.

I have thought about building a custom NAS but I couldn’t find a decent case that wasn’t silly money, had poor reviews or too big.

My budget it around £700.

What are your recommendations Overclockers?

 

[RavenLunatic]

I have 7 healthy 10TB Ironwolf HDD NAS drives and eight 500Gb SSD’s. I was using the HDD’s to mine Chia and Burstcoin to offset the cost of running the X99 but I have now stopped that due to poor returns and frequent disk failures.

I would be happy to have 30TB running five drives in a RAID6 or even better a Z2 pool, keeping two Ironwolf HDD for spares. Traffic wise I have two PC’s with 10Gb NIC’s one at 2.5Gb and my WIFI running off 1Gb all connected to a 10Gb unmanaged switch.

 

[RavenLunatic]

I think the only NAS offering ZFS are those running QNAP's QuTS-hero and I'm surprised the TS-932PX-4G doesn't run it.*
You could consider an Asustor like the AS5404T, AS6704T or AS6706T which offer four M.2 slots and four or six 3.5" slots then run your choice of NAS OS on it. Asustor actually documents how to do this so you're not risking your warranty.

*Ah, it's the cosmetically identical TVS-951X and TVS-h973AX that run Quts-hero as standard

The QNAP’s QuTS-hero systems are too expensive for me, and I am seeing reports that the 10Gb SFP+ ports on the QNAP TS-932PX-4G 9 Bay are unreliable.

I’m quite impressed with the specifications of the Asustor AS6704T given its x86 and I can run whatever O/S I like, and it has some great power saving features built in to ADM that I am looking for. Power draw is more important to me than potential data rot and I have backups. Unfortunately the 10Gb NIC with 2 NVME costs an extra £230.

 

[RavenLunatic]

Yes, I have that NIC and I had to order it from Asustor's online shop in Taiwan. I've had my AS6706T for two years and can't see me changing it soon.
However, for your use it might be worth waiting for the upcoming AS68xx series which were announced in June and are expected next month as they will have dual 10GBe built-in as well as four M.2 slots. https://www.asustor.com/product?p_id=86 is the AS6804T.

Thank you for finding that!

The AS6804T specs look amazing and it supports Btrfs which I think has data integrity features similar to ZFS.

I have been also been looking at Synology DS1522+ 5-Bay Desktop NAS as it had a 10Gb add in card for £100 that did not replace the NVME M.2 slots. The Synology also supports Btrfs.

I think I am sold on the Asustor AS6804T as it has everything I want bar the 5 drive capacity without needing to upgrade the RAM or NIC from the get go.

 

[RavenLunatic]

My basket at OcUK:

• 1 x Jonsbo N1 Mini-ITX Office PC / NAS Server Case - Grey (SKU: CA-029-JB) = £124.99
• 1 x MSI MPG B650I Edge WIFI (Socket AM5) DDR5 Mini ITX Motherboard (SKU: MB-374-MS) = £220.00
• 1 x be quiet! SFX 3 300W Bronze Power Supply (SKU: CA-13N-BQ) = £54.95
• 1 x Corsair Vengeance EXPO 32GB (2X16GB) DDR5 PC5-41600C40 5200MHz Dual Channel Kit - Black (CMK32GX5M2B5200Z40) (SKU: MY-4DP-CS) = £89.98
• 1 x AMD Ryzen 5 7600 Six Core 5.10GHz (Socket AM5) Processor - Retail (SKU: CP-3DW-AM) = £188.99

Total: £678.91 (includes delivery: £0.00)​

I have a HBA card that can go in the x16 slot supporting 8 SATA drives, but this leaves me with no 10Gb ethernet.

I could use the x16 slot for a 10Gb ethernet and use an M.2 to 6 SATA adaptor, but I am unsure if the cooling fan on the chipset is required.

Or I just forget about the 5th drive and run just 4 disks and save all the hassle with a 10Gb NIC in the x16.

PSU Calculator maximum power requirements are 193W which is no better than my X99 system. Since TrueNAS doesn't support C states idle power consumption will be more than a dedicated NAS system.

What do you think?

 

[RavenLunatic]

I was just searching for reviews of the N1 and came across this video by Level1Techs.

AM5 mini-server: N1 Jonsbo and... may include a bandsaw

The moment you've all been waiting for is finally here! Home server build in the N1 Jonsbo case! Also a bandsaw. BZZZZZZZZEnGenius EWS357-FIThttps://www.amaz...

youtu.be

Idle power is 60-70W using a 7900 with just 3 HDD's so I would expect it would be around 65-75W with 4 Drives.

The AS6804T only uses 35 W (Operation) and 17.3 W (Disk Hibernation) with 0.88 W (Sleep Mode) using just one drive. So I would expect 55-60W(operation) with just the 4 drives.

It would be fun to build a N1 server, but think a dedicated NAS power savings would make quite a difference to my electricity bill.

 

[RavenLunatic]

A few things I would consider.

What are the main tasks? You might not need anything like a 6 core Ryzen 7000.

What type and how many drives are you planning to use? You’d need a good few HHDs in raid to reach 10 gigabit transfers.

My 8 Ironwolf HDD Z2 pool with one faulted disk, 98% full, and no SSD Cache gets this.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 7.0.0 x64 (C) 2007-2019 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World: https://crystalmark.info/
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 bytes/s [SATA/600 = 600,000,000 bytes/s]
* KB = 1000 bytes, KiB = 1024 bytes

[Read]
Sequential 1MiB (Q= 8, T= 1): 938.097 MB/s [ 894.6 IOPS] < 8928.35 us>
Sequential 1MiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 541.923 MB/s [ 516.8 IOPS] < 1932.29 us>
Random 4KiB (Q= 32, T=16): 278.178 MB/s [ 67914.6 IOPS] < 7521.94 us>
Random 4KiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 14.401 MB/s [ 3515.9 IOPS] < 283.61 us>

[Write]
Sequential 1MiB (Q= 8, T= 1): 1085.535 MB/s [ 1035.2 IOPS] < 7694.37 us>
Sequential 1MiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 400.758 MB/s [ 382.2 IOPS] < 2612.64 us>
Random 4KiB (Q= 32, T=16): 191.618 MB/s [ 46781.7 IOPS] < 10901.13 us>
Random 4KiB (Q= 1, T= 1): 9.461 MB/s [ 2309.8 IOPS] < 430.86 us>

Profile: Default
Test: 1 GiB (x5) [Interval: 5 sec] <DefaultAffinity=DISABLED>
Date: 2024/07/30 12:38:20
OS: Windows 10 Professional [10.0 Build 22631] (x64)

Way over a 2.5Gb connection and if I used just 4 drives, I'm probably still in 5Gb territory.

I do intend on using an SSD or NVME cache depending on what machine I decide to use which at the moment looks like the AS6804T.

I use my NAS for local Backups mostly and two of my machines are 10Gb capable so I think it makes sense to have a NAS capable of 10Gb.

The choice of CPU was that it was the cheapest AM5 CPU with basic graphics capability. I think an APU chip would use more power and is unnecessary for my use case. I don't want to use an Intel 13/14 gen due to their apparent quality issues.

 

[RavenLunatic]

I’d be tempted to look at something ATX/MATX with a more flexible PCIE layout and possibly consider something like a Ryzen 5350GE.

Its a good suggestion, looking into it, I see that the 35W CPU was only ever available to large OEM's, and was for NUC type devices. It probably was soldered direct to the MB as I cannot see anyone selling them by itself just whole Mini Lenovo systems.

With regards to using ATX/MATX, the NAS cases to fit them tend to be poor build quality, very expensive, or too big.

 

[RavenLunatic]

ATX is too big for what I want to do, and M-ATX motherboards seem to only have 4 SATA as standard plus the two extra PCIe gen3 x1 lanes are not very useful to me. My aim is low power and I don't think I can get it by building a machine myself.

 

[RavenLunatic]

I am unable to find a 10Gb NIC with PCIe x1 form factor, one with PCIe Gen 4 would be ideal.

It could work if I got a PCI Express X1 to X16 Low Profile Slot Extension Adapter, and it would fit in a SilverStone CS351 which is the biggest chassis I would go for.

Would the NIC's connect at 10Gb but only transfer data at ~ 8Gb or would it negotiate down to 5Gb?

Would that create buffering issues connected at 10Gb but only able to transfer data at 8Gb?

Going MATX would save me £150 on the cost of the motherboard.

Regarding getting a 5350GE I can only find them used from China when I expanded my search.

 

[RavenLunatic]

What I find most odd about this, is you've given us no idea how the system will be used, which is arguably the most important thing. If you are wanting to save power, 10Gb NIC's will generally limit lower C-state support, if you are going ZFS, every r/w operation that isn't going to or from cache requires a full pool spun up. If your usage - that you haven't told us about - looks like static file storage such as media, and you don't need big concurrent IO numbers, then Unraid is probably the better option. Reads spin up the drive being read from, writes only spin up the parity drive and the data drive being written to, and you'd generally push them to cache till it hits the write threshold anyway. Of course, you're limited to 200MB/s on a single spindle, so multiple transfers to hit the 8Gb/s or so you'll see between 10Gb hosts, and if you need bigger IOPS, then it also supports ZFS, but i'd personally go TrueNAS if that's the plan.

Hardware wise, ITX is not your friend. Embrace function over form, MATX minimum, if you don't need 10Gb (and we live in a world where it's cheap and easy now) then stick to 1 or 2.5, also have a look at what you're going to have to spend to 'save'. A 8th gen i3 (4c) or i5 (6c) is cheap and very capable, iGPU has H265 transcoding support (inc. tone mapping) and reasonably efficient, why do you need to blow £678 on a 7600 based ITX system when your main issue is seemingly saving a few quid a month on your power bill, it doesn't add up.

The 7600 based ITX system was purely an exercise to show what I could put together buying from OCUK today within a £700 budget.

I am just exploring all the options available. If a self-build NAS becomes the cheapest option then I am open to it.

I want daily backups images from my PC's, a local backup copy of my Onedrive, and an offline storage of my game library's.

Sure, I could go with a 2.5Gb network interface but I already have a 10Gb home network it would be a shame not to use it.

I agree an old 8th gen intel could do the job cheaply but, current solution is an x99 i7 5930K. I want something better, smaller, easy to maintain, and if I can use less power then that's a plus.

I don't have the room for a huge ATX NAS chassis and most of the good NAS non-rack chassis are M-ITX.

Ultimately I have £1400 worth of healthy HDD's I don't mind spending £700 more to utilise them more effectively

 

[RavenLunatic]

Shiny is always a big part in this type of hobby, but if I can half my idle power usage that’s about £100 a year saved by your calculations. My 100W figure is from an energy monitoring socket with X99 NAS PC at idle, when writing to disk it hits 175W. Unfortunately, it only has total power used and not split by weekly or monthly. Maximum power peek draw apparently is 260W

Is it wrong for me to want to use less electricity?

I am not looking for ROI, however my Drobo 5n lasted me 10 years I would expect my new one will last as long as well, so if it does pay for itself then all the better.

 

[RavenLunatic]

Idle in that all the IW's are spun down so best case.

I found a great preview video of the Asustor Lockerstor Gen3 NAS

Asustor Lockerstor Gen3 NAS - ULTIMATE HYBRID NAS?

Asustor Lockerstor Gen 3 NAS Revealed https://nascompares.com/news/asustor-lockerstor-gen3-nas-revealed/Flashstor Gen 2 Reveal Video - https://www.youtube.co...

youtu.be

I don’t see the problem; I need a new NAS because my current setup is a pain to maintain. I want one that is power efficient. I am not fussy whether it is a prebuilt dedicated NAS or a self-build, and I have set aside a budget I think is reasonable to complete the task.

I get the consensus here seems to be to just keep running my power hungry x99 NAS system as the ROI would take years so its not worth doing.

My reasoning for using Z2 was purely for its fault tolerance on my aging IW’s.

 

[RavenLunatic]

I have pulled the X99 system apart, permanently removed the 4 inaccessible HDD bays, removed 6 of the 8 sticks of RAM, swapped the Corsair TX950 Bronze for an EVGA 750GQ Gold which I already had, and I have got the system idling at 83Wh.

Power usage over the last 7 days was 14.44KWh @ £0.2182635 = £3.15. Averaging the power usage comes in at 85.95Wh

The X99 system is no longer a pain to service and I think 83W is acceptable for a 6 SATA SSD + 5 SATA HDD NAS system.

Thank you all for your responses.

 

[RavenLunatic]

Zero spend and 14w saved, have a look at c-states and consider tweaking the BIOS power settings, fan profile (if not already tuned), disabling any unused controllers etc. and you should be able to improve on that by a few watts if you feel the need Realistically £12-13 odd a month isn’t huge for a server.

Unfortunately TrueNAS Scale does not support C-states, but it does down clock the CPU to 1.2GHz when idling.

I have gone through the BIOS as per your suggestion, and disabled on-board LAN and HD Audio, but it has not yielded any noticeable power savings.

Fan wise I had 4 Noctua industrial 140mm intake fans running at 5V, which I have just discovered have unplugged themselves when I changed the power supply.

This is likely to be the source of my power savings not a super efficient PSU lol.

Update
Reconnected the 4 fans and idle usage just went up to 86W so the replacement PSU is apparently more efficient.