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Topic: NAS or server (Read 16217 times) previous topic - next topic
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NAS or server

Hi

im planning to buy a NAS for my media files.

Anybody who know Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus, Diskless?
http://www.amazon.com/Netgear-ReadyNAS-Dis...U/dp/B004AM61YI

Or maybe some of you can give me a advice for what is a good solution for storing like 3 gigabyte?

Happy for all answers!



NAS or server

Reply #1 –
$950?  Guacamole!

I assume you mean 3 Terrabytes?

I don't know what you need, so let's get some information first.

1 - How fast is your network?
2 - How many clients?
3 - What sort of access speed do you need?
4 - How much money are you comfortable spending?
5 - What is your uptime requirement?  Are you tolerant of a day of downtime when a drive fails?
6 - Do you have an existing backup plan?  (RAID is not a backup plan) 
7 - Do you need the DLNA features?
8 - What ARE your intended clients?
9 - Have you considered just buying a $200 Atom-based box and installing FreeNAS?  $950 is still blowing my mind.
Creature of habit.

NAS or server

Reply #2 –
Quote from: Soap on
$950?  Guacamole!

I assume you mean 3 Terrabytes?

I don't know what you need, so let's get some information first.

1 - How fast is your network?
2 - How many clients?
3 - What sort of access speed do you need?
4 - How much money are you comfortable spending?
5 - What is your uptime requirement?  Are you tolerant of a day of downtime when a drive fails?
6 - Do you have an existing backup plan?  (RAID is not a backup plan) 
7 - Do you need the DLNA features?
8 - What ARE your intended clients?
9 - Have you considered just buying a $200 Atom-based box and installing FreeNAS?  $950 is still blowing my mind.



1) Cat 6
2) 4
3) streaming HD
4) like 1000-1500 $ preferably less...
5) no problem with downtime once in a while, but it has to be stable
6) external backup on a server in my garage
7) dont know what DLNA is...
8) mac computers and a dune mediaplayer (cinema) and a Aplle TV (jailbraked + XBMC) for FLAC streaming
9) No, i have good computer skils, but not linux I will google it now

Thanks for your good feedback

NAS or server

Reply #5 –
@Soap: 7 - Do you need the DLNA features?

I have red about DLNA now, and I like the idea. The standard so far don't support FLAC, MP3, AVI, MKV and more.
So my answer today is no, but if a good NAS also support DLNA I'l be happy :-)

So anybody who can give me a NAS advice?

Lysaar

 

NAS or server

Reply #6 –
Quote from: Lysaar on
Hi

im planning to buy a NAS for my media files.

Anybody who know Netgear ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus, Diskless?
http://www.amazon.com/Netgear-ReadyNAS-Dis...U/dp/B004AM61YI

Or maybe some of you can give me a advice for what is a good solution for storing like 3 gigabyte?


One option is to expand the purpose of some desktop computer you have someplace in your house.

The second option is to buy an inexpensive NAS server like this one:

Link to inexpensive expandable NAS server

It supports 5 drives, so unless there is a hidden restriction, those can be in the 1-2 TB range for a total of no less than 5-10 TB total capacity.'

BTW I've set up a DLNA system that used an inexpensive (sub $150)  Blu Ray player as its plyaback client and a laptop as the server on a wireless home network.
Worked a treat but we only tried to share .wav and MP3 files, if memory serves.  Setup was mainly downloading and installing the DLNA server software which coexisted with regular Windows file sharing.

NAS or server

Reply #7 –
Cat 6 is cable. What actual speed are you running at? I can run 10Mbps across a cat6 cable.

Personally I run a desktop as a fileserver which also runs web servers, SqueezeCenter etc, it may eat more power but is more expandable and customisable. You could easily build one for a couple of hundred quid (not sure what that'd be in dollars  ).

NAS or server

Reply #8 –
Quote from: probedb on
Cat 6 is cable. What actual speed are you running at? I can run 10Mbps across a cat6 cable.

Personally I run a desktop as a fileserver which also runs web servers, SqueezeCenter etc, it may eat more power but is more expandable and customisable. You could easily build one for a couple of hundred quid (not sure what that'd be in dollars  ).



Cat 6 is cable, and i did assume quality of cable told that I aim for Gigabit Ethernet.
But i only need to stream HD movies over cat6 cable, no cable longer than 10 m
I'm not sure how much bandwidt HD movies demands.

Any help choosing NAS is appreciated.


Lysaar

NAS or server

Reply #9 –
Your network performance not withstanding you should be able to build the cheapest of computers and stream HD.
I'm running Ubuntu 8.04 on a 1st generation Atom processor (CF card boot drive) with (currently) four storage drives attached via USB and get 30 MB/sec reads and writes across my network.  That is WAY more than fast enough for HD streaming, but lower than what you would want for running, say, a Lightroom library over a network share.

Despite the fact the outer branches of my home wiring are CAT-5 and my drives are all slow-spindle "green" ones, I believe my USB drive attachment is my current bottleneck, but my Atom board has neither E-SATA nor expansion slots.

For way less than the price of your linked NAS-in-a-box one could build a quite efficient Core i3 box with enough power and capability to be pretty darn future-proof as a storage server, AND populate it with a number of (internal or external) drives.  You could most likely meet current demands with an ARM board and Debian, perhaps even a current-gen Atom board, but I'm not sure what the E-SATA availability is on current offerings.  I would not recommend relying on USB today for external storage attachment.

This, of course, assumes your time is cheap.

I have no idea how much power my solution pulls, but the Atom board, my four drives, my cable modem, my Linksys WAP, my Gigabit switch, and Vonage box all last over 1/2 an hour on an old APC ES-350 UPS.

EDIT:
Arnold's solution is nice looking, inexpensive, solves most all client issues out-of-the-box, but appears to be limited to two drives, period. 

Creature of habit.

NAS or server

Reply #10 –
I'm thinking of setting a NAS server myself using FreeNAS.

This is the hardware I'll probably get:
Athena Power CA-SWH01BH8 Black Steel Pedestal Server Case 2 External 5.25" Drive Bays

GIGABYTE GA-880GA-UD3H AM3 AMD 880G HDMI SATA 6Gb/s USB 3.0 ATX AMD Motherboard

AMD Athlon II X2 260 Regor 3.2GHz 2 x 1MB L2 Cache Socket AM3 65W Dual-Core Desktop Processor ADX260OCGMBOX

G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model F3-10666CL8D-4GBRM

CORSAIR CMPSU-750TX 750W ATX12V / EPS12V SLI Ready CrossFire Ready 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Compatible with Core i7 Power Supply

6 x SAMSUNG Spinpoint F4 HD204UI 2TB 5400 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Everything amounts to $1147. If you use just 2 hard drives, it goes down to $787.
You'll still need another small hard drive for booting the OS though.

For your needs, you could probably get a cheaper/simpler case.
Allegari nihil et allegatum non probare, paria sunt.

NAS or server

Reply #11 –
Why twice the motherboard, 10x the processor, and 2-4x the memory that you need for a NAS box?  I know you can't go much slower on processor, but that's a ton of system for what the embedded boys do with low hundreds of Mhz ARMs.
Creature of habit.

NAS or server

Reply #12 –
Quote from: Soap on
Arnold's solution is nice looking, inexpensive, solves most all client issues out-of-the-box, but appears to be limited to two drives, period.


As I read the specs, there are two SATA ports and 3 USB ports.

NAS or server

Reply #13 –
Quote
Why twice the motherboard, 10x the processor, and 2-4x the memory that you need for a NAS box? I know you can't go much slower on processor, but that's a ton of system for what the embedded boys do with low hundreds of Mhz ARMs.


I have a AMD Sempron 3000 here. When transferring in Gb speeds (avg. of 40MB/s), it uses 100% of the CPU. So I didn't want the CPU to be a bottleneck for fast transfers.
But another major problem is the motherboard. I wanted one that had 6 SATA ports (for the 6 hard drives), but it needed at least one other port (SATA or PATA) for the OS hard drive.
After I picked that Gigabyte one, there weren't many processors that I could use. So I discarded all Sempron (as explained above) and got one that had a low power consumption.
You could probably get the 250, but for only $9 extra dollars you get the 260.
Allegari nihil et allegatum non probare, paria sunt.

NAS or server

Reply #14 –
This will save you some money and trouble. It won't do everything a server will out of the box but it runs Linux and so you can add services. It connects to the network at 1 Gbit but it's using one of those low hundreds of Mhz ARMs Soap mentions so only does about 150 Mbit actual throughput. Still, that's more than enough for a media server.

NAS or server

Reply #15 –
Quote from: Arnold B. Krueger on
Quote from: Soap on
Arnold's solution is nice looking, inexpensive, solves most all client issues out-of-the-box, but appears to be limited to two drives, period.


As I read the specs, there are two SATA ports and 3 USB ports.

Yea, I don't know how I missed that in the specs, it was exactly what I went looking for.

As Notat mentions these inexpensive embedded solutions probably can't saturate your drives, but should be PLENTY fast for multiple HD clients.
Creature of habit.

NAS or server

Reply #16 –
Quote from: Lysaar on
@Soap: 7 - Do you need the DLNA features?

I have red about DLNA now, and I like the idea. The standard so far don't support FLAC, MP3, AVI, MKV and more.
So my answer today is no, but if a good NAS also support DLNA I'l be happy :-)
Some new TVs support DLNA. So you could just plug a TV straight into your network, and have all your video, audio, and photos right there. Depending on the codec!

The biggest problem IME is the lousy interface most TVs provide to your library. And the fact they won't play the files . That's not specifically a DLNA problem though - it's a "we'll only support the mandatory codecs and provide a basic interface because no one really knows how useful DLNA should be yet" problem!

Cheers,
David.

NAS or server

Reply #17 –
The bottleneck would not be the CPU, it would be the fact that the NIC offloads its processing to the CPU.  Spend a little on a NIC with a decent processor of its own and you won't need crap for the rest of the system, and will be cheaper.  How is RAID not backup?  Maybe for a business where customers need to retrieve their data (web host) it isn't a power backup, but for a home user, RAID5 is plenty enough of a contingency plan for data integrity.  I'd personally spend that $1k on a budget motherboard, CPU, RAM, and an insane RAID controller and NIC.  A good RAID card will let you keep adding drives when you need to expand and rebuild your volumes for you.  A good NIC card will keep the data between the RAID card and the NIC card (in the bus), and utilize no very little or no CPU. 

I plan to get a budget motherboard, CPU, and RAM, but spend a crapload on a RAID card and an Intel NIC.  I will get a dual port NIC and bond the channels, so I can have 250 MB/s theoretical speeds, from a good RAID5 array of like 4 or 5 drives.

NAS or server

Reply #18 –
Quote from: ramicio on
How is RAID not backup?

It is if you've also archived the data on separate physical media, otherwise let's hope you don't accidentally delete a file.

NAS or server

Reply #19 –
ramicio: RAID is not a backup because if you accidentally delete a file, get a virus, your OS screws up etc, your RAID will not save you.

For example, using two drives as a main + backup is much safer than say a RAID1 as mistakes are not automatically replicated to the second drive.  Of course 3 drives in a RAID1 + backup is better, but more expensive.

You don't need a high end RAID card for a NAS.  The softraid in Linux or FreeBSD (FreeNAS) will easily keep up with an expensive card.  A motherboard with Intel Matrix RAID is also cheap and fast if you want to use Windows.  Your network will more than be the bottleneck before a good softraid.  Just avoid non-Intel cheap RAID cards/MBs or softraid 5 in Windows.

You won't get more than 1 Gbit with a bonded NIC unless you have multiple clients.

NAS or server

Reply #20 –
And buying a hardware RAID controller may mean higher performance, but hardware-locks your RAID set.  Software RAID is much much safer.

Quote from: ssjkakaroto on
Quote
Why twice the motherboard, 10x the processor, and 2-4x the memory that you need for a NAS box? I know you can't go much slower on processor, but that's a ton of system for what the embedded boys do with low hundreds of Mhz ARMs.


I have a AMD Sempron 3000 here. When transferring in Gb speeds (avg. of 40MB/s), it uses 100% of the CPU. So I didn't want the CPU to be a bottleneck for fast transfers.

As said previously, get a better network card.  I don't see 40% CPU consumption on my Atom box, ever.
Creature of habit.

NAS or server

Reply #21 –
Really, what kind of virus is there that wipes out ALL your data?  I really want to know.  Especially one that ruins data in any way outside of the root drive...  The target of viruses is information retrieval for monetary gain, not killing a simpleton's data. 

Any good RAID controller will let you migrate between array types, add drives, etc.  Software RAID is pointless, because RAID is also meant to boost performance, where software RAID requires a lot of resources. 

If you delete a file, that's YOUR fault.  It can be retrieved easily enough without a backup.  Human error is not a reason to say RAID is not a form of backup.  By all means, if your data is your money, then yes, have a separate copy.  RAID redundancy is ENOUGH for a personal user who just wants to store media files.

Why would I not get more speed from a bonded NIC?  The point of link aggregation is to boost speed OR for redundancy.  Get 2 identical 2-port 1 Gbps NICs (Intel) and directly connect them with 2 cables, you will get 2 Gbps.

NAS or server

Reply #22 –
Quote from: ramicio on
If you delete a file, that's YOUR fault.
No one said it wasn't.

Quote from: ramicio on
It can be retrieved easily enough without a backup.
On a NAS?  Please elaborate.

Quote from: ramicio on
Human error is not a reason to say RAID is not a form of backup.
Sure it is.

NAS or server

Reply #23 –
The file still exists on the disk after being deleted.  It can be undeleted.

NAS or server

Reply #24 –
Quote from: Soap on
As said previously, get a better network card.  I don't see 40% CPU consumption on my Atom box, ever.

Well, the cheapest AM3 processor on Newegg costs $38 and the cheapest Intel PCI Express NIC costs $40.
My current processor option costs $70. In the end it costs more to buy the NIC than to get a better processor.

Just out of curiosity, what NIC do you have and how fast are your transfers?
I'm currently using this NIC.
Allegari nihil et allegatum non probare, paria sunt.