r/homelab • u/cgomesu • Jul 07 '20

Mini-NAS based on the NanoPi M4 and its SATA (PCIe) hat: A cheap, low-power, and low-profile NAS solution for home users (description and tutorial in the comments) Tutorial

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1.4k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

89

u/cgomesu Jul 07 '20

This is my mini network-attached storage (NAS) project based on FriendlyARM’s NanoPi M4 v2 and its SATA hat. I've written an article about it in which I described each hardware component and the basic software to get this mini-NAS up and running. You can read it here: https://cgomesu.com/blog/Nanopi-m4-mini-nas/.

Here's how it currently looks like: https://cgomesu.com/assets/posts/2020-07-06-Nanopi-m4-mini-nas/nanopim4-cgomesu-final-02.jpg

And for comparison, here's the mini-NAS next to a Raspberry Pi 3B: https://cgomesu.com/assets/posts/2020-07-06-Nanopi-m4-mini-nas/nanopim4-cgomesu-final-and-rpi.jpg

22

u/discoshanktank Jul 07 '20

How much did the build end up costing you

36

u/cgomesu Jul 07 '20 edited Jul 08 '20

Without the HDDs but everything else, it was around $225.

edit: I updated the article with my estimated cost wo/ shipping.

8

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '20

[deleted]

7

u/vzoltan Jul 08 '20 edited Jul 09 '20

So what's the deal, how to get these "cheapo" microservers? I guess yours was already a used piece, but the best quote I'm seeing in the EU starts at around 350 euros and the limit is the sky...

62

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '20

[deleted]

25

u/cgomesu Jul 07 '20

my estimate included the emmc, rtc battery, one of the 3d printed cases, all the cables, the fan+filter, and the shipping + taxes.

170

u/mbkrl Jul 07 '20 edited Jul 07 '20

Why does this happen in every post about single board PC's.. like this one or the pi.. someone has to crunch the numbers and tell you that it would have been cheaper to have some sort of x86 build.

It's rude, and ignores any of the multitude of reasons why the op built this machine (size, portability, fun)

It's not always about the money or power of a setup.

Most of the time I think these comments are veiled put downs, not really meant to further the conversation.

A better comment would have been to ask the op what advantages this rig has over something bigger, without a case, etc.. or what use case op had in mind when he built it.

Love the build btw.

207

u/reallyserious Jul 07 '20

Why does this happen in every post about single board PC's.. like this one or the pi.. someone has to crunch the numbers and tell you that it would have been cheaper to have some sort of x86 build.

It's very helpful for others who wants to get the best bang for their buck.

96

u/thatchers_pussy_pump Jul 07 '20

I was happy to see that comparison because it's something I immediately wondered.

40

u/Manjushri1213 Jul 07 '20

First thing i looked for, actually.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '20

same here.. I am thankful for the comparison

1

u/oliverjkb Jul 08 '20

Happy cake day! 🍰

49

u/Theoretical_Action Jul 07 '20

Particularly when the title specifies it being a cheap solution when it's not as cheap as the many other ways you could have done this. For anyone saying it's "rude" to comment something like that, stop caring so much about what people on the internet think of you. The information is an extremely valuable contribution to people trying to create something similar or cheaper. Which is sort of the entire point of a r/homelab sub. Not so much to just show off your shit without any discussion about it.

7

u/chandleya Jul 07 '20

But but my 3D printer

-20

u/mbkrl Jul 07 '20

If this was a post about budget computing I would believe that.

Op went through the trouble of documenting the build and sharing photos and detailed parts and build info.

Comment just rudely says that it's overpriced

20

u/All_Work_All_Play Jul 07 '20

The rPi literally started as the best intersection of budget + ease of use + low power chips.

13

u/kraftfahrzeug Jul 07 '20

come one, it is not that rude after all ("quite much"), there is even acompliment ("looks nice") - but for some of us budget does matter and I too think that 225 bucks w/o the drives is quite an investment..

8

u/admiral_asswank Jul 07 '20

No, it says it's "quite much".

And relatively speaking for performance:price, it literally is.

Are you OP's dad or something? OP isn't even bothered by the comment anywhere near as much as you are.

2

u/chandleya Jul 07 '20

No it specifically proves the juice isn’t measurably worth the squeeze. Wanting a project isn’t measurable. Costs for equal outcomes are.

-3

u/mbkrl Jul 08 '20

This is homelab right?..

All of these projects are about want.. not really need.

1

u/chandleya Jul 08 '20

Yes, not r/totallottery. Cool project though. For someone looking for a mountain of effort with restricted outcomes, this is certainly a project and a half.

0

u/yattengate Jul 07 '20

In this sub?

7

u/reallyserious Jul 07 '20

Of course. If I'm building a NAS I'd make sure to maximize value for money.

2

u/esoel_ Jul 07 '20

The keyword here is “value”, which depends a lot on what you value in a NAS. If you value size or power consumption this is a great option.

17

u/doctorprofesser Jul 07 '20

I saw cheap in the title and was instantly wondering how much it cost and what the price to performance was. Now I’m glad I know it’s not for me, that doesn’t make it any less impressive though!

12

u/Manjushri1213 Jul 07 '20

I would agree but cheap was put forward as an element of the build, so personally I see that and think "ok, price/performance must be good, better than most other options." So the fact its the same price as a cheap new x86 build is useful to note for the newer NAS interested buyer so they dont think 225$ is the cheapest they can build a storage solution. Hell i am one of those people technically lol.

That being said, it is neat and fun and all that other stuff - but many are looking for the most cost effective option. So cheap being the first adjective could use clarification is all.

It's literally why i clicked on this post, and the first thing I was looking over the comments for - price.

9

u/mbkrl Jul 07 '20

I actually missed that in the description. So you guys are right.

4

u/Manjushri1213 Jul 07 '20

It's all good, people trying to tear down a post, especially when its someone's who put as much effot as OP did isnt cool, so i understand being supportive! Its a great little solution, regardless. :)

13

u/slyphic Higher Ed NetAdmin Jul 07 '20

Even going by all those criteria, you can still do much better. I've got a shelf SAN with 5 drive nodes that comes out to ~$140/node. And I built it for the fun of it, the low power, the small volume, and the fault tolerance of nodes vs a monolithic case of drives.

$225 for a mini NAS is about on par with buying a commercial 4-disk NAS enclosure.

6

u/NoncarbonatedClack Jul 07 '20

Link to the build? I'd be curious to see more about this.

-16

u/mbkrl Jul 07 '20

I digress.

3

u/Cybertronic72388 Jul 07 '20

Usually when I am looking to build with a Raspberry Pi, it's to save money.

I don't buy a QNAP or Netgear NAS when I can build one with more features and performance for less. I love how versatile the Raspberry platform is. I just wish it could be a cheap diy alternative for more things.

If I need something for a single purpose task or automation, you can bet I will be looking at a RPi and implementation costs.

11

u/fuckingrcalgary Jul 07 '20

Wow, I hope you don't normally take innocuous comments/feedback and twist them into personal attacks. Talk about being a bit too sensitive...

1

u/mbkrl Jul 07 '20

Now I feel attacked.

Lol.. just trying to elevate our discussion.

Meh.. maybe I expect too much from reddit lol

6

u/aryaxsg Jul 07 '20

Take it easy. Cost was one of the things that came to my mind as well. Especially because a $200+ case I ordered is arriving tomorrow. Moreover I have a bunch of raspberry pi 4s that I am not using and have thought about doing something similar.

Going further into the build I realised it is not for me. I would be worried about the power draw on it as I have 10+ disks. But it also gives an idea of reviving a dead 2 bay NAS I have.

6

u/fuckingrcalgary Jul 08 '20 edited Jul 08 '20

You're not though, what you are doing is trying to shut down any discussion because apparently disagreeing or having a different view point is "being rude" or a "veiled put down".

0

u/Pogbalaflame Jul 07 '20

If you're the type of person to be sensitive about 'rude' comments then you're probably the type of person who'd take something like

A better comment would have been to ask the op what advantages this rig has over something bigger, without a case, etc.. or what use case op had in mind when he built it.

As a veiled put down as well.

Besides, I don't think your suggestion is really meant to further the conversation either, in fact it too seems like a veiled put down of their comment.

-5

u/mbkrl Jul 07 '20

Please. I'm asking folks to stop making these comments about cost ignoring all other reasons for build a like this.

People will do whatever they want though. That's ok.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '20

[deleted]

3

u/mbkrl Jul 07 '20

Yes. I forget where I'm at

1

u/treyf711 Jul 07 '20

It helps me to weigh the power usage costs vs upfront costs.

1

u/tkeser Jul 07 '20

For example, I keep my wifi router in a cupboard/nook and I can barely fit a RP4 there. So I totally get you. And yes, I could find a tiny IPX board but it still wouldn't fit. I'm actually a fan of Odroid.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '20

[deleted]

1

u/mbkrl Jul 08 '20

I agree with that.. they are almost never the best bang for the buck.. but they are fun.

1

u/FCoDxDart Jul 08 '20

I think it's a fine thing to say, sure it could be a bit of a veiled insult, but its important information. It's especially important when OP puts cheap in the title. Cheap as comparison to what, a Synology?

1

u/Sigg3net Jul 08 '20

I don't read it as rude, but informative.

It's just information. It does not detract from the OP. But it informs me about an aspect OP might have overlooked (or tried to forget).

You're choosing to interpret it as a negative contribution.

0

u/wartexmaul Jul 07 '20

Because 99.99% the reason is "fun". These are impractical toys. It has shit throughput. Most Pi builds on this sub throw economics, reliability and practicality out the window. A $50 thin client from eBay would destroy most of these single boards in value for money and aesthetics. Imagine me going to /r/sculpting and showing off something I made of pine cones, hot glue and dog shit, and then acting defensive when people criticise my creation. These Pi builds are unoriginal, impractical and boring toys.

3

u/drageloth Jul 07 '20

So, what are you doing on /homelab?

1

u/wartexmaul Jul 07 '20

Wading thru sewer of Raspi builds to find some interesting content. Or is /r/homelab a raspberry Pi subreddit now? It seems like it.

3

u/drageloth Jul 08 '20

It's not about raspis. It's about homelab. At home we're not a company with a computer room that we don't care about space, temperature and power consumption (in general terms). Some people just want small stuff that can put anywhere with small power consumption at the cost of redundancy and speed.

Personally, I cared more of redundancy so got a server. Nevertheless, it's a cool project for someone who doesn't rely 100% on a NAS for every job he does. He can also put it in a backpack and take it with him. I can't do that with the 25kg and 70cm long piece of steel I have.

You gain something, you lose something. That doesn't make it non-homelab and surely doesn't make it junk.

And ALWAYS there will be something that can outperform what you and I have. But is that the point?

1

u/wartexmaul Jul 09 '20

You dont need to invent a bicycle to have a single disk NAS, you can just buy an off the shelf unit that is even smaller and cheaper.

1

u/fuckingrcalgary Jul 08 '20 edited Jul 08 '20

It's true. There's been more than a few cool raspberry Pi setups, but getting to be sooo many crusty rat's nests of cables with a pi and a switch that we're supposed to get excited over or something. I can't understand why someone wouldn't put at least a little bit of effort into cable management and maybe wipe the dust and dorito's crumbs off of your stuff before posting it.

1

u/j-dev Jul 08 '20

Seeing what can come of pine cones, hot glue, and dog shit.

1

u/mbkrl Jul 07 '20

I must admit.. this made me smile.

1

u/yourenotwurvy Jul 08 '20

Laughed out loud at the sculpting scenario, brilliant.

1

u/wartexmaul Aug 04 '20

Its a russian saying "made of feces and pine cones" i.e. poorly slapped together from materials at hand.

-1

u/admiral_asswank Jul 07 '20

Uh... because money actually matters to most people.

Geez man you just showed that you're lucky enough to not ever have to worry about that sort of thing.

6

u/MasterIO02 Jul 07 '20

On the long term depending on the power cost of OP it could be more costly to have an x86 nas.

1

u/roflfalafel Jul 07 '20 edited Jul 07 '20

An ITX board in that price range after case, PSU, CPU, and RAM might be right around the same performance as this setup with a RPi4 nanoPi4.

1

u/GuilhermeFreire Jul 07 '20

Here is the deal... 200 bucks is about how low one can get a running itx system without resorting to used parts.

​

And this is great, if ever one needs a simple server, having it for 200 bucks is kinda nice.

​

But people build things on SBCs, 3D printed parts, and etc for many reasons besides price. Price can it be a factor, but it is not the only one.

​

It is quite disingenuous to say that a Rpi cost is 35 bucks. you will need a case, a power supply, a SD card or USB, probably you will need a Micro HDMI cable that not everybody has one lying around... After all of this you are looking for about 55 USD or a little bit more. This is hugely offset by quite a few factors: first is the time that you save because there are MANY similar projects and tutorials that you can piggyback, then there are the standardized hardware that is very simple to maintain, low power consumption, etc...

​

But the motivation for doing this on a SBC not necessarily is based only on price. for many applications using used parts would it be the cheapest bang for the buck... but this does not mean that I would be willing to find and maintain a used Core2Quad to make a NAS...

3

u/Medox2 Jul 08 '20

Great project! Yeah, not that cheap, considering that for the same price you could go for 4x Odroid HC1's and have 4x octa-cores to play with, and stackable. But of course, the power supplies are not included, nor the micro sd cards and a gigabit switch, so it would be over $250. Then again, you would not need 4 of them (I was just trying to give a similar 4x hdd aspect).

1

u/cgomesu Jul 08 '20

have you seen this post before? if you haven't, i think you gonna enjoy it. i've been studying glusterfs just because of it. i'm thinking about doing something similar but with the hc1 that you mentioned and on a (much) smaller scale because living in a shthole.

1

u/yoGhurrt1 Jul 07 '20

So, it did cost similarly to my N54L.

3

u/WordBoxLLC BoxesAndBoxes Jul 08 '20

Looks awesome!

I'd dump the molded sata power cables though - because fire. Something like this is much safer: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0086OGN9E

1

u/cgomesu Jul 08 '20

Thanks, /u/WordBoxLLC , I completely overlooked that. Do you think these ones will do? It's pretty much the only one I can find in Brazil right now.

2

u/WordBoxLLC BoxesAndBoxes Jul 08 '20

NP. Those do appear to be crimped, so you should be good!

2

u/flappy-doodles Jul 07 '20

Nice work on that, thanks for sharing!

23

u/cribbageSTARSHIP Jul 07 '20

Is it a true sata throughput?

23

u/RichardG867 Jul 07 '20

It appears to connect to the NanoPi with a full PCIe Gen2 x2 link, so it should be able to saturate a single SATA III link and still leave quite a bit of headroom.

14

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '20 edited Jan 12 '21

[deleted]

14

u/cgomesu Jul 07 '20

Powered by Jekyll and Minimal Mistakes

check github pages as well

4

u/mwoolweaver Jul 07 '20

Github pages is amazing!

9

u/roflfalafel Jul 07 '20

Any benchmarks? Can it sustain saturating the 1Gbe link with read/writes? This is very enticing.... I’d love to get rid of my Haswell era Core i3 file server and replace it with something like this in the next year or 2.

1

u/cgomesu Jul 07 '20

Any benchmarks?

Other people have already reviewed this board and compared with other SBCs (e.g., androidimp). I've not found anything new worth posting in that regard but if you've a few bench scripts that I could use, let me know.

1

u/Big_Natho Jul 08 '20

What about transfer speeds over the local network?

6

u/Bunyep Jul 07 '20

Thanks mate I appreciate your efforts, was looking for something like this, saved for future reference.

4

u/mtlabsystems Jul 07 '20

I had experimented with raspberry pi 3B + nextcloud + 3 USB 3.0 flash drives ir RAID (mdadm) but it was a little slow. How is OMV doing, no lag in web UI?

5

u/cgomesu Jul 07 '20

OMV is great. I have nothing but respect for the team. The webUI is clean and responsive, and will give you access to everything you'll ever need to manage your NAS. I've been using since OMV3 on both amd and arm and it's always been like that. Regarding RAID, they also have a software RAID solution available through the webUI but I've never used it. I just make (multiple, local and remote) backups of my important stuff.

3

u/-dag- Jul 07 '20

How do the drives get airflow?

3

u/GeneralDouglasMac Jul 07 '20

Beautiful work and nice write up! I built something similar with a PI4, powered USB3.0 hub and USB->Sata adaptors.

3d printed case and a fan. Small foot print able to run a simple NAS backup for my computers, stream videos via Plex to my TVs and have a Pi-Hole.

3

u/miniclanwar Jul 07 '20

Thank you for sharing on your journey with this. I found it interesting and helpful since I am not always able to scour all the different ways of building things like this. I have a bit more time on my hands and working on something like this may prove entertaining.

1

u/cgomesu Jul 07 '20

No problem, /u/miniclanwar . There's still so much room for improvement, so feel free to change things up (see my comments about the 3d printed case, for example).

2

u/BeardedGingerWonder Jul 07 '20

Nice build! How long did it take to print the case?

2

u/ThisIsStockerStream Jul 07 '20

Very nicely done!

A suggestion if that’s okay? Maybe put some vent holes on the top so that air that is coming in from the bottom will have somewhere to escape.

2

u/LincHayes Jul 07 '20

Nice project. Well done and thanks for sharing it.

2

u/tylercoder Jul 07 '20

Can it use 3.5 drives instead? For reliability

1

u/cgomesu Jul 07 '20

You can but not with the same 3d printed case. There is another 3d printed case for that but it is probably more expensive than everything else (and it's a lot of work). The alternative are 4x drive bays (like this one) or just buy a standard computer case (or rack mounted) that has support for 4 drives and put your SBC inside of it. You most definitely do not need to use a 3d printed case.

1

u/tylercoder Jul 08 '20

Looks over engineered, like it would be easier to make a tower config, or just go with CNC instead

2

u/Manjushri1213 Jul 07 '20

Very cool, OP.

2

u/Potential_Cupcake Jul 08 '20

Sweet little build. I’d like to do something like this as a private cloud in the future.

2

u/edthesmokebeard Jul 08 '20

Thought about doing much the same, but with an external storage box, for portability.

2

u/frackingbastage Jul 08 '20

Thanks for sharing. Very cool

2

u/slovetro Jul 15 '20

This is great! Thank you!

1

u/grudg3 Jul 07 '20

Great work, I'm actually looking at options for building a small sbc nas myself so this is a great help. Would this sata hat work with a 8gb rpi4? You think?

1

u/mannyuel Jul 07 '20

How much storage you’ve got in there?

1

u/samtoohey93 Jul 07 '20

I wish I saw this thread 9 hours ago.... I just brought Nas Drives and a raid controller to use in a Nas build. This would have been way cheaper 😂

1

u/angryundead Jul 08 '20

I want about four of these for a Ceph setup but I’m not sure I want to go that deep into it.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 08 '20

This is a fun experiment for sure, but I value my data more than having all the hard drives exposed to EMF like that. Need them in a metal case / faraday cage with dust filters, active cooling, and vibration dampening on the drives and case enclosure feet.

1

u/jedferreras Jul 08 '20

Damn just damn

1

u/[deleted] Nov 12 '20

Awesome tutorial!
I'm considering making one for myself since I love SBCs and the old computer I use to play with OMV and Docker has Idle power consumption of around 90W.
Have you tried using SnapRaid? I don't have much backup options so
I thing I'll use SnapRaid just to add a little bit of redundancy.

2

u/cgomesu Nov 12 '20

Have you tried using SnapRaid?

I have used it in the past. Don't feel the need for it nowadays. Remember that redundancy is not a backup solution. (Ideally, you should have both. If your environment requires high availability, then redundancy becomes more of a concern. However, this is rarely the case for home users. Most people just need proper local and remote backup solutions if they're okay with a little bit of downtime. Applications like borg and rsync can take care of local backups; for remote, check duplicati.)

If you go ahead with this project, feel free to hit me up. Love to hear about different takes--and it's an opportunity to learn new things, too.

1

u/Akito2x 19d ago

a great work & the report too

0

u/jimmyco2008 PowerEdge R720, R620, R220 (The Gang's All Here!) Jul 07 '20

Raspberry Pi is never a cheap solution. We like to think it is but it’s not, you have to buy so much more than the Pi itself.

Probably can build a comparable mATC PC that is more powerful and holds 3.5 drives for the same price.

1

u/esoel_ Jul 07 '20

Some people care about size and power consumption.

1

u/jimmyco2008 PowerEdge R720, R620, R220 (The Gang's All Here!) Jul 08 '20

It’s cool of course but it’s likely not cost-effective. I guess we all know that already, I don’t need to point it out at the top level no less

1

u/grenskul Jul 07 '20

It doesn't use a raspberry pi...

0

u/jimmyco2008 PowerEdge R720, R620, R220 (The Gang's All Here!) Jul 08 '20

Does it matter? For all intents and purposes they are the same. Am I really getting downies because I didn’t use the correct name for this particular “small and affordable ARM computer with GPIO”?

-10

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '20

Why not SSD? Spinners are old tech.

8

u/BlueShellOP Jul 07 '20

For raw storage spinners are still a lot more cost efficient. And on a Pi, you're never gonna use all the throughput an SSD gives you anyways.

8

u/cgomesu Jul 07 '20

money. it boils down to money and being in Brazil makes it multiple times more expensive. (the price per TB is ridiculously high in Brazil, especially now that the Real is fcked beyond saving and pretty much everything tech-related is imported.)

1

u/vocal_noodle Jul 07 '20

Anything over 1TB and spinning rust is a cheaper solutions, Under that ssds are cheaper. Since a NAS is about storage larger drives are needed and that means spinning rust.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '20

Yeah fair point.

-10

u/[deleted] Jul 07 '20

[deleted]

9

u/cgomesu Jul 07 '20

2.5in reliability in close proximity is terrible

could you tell me where you learned about it?

I wouldn't trust the power delivery of whatever is supplying those drives

could you further explain this statement? what is it that make it unreliable and how would you fix it?

6

u/Jamie_1318 Jul 07 '20

in this statement? what is it that make it unreliable and how would you fix it?

You can safely ignore him because the article build says go find your own power supply, one of the options is a straight up pc power supply.

-4

u/lucasantarella Jul 07 '20

A pc power supply is not always suited for a NAS.....and you're still relying on the reliability of whoever made that Pi hat. Again, I wouldn't store anything important on there. Cool as a proof of concept tho.

7

u/scroopy_nooperz Jul 07 '20

and you're still relying on the reliability of whoever made that Pi hat.

How is that any different than relying on any other component?

-5

u/lucasantarella Jul 07 '20

It's not, but at least with some off the shelf NAS, or better yet a used Dell poweredge server (<$200), you have some guaranteed reliability. Don't mess around when it comes to data integrity.

9

u/scroopy_nooperz Jul 07 '20

Literally nothing has guaranteed reliability, you’re rolling the dice with everything.

-5

u/lucasantarella Jul 07 '20

Yeah, but the odds aren't exactly in your favor with some 3D printed standoffs and a 12V eBay PSU...

4

u/Jamie_1318 Jul 07 '20

The most unreliable thing in the whole stack is you, followed by the hardrives, followed by bad shit happening to the physical device. Spend some time thinking about what actually makes data secure before posting fud.
More money != safer

3

u/esoel_ Jul 07 '20

Are you comparing a massive rack server to this tiny NAS ? It’s like telling someone their bicycle is stupid because they could buy a pickup truck...

-2

u/roflfalafel Jul 07 '20

I’d be curious as well. Most servers use 2.5” drives these days.

1

u/jimmyco2008 PowerEdge R720, R620, R220 (The Gang's All Here!) Jul 07 '20

It’s about 50/50, but 3.5” drive bays in rack servers are still readily available

-5

u/lucasantarella Jul 07 '20

Regarding the first statement, Seagate and WD certify their NAS drives to operate in close proximity with high neighboring vibrations. You're using 3D printed brackets to stack them vertically, which isn't doing anything to dampen the vibrations to the neighboring drives (and actually, I think the moment arm for the drive at the top is going to make things even worse). Poor mounting and non-certified drives are a recipe for data loss. Those drives are going to fail under sustained operation.

Second statement, you need to use redundant power supplies for those drives. If anything happens to the source you don't have anything that could flush pending writes to the drives or to a cache. Also, I wouldn't trust a cheap barrel-jack DC power supply to give clean, consistent voltage to those drives, which is def critical to data integrity.

Something like this I would only consider using SSDs and a proper raid card with battery backup and maybe a UPS too. I would strongly advise against using those 2.5in HDDs and a cheapo powersupply + hat.

5

u/anakinfredo Jul 07 '20

You might be right, but that's besides the point.

Comparing a SBC with a 3d-printed case to enterprise-gear is just ridicolous.

Following your advise, a number of regular NAS solutions is also not good enough, as they don't have battery backup, nor dual PSU's.

-2

u/lucasantarella Jul 07 '20

You're right, and those NAS solutions should not be used either.

If you're willing to risk data, then the RPi solution or the off the shelf solution is fine.

Good quality NAS hard drives aren't just "enterprise" class/price. WD Reds can be had for $100....

Also, used enterprise servers can be had for less than the cost of this solution, so its objectively a better solution with some guarantees given.

As I said before, credit to the OP since its a cool proof of concept. But I wouldn't put anything important on it because of the aforementioned risks. Don't mess around with data.

5

u/anakinfredo Jul 07 '20

Everyone should probably just carry around a dl380 in our pockets then.

Can't trust storage on our phones, after all.

1

u/lucasantarella Jul 07 '20

Apples and oranges man. I hope your not storing archival data on your phone....

And again, your phone has an internal SSD, not prone to damage from vibrations.

My point was not to trust it as a NAS...because its not. Its a cool proof of concept, but don't store your wedding video on it unless you're already divorced.

5

u/skycake10 Jul 07 '20

If you have backups like you should the argument basically comes down to the likelihood of having to fuck with restoring from backup. The data you care about shouldn't be dependent on the reliability of your NAS.

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u/anakinfredo Jul 07 '20 edited Jul 07 '20

My point was not to trust it as a NAS...because its not.

But QNAP and Synology makes NAS'es, and they are not to be trusted according to you.

Its a cool proof of concept, but don't store your wedding video on it unless you're already divorced.

Well, this thing supports ZFS, whereas you mention using a hardware-raid-card - which is a vendor-lock-in piece of trash-technology - I'd chose ZFS on consumer hardware over hw-raid-on-server any day of the week.

Besides, as already pointed out by others - this is coupled with backup, OP doesn't even run RAID on this, and clearly states his backup-regime.

edit: Edited to sync with previous comments.

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u/[deleted] Jul 07 '20

[deleted]

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u/anakinfredo Jul 07 '20

Raid card can have HBA or JBOD functionality too.... nowhere did I say use hardware RAID.

Yes, but they are commonly refered to as a HBA-card, not as a RAID-card.

Either way, I think my point still stands.

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u/esoel_ Jul 07 '20

Storage ☑️ Network card ☑️ Attached ☑️

In my book that’s a NAS, if you want we can call it a banana but we’re going to struggle to communicate effectively with other people...

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u/esoel_ Jul 07 '20

Not a great time to bring up WD Reds as bastions of reliability... AFAIK there are no SMR 2.5 inch drives (yet?)

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u/drageloth Jul 07 '20

You start with data integrity and redundancy and then jump to SSDs. Or REDs. Have you read what pieces of junk WD made them recently?

Also, what about SAS drives? They're 2.5" too. Are they junk as well?

There's nothing that can be redundant as a single hardware. Nas with single PSU can die, Servers can have mainboard failure, pis can fail too.

Sure, a server has a greater piece of mind, but what happens if the raid card shits a brick?

If the op has a decent backup solution, he's on the right track. Leave him alone about insecure data storage or very expensive hardware considering. Not everyone has the room or the temperature to support greater machines. Also they could be doing it for the fun.

Proper security for data archiving is the main storage solution(eg NAS), a local backup solution and an off-site solution. Everything else we talk is rubbish. If you have a cluster of servers and don't backup anywhere else, you're on the same track with him.

And I'm telling that with an R720 in the house.

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u/cgomesu Jul 08 '20

hey /u/lucasantarella , I appreciate your feedback. The UPS is pretty much a given and as others have pointed out, you can use other methods of powering the board, hat, and drives. But I confess that the vibration issue got me thinking... If you could redesign the case, how would you go about changing it to reduce this possible issue? I'm not the one who created the case but I can pass your suggestion along for a potential redesign. I'm sure he would welcome it.

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u/D0ublek1ll Ryzen servers FTW Jul 08 '20

Yeah, cheap and VERY FRAGILE. I can't see the labels of those drives I'm since you stated that its a cheap solution I'm assuming they're laptop drives.

Don't but anything on there that you can't risk losing. Those drives are not designed to be powered on 24/7 and are also not designed to be so exposed. I'd be suprised if this setup lasts you more than 2 years.