NAS - build or buy?

[ysu]

Guys, opinions please!

I'm now really itching to get a NAS, and I just can't decide...

Here are the options:
1) BYO (build your own, this time ), install FreeNAS, cost of a 6-bay system: $280 (put it together in mwave, based on this article describing building a cheap NAS

2) Buy. I'm eyeing the Synology DiskStation DS414 4-bay unit. It's bit more pricey at $570. It's reportedly a very nice NAS, quick, agile, you name it.


Now, the obvious differences in hardware:
The BYO option has advantages:
better cpu, ram, capacity (6 vs 4 bays) - but bigger and potentially noisier (altho it can be easily upgraded with aftermarket fans & coolers, etc, but the cost can blow out)
Also it'll probably draw more juice (but I'm not sure on this one)
Another is the versatility; if a part fails, you can replace it fairly easily; or expand the ram if you need to...

But the even more obvious difference is the software, and the synology unit wins this hands down.
The BYO option needs to be configured, and that's probably a fairly lengthy process.


I'd like to ask your opinions, objective & subjective ones, what do you think is better and why?
Or simply: which one would you do and why?
What have I missed? (e.g. if you have a freeNAS system, what are the advantages/disadvantages of it in your experience?)

Thanks

[nutty]

Build your own! Use unRaid http://lime-technology.com/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[wabbit]

Without a doubt for me I'd buy one. I've got many colleagues and friends that have tried to "push" me down the build route, for me they don't offer the better solution (your milage my vary, depending on what you really want from a NAS).

So far I've had a Thecus 10TB and a Synology 20TB NAS and if I had to buy again, I'd easily choose Synology.

[ysu]

...Use unRaid ...

Well, thanks but ... It's essentially jbod with a parity drive isn't it?
I'm planning raid 1 or raid 10, I think unRaid would be a step back from there. (my biggest concern is data loss)

And why do you vouch for the build option if I may ask? (i.e. what's your reasoning or is it just the warm fuzzy feeling of achievement? )


Thanks wabs, good to hear a tested recommendation

[norbs]

Without a doubt for me I'd buy one. I've got many colleagues and friends that have tried to "push" me down the build route, for me they don't offer the better solution (your milage my vary, depending on what you really want from a NAS).

So far I've had a Thecus 10TB and a Synology 20TB NAS and if I had to buy again, I'd easily choose Synology.

What is the cost of those 2 if you dont mind me asking?

I built mine purely based on cost and not wanting to be tied into a manufacturer.

I got one of those HP boxes and run the OS off a USB stick with 4x2TB drives in it. It isn't everyones cup of tea, but works for me.

[wabbit]

What is the cost of those 2 if you dont mind me asking?

Good question, the Thecus was many, many moons ago so prices change over time. I think I paid $1300 (7 bay, "entry level enterprise" model), years later I saw the slightly upgraded model for $800-ish. I ended up selling mine for 50% of my buy price because it was packed full of drives (that I didn't want) and he got a lot of data too.

The Synology (8 bay, expandable to 18 bays), is newer but also superseded now which I think cost me $900-$1000, somewhere there anyway.

And yes, building purely based on cost I think it's always going to be cheaper to either build-your-own or go with that HP micro server thingy.

[nutty]

...Use unRaid ...

Well, thanks but ... It's essentially jbod with a parity drive isn't it?
I'm planning raid 1 or raid 10, I think unRaid would be a step back from there. (my biggest concern is data loss)

And why do you vouch for the build option if I may ask? (i.e. what's your reasoning or is it just the warm fuzzy feeling of achievement? )


Thanks wabs, good to hear a tested recommendation

Guess I should start with, what are your goals? are you planning on running anything on the box as well? do you care about flexibility?

The guys at my old job all switched to unRaid and love it, it gives great flexibility.. the problem is its prob a bit slow for what im doing..

My current home setup is.

HP N40L running 5x2TB drives on Ubuntu with software Raid 5.. it holds all my downloads and runs Sickbeard/SabNZBD
G8 HP Microserver running ESX-i 5.5 with only a SSD Virtual Flash.. the main storage is via an NFS share on the N40L.

I have it running 4x Windows Servers, 1 x F5 LTM, 3 x MobileIron test boxes and a Sophos UTM firewall appliance.

Long term I want to replace the N40L with something that can manage two drive failures, not sure what tho

[ysu]

I don't know what I want to do with it, as I don't know what I can do with it, nor if it is easily doable nor if it's really useful.

All I want for a starters is file storage that I can share with the family, maybe media playing (but as I haven't tried this I don't know what's possible and how it works together with other computers/devices/telly?) and possibly some torrents to run overnight.

I want it to be quiet, and low power consumption (altho I don't know why; electricity costs peanuts here). And expandable, as only god knows how much it'll hold eventually. For starters we need about 1TB space, so I'll probably opt for a raid 1 on 2x3TB WD red or something.

But as I said, I want a really safe solution, which is why I prefer a raid 1 or 0+1. Although it's unlikely that we'll ever be able to actually make use of the speeds provided by a raid 10 so raid 1 is perfectly fine I reckon.

[Quincy]

I wish I knew what you guys are talking about. . . sounds rad!

I'm assuming it's some form of home network system, allowing many computers to access one large system??? or am I off the mark completely?

[wabbit]

You're bang on

[ysu]

Yep, NAS = network attached storage.
It's essentially an always-on server (one computer) that has all your files on it (that you want to keep & share, eg pictures, videos, music...).

The primary aim is to be accessible for anyone with any device within your home network.

[nutty]

I think unRaid is the way to go.
Remember its not striped, its just single disks with a parity disk

A marginal failure, means a particular spot on the disk or portion of a file has failed, but the rest of that disk is still readable.
A catastrophic failure is one where the entire disk has failed and is unreadable.

In a striped array (i.e. RAID5) lose one disk to either type of failure and the array still functions, using parity.
In a striped array (i.e. RAID5) lose two disks to either type of failure and the array goes offline, and ALL data is unreachable, including data on the failed drives and the non-failed drives. Potentially, a (very expensive) service can recover some data, but you'll have to ship them ALL the drives (and usually, a complete extra set to send you the data back on).

On unRAID, lose one disk to either type of failure and the array still functions, using parity.
On unRAID, lose two disks to either type of failure and the array fails, and the array goes offline. When this happens there are three important differences from striped RAID:

1) the unaffected disks can be mounted and accessed individually, without data loss.
2) if either or both of the failed disks' failures were marginal (i.e. only affecting part of the disk or files), the marginally failed drive(s) can usually be mounted and the unaffected portions of the disk can be accessed just fine, and the data copied off to a safe location.
3) any catastrophically failed disk can be sent to a (less expensive) recovery service and the data on that single disk recovered. (Note, this does not apply to the parity drive, for which recovery is generally not necessary and not possible, since the data can not be recovered to the same sectors).

The one problem running most typical RAIDS is you need same size drives, unraid your parity just needs to be the size of your biggest drive, so in yourcase I would buy 1x3TB drive + whatever you want... then just keep upgrading as you need more space.

Ive basically talked myself into moving to unraid.. haha.. dammit

[ysu]

The issue as I see it is in unRaid you lose one data drive = the data lost.
Edit: you mention data recovery services...have you checked the success rate and prices at all? I reckon it's out of reach for the home user.
So you're basically risking some of your data on a single-disk failure - which does happen, and the likelyhood increases linearly with the number of drives you got.

You have the parity, but you can't re-claw the data from that, can you? JBOD with a parity disk. So what's the point? Why not use the disks as-is ?

I've never talked about getting raid 5 or raid 6.
I want raid 1 or 10.
In raid 1 or 10 you can lose a drive and still have the data. And that's what I want. The chances of two drives giving up at the same time is minimal.

[nutty]

No that's not right, you need to have two FULL disk failures to lose data, the parity is split across all the drives.

As it says,
"lose one disk to either type of failure and the array still functions, using parity."
Its only if you lose two consecutive disks that you have to go down the path, but what its trying to say is in a typical raid 5 if you lose two drives all your data is gone.. in raid 1+0

Losing two disks is a rare thing, but ive seen it with a batch of drives.. when I brought drives from my NAS i got two from one shop and three from another to make sure I got a different batch.
If your only looking at running 2 drives, you may as well go Raid 1.. but lets say you went 2 x 3TB you then have a hard limit of 3TB and to get 6TB you need to buy another two drives and move from Raid 1 to Raid 1+0..

unRaid allows you to buy two drives now, then slide another in and get that whole drive worth of space later

[wabbit]

Fark in all my years I've never lost two drives at once, actually I've never lost one. That's over 20 disks in total and god knows how many years. Not to say failures don't happen

[ysu]

ah ok, great; so I mis-understood the whole thing Thanks for clearing that up.
Well, in that case unRaid is on the table...still can't decide the hardware, though

Although from what I read, the better cpu & more ram of the home-build maybe a sizeable advantage if using unraid...

You're lucky, wabs. I've lost drives, and I've lost data as well due to some small drive issue (eg one whole DVD's worth of my music has gone bye-bye lately)

[wabbit]

I've always gone down the route of mimicking what my work would do (within reason of course, I'm a "home user" and not a massive corporation). With that reasoning I've bought good (great if you will) hardware both in terms of device and drives and used them in a RAID5 config, hot spare if you feel the need but realistically the NAS (either self built or off the shelf) will alert you to the failure and you can sort out the correct solution from there.

Of course RAID isn't a backup, it's a form of redundancy and therefor no matter what you'll want your critical stuff copied/backed up somewhere else. We're not at the stage of creating a Disaster Recovery plan are we? :P

[markus]

I have a Drobo.

I have mostly been very happy with it.

One day the power-unit failed.... Guess how much easier that is to replace with a "build your own" compared to a store bought one. All the local stockists sold "not available", ordering direct from Drobo was seriously expensive so in the end I got a similar power brick from ebay and an adapter from China. So consider how expensive a week or two without your NAS is going to be.

[ysu]

Wabs: no, not a full failover/DR plan, just a NAS, thank you

Markus: thanks, yes, this is a good point; it's always easier to source replacement parts for the home-build I guess...

I'm leaning towards the home build now...also for the fun of it....assuming it's heaps of fun to spend a lot of time learning the tricks of FreeNAS

[DexterPunk]

I wish I knew what you guys are talking about. . . sounds rad!

Hahaha!! Same


Sent from Han Solo using TK-421's phone.

[dvestate]

Interesting to see where this goes, been planning a HP mini server build pre June 30 for a tax write off but nobody has dropped the price to "sale" numbers.

Couple of guys at work are telling me just to buy one and save the effort

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[Sarsippius]

I'd say for the majority of people just by a Synology NAS with the number of drives you want and be done with it, this coming from someone who built their own and for good reasons.
Unless you have a specific need that is not met by a Synology then it mostly comes down to cost. While building your own is significantly cheaper this can mostly be negated once you factor in your own time required to build and to learn and setup the software.

[ysu]

I've made a decision to try and build one - for the dubious fun (let's call it learning experience) and the freedom of choice with software.
I've ordered the parts 2 days ago. Thanks for all the inputs, gents, and by all means we can keep the conversation open

[Sarsippius]

Yeah nothing wrong with that, I built my first one partly as an exercise in learning a bit of linux. So what did you buy and what software are you going to use?

Mine actually gave me a bit of a fright last night just after I posted. Hadn't done a package update for a while, zfs on linux must have been updated a few days ago but only some of the required packages installed. After a reboot suddenly the whole zpool (think raid array) was gone, managed to get it sorted today but it gave me a few anxious moments

[nutty]

Whats your build list ysu?