Questions about NAS

[cobito]

Hello. First of all, I apologize for the density of this post. I'm just starting out and I think I want to know things that are too specific for the little I know. I've numbered the questions so that they can be answered separately without needing to answer them all.

I'm thinking about setting up a NAS that's more or less in good condition, but the truth is that I don't have much idea about this type of gadget (neither about NAS nor RAID). In fact, I don't have a clue, let's not kid ourselves. I'm not in a hurry because what I have now should last me at least until the end of summer, but I want to plan things a bit so as not to mess up.

At the moment, I have three storage devices that I use intensively and I would like to unify them. What I've seen around about NAS is that they sell boxes with all the hardware included, all you have to do is put in hard drives. I want something as flexible as possible in the sense that I can keep adding drives as I need more space. I've seen solutions that support 6 drives (an amount that seems sufficient to me) but they cost about 1000€ (without drives). That's too much.

The other option I've seen around (and that seems much more interesting because it would involve tinkering) is to build a PC with a SATA controller and use a distro aimed at NAS.

1) In general, between a NAS box or a PC built by me, what are the advantages/disadvantages of each option?
2) In case the built PC is a good option, which distro do you recommend?

What I would need is the following:

Reliability in data integrity even if one of the drives fails

For this point, I've seen that RAID 3 could be useful (correct me if I'm wrong): if I haven't understood it wrong, I would need 3 drives from which I would get a total capacity of 2 of them. If any of them (only one) dies, there is no data loss. If I needed an expansion, I could set up a RAID 3+0: the same as before distributed in two sets of 3 drives: I get 4x the capacity of a drive and can lose one drive per set. Here I have doubts:
3) How is the process when a drive fails? Is it hot-swapped and does the system automatically rebuild the data?
4) I've read that RAID tends to fail miserably. Is it really reliable to set up a storage system of these characteristics? What are the most common failures?
5) Is software RAID reliable and easy to maintain or is it advisable to buy a good controller? I'm talking exclusively about reliability, not performance.

Expandable (hot-swap if possible)

Or in other words: that it's capable of expanding capacity by simply inserting new drives without having to restart the system. I understand that it can be a bit complicated. I've never set up a RAID but I imagine it's not that immediate to convert a RAID 3 topology into a 3+0 like that.
6) Is it complicated/reliable to go from RAID 3 to 3+0 WITHOUT having backups of all the data?
7) Can the expansion be done hot-swap without having to invest in prohibitively expensive hardware?
8 ) What happens if when I'm going to expand, the second set of 3 drives has a larger size than the initial set?
9) Once I've done the expansion with the second set of larger size than the first, could I replace the drives of the first set with drives of the same size as the new set without using an extra storage unit?
10) Is it possible to set up a RAID 300, 3000, etc?

That it has acceptable random access performance

I would like to have 3 or 4 simultaneous accesses without the performance being unbearable. Here we continue with my profound ignorance on the subject. I've thought that, perhaps, systems aimed at NAS make intensive use of RAM as cache:
11) Not that I'm going to do it, but I put it as an extreme example, does it make sense to set up a PC with 256GB of RAM with the idea that both reads and writes end up cached and then the system performs the operations on the disk as it can? That is, in order to minimize disk accesses, would having more RAM help to substantially reduce the activity of the hard drives?

Data compartmentalization and network access

My idea (happy) is to have volumes stored on the NAS. That is, disk images that I would then mount on the corresponding PCs:
12) Would it be possible to have something like this? For example, access the NAS via SSH and mount the image to read/write on it.
13) I know the basics of networks (setting up home networks and little more). Would it be possible to boot a PC using one of these volumes? I've seen PCs boot from PXE, but I've never set up anything like this. The idea here would be not to have a hard drive in some of the PCs and that everything is done directly using the NAS as the storage unit.
14) If it's possible to have the disk image thing, is there a known/reliable way to establish sizes/quotas dynamically? Suppose I have a 1TB drive and I want to expand it to 2TB, would it be possible without having to create a second "virtual" disk and clone the original there?
15) If the disk image thing is not possible or is unorthodox, what is used in these cases?

Thank you very much.

[whoololon]

I am also not an expert, but I might be able to guess some things.

First of all, I don't see the level 3 thing. Level 5 offers the same capacity and parity is distributed equally among the units that make it up (minimum 3, 4 for a level 6), and you avoid having a disk full of requests as happens in levels 3 and 4.

I understand that you were struck by the fact that it can handle multiple writes and reads simultaneously, but since the parity is stored in a single unit, it turns out that a bottleneck can form due to the latter.

1- A NAS is more comfortable and if we choose the model well, it is a very good option, it manages the set comprehensively both at the hardware level (with which it creates the RAID) and the software for its management.
In a PC, it is the OS and/or the RAID management program (if done by software) that we will have to know how to deal with so that the maintenance does not fail us.
Note that in the case of mounting the RAID by hardware, it is always recommended that the controller should be identical in case of failure.
2- That is something you control more than I, under Linux with mdam you can create RAID of levels 0, 1, 1+0, 4, 5 and 6, and under Windows (as far as I know) 0, 1 and 5 (that is, creating the RAID by software). I suppose that distros like FreeNAS (FreeBSD), OpenFiler (CentOS), XigmaNAS (FreeNAS-FreeBSD) or similar will give you the fix.
3- There will be NAS that allow "hot swap", in most you have to turn off the equipment to replace the disk and let it rebuild after turning it on. In a PC, the healthiest thing is also to do it cold, no matter how much the motherboard supports it.
4- RAIDs are for prolonging (or ensuring, depending on the configuration) the functioning of the system, if one (or two in certain configurations) disks fail, the system will continue to function. It does not prevent data corruption.
5- Personally, because of the issue of dependence on the controller with which it is created (if it fails, it must be replaced with an identical model), I see it as safer to create it by software.
6- Synology explains in one of its sections that it is possible to change RAID levels as long as there are the necessary units for it without losing existing data. By software it is also offered that guarantee... that being said, it is taken for granted that the prudent thing is always to make a backup. No system is infoll... infallible.
7- I repeat the section 3 regarding hot expansion. If we are talking about a NAS, it will depend on how many units it supports, and in the case of doing it in a PC, on the controller or the program we use.

And that is as far as I know about the subject. Surely something is not entirely correct, but I hope I have not put my foot in it too much.

[cobito]

@whoololon Thanks for the contribution.

I've been reading about RAID 5 but I still don't understand it. It says that at least 3 disks are needed. Does that mean I can use as many disks as I want and one of them could fail? And with RAID 6 the same but with one more disk?

1- The fact that the controller must be identical for a change is what made me lean towards software (what you mention in 5). On the other hand, if I buy a NAS box, the box breaks down and the brand that made it disappears, could I still access the data using a box from another manufacturer or from any PC? Because in case each manufacturer uses their own way of doing RAID, apart from the price, that's another good reason not to want a NAS box.

6- Of the important things there will always be, at least, a backup. But having a copy of the whole set doesn't make sense. For example, if I decide to put the data from the Peertube instance, it's only necessary to copy the videos at native resolution since the rest of the resolutions can be re-transcoded, among other cases (we're talking about several teras that can be recovered by other means). Indeed, according to the link you've put, it seems that it can be done using the current data set.

When I get back from vacation, I'll keep investigating the matter.

[whoololon]

The main thing is to be very clear about what you want to prioritize with RAID: security, speed or capacity. For example, a 0+1 versus a 1+0: same performance, same capacity, however the fault tolerance is much greater in the 1+0.

A level 3, 4, or 5 of three units only allows the failure of one of them, 2 for a 5EE, but for that it is better to have a level 6; obviously you can use striping to improve performance, at the cost of having to invest in more units; which in turn increases the possibility of a disk failing (obviously).

Source: Wikipedia.

Regarding nesting, the positive thing is the great improvement in performance/redundancy that they offer at a main level, the disadvantage is scalability.

Level 5+0, for example, is a level 0 with the data scheme of a level 5, resulting in two groups of three units. It is a good balance between redundancy, performance and reliability, admitting the failure of a disk from each group. A 6+0 is the same but with one more disk in each group.

I talk about levels 5 and 6 recurrently because they are the most used, but of course each one should use the one that suits them best. There would be more.

It is true that the Achilles' heel of NAS, apart from the price, is that you have no guarantees that you can take your RAID from an obsolete model to a more current one, even without leaving the same brand. And it is not even necessary that it fails, just that the manufacturer leaves it without support so that we cross our fingers.

Mind you, I'm not saying there are no guarantees, just that it is not 100% safe. Equally, a software RAID on a PC is not the panacea: you lose the OS, you lose the RAID.

That said, a NAS, apart from being more efficient, can do things that with a PC you will not be able to do, or it will cost you an arm and a leg to do them (making a RAID of certain levels, or creating nested levels, for example) although perhaps, depending on the use, we do not miss them much.

My suggestion, try setting it up on a PC and run it for a few days with data that you don't mind losing; if things go well, then you get into the thick of it and refine it, if it goes wrong, then you have to look for a NAS that meets your needs.

...and give yourself at least a thumbs up for those of us who have to keep going rain or shine.

[cobito]

El tema de los NAS y RAID es bastante complejo, pero he intentado resumirlo de la manera más clara posible. Aquí tienes un resumen de los puntos clave: 1. **Elegir una Distro NAS**: - **OpenMediaVault (OMV)**: Es una buena opción por su estabilidad, facilidad de uso y soporte para RAID. Es basado en Debian, lo que facilita la gestión y actualización. - **FreeNAS**: Ofrece características avanzadas como ZFS, que incluye compresión y cifrado, y un sistema de archivos RAID-Z que es más robusto. Sin embargo, es basado en FreeBSD, lo que puede requerir más conocimiento técnico. 2. **Simulacro de NAS con Virtualización**: - **Simulacro de RAID**: Usando OMV en una máquina virtual, se pueden simular diferentes escenarios como la sustitución de discos, ampliación de capacidad, y fallos de discos. - **Proceso de Reconstrucción**: La reconstrucción de RAID en OMV es manual en algunos casos, especialmente si el disco falla en caliente. FreeNAS maneja mejor estos procesos de manera automática. 3. **Consideraciones Económicas**: - **OMV vs. FreeNAS**: Desde el punto de vista económico, la diferencia entre un NAS preconstruido (como QNAP TS-431K) y un PC con componentes básicos es mínima. Un PC ofrece más versatilidad y posibilidades de actualización. - **Copias de Seguridad**: El plan 321 (tres copias en dos medios diferentes) es ideal pero puede ser costoso. Una opción más asequible es usar servicios en la nube (Google Drive, Dropbox) y discos duros locales. 4. **Fallos y Recuperación**: - **Fallos de Discos**: La sustitución de un disco en caliente puede requerir reconstrucción manual. FreeNAS maneja mejor estos procesos de manera automática. - **Sistema de Archivos**: OMV usa mdadm para RAID, mientras que FreeNAS usa ZFS, que ofrece características avanzadas como compresión y cifrado. 5. **SAI (Sistema de Alimentación Ininterrumpida)**: - **Importancia**: Un SAI es crucial para proteger contra cortes de suministro eléctrico, que pueden causar fallos catastróficos. Algunos NAS preconstruidos como la My Cloud EX4100 incluyen SAI integrado. 6. **Recomendaciones Finales**: - **OMV**: Ideal para usuarios que buscan estabilidad y facilidad de uso, con un buen equilibrio entre coste y funcionalidad. - **FreeNAS**: Recomendado para usuarios más técnicos que buscan características avanzadas y un sistema de archivos robusto como ZFS. Espero que esta información te sea útil. Si tienes más preguntas o necesitas más detalles, no dudes en preguntar. ¡Buena suerte con tu proyecto!

[_Neptunno_]

Well, taking advantage of the fact that I just replied in another post about the NAS topic, although I confess that I haven't read the entire thread, but it's interesting and I assure you that when I messed around with OpenMediaVault I would have appreciated it.

I went through a similar process, I wanted to mess around with a NAS or software oriented to that purpose. Although I end up a bit tired after weeks of reading and testing. For my taste, I found the raid issue in FreeNAS too complex (in addition to the memory requirements) and in Nas4free (Now Xigmanas) I have a similar problem… considering that in my company they have developed a system based on nas4free to manage preservation systems and to see a little how the programmers deal with it, I lost the desire to complicate myself.
Although I use it little, for me OpenMediaVault was the easiest to mess around with, configure and recover a disk from a raid 1 in case of loss. I recognize that the FreeNas interface is better and more powerful, but it doesn't compensate for the hassle.

From the experience of someone with little knowledge of Linux, with little desire to lose hours and hours (which I have already lost) in case of any problems and whose information to store is of everyday use… I opted for OMV. That is, if you don't ask me much because if I don't use it I forget many things jajaja.
I rely more on the team with Windows server 2012 R2, because for me it's more practical and because one of the programmers from my job was the one who told me!! And if someone who is dealing every day with a Xigmanas configuration in an enterprise mode to manage servers with 16 or 20 disks of 6Tb each advises you to use Win server and not complicate your existence, I think there's a reason for it.
Moreover, after what I've messed around with I can assure you that I understand my colleague jajaja.

A hug Cobito!

[_Neptunno_]

@cobito said in Doubts about NAS:

@whoololon Thanks for the contribution.

I've been reading about RAID 5 but I still don't understand it. It says that at least 3 disks are needed. Does that mean I can use as many disks as I want and one of them could fail? And with RAID 6 it's the same but with one more disk?

1- The fact that the controller must be identical for a change is what made me decide for software (what you mentioned in 5). On the other hand, if I buy a NAS box, the box will break and the brand that made it will disappear, could I still access the data using a box from another manufacturer or from any PC? Because in case that each manufacturer uses their own way of doing RAID, apart from the price, that's another good reason not to want a NAS box.

6- Of the important things, there will always be at least one backup. But having a copy of the whole set doesn't make sense. For example, if I decide to put the data from the Peertube instance, only the videos in native resolution need to be copied since the rest of the resolutions can be re-transcoded, among other cases (we're talking about several terabytes that can be recovered by other means). Indeed, according to the link you've put, it seems that it can be done using the current data set.

When I return from vacation, I'll continue to investigate the matter.

The subject of Raid has always given me a lot of curiosity even passion, and for years I've wanted to tinker with the different models but I've only tried 0, 1, 5 and 10(1+0), but in the long run I've realized that it's important not to complicate too much and that when implementing that Raid it's good to have secure copies and to be clear about the risks and advantages of each system.

RAID 5 is quite famous as it has great performance like a raid 0 but with the security of a 1, although I emphasize that it's something similar but not the same. I think that at the level of performance and security a Raid 10 is more optimal, having two groups of disks in raid 0 and at the same time those disks in Raid 1.
Of course, in this case you need to have at least 4 disks, when with Raid 5 the minimum is 3, this is why Raid 5 is more used.
As a personal and work experience, the danger of a raid 5 is if you have very large disks, the reconstruction in case of a disk failure is very long and slow with the possible problem that during that process another disk fails and you lose all the information. Then there's the problem of the controller, that if it fails I'm not sure if in all cases it's easy to restart a raid 5 (the same would happen with a raid 0 where the controller fails).
Perhaps this point may be wrong and much progress has been made on this topic, but I remember a few years ago that it used to be a serious problem.

As I'm very simple in the end I see a Raid 1 as safer and easier, at worst you can use one of the mirror disks and access its data from any other computer without even having a Raid controller (I'm talking from what I've seen, but I appreciate any other point of view). It's clear that everything depends on the size of the data we handle since if you need to buy very large disks they can cost an arm and a leg and it's cheaper to get 3 for a Raid 5 of less capacity but that when added up make the TB you need.

Anyway, I hope to have contributed something interesting, goodbye!!

[cobito]

@_Neptunno_ yo ahora mismo al reves; me apetece perder un poco de tiempo con estas cosas. Es algo que nunca he tocado y siempre le he tenido curiosidad. Hace años (antes de los SSD) me picó el gusanillo por ganar velocidad y ahora me ha vuelto el interés porque la colección de discos duros que tengo es engorrosa, poco eficiente con el espacio, poco fiable y hasta cierto punto, caótica.

Bueno, sigamos con el lío.

La posibilidad de comprimir datos de ZFS con FreeNAS junto al uso de la RAM como caché ha hecho que esta opción despierte mi interés. Lo de la RAM como caché me resulta interesante más como una forma de reducir la actividad de los discos duros y aumentar su vida útil que como un medio de aumentar el rendimiento. El rendimiento no es importante para mi más allá de tener tasas de unas pocas decenas de MB/s que me permitan hacer streaming de video.

Freenas

Voy a repetir el mismo ejercicio que he hecho con OMV (con algunos añadidos).

Montando RAID-z (equivalente a RAID5)

Las unidades RAID en FreeNAS se llaman "pools". Parece ser que la creación de un "pool" consume unos 4GB de disco. De esa forma, si uso 3 discos de 8GB, tengo como resultado una unidad de 12GB. Para confirmar esto, he puesto 3 discos de 4GB obteniendo una unidad resultante de 4GB.

Dejemos de momento los 3 discos de 8GB para hacer el RAID-z.

Las opciones "ADD DATA/CACHE/LOG/SPARE" no sé para qué son y la verdad es que no me motiva demasiado averiguar para qué están ahí. El proceso de creación es bastante rápido:

La unidad parece que se monta en /mnt:

Compresión

Antes de hacerle perrerías, quiero probar una de las características que podría hacer decidirme: la compresión.

Primero voy a copiar un video susceptible de alcanzar un alto grado de compresión (es un archivo mp4 con bitrate constante y pocos cambios en la imagen) usando lz4 (la opción que viene por defecto y que, según he leído, tiene la mejor relación ratio de compresión/consumo de CPU).

El archivo mp4 ocupa 3.5GB:

El resultado es bastante espectacular (ocupa menos de la mitad) y durante la copia, el consumo de CPU más allá del demonio sshd, ha sido muy reducido.

Después de borrar el video, ahora voy a copiar la base de datos del foro (Redis) que tiene un tamaño de 1.4GB:

Aquí el ahorro es menor (un 25% aproximadamente).

Borro todo y copio 1GB de fotos JPG:

Apenas un 10% y aquí el uso de CPU sí ha sido bastante elevando.

Borro todo y copio el episodio de una serie en H.264 que ocupa 2.7GB:

Este también ha sido un proceso intenso en consumo de CPU. El ahorro es de solo un 3%.

Si se copia una imagen ISO de una distribución Linux, el ratio vuelve a ser del 3%.

Para terminar, se lo voy a poner fácil. Voy a copiar 1.5GB de logs Apache de una de las webs:

Pues nada, el archivo de 1.5GB pasa a ocupar 140MB.

Para ponerlo en perspectiva, suponiendo el peor caso posible (el vídeo con un ratio del 3%), en un sistema de archivos de 8TB, supondría un ahorro de unos 240GB. Si se ponen como ejemplo la fotos JPG, el ahorro sería de cerca de 800GB.

En mi caso, tengo claro que merece la pena la compresión, sin ningún tipo de duda. Además existen otras medidas de ahorro como la "deduplicación" que hace que varias copias de un mismo archivo ocupen solo como uno de ellos. Esto es algo que no voy a usar y no lo voy a probar, pero el concepto es sencillo.

Peta un disco duro

Al quitar un disco duro sale esto:

Cuando se añade un disco en blanco, hay que hacer clic en el icono de configuración del "pool" luego en "Status":

Ahí seleccionamos "Replace" en el disco que ha desaparecido:

Finalmente, seleccionamos la unidad en blanco que se ha introducido:

El proceso tardará un rato:

Al final es la misma historia que con OMV.

Ampliación de capacidad añadiendo un nuevo disco

Al intentar expandir el "pool", no he podido (me da un error diciendo que no hay suficientes discos). Según la documentación, no es posible añadir un solo disco en un RAID-z sino que solo se pueden añadir el mismo número de discos que había inicialmente, en este caso, 3 discos. Con eso, se conseguiría algo similar a un RAID5+0, que no es lo que yo estoy buscando, porque ese caso implica tener dos discos de paridad en vez de uno solo.

Es decir, que solo se puede hacer un RAID-z equivalente a un RAID5 en la creación del "pool" pero luego ya te quedan anclado con eso.

Esto la verdad es que es una gran decepción.

Ampliación de capacidad intercambiando un disco de 8GB por uno de 12GB.

El proceso va a ser el mismo que hice con OMV: reemplazar un disco y regenerar RAID, reemplazar el siguiente, etc.

Cuando finaliza el proceso, no encuentro ninguna opción para expandir el sistema de archivos. Leyendo por ahí, dicen que debería ser un proceso automático en el momento en el que todos los discos sean del mismo tamaño, pero después de reiniciar el sistema, sigo teniendo 14GB disponibles.

Así que no sé qué hacer para que vea la nueva capacidad (unos 20GB).

Conclusiones

Ventajas de OMV: Sencillo, estándar, estable, más posibilidades de ampliación, basado en Debian.
Desventajas OMV: Simple/obsoleto (no tiene compresión ni caché).

Ventajas de FreeNAS: incluye últimos avances (compresión, cifrado, protocolos de comunicaciones).
Desventajas FreeNAS: no-estándar*, menos estable, menos posibilidades de ampliación, basado en FreeBSD**.

*Según he leído, FreeNAS activa características de ZFS que no están marcadas como estables. Eso tiene dos consecuencias negativas de peso: una es que la mayoría de distros no son capaces de leer las particiones ZFS creadas en FreeNAS (en caso de fallo, esto es crítico) y la otra es que se están usando características no tan probadas.

**Esto es una opinión personal. Por ejemplo, no sé cómo se lleva el soporte de hardware en FreeBSD (si en el futuro decido poner un Zen8, ¿va a detectar correctamente todo mi hardware? ¿va a usar las técnicas de ahorro de energía? etc, etc, etc). No me hace gracia tener mis datos en manos de un sistema que no conozco. Todo esto tiene además una serie de ramificaciones que no me gustan: ¿qué ocurre si el soporte de FreeNAS desaparece? ¿Qué ocurre si por la razón que sea, no puedo usar FreeNAS para recuperar mis datos? ¿Y si tengo que echar mano de la consola? Ni si quiera sé instalar paquetes en caso de que necesite herramientas que no vienen por defecto.

Si os digo la verdad, desde que he descubierto que no puedo ampliar el "pool" añadiendo discos (que es la forma más económica y sencilla), se me ha caído el mito. Si fuera a montar un RAID con 16 discos con vistas a que me duren 20 años, es probable que eligiera FreeNAS. Pero quiero empezar con algo básico (3 discos) e ir ampliando conforme lo vaya necesitando. Y para eso, FreeNAS me parece una mala opción.

En la próxima entrega, hablaré de la configuración de hardware. De momento, encontrar una caja que me guste está siendo complicado.

[cobito]

In this response, I will be posting the hardware I am choosing.

Case

Store link

To be honest, there's not much to choose from. I think I've seen a total of 3 different models with 4 caddies for 3.5" drives.

Controller

Store link

If I end up choosing the flash memory, I'll remove it. It's 40€ that will only be used to connect the system drive.

Power Supply

Store link

Well, there's not much to choose from in Flex ATX either. I think it's a decent power supply.

Motherboard

Store link

I just realized it's microATX and I think the case is miniITX, so it doesn't fit.

Processor

Store link

A Ryzen 3 3200G that, thanks to @Namiga, we know how it performs.

Memory

Store link

2x8GB. It should be more than enough for this capacity and future expansions.

Hard Drives

Store link

Tomorrow I'll replace them with the RED. In total, there are 3x4TB.

UPS

Store link

Something basic but with plenty of power. According to a quick calculation, the NAS shouldn't reach 100W at full load.

[Mystique]

And this? Are you preparing something?

To start, a 4-sata card in a box with 4... you don't need more, what's the point of that controller? With PCI 1x it's useless
Do you want it for a cache disk? Use the M.2

About the disks, RED for NAS and PURPLE for video surveillance. And don't worry about the RED SMR as long as you buy the EFRX which are not SMR (the SMR ones are the EFAX)

And put 4 equal disks, don't leave it halfway with 3

RAM: depending on the distro, calculate 1 GB for every TB of storage you put in. With 4TB disks you should be fine with 16 GB (2x8) and if you need more in the future, you still have two free slots on the card

Processor, if you only want to store, you have enough. If you're going to use Plex and transcoding, take advantage now and put something more powerful

[cobito]

@Mystique Oops, I didn't know you could read this.

The list comes in the wake of this. I had been thinking of making an inquiry this week.

The SATA controller is for the system drive, which will be a 2.5" internal hard drive. The 4 Sata on the board go to the box caddys and the reason for using 3 drives instead of 4 is that at the moment with 8TB (RAID 5) I am more than satisfied, but I want to have the possibility of hot expansion in the future.

About the Red and Purple drives, as much as I have read around I don't see anything other than the obvious that one is for video surveillance and the other for NAS. It was one of the questions I had pending.

The gadget is intended exclusively for storage with OpenMediaVault.

[Mystique]

I see everything...

OMV doesn't boot from USB? Most people do it and once it loads into RAM it's not accessible...

[_Neptunno_]

@cobito is that I once found myself in the same situation as you, I felt like wasting time researching and testing on virtual machines, to get a feel for this little world. I was also lucky enough to see some things at work, where the base is in Xigmanas and I started to get small ideas of how everything works.
But after a lot of testing, researching and realizing that I needed to learn more things to have my data under control...I ended up with OMV because of its simplicity and because when the raid degraded it was easier for me to repair the problem. My biggest concern is having control over my data, which unfortunately Windows gives me.

And although I have OMV working, I have practically touched it very little and it frustrates me because if I have to do some rescue I will have to spend some time...although for example with Xigmanas or FreeNas I would probably have an even worse time.
By the way, if you want to do some testing with Xigmanas...it might be an option that interests you, I don't know.

By the way, great tests and the information you provide. A thousand thanks for the hard work, really

Take care!

P.D: I am now doing a course on Windows server 2016/2019 but I will see if I finish it and install a machine with Linux to have more knowledge and be able to consider this option for storing data and being able to recover it in case of a possible failure.
I bought an OEM license of 2012 R2 and with a low-power Xeon 1150 I have my small server set up...but in the future it would be great to be able to use a Linux server or to delve deeper into Nas based on Linux distro.

[_Neptunno_]

@Mystique said in nas hardware:

I see it all...

OMV doesn't boot from usb? Most people do and once it loads into RAM it's not accessible...

In my case I have it with a 16GB 2.0 USB (in my case I don't know why but the 3.0 ones wouldn't read for booting, even though it's a 775 board).
The only thing that worries me a bit is the degradation of the flash memory, with what I've read it's a good idea to make a backup of the configuration and when that memory fails you put another one... the only thing is that the restoration thing seemed to cause problems and I directly made an ISO, so I avoided any hassle.
@cobito initially thought about putting a disk but in the long run it seemed like too much space (even if it's 2.5 a usb memory is smaller) and a lot of wasted size.
However if your intention is to do some scraping on that disk of configurations and such, go ahead

[_Neptunno_]

@cobito said in nas hardware:

About the Red and Purple drives, despite all I've read around, I don't see anything beyond the obvious that one is for video surveillance and the other for NAS. That was one of the questions I had pending.

The "Purples" are for surveillance systems since they are constantly writing and their characteristics are to offer good performance for this type of task. I don't know more characteristics, but I bet they will have worse performance for reading information since their mission is to write at full capacity.
The "Reds" are intended for storage because, among other things, they have anti-vibration systems that help improve their durability (small vibrations that the drives emit and, when they are together, can end up damaging the drive), which is why they are used for NAS and some servers.

I also didn't know certain characteristics of drives, but in the long run you realize small details that, after years or a few months, could cause problems in the long run.

[cobito]

Since the cake has been discovered, I'll tie the thread here.

@Mystique the truth is that I hadn't thought of the USB memory. I have around here a few 2.5" hard drives of 120 and 160GB and I had planned to use one of them.

@_Neptunno_ This week I'll have time, so I'll probably start playing with Xigmanas. The truth is that I didn't know it. At first glance (reading over on their website) it seems that it's cooked in the same pot as FreeNAS.

On the subject of Linux vs Windows, in the end they are two different operating systems. The practical reasons why I like Linux is for its modularity but it's clear that the homogeneity of Windows ends up being more comfortable. In the end I have who knows how many text files with procedures to do things: update the forum platform, Peertube, crontab, SSL certificate management, etc... because they are things that I touch from figs to brevas and I forget. On the one hand it's a pain but on the other hand you have absolute freedom to do whatever you want. In addition, the documentation and support in known distros (Debian in my case) is immense.

Continuing with the USB topic, if @Mystique is right that it loads into a ramdisk, in principle there wouldn't be as much problem of degradation. It would save me 40€ from the controller. It's something I'll think about.

Regarding the types of disks, it's a bit clearer to me. In price the difference is minimal so if the Reds have the vibration issue, I'll go for them.

[Mystique]

@_Neptunno_ said in NAS doubts:

In my case I have it with a 16GB 2.0 USB (in my case I don't know why but the 3.0 ones didn't read them to boot, although it's on a board for 775).

I also had the same problem with freenas when I started, that the usb 3 gave more problems than the 2

@cobito most distributions for NAS boot from usb and it's not touched again. Using a disk is completely wasting it (and useless in my opinion)
For that, use it as cache, that you might use it more. I put a 250 GB SSD for the movie volume (4x6TB) although I ended up removing it

As I said, I started with freenas and as I couldn't get what I wanted, I moved to xpenology. Much easier to set up and use. And as I said, in my case the usb is a bootloader that loads the system initially and then it's not used. The system and applications are on the first volume that is created at the beginning

[_Neptunno_]

@Mystique said in Dudas sobre NAS:

xpenology

In case @cobito wants some information about Xpenology (the operating system that uses Synology Nas):

[cobito]

Xigmanas

At the suggestion of @_Neptunno_, I've taken a look at XigmaNAS. The essence is quite similar to FreeNAS but with additional options. Of all the interfaces I've seen so far, this is the least user-friendly.

Please note that in these tests I am omitting most of the features, such as the repertoire of communication protocols.

Since ZFS is not capable of adding new disks to a "pool", I will focus on RAID functions.

Preparing the system

Once installed, you have to manually add the disks:

Just like FreeNAS (something I haven't commented on in its mini-analysis) and unlike OMV, it is possible to choose the power consumption policy of each drive.

Once added, you have to format them in "Software RAID" format (otherwise, you can't create the RAID), which I find a bit disconcerting, to be honest:

Once formatted, you can now create the RAID:

XigmaNAS has the novelty so far of the possibility of creating a "JBOD" drive (acronym for "simply, a handful of disks"). It is not a RAID but what it does is to unite the capacities of different disks (which can have different sizes) and store data contiguously. If one of the disks breaks, you lose the data that was on that disk but not the data on the rest. It may be interesting for storing things without much value, but having a semi-serious NAS with this, I don't think it's a good idea.

As you can see, there is no option to create a RAID 5 and I can't find information about it out there, so if I haven't missed something, this distro is not for me. Having ZFS, it is possible that the higher levels are reserved for this file system.

Xpenology

Reading these instructions, I think I'm going to skip this option directly. In the "Known compatible motherboards" section, only 4 models appear and for one of them, WOL doesn't even work. I imagine it will be compatible with more boards and, in the end, being able to detect the hard drives and the network card is enough. But I don't want to deal with systems that don't detect all my hardware and don't use all the energy-saving capabilities.

Moreover, they ask for an email to download it and on top of that, it has to be valid because they send the link to that address.

Now that, seeing the images, the interface looks impeccable.

Anyway, I think I'm going to go for OMV for the reasons I've already mentioned: it allows RAID 5 (which lets me do the type of expansions I'm looking for) and is based on Debian. For now, I don't need more than that and the rest of the options I've tried fail in one thing or another that I consider essential.

In the coming days, I'll talk a bit about the hardware. I already put a list of components, but the case is mini-ITX and the board I put is microATX. Seeing the few miniITX options for the B450, I'm reconsidering, either the case or the platform because by changing a couple of things, there could be a significant economic saving.

[_Neptunno_]

@cobito the ZFS system seems to be a strong point in these systems and quite robust, but in the end you go through what happened to me, maybe I'm a bit "square" but I like to be able to have clear what I do and more when I put my data on that Nas/Server.
Taking advantage of my work situation I am doing an online course of Windows Server 2016/2019, precisely yesterday I was with the section of storage and configurations. I realize that FreeNas and XigmaNas operate in a similar way to the storage pool (Storage Groups), so it doesn't seem to me a much more robust way than I thought.
In Win Server 2012-2016-2019 you can group a set of disks and within that group you can generate a simple type (Raid 0), Mirror (Raid 1) or Parity (Raid5), you can even generate three types at once... or two types, according to your need.
And subsequently you add hard drives to that group or groups and expand the capacity.

Maybe with FreeNas it works that way, but it seems to me something more simple and effective in Windows Server.

Well, I'm glad you made your decision with OMV. It's always good to consult you when it hits me hard

About Xpenology, it's true it has a brutal look (it's noticeable it's oriented for NAS) but now that you mention it I remember that I found it a bit complicated and decided not to try it.
It's more this system I think would be the best of all... or I have that feeling.

Regards!!