4 ms·

Radxa's SATA HAT makes compact Pi 5 NAS

32 points by ingve 3y ago

hkwerf 3y ago
Sadly, the the 8 TB Samsung QVO SSDs jumped pretty badly in price since the beginning of this year. (At least here in Germany.)
- geerlingguy 3y ago
  That was crazy, too—last year I saw them get down to the $350 range (almost bought a couple more at that price)... and yesterday when I went to check on them I noticed they're up to $530! When I bought my drives a couple years ago they were around $400. I wish there were more options for 4-8 TB SSDs that went for capacity over performance. Honestly I would be happy with some larger lower-cost SSDs that ran at 100-200 MB/sec just for silent, low power capacity.
  - wang_li 3y ago
    Agreed. A low bandwidth SSD with no rotational or seek latency would be a very good use case for home users and NAS storage devices. Add in the reduced power, heat, and noise benefits and it's even better.
- baobun 3y ago
  Good luck finding a reasonably priced PCIe 3 drive with cache these days. The only non-junk PCIe3 option that's even advertised here recently is the overpriced WD Red SN700. Other than that it's just lemons and more power-hungry PCIe 4-5. I still have better operational cost-performance from 5 year old drives compared to anything on the market today.
  - justinclift 3y ago
    > The only non-junk PCIe3 option that's even advertised here recently is the overpriced WD Red SN700. Those WD drives seem to have some real issues, at least with ZFS and btrfs. :( https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/discussions/14793 https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/discussions/14793
    - baobun 3y ago
      That's WD Black SN770 - targeted towards gamers. WD Red SN700 is prosumer/SMB NAS range. Lower performance and >2x the price.
      - justinclift 3y ago
        Thanks. I tend to avoid WD so didn't know they were different. :)
superkuh 3y ago
Why would anyone put SSD at the end of a slow network attached storage device? It's a waste of money for very little space. A couple HDD would give you way more space, longer lifetime (writes), and cost incomparibly less. It seems like this is just for aesthetics and kind of cargo culting.
- packetlost 3y ago
  one reason is physical space and power draw. Not everything is a cost optimization.
- justsomehnguy 3y ago
  Power. You need quite a solid PSU to withstand the power-up of a couple multi-TB drives. Space. You trade off the physical space to get more storage space. Random IO bandwidth. Until 6+ HDDs (w/o counting parity/mirrors) there is no point even speaking about random IO bandwidth. > longer lifetime (writes) To each their own. You need a lot of writes to deplete TBW of a modern drive, even MLC/QLC ones. > kind of cargo culting I would say what it's not the right term here. But hey, calling everyone who uses SSD in NAS because reasons is totally the right way. Rite?
  - hkwerf 3y ago
    I'll add two more: Noise. Feeling. Solid state devices always felt more durable to me. I know I won't use too many writes on the NAS, but mostly read. And then there's "rare" access time: If you don't want to spend power on spinning disks, you need to wait some time for them to spin up if you want to access your NAS.
  - superkuh 3y ago
    In terms of power for an equivalent amount of storage the SSDs require much more (SSD and HDD use about the same amount of power). But you're talking transient spin-up power of course which is significant and might require an external power supply if you have more than handful of HDD. But you don't even need 4 HDD. The amount of money saved by an SSD average power draw versus HDD average power draw is insignificant and would not total up to anything even over the SSD lifetime (which is limited compared to HDD). Also, if you turn off the device and let the data sit without power SSDs' charge traps will leak and bit rot (like in an off-site scenario). The physical space required is not significantly different. They're both small form factor things even if HDDs are 2 to 3 times the volume it's 2 to 3 times an insignificant amount. Plus you need only about 1/5 the HDD to match SSD storage. Random IO bandwidth doesn't matter at all when you're putting it at the end of an ethernet connection to an rpi. You could certainly benefit from it if you put them in your actual computer though. By cargo culting I meant the entire concept of NAS in the first place for home use. Just put the drives in your desktop PC and it'll be much much faster, much cheaper, and significantly less likely to break. The power cost of leaving your desktop on for the lifetime of such a thing will be less than the extra cost of NAS parts.
candiddevmike 3y ago
If the raspberry pi had ECC RAM (and maybe a faster NIC or multiple NICs) this would be an excellent solution. Are there any (hobbyist/non-industrial $$$$) ARM NAS boards with ECC?
- baobun 3y ago
  The Helios64 looked really promising until it was abandoned. https://blog.kobol.io/2021/08/25/we-are-pulling-the-plug/ https://blog.kobol.io/2021/08/25/we-are-pulling-the-plug/ https://wiki.kobol.io/helios64/intro/ https://wiki.kobol.io/helios64/intro/ An RK3588 version of that with some more PCIe connectivity (another m2 slot or two?) would have been pretty much ideal.
- geerlingguy 3y ago
  ASRock Rack is selling an Ampere motherboard... full size, and over $1k including an Ampere CPU. But that's about it for now.
lenerdenator 3y ago
... of course this drops after I spent some righteous clams on a Synology NAS. For a NAS newbie, how would it compare to a DS224?
- FredPret 3y ago
  "Righteous clams" - going to start saying this immediately along with "What's the clam-age" and any other variants I can think of
- geerlingguy 3y ago
  Honestly Synology's software and support is going to be nicer than what you get with something like OMV (and TrueNAS isn't available on the Pi). The hardware is fairly similar in terms of what you'll get for performance and efficiency, though you get hot swap bays on the Synology, which is nice. Plus a case... Radxa hasn't told me when they're releasing the case, just that they're working on producing it.
- shadowpho 3y ago
  Synology NAS just works, it has nice UI and lots of plugins. However, it's far more expensive and hardware can be underwhelming. It's less flexible as well.
willglynn 3y ago
Be aware that there's N100 boards with 6x SATA, 2x M.2 NVMe, and 4x 2.5GBASE-T around this price point. For example: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806198066931.html https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806198066931.html The N100 processor offers 2-3x the performance and lots of additional PCIe lanes compared to a Raspberry Pi 5 despite having half the TDP (6W vs 12W).
- rickydroll 3y ago
  I really would like one of those with dual 10 Gigabit Ethernet. My home lab needs are a little more advanced but my budget isn't. :-)
  - geerlingguy 3y ago
    I know GoWin has started releasing some boxes with 10 and even 25 GbE adapters, it'd be nice if all manufacturers were able to add on 2.5 + 10 GbE, since modern low-end chips can finally get those speeds.
- shadowpho 3y ago
  n100 will also last longer and be more reliable. You can run regular linux distro and it will be supported forever as it's x86. You will get better performance with the NAS too (6 drives can go pretty fast!)
- geerlingguy 3y ago
  Not to ding that board at all (because it is quite nice), but adding on a power adapter (like Pico PSU for $30) and a cheap NVMe SSD (Kingston for $20) brings it up to $175—which is not that much more than the $127 entry for the 4GB Pi option—but it is closer to a $200 price point. The overall build footprint will also be larger, and you'll have to pick up a set of SATA cables ($10 or so for four) and possibly a case or bracket to support the drives ($10-20). It does have 16 GB of RAM (Pi tops out at 8GB for $147), the CPU is faster, and it has 4x 2.5 GbE which is a huge upgrade! But I wouldn't quite put a mini ITX motherboard in the same price class, even though it's a better all-round board for a 'homelab in one box' type of setup.
- 3y ago

32 points by ingve 3y ago

Sadly, the the 8 TB Samsung QVO SSDs jumped pretty badly in price since the beginning of this year. (At least here in Germany.)

geerlingguy 3y ago
That was crazy, too—last year I saw them get down to the $350 range (almost bought a couple more at that price)... and yesterday when I went to check on them I noticed they're up to $530! When I bought my drives a couple years ago they were around $400. I wish there were more options for 4-8 TB SSDs that went for capacity over performance. Honestly I would be happy with some larger lower-cost SSDs that ran at 100-200 MB/sec just for silent, low power capacity.
- wang_li 3y ago
  Agreed. A low bandwidth SSD with no rotational or seek latency would be a very good use case for home users and NAS storage devices. Add in the reduced power, heat, and noise benefits and it's even better.
baobun 3y ago
Good luck finding a reasonably priced PCIe 3 drive with cache these days. The only non-junk PCIe3 option that's even advertised here recently is the overpriced WD Red SN700. Other than that it's just lemons and more power-hungry PCIe 4-5. I still have better operational cost-performance from 5 year old drives compared to anything on the market today.
- justinclift 3y ago
  > The only non-junk PCIe3 option that's even advertised here recently is the overpriced WD Red SN700. Those WD drives seem to have some real issues, at least with ZFS and btrfs. :( https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/discussions/14793 https://github.com/openzfs/zfs/discussions/14793
  - baobun 3y ago
    That's WD Black SN770 - targeted towards gamers. WD Red SN700 is prosumer/SMB NAS range. Lower performance and >2x the price.
    - justinclift 3y ago
      Thanks. I tend to avoid WD so didn't know they were different. :)

superkuh 3y ago

Why would anyone put SSD at the end of a slow network attached storage device? It's a waste of money for very little space. A couple HDD would give you way more space, longer lifetime (writes), and cost incomparibly less. It seems like this is just for aesthetics and kind of cargo culting.

packetlost 3y ago
one reason is physical space and power draw. Not everything is a cost optimization.
justsomehnguy 3y ago
Power. You need quite a solid PSU to withstand the power-up of a couple multi-TB drives. Space. You trade off the physical space to get more storage space. Random IO bandwidth. Until 6+ HDDs (w/o counting parity/mirrors) there is no point even speaking about random IO bandwidth. > longer lifetime (writes) To each their own. You need a lot of writes to deplete TBW of a modern drive, even MLC/QLC ones. > kind of cargo culting I would say what it's not the right term here. But hey, calling everyone who uses SSD in NAS because reasons is totally the right way. Rite?
- hkwerf 3y ago
  I'll add two more: Noise. Feeling. Solid state devices always felt more durable to me. I know I won't use too many writes on the NAS, but mostly read. And then there's "rare" access time: If you don't want to spend power on spinning disks, you need to wait some time for them to spin up if you want to access your NAS.
- superkuh 3y ago
  In terms of power for an equivalent amount of storage the SSDs require much more (SSD and HDD use about the same amount of power). But you're talking transient spin-up power of course which is significant and might require an external power supply if you have more than handful of HDD. But you don't even need 4 HDD. The amount of money saved by an SSD average power draw versus HDD average power draw is insignificant and would not total up to anything even over the SSD lifetime (which is limited compared to HDD). Also, if you turn off the device and let the data sit without power SSDs' charge traps will leak and bit rot (like in an off-site scenario). The physical space required is not significantly different. They're both small form factor things even if HDDs are 2 to 3 times the volume it's 2 to 3 times an insignificant amount. Plus you need only about 1/5 the HDD to match SSD storage. Random IO bandwidth doesn't matter at all when you're putting it at the end of an ethernet connection to an rpi. You could certainly benefit from it if you put them in your actual computer though. By cargo culting I meant the entire concept of NAS in the first place for home use. Just put the drives in your desktop PC and it'll be much much faster, much cheaper, and significantly less likely to break. The power cost of leaving your desktop on for the lifetime of such a thing will be less than the extra cost of NAS parts.

candiddevmike 3y ago

If the raspberry pi had ECC RAM (and maybe a faster NIC or multiple NICs) this would be an excellent solution. Are there any (hobbyist/non-industrial $$$$) ARM NAS boards with ECC?

baobun 3y ago
The Helios64 looked really promising until it was abandoned. https://blog.kobol.io/2021/08/25/we-are-pulling-the-plug/ https://blog.kobol.io/2021/08/25/we-are-pulling-the-plug/ https://wiki.kobol.io/helios64/intro/ https://wiki.kobol.io/helios64/intro/ An RK3588 version of that with some more PCIe connectivity (another m2 slot or two?) would have been pretty much ideal.
geerlingguy 3y ago
ASRock Rack is selling an Ampere motherboard... full size, and over $1k including an Ampere CPU. But that's about it for now.

lenerdenator 3y ago

... of course this drops after I spent some righteous clams on a Synology NAS. For a NAS newbie, how would it compare to a DS224?

FredPret 3y ago
"Righteous clams" - going to start saying this immediately along with "What's the clam-age" and any other variants I can think of
geerlingguy 3y ago
Honestly Synology's software and support is going to be nicer than what you get with something like OMV (and TrueNAS isn't available on the Pi). The hardware is fairly similar in terms of what you'll get for performance and efficiency, though you get hot swap bays on the Synology, which is nice. Plus a case... Radxa hasn't told me when they're releasing the case, just that they're working on producing it.
shadowpho 3y ago
Synology NAS just works, it has nice UI and lots of plugins. However, it's far more expensive and hardware can be underwhelming. It's less flexible as well.

willglynn 3y ago

Be aware that there's N100 boards with 6x SATA, 2x M.2 NVMe, and 4x 2.5GBASE-T around this price point. For example: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806198066931.html https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256806198066931.html The N100 processor offers 2-3x the performance and lots of additional PCIe lanes compared to a Raspberry Pi 5 despite having half the TDP (6W vs 12W).

rickydroll 3y ago
I really would like one of those with dual 10 Gigabit Ethernet. My home lab needs are a little more advanced but my budget isn't. :-)
- geerlingguy 3y ago
  I know GoWin has started releasing some boxes with 10 and even 25 GbE adapters, it'd be nice if all manufacturers were able to add on 2.5 + 10 GbE, since modern low-end chips can finally get those speeds.
shadowpho 3y ago
n100 will also last longer and be more reliable. You can run regular linux distro and it will be supported forever as it's x86. You will get better performance with the NAS too (6 drives can go pretty fast!)
geerlingguy 3y ago
Not to ding that board at all (because it is quite nice), but adding on a power adapter (like Pico PSU for $30) and a cheap NVMe SSD (Kingston for $20) brings it up to $175—which is not that much more than the $127 entry for the 4GB Pi option—but it is closer to a $200 price point. The overall build footprint will also be larger, and you'll have to pick up a set of SATA cables ($10 or so for four) and possibly a case or bracket to support the drives ($10-20). It does have 16 GB of RAM (Pi tops out at 8GB for $147), the CPU is faster, and it has 4x 2.5 GbE which is a huge upgrade! But I wouldn't quite put a mini ITX motherboard in the same price class, even though it's a better all-round board for a 'homelab in one box' type of setup.
3y ago