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> I'd love a consumer (price) level NAS where the OS can be ripped out and replaced with some vanilla OS/kernel. A regular PC will work fine if this is what yo

by dheera 3y ago

> I'd love a consumer (price) level NAS where the OS can be ripped out and replaced with some vanilla OS/kernel. A regular PC will work fine if this is what you want to do. A lot of consumer motherboards these days have at least 2 x NVMe and 6 x SATA ports or more. There are rack-mount cases that allow you to front-mount the SATA hard drives to make it easy to swap them. Or if you want something small, you can get a compact Mini-ITX case with 5.25" drive bays and put hotswap trays in them. Like maybe this case https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1193826-REG/istarusa_s_35ex_3_x_5_25_bay.html https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1193826-REG/istarusa_... And put one of these for 4 x 2.5" SSDs: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00V5JHOXQ/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00V5JHOXQ/ And one of these for USB/SD card reader galore: https://www.amazon.com/EZDIY-FAB-Internal-Reader-Support-Computer/dp/B07ZHBT4S6/ https://www.amazon.com/EZDIY-FAB-Internal-Reader-Support-Com... The reason I often do NOT want a vanilla OS is that I don't want to have to maintain it or risk corruption of the OS partition, and don't want to ever have to wire up a keyboard, mouse, and monitor because some upgrade and reboot caused it to get stuck on some interactive prompt. Most commercial NAS (e.g. Synology) have web-based administration and read-only partitions for the OS fully figured out.

hobs 3y ago
I recently stood up a 140TB unraid instance, first time I did any nas stuff. Get manufacturer recertified drives for about 13 dollars a tb. Went with a framework case and a normal am4 processor/mobo with 8 sata connections. 2tb nvme cache + 20TB a drive + parity is 140 useable TB, and unraid makes the NAS stuff really easy, just installed a bunch of "apps" which are basically docker containers + settings, and things are a breeze.
- dgacmu 3y ago
  Where'd you get the drives? That's a quite reasonable price.
  - hobs 3y ago
    serverpartdeals has a seagate-exos-x20-st20000nm007d-20tb-7-2k-rpm-sata-6gb-s-3-5-recertified-hard-drive that I went with.
toast0 3y ago
6x SATA ports on a motherboard is getting to be rare. You'll need to shop carefully, and make tradeoffs to get there. I'm moving towards used, ancient, large desktop cases. You can find them at computer recyleries if you have them in your area or local marketplaces. I got one with a hotswap backplane and trays and everything in the 5.25" bays. Of course, the backplane didn't work for me, so I had to pull out the backplane and just wire the drives like normal, but trays are still nice. I've got lots of space, so I just leave a keyboard and monitor next to my servers, in case I break something. It's not elegant, but it's cost effective. A used $10 monitor and a keyboard I don't like will last forever, but buying boards with IPMI adds $100-$200 everytime I upgrade.
- dheera 3y ago
  You might also consider a rack mount case. 4U rack cases are usually designed for standard ATX builds. For home use it cleans up a lot of wire mess to have router, switch, NAS, your main desktop, and maybe some other things all on one rack. When you move you can also just move it all in one piece if you have a liftgate van.
- semi-extrinsic 3y ago
  Why do you need 6x SATA? 18 TB drives are to be had for around $300. Just do 4x of those in striped mirrors with ZFS for 36 TB of available storage. Resilver times are stupid fast. And you have an easier upgrade path. If you buy one pair of ~40 TB drives in a couple of years, you can replace one of the mirrors just by swapping out the old disks one by one and waiting for resilver. Then ZFS can autoexpand your storage to 18 + 40 TB total. And you can repeat further down the line, going 40 + 80 TB or whatever is available, true Ship of Theseus style. Yes, you lose a little resilience compared to RAIDZ2, but RAID is just a HA solution, not a backup solution, no matter how fancy you make it. And a RAIDZ2 gradual-upgrade by replacing disk after disk is just horrible.
  - dheera 3y ago
    So 4x18TB for HA 36TB. Then another 2x18TB for backup.
immibis 3y ago
Beware that not all port combinations are supported. For example, the Z270 chipset supports 6 SATA, but only 4 SATA if NVMe is also used. The motherboard manual will tell you this.

by dheera 3y ago

hobs 3y ago

I recently stood up a 140TB unraid instance, first time I did any nas stuff. Get manufacturer recertified drives for about 13 dollars a tb. Went with a framework case and a normal am4 processor/mobo with 8 sata connections. 2tb nvme cache + 20TB a drive + parity is 140 useable TB, and unraid makes the NAS stuff really easy, just installed a bunch of "apps" which are basically docker containers + settings, and things are a breeze.

dgacmu 3y ago
Where'd you get the drives? That's a quite reasonable price.
- hobs 3y ago
  serverpartdeals has a seagate-exos-x20-st20000nm007d-20tb-7-2k-rpm-sata-6gb-s-3-5-recertified-hard-drive that I went with.

toast0 3y ago

6x SATA ports on a motherboard is getting to be rare. You'll need to shop carefully, and make tradeoffs to get there. I'm moving towards used, ancient, large desktop cases. You can find them at computer recyleries if you have them in your area or local marketplaces. I got one with a hotswap backplane and trays and everything in the 5.25" bays. Of course, the backplane didn't work for me, so I had to pull out the backplane and just wire the drives like normal, but trays are still nice. I've got lots of space, so I just leave a keyboard and monitor next to my servers, in case I break something. It's not elegant, but it's cost effective. A used $10 monitor and a keyboard I don't like will last forever, but buying boards with IPMI adds $100-$200 everytime I upgrade.

dheera 3y ago
You might also consider a rack mount case. 4U rack cases are usually designed for standard ATX builds. For home use it cleans up a lot of wire mess to have router, switch, NAS, your main desktop, and maybe some other things all on one rack. When you move you can also just move it all in one piece if you have a liftgate van.
semi-extrinsic 3y ago
Why do you need 6x SATA? 18 TB drives are to be had for around $300. Just do 4x of those in striped mirrors with ZFS for 36 TB of available storage. Resilver times are stupid fast. And you have an easier upgrade path. If you buy one pair of ~40 TB drives in a couple of years, you can replace one of the mirrors just by swapping out the old disks one by one and waiting for resilver. Then ZFS can autoexpand your storage to 18 + 40 TB total. And you can repeat further down the line, going 40 + 80 TB or whatever is available, true Ship of Theseus style. Yes, you lose a little resilience compared to RAIDZ2, but RAID is just a HA solution, not a backup solution, no matter how fancy you make it. And a RAIDZ2 gradual-upgrade by replacing disk after disk is just horrible.
- dheera 3y ago
  So 4x18TB for HA 36TB. Then another 2x18TB for backup.

immibis 3y ago

Beware that not all port combinations are supported. For example, the Z270 chipset supports 6 SATA, but only 4 SATA if NVMe is also used. The motherboard manual will tell you this.