I hope we’re all well? Aww, run out of milk eh, me too
Anywho, I have a ***media collection on an 8 x HDD TrueNAS instance that I built at a time when electric was cheap (UK). So I had to vastly scale things down and these days my only TrueNAS machine that’s on 24 hours a day is a tiny Intel **G4560 / SuperMicro combo, with 2 HDD’s (*mirrored).
Last weekend I had a cunning plan, I replicated the 5.5TB of films to a single HDD installed in the “always on” TrueNAS machine. So no redundancy with that copy, but I figure it doesn’t matter if corruption occurs.
Just wondered if this was a good idea? It does mean that any new films added, will first be added to the original 8 HDD machine and the replication will have to pull across the new file. But that’s not a huge hassle really. So far it seems to have worked, I’m grudgingly using Plex again, having tried Emby and JellyFin. All I need at the moment is LAN access to films, so I don’t need any remote access facilities. JellyFin was great, but needed TrueNAS Scale, so I re-used an old machine for a test install and it was good, but just acted strange at times, when compared to Core. So for the moment, I’m happy staying with Core.
Thanks!
*In case interested
I’m intending to upgrade the mirror to a 3 HDD RAIDZ1.
**Power usage
It’s incredible how electricity prices have gone up. My network gear and server uses a steady 110W. 110 x 24 = 2640Wh, or 2.6KWh. Per week is 2.6x7 = 18.2KWh. Per year is 18.2x52 = 946.4KWh. Price per KWh is 35p, so 0.35 x 946.4 = £331.24 per year. If I left the other 3 TrueNAS machines on 24 hours a day, that cost could be nearer £1000 per year…that is crazy (around $1200).
***Redundancy
Just so you know, my media collection is replicated every few weeks to 2 other TrueNAS machines, eventually one of those will be stored in a separate building on the same site.
step 1. Solar, if your roof isn’t maxed out, max it out… I don’t mean, do complex math to figure out what you need. Max it out – it’s a one time hassle, cost of people climbing on roof and screwing things in is way more expensive than panels themselves, max things out and you’re good for the next 10 years.
At least, buy 2 panels and 2x 240v micro inverters and stick them on some 2x4s on your shed roof.
step 2. Battery, get 10 or 20 kwh of storage (10/15k) and switch to dual tariff or time of use tariff (smart tariff , whatever that’s called) – and always just pay whatever night time rate is cheapest. You probably don’t need more than 10/20kwh as long as you’re on gas, if you’re on heatpump, might need another 50-100 kwh, because hot showers are awesome, +eventually you’re going to be charging a car at home, if you aren’t already.
reason I mention the two things above, is that they’re probably the cheapest source of energy you’re going to get and it’ll cover your for the next 20-30 years.
Re movie and tv show storage and redundancy, …as folks on IRC would say “you are my backup”.
snapraid
TrueNAS + ZFS is cheap and easy, … but what a lot of people do, those who only need cheap cheap cheap storage per byte, is a bunch of single disks. … sometimes a bunch of single disks + Snapraid.
At the moment, in terms of bytes, most of my storage is “not raid protected”. I have a bunch of cheap drives with btrfs on each. If a drive dies, files are gone.
I also use ZFS, btrfs raid10 and SnapRaid.
SnapRaid is super interesting, for large rarely changed files.
you point it at a bunch of data directories, and it makes a parity directory. You don’t need to worry about drive sizes, … files can even be on a network.
you can upgrade data dirs and move them around (with a bit of care) and so on.
…but most interestingly…
you can tell it to generate a “pool” directory, that just has symlinks, which Samba can “follow” and pretend they’re actual files. … so if you use a Samba mount to build a kodi library - your disks only spin up when you actually need the data (… or when you want to figure out the filesizes or some such thing).
For putting things into these individual drives, I use MergerFS … it’s a fuse overlay filesystem that just merges a bunch of directories. It has configurable policies on how to put data onto drives - e.g. taking into account free space, or taking into account where there might already be a pre-existing directory.
Again, it works on a file / filesystem level, … size of disk, whether they’re local or network, doesn’t matter much.
battery, you can add as long as you have physical space (and as long as you own the apartment I guess, landlord generally have no incentive to do long term improvements into a property). The ROI is better in combination with solar, but there’s nothing preventing you from using it in an apartment and shifting cost.
The second one is an energy coop. You buy a stake in wind farm, wind farm produces energy somewhere in some field or ocean, you use energy in your apartment, … you move apartments, the wind farm still makes energy.
The apartment and its not facing south for sunlight and its not facing an open space for a wind generator, and I’m pretty sure I will be raped to oblivion by regulations for sticking things on the balcony, even if I owned the apartment.
If I buy stake in wind farm how can I get it delivered from my apartment?
What I’m trying to say is that your suggestion is not reasonable for everyone. Of course I’d like to live in a place where those things are available but unfortunately circumstances exist.
IIUC @ChrisA owns a house somewhere in UK (from what I remember of previous posts).
I wish that particular coop scheme was available to me - of-course, there’s still distribution grid costs and there’s maintenance costs and “taxes on insurances” to pay and all that other b.s. … but it’s probably the most effective financial hedge re energy costs if you happen to be in the UK.
I don’t know if there’s another option that’s available to you as an individual if you live in an apartment, … buy energy futures on Robinhood … dunno ?
EU. And there is even more: you can’t just install those things. You need to contract a regulated company that will do the installation for you and sign a contract to collect the equipment after it expires so it doesnt end up in a common trash. Sounds good but in practice doubles triples the price of the installation. (and it’s bullshit anyway since most of those companies wont exist in 20 years). I imagine UK laws are similar since they were part of the EU up to a few years ago.
My strategy is go go low with SBCs. My home network stuff that runs 24/7 totals around 60-65W. I could feed those with a cheap solar panel and battery pack if I had south facing windows and also if I could acquire and place it in a way that avoids the rEUgoolators.
Iirc, @ChrisA built his own brick office in his garden in the UK.
He could put panels on the four if he got sunlight, but if so,would have looked into it by now
Not sure where in EU you happen to be, but generally, there’s this WEEE thing (acryonyms differ per language…) , … you’re basically paying an additional disposal fee whenever you buy a battery (same as you do when you buy a lightbulb or a laptop), … and in e.g. 10 or 15 years (depending on how hot you’ve been running your batteries)… when you disconnect them, put them in a car trunk, you go to your recycler, and hand them over.
Larger industrial batteries are cheaper per kWh, because there’s ways to dodge the WEEE thing.
But for typical consumer/builder/residential, if you’re lucky, maybe you have a company nearby where you can sell a trunkful of them by weight and get some pocket change that lets you buy a burger.
If you’re really lucky they’ll last longer.
You would typically need an “electrician” because of insurance and warranties and regulations for the initial install (which also vary per country). e.g. in UK there’s this stupid thing where you “own” and “are responsible” for the distribution panel in your house and the apartment as it’s after the “demarcation line” from your meter, … but you’re not allowed to e.g. replace it by yourself, and you’re not allowed to remove existing circuits, but can add new ones. … there’s much stupid “I fear electrons”…
Generally, once you have batteries and chargers/inverters, on a wall or in a rack, you can change that system as you please, … (e.g. add more/ swap etc).
I like the SBC route idea, … e.g. there’s these 5 drive usb3.1 icy-dock bays (for about 300 a piece), you can daisy chain them, … and hook them up to a $100-$150 reasonably performing 2.5Gbps nic SBC. (oooh, or an x86 mini pc)
Haven’t you thought about a tape drive? As such a cold backup and will not draw electricity in an unusable state…
Personally, I only back up important things that would be painful to lose. And up-to-date OS copies for quick recovery.
Making a home copy of xTB movies is a bit of an art for art’s sake. Is it so important?.. it is possible to live, although the reconstruction will certainly be burdensome.
For things like video which is not very important I would not play any raid and zfs if it eats up my clean data space.
One master resource and some copy of it somewhere. It all depends on what drives you have and what you are willing to buy, and how much space you actually need for your main resources.
Once a day do the usual synchronization of files between servers and that’s it. No need to complicate your life here.
If you like to drive hard and data transfer speeds are not a problem then… friendlyelec zeropi with usb2.0 port and 1Gb eth + usb hub with backup drives. The first sync will be a long one! But later, sending a few/over a dozen GB per day/week as part of synchronization should not be a problem. This way you have a small backup server which can even be run from a power bank. Yes, if you lose your primary source, it can take a long time to recover your data, unless you take the drives in the usb bays and connect to the primary server and everything will be usb3.
Since the configuration of the main server with one large disk and the second server with 8 disks suits you in terms of space and power consumption, I would not make life difficult for myself with new solutions.
Or leave the main server as is and maybe think of the sbc as a backup machine with one/two large disks as well.
HC4 doesn’t look bad at first with one disk…
In terms of power consumption, no x86 can match arm, and 8 small disks vs one large is also logical that they will have a worse result. So you have to calculate whether you spend more money on new toys than you currently spend on electricity for your current equipment.
Funnily enough I did the maths for solar/battery about a year ago and I’m just slowly picking up the notion again now. I’m drafting a separate
You pretty much think the way I do, there are a few factors of concern though. I thought we could move chatting about this to another thread, how about it!
Thanks for introducing me to Snapraid @risk , I’m going to look into that
In theory the good thing about my arrangement is that it’s technically a 4th disposal copy of my files and files only get updated from the source, which is already copied to 2 other machines.
You have a good memory
Ahh, it’s nice when people know me Cheers, yes indeed it has been investigated…the maths isn’t encouraging but I’m still pursuing it, as it’ll be good to have power redundancy during powercuts at least.
I THOUGHT I’D CREATE A SEPARATE THREAD ON SOLAR / BATTERY!
?
