So I’m looking into buy an odroid HC2 as a starter NAS as a gift to a family member, but the HC2 is only one drive bay, so I’m wondering what can be done to have multiple HC2 systems show as one network storage preferably supporting in essence RAID 1,0,5.
The only means of communication in between the systems would be LAN, and they are ARM based, any ideas? It would also be nice if it was as user friendly as possible. As a last note, the only nas oriented OS I can find that will run on the HC2 is OMV (open media vault)
There’s plenty of options for networked shared storage, ceph, gluster, lvm2 to name a few. I’m not sure if any of them are packaged in a turn-key distro like OMV or Unraid
Hard Kernel has the same processor in a different format, and I believe it supports 2 or 4 disks, using an external SATA expander. Cloudshell or some such.
There’s no “console” on the HC2 aside from a serial port that needs a weird connector, it’s not really what I’d call family friendly.
Ok will look into some of those I’m assuming file systems, also what SBC are you referring to??? I’ve been to hard kernel before (where I first learned of the HC1/2) and other than those the only thing they have with Sata is the H2, with 2 Sata 3, and for about $40-$50 more with things that are also unneeded…, also from what I’ve read unraid will not work on any arm based CPU… (would love to use it) but what would work the best is like a plugin for OMV? Or some other NAS OS that works on the HC2. Also it would need to be something that starts up with a web GUI If used on the HC2, also the two main points of my want to give out a NAS is for plex, and wireless computer backup
For a bit more money you could buy a NanoPi M4 and add the 25$ 4 SATA ports hat. You can still install OMV 4 on it like the Odroid board but you won’t need to worry about redundancy over different systems, just set it up in software directly on one board.
It’s not a little more… it’s almost 50% more including the hat… also if I am going to have 4+ drives I would like it to be able to run unraid… this is more of a “you can start with this” but it would be nice if down the road the people I would be giving these to could add another drive for redundancy, and or storage increase
You might consider something with PCIe, like a rockpro64. You can install a SATA HBA on there and support multiple disks. They even make a “NAS” enclosure.
EDIT: nevermind, that’s gonna be more expensive than the NanoPI M4.
I highly recommend checking out OpenMediaVault. It can be installed on ARM systems, and while it’s not quite as “embedded” as unraid, it’s a great solution with a powerful webui.
I already know about OMV (I mentioned it above) I have just not had much luck with it, when I tried to do some testing with it on a Rpi 3b+ all I had was problems, from the web GUI service never starting, to it corrupting everything, to finally getting the GUI to work and “setting everything up” just to have it not work in any way… (even though I had many people on the OMV discord confirm I did it correctly) it may just be a problem with the Rpi version but… same thing stands, I can try OMV again, but if it’s more than 1 drive I would prefer it to be able to run unraid
I think I understand your wish for unraid (the fakeraid they do, right?) but to my knowledge it’s not supported on ARM, due to their focus on passthrough.
Well more the fact that I feel it’s more stable than other options, and also VERY user friendly (would be giving these to people that are not the most tech savvy… so friendly is good)
Yeah, but still much more reasonable than buying more Odroid boards that would also require multiple power supplies and ethernet connections
To just use a max of 4 drives, for an home NAS, Unraid is overkill in my opinion. Even just a RAID1 NAS to back up photos, videos and some documents is a decent solution for an home.
With the HAT you’ll have 4 ports. If you start with the Odroid is one drive and that’s it.
Unfortunately I don’t think there are many other viable solution going with an SBC since they’re not made to be NASes but more like for connecting sensors, motors and so on.
I used OVM on my Pi2 overclocked with Nextcloud, PiHole, Transmission and one drive shared on the network. I didn’t have much issues with it but a friend with a Pi3 had some like you did. I don’t know at this point if it’s a problem with the OMV image or not. I know a sample of 2 isn’t much but it’s something.
If you want to give the possibility of expansion you’re forced to get an x86 machine, buy an Unraid license and give it out. But that would cost you at least 300$.
Ceph’s best practices also recommend a dedicated storage network, because integrity validation and replication generate so much overhead. That can be problematic on SBCs in particular where thing like Gigabit ethernet gets pushed through a USB 2.0 controller.
Nah, ceph is a great tool, you just want it on a much larger scale. If you haven’t worked with it in a prod environment, you may never experience the downsides of it.
I’ll have to look into this.