NAS New Build Advice v.overloaded October 2020

A newbie around here, I’d like to say hello.

I have been trying to figure out what direction to go for a NAS for the past couple months and frankly, I’m overloaded.

I’ve watched dozens of videos by Wendell and all around as well as r/datahoader, homeless etc.

So I figured, this would be a good place to get insights (maybe Wendell, you can chime in :slight_smile:)

My needs are pretty basic compared to everything ya’ll do.
I need to have high data protection and the ability to edit RAW photos and low bitrate video (100MB/s) directly off my NAS.
I have been using a QNAP for 10 years and it’s relatively ok, but I am starting to worry about bitrot. Also, the interfaces on it are just slow/old (sata2, 1gbe NIC).

I do have some parts I can reuse:

  • 2 x 2 TB sata3 SSDs
  • 2 x 1TB m.2 NVME
  • 10Gbe switch

I don’t have a lot of data, < 10TB, and frankly, some will get reduced when I deduplicate.
Originally I was going to use my old NUC skull canyon with the m.2 drives and usb 3.0 external since I just have it laying around, but I’ve realized that was not only sacrilegious, but not a good idea for integrity. Though, I can be convinced otherwise, as I could add a 2.5Gbe NIC via TB…

ZFS or btrfs?
FreeNAS/TrueNAS vs unraid vs standard linux vs OMV?
or prebuild with QNAP / Synology w btrfs?
ECC vs non RAM?
I’d like to keep power usage down and I don’t have use for VMs right now (have a pi running pi-hole, but can consolidate if ya’ll think it’s best), so I don’t need high specs. Frankly, a 2 bay with NVME slots and 10GBE NIC would probably work but I can’t find one.

At the end of the day, I don’t want to have to baby this thing, just for it to run, but I don’t have a lot of $ or space to throw at it. Something that is reliable, usable for local editing and enables me to setup an offsite rsync/rclone or the likes to back blaze or similar.

Thanks in advance if you made it this far!
~semi
freenasmaybe

this immediately tells me freenas/truenas with ZFS

isn’t this more of an issue with HDDs?

im using non ECC. maybe im crazy? probably.

oh but VMs are so much fun.

give it time. it will grow.

alright…my thoughts

mITX build. you can probably find an mITX board with 10Gbe already on board. issue there would be linux drivers (assuming you want linux) or freenas (i guess if you just want NAS funcitonality). personally i have an mATX system with freenas in a VM and an HBA passed through. could do something similar here i think. if you cant get a board with 10Gbe then mATX could work but finding the proper slot layout may be a pain. i have mine housed in the fractal design core 1000 (fairly small, probably about the size of the NAS you posted pic of). and i used a 5.25 bay adapter for the hard drives. but mine are 2.5" drives. you could mount your 2.5" ones inside the case and get a dual 5.25 to 3.5" adapter and then get some bigger drives to use. and assuming the mobo has 2 M.2 slots be good to go.

Thanks for your insight!

Is ZFS stable with non-ECC memory?

Any thoughts on a new QNAP w/ QuTS hero OS as it is ZFS based?
The ts-h686 seems pretty good, though too much compute for what I need and much too $

Any experience w/ TrueNAS 12?
Seems still a little unstable. Won’t let me know for some reason, but there appears to be a SMB bug

Correct. I have HDDs in my current setup.

I haven’t noticed issues but I only have it deployed for little over a month. Majority of what I store on it is video. Movies and security camera.

I haven’t dug into pre built NAS units so I won’t comment on that. But if the unit looks like it will suite your needs then go for it.

I have not upgraded to truenas 12 yet. I’ll wait for U2 release before I do which will be sometime next year. I’m very slow to perform software updates.

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Buy a modern, pre-built QNAP and call it a day. A RAID10 setup is more than sufficient for redundancy, and you’ll get serious performance.

QNAP has qualified add-ons for expansion, and they use the ZFS filesystem. Use any RAM on their QVL list, disregarding ECC unless you can get ECC cheaper by some fluke.

Originally I was going to use my old NUC skull canyon with the m.2 drives and usb 3.0 external since I just have it laying around, but I’ve realized that was not only sacrilegious, but not a good idea for integrity.

I think most people (and even most small businesses) are better served by the 3-2-1 principle than a NAS if they were budget constrained.

Being able to unplug it and put it in a safe deposit box twice a year gives you protection from your house burning down. No magical combination of filesystems and error-correcting memory handles that very real scenario.

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