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Looking for a NAS for data backup and "anywhere" access. I may eventually do more things with it. Mail server comes to mind and maybe a web server (just for family/friends use). While I could handle putting together a FreeNAS box, I am more interested right now in plugging something in and riding with it. In the future I may hit limits and decide to build a NAS, but that is just not something I want to mess with right now. So, I have narrowed my choices to the Synology DS214+ and the Qnap TS269-L. Any input on these two canned NAS devices? Thanks!
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Jun 6, 2014 16:34
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Why do you want to run your own mail server? It's a pain in the rear end and nothing will even come close to the spam protection and simplicity that Google Apps offers. Your ISP may even block outbound mail. I would also be vary careful about running a web server on the same box you store important data. Automated attacks will start hitting your server as soon as it is publicly visible on the internet.
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Jun 6, 2014 19:13
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killendino_001 posted:Looking for a NAS for data backup and "anywhere" access. I may eventually do more things with it. Mail server comes to mind and maybe a web server (just for family/friends use). I would just buy a VPS or some kind of shared hosting service if you want to host a website or mail. You probably don't want to host your own mail server though.
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Jun 6, 2014 19:24
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Thanks for the advice. I should have prefaced what I want with: none of this is very well thought-out. I guess I had "mail server" in mind for some misguided notion that I could get away from Gmail, and the NSA, haha. Anywho, my real goals are to be able to back up the PCs in my house, or at least my data, and to be able to access that data externally from my house. Anything else a NAS device offers, is just gravy and likely only something I would play with; I would not rely on it. I am thinking at this point that the two choices I have narrowed things down to, are basically the same thing and the choice really comes down to small nuances. I am hoping someone could share their experiences with these devices, and perhaps the vendors too, just so I can get a feel for which is more full-featured, reliable and which vendor tends to offer better support. I am leaning toward the Qnap as I have read that Synology tends to end support on their units fairly quickly...at least I have read complaints about it. The Qnap is also less expensive, which always helps. I am imagining they both have basically the same apps available for various things, which again is only toys for me to play with, unless of course I find something really neat or useful. Any comment on a processor comparison? I like that the Qnap allows you to upgrade the RAM.
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Jun 6, 2014 21:32
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killendino_001 posted:Thanks for the advice. I should have prefaced what I want with: none of this is very well thought-out. I guess I had "mail server" in mind for some misguided notion that I could get away from Gmail, and the NSA, haha. If you want that, your best bet is to pay for hosting from somewhere outside the US. My preference is mykolab.com which is hosted in Switzerland, a country with excellent privacy laws. It won't stop a targeted attack (nothing really will short of absolute abject paranoia) but it will require that any agency go through a lot of additional trouble to read your email, at least. In terms of actual defense against governmental agencies the benefit is minimal, but getting away from Gmail is always beneficial. Bear in mind it will probably require a bit more setup than a gmail account and their webmail client is decent but not quite as nice.
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Jun 7, 2014 08:10
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The NSA has direct access to core fiber hubs. Search for "fiber splitter" and "prism". If the NSA is your worry then email is simply insecure, end of story. Even if you had an impenetrable server in north korea the whole point of email is communicate with other people who probably don't have similar setups. Treat all internet communication as public. Don't say, search or do anything you wouldn't do with grandma standing next to you. Comatoast fucked around with this message at 17:08 on Jun 7, 2014 |
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Jun 7, 2014 17:02
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Comatoast posted:The NSA has direct access to core fiber hubs. Search for "fiber splitter" and "prism". If the NSA is your worry then email is simply insecure, end of story. Even if you had an impenetrable server in north korea the whole point of email is communicate with other people who probably don't have similar setups. End to end encryption mitigates this somewhat but good luck getting anyone you know to use it.
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Jun 7, 2014 17:33
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Oh great Packrat thread, I come to you today with a tale of woe (but a happy ending). Having long felt that my paltry 8x2TB, 16GB, i3-2100 setup was simply not excessive enough for the simple file-sharing needs I employ, I decided to upgrade. My chosen parts? A Supermicro X9SCM-F, 8-16GB ECC RAM, and a M1015 because why the hell not, with a Xeon E3 to drop in down the line--then I can throw that 64GB Samsung 830 in there and run ESXi off it! And what's this? Amazon has a used "like new" X9SCM-F for $95? Never one to pass up a good deal, I snapped it up, along with 8GB of no-name Hynix ECC RAM for another $50--I pat myself on the back for finding such good deals! They arrive, and I eagerly tear into it: the board does indeed look un-used, and I quickly replace everything in my case and try to boot it up. All I get was a sad under-powered CPU fan whir for a second, then nothing. The fan stops, power cuts out, only to recycle itself 5 second later for one second, ad infinitum. No display, no beeps, nada. Well, poo poo. Probably the RAM, I figure--Supermicro's are not known for their inclusivity on that front, so I order 16GB of Kingston RAM off the HCL. Half a week goes by, and my wife starts wondering when she'll be able to watch her shows again--apparently she'd stuck the latest few episodes of Game of Thrones on the NAS and not being able to watch them was becoming an issue. The new RAM finally arrives, and I jam it into the server. Whir. Stop. gently caress. Not the RAM, apparently. I turn to random internet forums for help. Maybe it's a short, some suggest. That seems possible, if a little unlikely, so I rip everything out of the case and set it on a table to continue troubleshooting there. Nope, not a short. Maybe I damaged the CPU? Nope, still checks good in the old 'board. Well maybe it's the PSU--the Supermicro requires an EPS-compliant power supply, and the Antec I have in there doesn't clearly state such support. Alright, fine, I'll pull the TX550 from my other computer, which does specify support. Whir. Stop. gently caress. Ok, ok, some forum guys are saying they've had issues with certain Corsair lines--not mine, but hey, I'm running out of options here. I run off to BestBuy to pick up two different EPS-certified PSU's; certainly ONE of them would have to work, right? Alas, BestBuy will be getting both PSU's back, as they were of no help. Finally, lacking any other options besides trying to return the board to some random Amazon sales partner, I pull out the quick-start pamphlet from the Supermicro box. Not a whole lot on here except your usual stuff about putting in the CPU and RAM, and a whole bunch of jumper settings--seriously? Who still uses jumpers for...wait a minute. Why is there no jumper on that pin set? Jumper #34 is... SPI Programming (internal use) -- Closed (normal). WELL gently caress ME KINDLY. I toss a spare jumper on it (and by "spare" I mean "ripped off a spare board old enough to still HAVE jumpers") and... Whirrrrrrrr beep! Why hello there, boot screen! Haven't seen you in quite some time. tl;dr I'm not sure there's really a lesson here, other than gently caress you, SuperMicro, for still thinking it's cool to use jumpers for anything at all, with an additional gently caress you to that Amazon seller for including absolutely everything from the original packaging except that one jumper. Also a bonus gently caress you to myself for spending literally a week and a half and $250 on random replacement parts to fix a 20c jumper.
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Jun 10, 2014 05:22
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DrDork posted:jumpers Bet it was returned for 'unable to POST' and nobody bothered testing it
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Jun 10, 2014 05:51
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Another 5 minutes and I would have done the same, honestly.
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Jun 10, 2014 06:10
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That'll teach you for not reading the manual.
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Jun 10, 2014 22:25
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Star War Sex Parrot posted:That'll teach you for not reading the manual. I love telling people this at work constantly, it makes me smugpenis grow stronger each time
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Jun 11, 2014 16:43
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Megaman posted:
Amazing post+red title combo right here.
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Jun 11, 2014 17:13
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Also, for what it's worth, the generic no-name ECC RAM works just fine now. Now to set up NAS4Free on ESXi. You know, because I clearly haven't already learned my lesson.
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Jun 12, 2014 00:25
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DrDork posted:Now to set up NAS4Free on ESXi. You know, because I clearly haven't already learned my lesson. Works just fine, and I'm doing it without ECC even! 
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Jun 12, 2014 00:41
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IOwnCalculus posted:Works just fine, and I'm doing it without ECC even!
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Jun 13, 2014 06:13
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I'm actually using an Intel DQ67SWB3 motherboard, which supports VT-d (as does the i5-2400) but not ECC. I have the onboard SATA controller and an IBM m1015 passed through to the NAS4Free VM, and I use an older LSI 1064 controller to host the local datastore for the ESXi stuff. I do plan on eventually moving my storage onto its own box with a Xeon and ECC, it's just a time/money thing.
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Jun 13, 2014 20:15
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IOwnCalculus posted:I do plan on eventually moving my storage onto its own box with a Xeon and ECC, it's just a time/money thing.
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Jun 13, 2014 21:28
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DrDork posted:Understandable. I upgraded to ECC because my wife stores all her photography business crap on the NAS, but I'm not sure I really want to spend another $200 on a Xeon chip just to play with ESXi and set up a Minecraft server or whatever else I'd find to do with VMs. You certainly don't need a xeon to mess with VMs. VTd is only really necessary is if you want to pass peripherals through to VMs. If you do something like run filesharing from the host/hypervisor then you most likely won't miss it.
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Jun 14, 2014 00:12
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Longinus00 posted:You certainly don't need a xeon to mess with VMs. VTd is only really necessary is if you want to pass peripherals through to VMs. If you do something like run filesharing from the host/hypervisor then you most likely won't miss it. My understand was that, since I'd be running NAS4Free/FreeNas with ZFS/RAIDZ under ESXi, that without VT-d to do direct passthrough, I'd have to set up my disks as VMDKs, and then pass those to NAS4Free. Which should work fine until something goes wrong and a disk dies, and then instead of just popping the dead disk out and tossing a new one in, I'd have to fight with first ESXi, and the NAS4Free, to get it to properly replace the disk. Also SMART may not work, and ZFS may get quite grumpy about not really having direct access to the disks. The other option is RDM, but basically everything I've read about using RDM'ed drives for ZFS makes it sound like a really bad long-term plan.
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Jun 14, 2014 00:40
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DrDork posted:I do pretty much need a Xeon if I want ECC and VT-d on the same chip, though, since Intel happily split those features up on the entire i3/i5 line because they're jackasses like that and apparently love money or some poo poo. Which is why I said "fileshare from the host/hypervisor"...
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Jun 14, 2014 00:43
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Longinus00 posted:Which is why I said "fileshare from the host/hypervisor"... Why does one need a VM to share/backup things? Why wouldn't a normal OS work (whatever FS you feel like)?
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Jun 14, 2014 04:09
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rhag posted:Why does one need a VM to share/backup things? Why wouldn't a normal OS work (whatever FS you feel like)? Because he qualified his original post with "to run VMs".
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Jun 14, 2014 04:28
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ZFSonLinux updated yesterday to 0.6.3 I haven't checked the change log yet, but I am sure it's probably just bug fixes.
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Jun 14, 2014 04:47
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rhag posted:Why does one need a VM to share/backup things? Why wouldn't a normal OS work (whatever FS you feel like)?
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Jun 14, 2014 05:20
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Lowen SoDium posted:ZFSonLinux updated yesterday to 0.6.3 Yay for Posix ACLs
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Jun 14, 2014 05:51
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Ars put up an article about FreeNAS & NAS4Free: http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/06/the-ars-nas-distribution-shootout-freenas-vs-nas4free/
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Jun 19, 2014 03:25
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DrDork posted:I do pretty much need a Xeon if I want ECC and VT-d on the same chip, though, since Intel happily split those features up on the entire i3/i5 line because they're jackasses like that and apparently love money or some poo poo. I get not wanting to get AMD for your gayming rig or whatever. But they're a totally appropriate solution for virtualization. You get a lot of cores and reasonable good virtual performance for very little money, and the vast majority of their chipsets support both VT-d (IOMMU) and ECC without ridiculous segmentation of the market.
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Jun 19, 2014 05:58
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evol262 posted:"What is AMD?" I'll take lovely AHCI implementations for 100 Alex.  This is a joke.
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Jun 19, 2014 06:02
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evol262 posted:"What is AMD?" Does any solid list exist anywhere of what AMD boards support ECC for sure? I get that the 970/990FX chipsets are supposed to support it, but it looks like BIOS support is still required on top of that.
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Jun 19, 2014 06:39
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IOwnCalculus posted:Does any solid list exist anywhere of what AMD boards support ECC for sure? I get that the 970/990FX chipsets are supposed to support it, but it looks like BIOS support is still required on top of that. I'm using an old ASUS 880G board with an Athlon II x3 and the BIOS has more ECC options (other than off/on) than I've seen on server boards. It recognizes my Kingston ECC UDIMMS just fine too, so it's not just their high end boards that support it.
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Jun 19, 2014 14:39
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Yeah, it looks like Asus supports it across the board - but new availability on these isn't so great, nor is there much in the way of compatible new CPUs. What I can find puts it right at the same price point as a used Supermicro/Intel combo - either an X8S* plus a X3430, or possibly a X10S* plus a Celeron G1820 if the right deal comes by on eBay for the motherboard. CPU doesn't seem to be something my storage box runs into problems with, it's only got one vCPU on my i5-2400.
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Jun 19, 2014 20:38
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evol262 posted:"What is AMD?" Now I'm in the real fun part: trying to deduce what the blazes I need to tune in the system for NAS4Free to optimize performance under ESXi 5.5. On bare metal, NAS4Free running CIFS would take about 1/2 a second to ramp up on a large file transfer to a top speed of ~105MB/s, where it would stay +/- 5MB/s for as long as I wanted. Same NAS4Free settings run under ESXi and it takes about 5s to ramp up to ~105MB/s, but then it goes all roller-coaster between about 90MB/s and 50MB/s in roughly 10s cycles. I can't imagine it's from the ~3GB of RAM I stole from NAS4Free to leave open for...other things...since the RAM usage never pops above about 5GB out of 13GB free, and with passthrough'ed drives, that shouldn't be impacting it much. Maybe I need to passthrough a physical NIC instead of virtualizing it on top of the same NIC I'm using for IPMI and ESXi administration. Maybe I need to gently caress with some CIFS settings. Maybe I need to sacrifice a small goat to the gods of ZFS.  My nearly pointless (but fun and educational) adventure continues!
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Jun 21, 2014 05:55
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I've got a DS412+ currently with four 2TB Seagate ST2000DM001 drives in the SHR-1 pseudo RAID5 setup. The system has been running for just over two years now. In the last month one of my four disks racked up 368 reallocated sectors. I have about three TB worth of data stored on this that I don't really want to have to recover from Crashplan if I don't have to. Would it be a good idea to replace this harddrive now and let the array rebuild while all the other drives appear clean on S.M.A.R.T.? If I do is there any reason I shouldn't replace it with a different 4TB drive now so if I put a second one in later I can expand the volume size with SHR?
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Jul 1, 2014 16:25
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OnceIWasAnOstrich posted:I've got a DS412+ currently with four 2TB Seagate ST2000DM001 drives in the SHR-1 pseudo RAID5 setup. The system has been running for just over two years now. In the last month one of my four disks racked up 368 reallocated sectors. I have about three TB worth of data stored on this that I don't really want to have to recover from Crashplan if I don't have to. Basically, yes to both. The SHR will handle a bigger drive just fine - there's a slightly elevated chance one of the other 2TB drives will die during rebuild (due to the added stress), but in that case it would've failed eventually anyhow. This is how I've grown the size of my Xpenology SHR setup; it started out as 3 random drives I found, 2TB+500GB+400GB; I swapped the smallest ones with two 750GB drives I found, and recently swapped one of the 750s with a 3TB WD RED. The NAS was up throughout all this (except for the downtime as I turned it off to swap drives, of course - no hotswap in the N54L) and expanded the size nicely.
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Jul 1, 2014 16:34
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For owners of the N54L, what's actually required to put drives in the optical bay? I just need an extra SATA cable, right? Or do I need a molex-to-SATA power adapter too? I haven't found clear instructions, and I haven't wanted to pull it fully apart to check.
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Jul 1, 2014 16:37
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dorkanoid posted:For owners of the N54L, what's actually required to put drives in the optical bay? I just need an extra SATA cable, right? Or do I need a molex-to-SATA power adapter too? You'll need the sata cable. Fishing it through the case is kind of a pain, but sliding the motherboard tray out helped. The power connector up top is molex, but my cheap drive tray converted from molex itself.
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Jul 1, 2014 18:05
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eddiewalker posted:You'll need the sata cable. Fishing it through the case is kind of a pain, but sliding the motherboard tray out helped. The power connector up top is molex, but my cheap drive tray converted from molex itself. Ah good, I have all I need then (except a drive tray); right now my 4 bays are taken by 3 Xpenology SHR drives, and the single 500GB drive used for ESXi datastore; I want to put this 500GB disk "up top" so I can use all 4 bays for RAID. I was thinking of buying one of those 4x2.5 trays, but that seems to require another RAID controller in the box, so I'll delay that a bit and just put in a single 3.5" tray (money is better spent on buying WD Reds for the thing, honestly). How will ESXi handle the datastore moving from the SAS controller to the SATA controller, does anyone know?
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Jul 1, 2014 18:19
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dorkanoid posted:Ah good, I have all I need then (except a drive tray); right now my 4 bays are taken by 3 Xpenology SHR drives, and the single 500GB drive used for ESXi datastore; I want to put this 500GB disk "up top" so I can use all 4 bays for RAID. By default the internal SATA port is limited to SATA I speeds. However if you apply a modified BIOS it allows you to change this to SATA II to match the other ports. It will also allow you enable hot-swapping for the 4 HD bays. Modified BIOS instructions: http://witnessmenow.blogspot.com/2014/01/microserver-n54ln40l-custom-bios-update.html A lot of people using ESXi with this box put a SSD for the datastore in the space between the 5.25 drive and HD bays hooked up to the internal SATA and then route an external to internal SATA cable from the eSATA port on back to a drive mounted in the 5.25 bay for 6 total drives.
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Jul 1, 2014 18:40
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Krailor posted:By default the internal SATA port is limited to SATA I speeds. However if you apply a modified BIOS it allows you to change this to SATA II to match the other ports. It will also allow you enable hot-swapping for the 4 HD bays. Thanks! I modded the BIOS, found an eSATA->SATA cable by pure luck in my pile-of-stuff, and put the ESXi datastore drive (loosely) in the 5.25 bay (I'll get my dock later). To answer my own question: ESXi had no problem with the datastore disk moving to a new port/controller/whatever 
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Jul 1, 2014 19:42
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