QOTW: Do you use a NAS server at home?

[aidanjt]

I've been running a Linux home file server pretty much since I built my second DIY PC, and used the previous PC as a server. My old i7-920 machine is fulfilling that role at the moment, but that's major overkill for what I really need, and on the go connectivity options aren't great, so I'm planning on replacing it with a Synology NAS box and handing the i7-920 off to a friend, since that's still more than able to do the job as a desktop/gaming machine.

[cjs150]

Yes: QNAP 4 bay, rock solid 6TB RAID 5 array (maybe 4 yrs old). All music and Blu-rays stored, lossless. So a blu ray takes 23G - not a problem. Will need to expand next year, just need the 5-6TB HDD to come down in price

[kjlp]

I built my own one 10 years ago using a Yeong Yang cube case, Iwill DK8N m/b and a Raidcore 8-port RAID controller. The drives are stored in IcyDock 3-in-2 drive bay trays which lets me have easy access to all 8 drives plus the system drive.

The Iwill motherboard fell prey to the notorious counterfeit capacitor problem by 2008 but after replacement the machine has still been going strong and running 24/7. Even though the replacement motherboard doesn't have PCI-X, throughput is still acceptable (about 90MB/s read, 40MB/s write).

The drives of course have been upgraded through the years:- 300GB then 1TB Seagates, 2TB Samsung Spinpoints and now 4TB Hitachi Deskstars. I think I only ever had to do a rebuild once due to a mysterious temporary dropout by one of the Seagate drives.

All that said, I recently got a DLink DNS-345 when Scan were selling their old stock cheap. It's significantly slower, but allows a degree of OS customisation so I can still run a web server on it and if I keep my recent stuff synced it, I don't have to have the main server powered up to still have access to my media and development files from other computers or media players.

It might sound silly to say that I think the mainstream NAS boxes are way overpriced, but at least my main server (running XP64) is also usable for gaming, coding and general purpose work.

[Woodentop]

6 Bay QNAP for me, this is my second QNAP as my first was only a 2 bay so sold it and upgraded to a 6 bay. I think they are brilliant devices as others have said, very stable and lots of support for apps and other tasks on top of the normal file sharing services.

[BlackDwarf]

Synology DS412+ w/ 4x4Tb WD Reds in SHR for storage. Dell CS24 Dual Quad Xeon 12Gb RAM for VMs, but upgrading to a Dell R710 Dual Hex Xeon 32Gb RAM at the start of next week.

[loccothan]

Its a definitely a Great solution if you need Large HDD space For Database. I like it, maby i win one on Hexus ;-)

[Bluecube]

Sort of. I run an Xpenology VM on ESXi with pass through access to four 2tb drives. The server itself runs on an old Xeon. It's fast, surprisingly power efficient for what it is and probably not what anyone would call a NAS!

[MercutioUK]

For anyone interested in having... well, high speed NAS, kind of how it works in a corporate environment (where the NAS is as fast/faster than local disks) take a look at windows 10 preview. Since windows 8 there has been a new version of the protocol microsoft uses for windows shares.

SMB 3.1 (server message block) allows you to properly bind connections together. Previously a file server could have bonded connections but that only improved the file servers throughput (single clients would only access from a single link so the bonding didn't help at the client end). In windows 8 onwards the newer version of SMB lets you properly link interfaces together to get more bandwidth.

Long story short, if you have 2/3/4 network ports on both the machine you are using as NAS and the computer accessing it, assuming everything is set right and the network cards are fairly decent (plenty on ebay, look for 2 or 4 port cards) you can have a 180/270/360MB/sec (yes, megaBYTE) connection. For many people, maybe not useful but having a small SSD for boot in each computer and well structured disk setup in a single server computer might suit a few people. Backups etc become MUCH easier to manage

[MercutioUK]

Yes, I have a home built pc (dual core, 4gb ram) using old parts and items I've bought from hexus members. It runs FreeNas.
It has a dell raid 5 card with 4 x 500gb disks (raid 5), 2 1tb (mirror) and a raptor drive for the os.
I also bought a 4 port Ethernet card from ebay, plus the motherboard has 2 ports. All 6 ports are teamed (link aggregation) to my managed switch for extra pointlessness.

Take a look at SMB3 in windows 8/10/server 2012+ stick some more ports on your client machines and that aggregation will actually mean more bandwidth between computers.

[Splash]

For anyone interested in having... well, high speed NAS, kind of how it works in a corporate environment (where the NAS is as fast/faster than local disks) take a look at windows 10 preview. Since windows 8 there has been a new version of the protocol microsoft uses for windows shares.

SMB 3.1 (server message block) allows you to properly bind connections together. Previously a file server could have bonded connections but that only improved the file servers throughput (single clients would only access from a single link so the bonding didn't help at the client end). In windows 8 onwards the newer version of SMB lets you properly link interfaces together to get more bandwidth.

Long story short, if you have 2/3/4 network ports on both the machine you are using as NAS and the computer accessing it, assuming everything is set right and the network cards are fairly decent (plenty on ebay, look for 2 or 4 port cards) you can have a 180/270/360MB/sec (yes, megaBYTE) connection. For many people, maybe not useful but having a small SSD for boot in each computer and well structured disk setup in a single server computer might suit a few people. Backups etc become MUCH easier to manage

Yay for higher port counts being required at the switch (10GbE isn't coming down in price anywhere near fast enough for my liking - I'd love to run my lab over 10GbE single links, with 2 ports on my servers in the datacenter carved out to dedicate bandwidth for vMotion/management/various other networks - it's all about keeping the ports down at the ToR switch at that point. Running 8 ports of 1GbE just isn't scalable.

On topic: yes, I do. There's a Thecus N5200Pro with 5 3Tb WD Reds in there as a backup target, a HP Microserver N40l providing general file storage and an HP ML115 G5 providing NFS to my VMware lab (a Microserver N54L for management with local storage, and 3 Intel NUCs for compute)

I need to get out more. Also to consolidate my storage on something a bit more power efficient: I keep looking at the Synology DS1815+, but I'd probably need to tag on a DX1215 expansion unit sooner rather than later and that's £££ (the disks I'd put in initially will all need replacing in the next 18-24 months, so hopefully 8Tb rust will be bedded in by then). I'd still keep the N5200 even though it's long out of support for a backup target though.

[Brewster0101]

Netgear ReadyNAS Duo v2 here - need the logitech squeezbox server as we use their radio's/music players in the house.

Until I find a radio device that is as good , I will be sticking with the Negear

[Jedibeeftrix]

yes - opensuse+owncloud running on a £150 Acer Aspire AMD kabini powered SFF box.

[aidanjt]

Netgear ReadyNAS Duo v2 here - need the logitech squeezbox server as we use their radio's/music players in the house.

Until I find a radio device that is as good , I will be sticking with the Negear

No need to flog that horse to death on account of that, Synology has SqueezeBox support as well as lots of more modern nicities: https://www.synology.com/en-global/d.../SqueezeCenter

[Barakka]

I started with a Synology DS207+ many moons ago with 2 x 1TB in RAID1 which was fine for music and file storage, but when my wife started working in photography it soon got full.... So I moved to a HP N36L with 4GB RAM and 3 x 2TB drives running FreeNAS which was OK but too fussy, slow, and didn't have the functionality I needed - but to be fair filled the gap of needing a lot of storage quickly and relatively cheaply at the time.

Just recently moved to a 4 bay QNAP TS-451 with 4GB RAM and 4 x 4TB WD Red drives - very impressed so far - fast quiet and plenty of room to grow into the functionality. All the usual sharing, Plex, IP camera monitoring, PHP/MySQL etc you get with most NAS these days, plus virtualisation hosting, Full HD hardware transcoding, and direct HDMI connection.

[crossy]

I've got two:

WD MyBook World Edition - only 1TB (it's a very old unit) so it's relegated to music and mp4 streaming, and as a temporary "locker" for work-related stuff that I might want to work on later.

WD MyCloud (4TB) - primary use of this is to hold the main backups of the various laptops we have in the house and a copy of the ripped music library (I still have all the originals!). Pretty good unit actually.

I'd prefer to get something a bit more "professional" like a QNAP, Thecus or Synology, but at the moment the only way that's going to happen is if I win one (lack of funds).

[gagaga]

24 bay rackmount, Xeon E3-1220L V2, 16GB, Windows 2012 R2 Essentials. 79.5TB, plus microserver to hold the flexraid parity drives...