Any Computer Nerds - Needing NAS advice

[BytorJr]

I'm looking to build a home NAS. Since my computer is ancient and I'm trying to become platform independent (iPad, Windows, macOs, Android), not waste all that money on a large hard-drive on a laptop, and not use anybody's cloud (drop box, one drive, etc) I'd like to have my personal NAS. Then I would be able to back that NAS up monthly or quarterly and take it to offsite storage.

I think the other thing the NAS buys me is any ransomware attack can be reduced in scope due to 1) backup of the backups, 2) snapshots that "in theory" would allow me to go back to non-ransomware (correct me if I'm wrong here) versions.

I'd pretty much talked myself into a minimum of 6 TB as that's where the knee in curve for disk prices goes up. However, herein lies my dilemma. I had been looking at a Qnap 2 disk and I see now they've come out with the TS-253D. However, for not that much more money (on the box) I can go up to TS-453D. The TS-453D would allow me to have 12 TB of data minimum with a RAID 1+0 setup and slightly better than dual redundancy ( I think).

So the question is, should I go with a 2-Disk RAID 1 with two 10-12 TB disks or should I do a 4-DISK RAID 1+0 with 6-8TB disks?

I really cannot see myself ever having more than 12TB of stuff - even if I were to go nuts on movies and hard-core audio format. So this would in all probability be a 6 year solution.

 

[W54/XM-388]

If you have an older PC that can hold a bunch of 3.5" drives all you need to do is clear all the drives off, and install the NAS software and you are good.

I'd recommend this one: https://www.openmediavault.org/

I comes out of the box ready to work with windows and linux clients.

It will do software raid for you so you don't have to worry about a raid card.

Have 1 dedicated smaller (like 128gb or such) SSD for the boot drive then put in 2 or more SATA Hard Disk Drives of matching size (go with 7200rpm drives) and then setup the data drives as Raid 1 if just 2 or Raid 5 if 3 or more. (You could also get fancy and do Raid 6 or Raid 10, but I don't think you'll need that).

 

[W54/XM-388]

It also has a plug in module where you can connect up a USB drive and automatically back everything up to the USB drive so you can store that drive elswhere.

 

[Powder_Burns]

I remember saying to myself when I bought my first tower that I would never fill up that 2gb hdd.

 

[W54/XM-388]

I think the other thing the NAS buys me is any ransomware attack can be reduced in scope due to 1) backup of the backups, 2) snapshots that "in theory" would allow me to go back to non-ransomware (correct me if I'm wrong here) versions.

A NAS will NOT protect you from a ransomware attack unless you specifically set things up.
Generally most ransomware attacks will hit one of your local in use computers and then try to connect to any and every network device they can attach to and encrypt any file store they have write access to.

If for example you are using OpenMedia Vault and want to configure it to give you some ransomware protection, do these 2 things:

1. Install the USB backup module and take regular backups to a USB drive (make sure you use at least 2 and rotate them), that you then unplug and store when not in use.

2. In addition to your primary file store, make a second file store that has different user accounts & passwords and NEVER let your windows or other system remember those login details, only log in manually, and use that second file store to backup the first file store to manually, and make sure you reboot the computer you are accessing it from after the backup to make sure no passwords are left in memory.

There are some other folks on the hide here who are way better at the software stuff than me & I'm pretty sure they could walk you through all kinds of fancy setups, but the above will at least get you started.

 

[Adam B]

As mentioned, If you have an old pc with a few drive bays check out

TrueNAS - Welcome to the Open Source Storage Era

TrueNAS is the World's #1 Open Source Storage. Based on OpenZFS, it is trusted by millions and deployed worldwide.

www.freenas.org

Openfiler | Open Platform Software Defined Storage

www.openfiler.com

you can install the os on a usb drive and setup a raid array in the disks

 

[SalomonQST99]

I have a QNAP TS453B 4x8tb. The other big player in the market is Synology. QNAP seems to be more aggressive with different hardware configurations while Synology has a tamer portfolio. You could ask 10 people about which is better and you'd probably get 10 different valid answers.

Myself, I'd go with a 4 bay unit if you think you'll fill it up or not.

 

[Adam B]

I use this stuffed 7.2k drives

No Results | HPE Store US

buy.hpe.com

 

[BytorJr]

I have a QNAP TS453B 4x8tb. The other big player in the market is Synology. QNAP seems to be more aggressive with different hardware configurations while Synology has a tamer portfolio. You could ask 10 people about which is better and you'd probably get 10 different valid answers.

Myself, I'd go with a 4 bay unit if you think you'll fill it up or not.

seems like Qnap has better hardware in my eyes. More memory, PCIe expansion, etc. I'm reviewing their ransomware "semi-whitepaper" as I type.

 

[SalomonQST99]

seems like Qnap has better hardware in my eyes. More memory, PCIe expansion, etc. I'm reviewing their ransomware "semi-whitepaper" as I type.

I think that the hardware edge goes to QNAP. Synology seems to have slightly better apps.

 

[P-Squared]

I'm running 2 QNAP 451's One is running 7TB drives and the other is running 10TB drives. Both have an external 10TB drive for backup. The oder 451 is just that, the newer one is a 451+.

I love these things.

 

[SniperWolf6mm]

Use greyhole and run whatever the fuck you want. I like the idea of something like an Intel nuc (running Linux of course) with a multi external drive enclosure...

 

[W54/XM-388]

Use greyhole and run whatever the fuck you want. I like the idea of something like an Intel nuc (running Linux of course) with a multi external drive enclosure...

The interface between the NUC and the external drive enclosure is going to be a bit of a limiting factor unless you get something faster.
Not to mention the price for those is usually a fair bit higher.

A simple little cheap tower case that holds a bunch of drives and has a bunch of SATA ports on a simple motherboard with a basic processor, would probably be faster and cheaper. (That's actually what most of these home use, branded NAS systems are when you get down to it).

If noise was not an issue for you, it's easy to pickup super cheap 2U rackmount servers that hold 8 to 12 of the 3.5" drives and have a kick ass NAS server, but the fan noise on those generally precludes you running those in a residence.

 

[SniperWolf6mm]

The interface between the NUC and the external drive enclosure is going to be a bit of a limiting factor unless you get something faster.
Not to mention the price for those is usually a fair bit higher.

Wrong...especially for his use case.

 

[W54/XM-388]

Wrong...especially for his use case.

So what interface are you proposing between the NUC and the drive array and what's the transmission speed for that interface?

 

[SniperWolf6mm]

USB 3.0 would be more than enough transfer speed for a NAS...

 

[W54/XM-388]

USB 3.0 would be more than enough transfer speed for a NAS...

So is your plan then to get a NUC and get one or more external USB enclosures, each with a SATA drive and run them off that NUC through the USB ports to the NUC which then does the processing and software side and connects up to the network via an ethernet port so the rest of your devices can use it?

If so, how is that substantially better than essentially a case that houses those same drives and the motherboard and the power supplies all in one single unit?

How are you providing redundancy in the event of failure? Software raid run by the NUC across the USB connected drives?

 

[SalomonQST99]

So is your plan then to get a NUC and get one or more external USB enclosures, each with a SATA drive and run them off that NUC through the USB ports to the NUC which then does the processing and software side and connects up to the network via an ethernet port so the rest of your devices can use it?

If so, how is that substantially better than essentially a case that houses those same drives and the motherboard and the power supplies all in one single unit?

How are you providing redundancy in the event of failure? Software raid run by the NUC across the USB connected drives?

There is a value add with all the apps that QNAP and Synology provide for the lay man. With regard to the NUC, it has an advantage as it's an i7 vs my QNAP which is running a Celeron processor.

 

[BytorJr]

Well, it's a tad bit embarrassing to ask these questions because "in theory" I do "computer shit" daily. However, I'm on the other side of the wall and generally work stuff like backups is done "for you." Feeling a bit stupid now (but hey, this is the Bear Pit...LOL). I will say from the hardware perspective having a Celeron isn't exactly what I call high performance but so long as I can stream the occasional 4k video I'd be okay (not that I stream much of anything). But hell, my Xeon 4114 at work sucks so bad that I'd gladly take an i7 from 2011-2012 in it's place.

 

[broncoaz]

I have a Qnap 2 drive unit with three western digital 4 gb red drives. I swap the third drive in about quarterly and have my wife take one to her office in a small pelican box. I’ve had it for a few years, mainly for photos and as a music server. It works well and is pretty easy.

 

[BytorJr]

I have a Qnap 2 drive unit with three western digital 4 gb red drives. I swap the third drive in about quarterly and have my wife take one to her office in a small pelican box. I’ve had it for a few years, mainly for photos and as a music server. It works well and is pretty easy.

That's not a bad idea if I go the two drive route. actually 4 drives makes that much more complicated in a RAID 1+0 config, except burning to a completely external drive.

 

[W54/XM-388]

I will say from the hardware perspective having a Celeron isn't exactly what I call high performance but so long as I can stream the occasional 4k video I'd be okay (not that I stream much of anything).

If the device is acting as a straight file server and not even doing Raid 5 or such, (Just doing software raid 1 or Raid 10) then you may find the processor doesn't make as much difference.
Now if you want to run a Raid 5 with software and have a bit more throughput, especially if you decide to go 10GBe later on, it's nice to have one built out of at least something comparable to a i5 6th generation or higher.

But hell, my Xeon 4114 at work sucks so bad that I'd gladly take an i7 from 2011-2012 in it's place.

The Xeon 4114 is not exactly a high end CPU for that range, but what's the specific problem you are having on your workstation sucking?

 

[OldSalty]

For your use case that old desktop will likely work just fine.

Buy a 1GE ethernet adapter (if you do not have one). You could buy two of them and do a LACP bond if your network supports. 1GE cards are cheap AF.

Personally, I would also buy a hardware SATA or maybe even a SAS raid capable HBA controller. Maybe even find one that has onboard cache. These can also be had for cheap. This will allow hardware raid, which will be wayyyy more reliable that software raid, IMO. Configure the disks within the controller cards BIOS.

Throw a few large capacity 7.2k disks in and install something like Ubuntu or other free linux distro. Lots to choose from. Do a minimal install, unless you want the deaktop GUI mode etc. Personally, I would want commandline only.

Configure the NAS services and you should be good to go.

Could buy a dedicated NAS appliance of course if you want to go that route but for what you describe that old box should be plenty.

 

[SalomonQST99]

I will say from the hardware perspective having a Celeron isn't exactly what I call high performance but so long as I can stream the occasional 4k video I'd be okay (not that I stream much of anything). But hell, my Xeon 4114 at work sucks so bad that I'd gladly take an i7 from 2011-2012 in it's place.

My QNAP unit is well over 5 years old and still streams just fine using Plex.

 

[BytorJr]

Sorry, I should have said, I only have a laptop. Long ago, for home, I gave up the desktop. Never foreseeing working from home as an option in my business.

As for the 4114, indeed, they bought the newest ones (the E5 was a good chip) from Dell, and I guarantee they never bothered looking at the performance, they just bought the "equivalent priced" machine from Dell as to the old E5 Xeon. It's worthless. It's slow as crap. Even doing parallel processing my computer is slower than a 2014 i5 single tasking the exact same code!!!! The big problem is the base rate is LOW (about half of the i5) and despite them saying they have turbo turned on, another IT guy said they disable that!!! I've stuck my neck out as far as I can at work, and now just look like a troublemaker. But when you have a deadline and stuff that used to run in 20-30 minutes takes 120-150 minutes, well it's easy to get pissed. Almost all else is good on the box - 64GB of RAM, 256GB SSD and a 1TB rusty at 7200 (that should have been a 1TB SSD).

 

[SniperWolf6mm]

So is your plan then to get a NUC and get one or more external USB enclosures, each with a SATA drive and run them off that NUC through the USB ports to the NUC which then does the processing and software side and connects up to the network via an ethernet port so the rest of your devices can use it?

Yes. Although it's not my plan. I'm running a rack-mounted server along with internal and external drive storage. Not saying the OP should do this, as my use case is...not average. However, as I suggested, the NUC could easily do anything QNAP can do and much, much more.

If so, how is that substantially better than essentially a case that houses those same drives and the motherboard and the power supplies all in one single unit?

For one, heat. Most external enclosures come with their own fans which help keep things cool under load. Second, the ability and flexability (see greyhole ref below) to expand capacity at scale is hands down, substantially better. Third, QNAP has utter shit for RAM capacity.

How are you providing redundancy in the event of failure? Software raid run by the NUC across the USB connected drives?

As I mentioned in my initial post, GREYHOLE. It essentially acts as a storage pool using jbod and smb to appear as a single drive and removes the hassles and headaches that are associated with typical RAID setups - drive matching, expanding, etc...hell it's so flexible you could even use a flash drive as a storage pool, not to mention the internal drive utilized by the host operating system, when partitioned correctly, cutting down costs even further.

Don't get me wrong, QNAP isn't a bad solution. It's just tailored for not-so-tech-savvy people looking for turn-key solutions. I'd rather rock my own services/apps, administer my own system, and customize it to my needs.

 

[BytorJr]

It was my understanding, albeit weak, that the newer QNAP has 8GB and the ability to put a PCIe card and run a SSD as a cache. Doesn't that somewhat solve the memory problem? I'm looking more for a turnkey approach. Though, you've now pushed me to do more research.

I'm also a bit space limited (physically at home) at the moment so that was another positive about the QNAP for me, just a box hanging off a switch. Is the THE BEST solution, doubtful; but we ran enterprise level RAIDS at my last job and never had any issue there other than the occasional disk dying off. Again, I was an end user, so no clue as to how they had it set up. Probably 16-32 disk for those RAID setups though.

 

[SniperWolf6mm]

It was my understanding, albeit weak, that the newer QNAP has 8GB and the ability to put a PCIe card and run a SSD as a cache. Doesn't that somewhat solve the memory problem? I'm looking more for a turnkey approach. Though, you've now pushed me to do more research.

Yes, but it comes with an inflated price tag...I really meant, it's utter shit relative to it's price.

I'm also a bit space limited (physically at home) at the moment so that was another positive about the QNAP for me, just a box hanging off a switch.

You'll be kicking yourself in the ass when you run out of drive storage...trust me.

 

[Bolo]

@BytorJr
Sounds like you're on point. Full backups every 2-3 days, keeping the last 5 or 6 is a great tactic that works. Plan for that level of storage. Consider one with 4 drives, but where you can break that down into two separate physical volumes- one for SJHTF computer backups, the other for your media needs.

Since one of your use cases is to prevent blowback from Ransomware, stay (the fuck) away from QNAP or Synology as a NAS. Seriously, no joke. Their software / firmware has more holes than lowlight's zero targets. So many stories I could share if I weren't under NDA...
No issues with them being used as a DAS (direct-attach storage). USB3 or eSATA connectivity to something solid-state (like an Intel NUC- you can get refurbed ones cheap) and running a locked-down minimalist Linux OS is a solid solution.
Zero worries about the DAS interconnect performance.. it will be way faster than anything a home or small-business network can handle. Even 10G ethernet... consumer-grade 10GE is practically limited to ~2.5Gb/s. (Think of it like a Tasco scope. There's a reason professionals don't use it, but it serves a purpose.)
If something dies, or needs to be upgraded to keep up with the times... the external enclosures have internal RAID to protect against hardware failure (1 is all you need, 10 increases performance a bit, but then you have two drives to swap out to cold storage); the enclosures are easy to find and can be swapped out in 15 minutes; and a new NUC can be placed and rebuilt on an hour or so. Resilience through simplicity and modularity.

Here's a key point: most of the ransomware I run into these days smokes the internal snapshots (VSS/Shadow Copy) or inserts itself so you end up restoring the malware as well. I'm also seeing delay / sleeper mechanisms for up to 30 days before the malware weaponizes itself. That means your latest backup may be worthless anyway, so plan to keep multiple ones on a rolling schedule.
Implement some basic ransomware protections up front, defense-in-depth strategy. Make sure the only path to the storage is through the NUC. Firewall / VLAN that off so it can only be accessed from a few internal IPs. Put anti-malware software on the NUC and scan everything (this also rules out being able to use the NAS with its built-in software). If you can use multi-factor authentication, do so- across every service you access. Take a good, hard look at your home router... it needs to perform basic firewalling at a minimum, and friends don't let friends use their ISP's router by itself (not even for WiFi). Use a DNS resolution service that blocks malware-serving sites and alerts on / prevents callbacks (i.e. OpenDNS).

 

[SniperWolf6mm]

@BytorJr
Since one of your use cases is to prevent blowback from Ransomware, stay (the fuck) away from QNAP or Synology as a NAS. Seriously, no joke.

Amen. This is another aspect I didn't want to get into, but it's correct.

 

[respiegel]

When I wanted a NAS I ended up going with a used Dell T3500 server from Newegg for less than $200 shipped, added hard drives and it has been great. Tried FreeNAS but liked running Ubuntu better.

 

[BytorJr]

@BytorJr
Sounds like you're on point. Full backups every 2-3 days, keeping the last 5 or 6 is a great tactic that works. Plan for that level of storage. Consider one with 4 drives, but where you can break that down into two separate physical volumes- one for SJHTF computer backups, the other for your media needs.

Since one of your use cases is to prevent blowback from Ransomware, stay (the fuck) away from QNAP or Synology as a NAS. Seriously, no joke. Their software / firmware has more holes than lowlight's zero targets. So many stories I could share if I weren't under NDA...
No issues with them being used as a DAS (direct-attach storage). USB3 or eSATA connectivity to something solid-state (like an Intel NUC- you can get refurbed ones cheap) and running a locked-down minimalist Linux OS is a solid solution.
Zero worries about the DAS interconnect performance.. it will be way faster than anything a home or small-business network can handle. Even 10G ethernet... consumer-grade 10GE is practically limited to ~2.5Gb/s. (Think of it like a Tasco scope. There's a reason professionals don't use it, but it serves a purpose.)
If something dies, or needs to be upgraded to keep up with the times... the external enclosures have internal RAID to protect against hardware failure (1 is all you need, 10 increases performance a bit, but then you have two drives to swap out to cold storage); the enclosures are easy to find and can be swapped out in 15 minutes; and a new NUC can be placed and rebuilt on an hour or so. Resilience through simplicity and modularity.

Here's a key point: most of the ransomware I run into these days smokes the internal snapshots (VSS/Shadow Copy) or inserts itself so you end up restoring the malware as well. I'm also seeing delay / sleeper mechanisms for up to 30 days before the malware weaponizes itself. That means your latest backup may be worthless anyway, so plan to keep multiple ones on a rolling schedule.
Implement some basic ransomware protections up front, defense-in-depth strategy. Make sure the only path to the storage is through the NUC. Firewall / VLAN that off so it can only be accessed from a few internal IPs. Put anti-malware software on the NUC and scan everything (this also rules out being able to use the NAS with its built-in software). If you can use multi-factor authentication, do so- across every service you access. Take a good, hard look at your home router... it needs to perform basic firewalling at a minimum, and friends don't let friends use their ISP's router by itself (not even for WiFi). Use a DNS resolution service that blocks malware-serving sites and alerts on / prevents callbacks (i.e. OpenDNS).

Maybe I should stick to old school and bring out my 3.5" floppy .

When we get to DNS and all that I really quickly get over my head. So let me ask this. So in a DAS setup I could still use the Qnap like a NAS, but the NAS would be controlled by/through the NUC? I'd have to put something other than Windows 10 on there. I'm really trying to migrate away from Winders....I hate "10" as it still appears after 5 years to be a hodgepodge of settings, locations of things, touch/non-touch crap.

Basicly I want to be able to backup laptop, access video and files currently on laptop from any computer I own (tablet/phone/laptop/etc) - securely from wherever I am. I hated the idea of the cloud until my father died, and then it became obvious why the cloud was handy as I'd have to answer questions, have copies of this/that wherever I was.

Hell, i guess I could resort to hiring somebody .

 

[respiegel]

Yes, you could use a NUC or some other embedded computer to host the DAS, but that seems like more cost/extra work to end up with a server at the end of the day. Again, cheap Dell servers come with Gigabit Ethernet adaptors and hardware RAID ready to go, just add hard drives.

Local network storage is easy and straightforward as MiniDLNA and Samba, you'll be up and running in 15 min. Opening ports to the outside world and updating your dynamic ip address is easy, but doing that securely is more of a challenge, if a port is open somebody from the PRC is going to try and break in eventually.

Maybe I should stick to old school and bring out my 3.5" floppy .

When we get to DNS and all that I really quickly get over my head. So let me ask this. So in a DAS setup I could still use the Qnap like a NAS, but the NAS would be controlled by/through the NUC? I'd have to put something other than Windows 10 on there. I'm really trying to migrate away from Winders....I hate "10" as it still appears after 5 years to be a hodgepodge of settings, locations of things, touch/non-touch crap.

Basicly I want to be able to backup laptop, access video and files currently on laptop from any computer I own (tablet/phone/laptop/etc) - securely from wherever I am. I hated the idea of the cloud until my father died, and then it became obvious why the cloud was handy as I'd have to answer questions, have copies of this/that wherever I was.

Hell, i guess I could resort to hiring somebody .