Recommendations for a DIY

[L&LD]

If ZFS or OpenZFS was truly superior, it would be used everywhere. As you say, it is open-source after all.

For it to not be, there must be very good reasons, from all sides.

 

[sbsnb]

If ZFS or OpenZFS was truly superior, it would be used everywhere. As you say, it is open-source after all.

For it to not be, there must be very good reasons, from all sides.

Like the way everyone used the superior betamax over VHS, or HD-DVD over Bluray? And don't underestimate inertia. People hate change. RAID has been around a very long time in comparison to robust ZFS.

 

[L&LD]

And RAID is still around despite that ZFS robustness.

While Betamax was superior, it wasn't free.

HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray, along with many other optical formats were put to pasture with streaming services and nand chips on micro-sized iPods and phones, for most consumers.

 

[sbsnb]

My point is that things don't always end up being the most used because of technical superiority. I think ZFS isn't so widely used specifically because of opposition from the Linux camp, and that's mostly a licensing issue rather than a technical crtitique.

HD-DVD vs. Blu-ray, along with many other optical formats were put to pasture with streaming services and nand chips on micro-sized iPods and phones, for most consumers.

Which is crazy. Streaming services yank shows and movies all the time, not to mention editing them to fit the current day's politics. I'm sure we can all relate to a favorite movie or show suddenly becoming unavailable. On the political front Disney+ simply deleted an episode of The Simpsons that referenced Tiananmen Square for customers in Taiwan. If you don't want your movie library to be at the mercy of the whims of your government or streaming provider you have to own them on read-only media.

 

[L&LD]

I agree 100% with you. Truly.

TV/Movies are not something worth owning (for me). Now, music? All these 'newly mastered' versions, let alone covers? Pure garbage. The original 8-Track recordings in a 1980's automobile sound more like music with soul than most of what is available today.

 

[degrub]

8 or 16 track reel to reel is the way to go ! 8track cassettes wear out too fast.
Digital will never replace analog recordings, but it can get close, at least for human hearing (the older i get the better it sounds ;-) ) ranges.

 

[L&LD]

Lol... hard to get those 8/16 Track Reel to Reel's going in a car though.

A merely 'pristine' state of sound doesn't always equate to the feelings it should evoke.

 

[TheLostSwede]

If the plan is to mostly store media files, don't complicate things.
Go with Open Media Vault, Union FS and SnapRAID.
It'll run perfectly fine on your hardware. It's easy to install and SnapRAID is designed for media servers.

SnapRAID

A backup program for disk arrays. It stores parity information of your data and it recovers from up to six disk failures

www.snapraid.it

 

[coxhaus]

That's why I like ZFS. The chances of a hardware failure corrupting your data is almost nil, unlike RAID or similar strategies. In the end the data is what's most important. I did have a motherboard fail several times on my NAS, and it was because of a bug in the actual motherboard hardware that was eventually fixed by the manufacturer. Coincidentally, it was a board with a soldered Intel Atom CPU that then died because of an Intel bug, but that was outside of the warranty. No data were harmed.

It was ironic because I've never had anything like that happen with consumer level "junk" I have all over the place. I still have motherboard, CPUs, RAM, and hard drives that still work and they're older than some people on this board. The one time I buy "server grade" hardware it fails multiple times within 5 years.

I have bought lots of server grade networking gear. The best motherboards were real Intel made boards. I never bought budget motherboards but I bought some ASUS motherboards way back. They had lots of BIOS bugs back then. With OS/2 there were lots issues. They did issue fixes. You just had to wait. I quit buying ASUS motherboards and only bought server grade stuff. It was much more reliable. I had good luck with SuperMicro also but I preferred real Intel boards.

 

[thecheapseats]

Not one mention of the real advantage of ZFS?... It's ability to combat bit rot (a very real problem) is legendary and useful for long term storage and archiving.... raid, btrfs, and modern journaled filesystems don't address this... Any ZFS discussion omitting this issue is incomplete.

 

[L&LD]

Raid Scrubbing is what QNAP uses. Is that equivalent?

 

[TheLostSwede]

Not one mention of the real advantage of ZFS?... It's ability to combat bit rot (a very real problem) is legendary and useful for long term storage and archiving.... raid, btrfs, and modern journaled filesystems don't address this... Any ZFS discussion omitting this issue is incomplete.

And also requires ECC memory which doesn't work with modern consumer CPUs.
SnapRAID also prevents bit rot, without the need of expensive hardware.

 

[thecheapseats]

And also requires ECC memory which doesn't work with modern consumer CPUs.
SnapRAID also prevents bit rot, without the need of expensive hardware.

Deploying consumer 'anything' for long term storage and archiving of important files without ECC memory is foolish... good luck with that choice...

 

[TheLostSwede]

Deploying consumer 'anything' for long term storage and archiving of important files without ECC memory is foolish... good luck with that choice...

So that's why none of the pre-built NASes from Asustor, Synology, Thecus, QNAP or WD features ECC memory then?
Dude, get a life.

 

[thecheapseats]

So that's why none of the pre-built NASes from Asustor, Synology, Thecus, QNAP or WD features ECC memory then?
Dude, get a life.

I spoke specifically about ZFS. Your reflexive listing of the usual suspects of consumer NAS devices is curious - as none on your 'list' support ZFS. Your sensitivity eclipses your sarcasm - I won't speak to your lack of focus.

Your comment regarding (some, not all, btw) consumer CPU devices which do not support ECC memory, while speaking about consumer NAS devices that do not support ZFS is a non-sequitur.

I simply extended, for the benefit of readers here, to encompass 'any' consumer' device, in part or in whole, as being inappropriate for the important specific task of long term storage/archiving.

ZFS scales to zettabytes, is far more mature - and (unlike SnapRAID) runs required sanity processes automatically and supports storage pooling.

 

[TheLostSwede]

I spoke specifically about ZFS. Your reflexive listing of the usual suspects of consumer NAS devices is curious - as none on your 'list' support ZFS. Your sensitivity eclipses your sarcasm - I won't speak to your lack of focus.

Your comment regarding (some, not all, btw) consumer CPU devices which do not support ECC memory, while speaking about consumer NAS devices that do not support ZFS is a non-sequitur.

I simply extended, for the benefit of readers here, to encompass 'any' consumer' device, in part or in whole, as being inappropriate for the important specific task of long term storage/archiving.

ZFS scales to zettabytes, is far more mature - and (unlike SnapRAID) runs required sanity processes automatically and supports storage pooling.

I think you're in the wrong forum.
I don't think anyone here is building storage servers for their business and the OP was asking about what he could run on his current hardware, but I guess you decided to completely ignore that and have a rant about something unrelated instead. Good call.

 

[Tech9]

.Motherboard:Asus A88X-PRO
.CPU:AMD a10 5800k

For reliability alone, I would use newer and more power efficient hardware. This MB is 8-years old and may have some aged components on it. This CPU is 10-years old with 100W TDP and useless for NAS built-in Radeon GPU. This build will be less reliable, noisy and it will have dust build up.

 

[thiggins]

@thecheapseats @TheLostSwede Disengage, gentlemen or you'll both earn a timeout. Stay on topic.

 

[L&LD]

Any insights into the question that may have gotten lost in the shuffle above?

Recommendations for a DIY

If ZFS or OpenZFS was truly superior, it would be used everywhere. As you say, it is open-source after all. For it to not be, there must be very good reasons, from all sides.

www.snbforums.com

 

[TheLostSwede]

For reliability alone, I would use newer and more power efficient hardware. This MB is 8-years old and may have some aged components on it. This CPU is 10-years old with 100W TDP and useless for NAS built-in Radeon GPU. This build will be less reliable, noisy and it will have dust build up.

So dust can't be cleaned out?
Power efficiency isn't the end all of a NAS though, is it?
I used a Core i7 6700K in my NAS, as it's what I had going spare at the time.
Considering that the CPU is idling most of the time, it gets nowhere near the 91W TDP it's rated at in terms of power usage and neither will the OP's CPU.
TDP doesn't equal actual power draw, it's thermal output at full load.
Aged components doesn't mean much either, people are still running much older systems, although something like the PSU might be an issue.
Even so, considering that people use a RPi as a "NAS", I'd say this is a much better choice.