Recommendations for a DIY

dosborne · Feb 6, 2022

Tech Junky said:
Principal though is KISS.. when you complicate things they tend to not work as well

Which seems to be a reason not to go a DIY solution which you seem to prefer based on a few of your posts

A commercial NAS, essentially, just "works" OOTB.

Tech Junky said:
Picking the FS though outside of buying something preconfigured to use x / y / z locks you into their system. Drawbacks can be as noted prior with the inability to expand easily or data integrity.

I've seen you post this before too, but I disagree. Yes, the drives with the data intact may not be likely to pop into another system, but the physical drives can be used universally. There are issues moving any drive from one unit to another and maintaining data, even within whatever brand or DIY solution you pick. But, I'd wager, the majority don't care. You run it until you replace it or add a new one and simply migrate the data.

Tech Junky said:
If you build it you know what's going on and looking at many different how to pages will give you a clearer picture on security / integrity.

Id give this a partial agreement. I've never owned a Synology so can't comment on their platform. My D-Link NAS boxes are the most flexible as they were essentially"rooted" to give full control and remove every single bloatware component right down to the O/S level. With a bit of effort, and less than a DIY, I would like to think I have a really good handle on in inner workings of my QNAP boxes.

Not being argumentative, just my personal experience. I've built hardware solutions from system design, PCB layout and all the way up so typically have a preference for building a solution, but even I like the simplicity of buying a device at the store (1 box) and having it running 30 minutes after getting it home.

modestyB · Feb 7, 2022

L&LD said:
I am not 'promoting' QNAP. Other than it is simply the product I feel gives the best overall value between it and Synology.

Read the posts above to see why you may not want to use ZFS.

QNAP is 'more susceptible', today. That doesn't mean anything else is more secure in the long run.

Use the hardware/firmware that you feel is better. Nobody will judge.

When asked about NAS, in general, I state QNAP, Synology (only). With the nod to QNAP because it offers more hardware/performance for less cost. In almost every other area, these two top picks are effectively the same.

Ok, I can understand setting up QNAP/Synology to have something that just works, and will provide a NAS which can be trusted.

The posts above is about some opinions made 2 years ago, and it appears that LinusT is mostly irritated with the licensing issue vs Linux and implementing ZFS in the kernel.
Since ZFS became FOSS, there have been a continued development on OpenZFS which is well maintained with OpenZFS2.0 is well implemented - and work on OpenZFS3.0 is ahead.

Blog - OpenZFS 3.0 Introduced at Developer Summit

The ninth annual OpenZFS Developer Summit took place November 8th and 9th online with iXsystems proudly returning as a Gold sponsor. The OpenZFS community remains vibrant and is continuing to develop features at a rapid pace. This blog summarizes some of the more interesting talks. Matt Ahrens...

www.truenas.com

Now, there are issues with all filesystems. Exerpt from another thread:
---------
"BTRFS has issues with raid5/6
BTRFS has a black eye as the way Synology uses it on their NASes is terribly slow.
all file systems have issues when run on top of LVM
Red Hat is trying to make another file system(Stratis file management) to replace or extend the functionality of XFS/LVM
In 2017 Red Hat has said there is NO future in BTRFS and is deprecating and removing it
LVM/XFS when shutdown dirty results in IT doing the single user mode thing and "Y" a few hundred/thousand times
MD and LVM are two complex tools to manage part of what ZFS does."
---------

TrueNAS Core which is the only stable, does not use Linux, it is FreeBSD. Truenas Scale will run on Linux.
I have read about ZFS and I still cannot see any problem with ZFS and the future, I can just see that it is a supreme file-system with the best performance.

QNAP/Synology is probably best because it is more easy to deploy, but I would not call it "Much more secure. Much more reliable." than building your own NAS. A well-built TrueNAS is probably more secure and more reliable, but it is little more difficult to setup.

So it is as you say, use what you are comfortable with.

modestyB · Feb 7, 2022

L&LD said:
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.

Why does QNAP use ZFS for mission-critical storage then?

The preferred choice for reliable ZFS storage | QNAP

QuTS hero NAS offers a complete product line, especially featuring HDD+SSD hybrid storage solutions, for enterprises to seamlessly integrate them into IT infrastructure without a burden.

www.qnap.com

L&LD · Feb 7, 2022

For an average user, building your own NAS is not inherently 'more secure and more reliable'. Particularly if built off of spare parts you have lying around (or worse, paying for them on eBay), the reliability part is questionable by any sane metric.

Now see, there's the thing. If QNAP actually supports ZFS, I may begin using it in 2030 or so. It should be enough time to see 1) is it still around, 2) have they made the hardware/software as bullet-proof as the current QNAP I use.

Centrifuge · Feb 7, 2022

I got a mini pc (Protecli FW2), Celeron based, a couple of TB's of drives lying around that would be connected via usb. Is this enough to get a Truenas NAS going?

L&LD · Feb 7, 2022

Connected via USB? No, not a true NAS.

Tech9 · Feb 7, 2022

Centrifuge said:
Is this enough to get a Truenas NAS going?

With USB drives you can get good performance, but you don't need TrueNAS. Keep USB drives NTFS formatted and sync/mirror in software.

See this: