DIY NAS. RPi4B?

[T i m]

Hi all,

I've been running OMV on a RPi2B with a 3TB external 2.5" drive (powered by the RPi) for some time now and whilst I'm still not fully conversant with the OMV software, I do seem to be able to access it and it seems quite responsive, considering.

However, the new RPi4B has two features that I think might potentially make it a better NAS, the first being Gb Ethernet and secondly, USB3 ports.

But how might it improve from a users POV, ITRW?

All of my network here is Gb and I'm typically the heaviest user (she might be playing games or watching Catch Up TV)?

OOI, I'm currently sending a W10 backup / image to the OMV Pi and the Taskmanager suggests it's doing so at around 85Mbps?

I'd tell you what the OMV utilisation was, if I could log back into the desktop as admin (I can get in as Tim but can't see the stats). ;-(

Cheers, T i m

[spuorgelgoog]

And more to the point, the Ethernet isn't sitting on top of a USB bus.

Owain

[The Natural Philosopher]

+1. BUT I have found an old mini-tower PC that was essentially given to me as scrap will take up to 4 SATA drives of terabyte level size, comes in a case with a PSU, and its powerful enough to run a TV server , a media server and act as a repository for music ,e books and personal data and ....

....a pi would cost more!

[spuorgelgoog]

What about the electricity consumption though?

Owain

[RJH]

What's the power consumption?

Wouldn't surprise me if the Pi would pay for itself from saved electricity in a few months. Plus the advantages of size and low noise (no noise with SSDs).

[T i m]

... is the size of a shed (comparatively) and sounds like a jet. ;-)

Not if you didn't already have such hardware kicking about and certainly if you had to pay for your electricity (over time).

Pi2 average (stress) current consumption: 750mA. @ 5V so 3.75W and the

3TB USB hard drive (when active) adds another 1W. ;-)

Don't get me wrong, I also built my own server (and have done for years, even running Netware) but as a diy / feasibility project, I have been pretty impressed with how my RPi2 OMV NAS has run, in spite of only being 'tacked together' over a year (or possibly more?) ago.

My current server, WHS (V1) is also silent and draws (from memory) about 25W when active. A Synology DS218j NAS is about 17W active.

And given you could probably fit 3 of these solutions in a PC PSU (not PC) case ...they are much easier to lose behind the TV or wherever there is a tiny bit of space.

Mine is currently in the bedroom and online 24/7 ... and you couldn't hear if it was working on not until you put your ear up against the HDD.

Cheers, T i m

[The Natural Philosopher]

Well its not huge. About 25W I reckon

at 8000 hours p.a. thats 200kWh = about £40. Still cheaper than a Pi :-)

And it keeps the office a bit warmer in winter

[The Natural Philosopher]

Have you any idea how much 4TB of SSD costs?

The server is almost completely silent The disks seldom spin

>

[RJH]

£300 - £400? 3 to 4 times the cost of the cheapest alternative, but not outrageous if silent is needed.

Some Dells I've used have been pretty good, but not as quiet as my 2 disk NAS - which I'd consider too loud for a living room.

[Andy Burns]

starting at £400 for 4x1TB, about a 10% premium for 2x2TB and 20% premium for 1x4TB

[dennis]

Waste of time on a Pi4 then as they run hot so will need cooling.

Also..

The USB3 is a bit limiting if you buy NVME SSDs which are about that price.

The gigE doesn't give you ten times the performance, only about 2.5 times.

They might be able to fix the gigE in software but that's what it is ATM.

Unless you like bleeding edge linux I would give it a miss for a few weeks/months.

There are some ARM based 3d printer boards that would probably do these sort of things that are much cheaper. I have a bigtreetech SKR mini-E3 on order to fit my ender 3. Not that I would consider that suitable as its specifically done for an ender 3. They are about £22.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Why put it in a living room?

This office here has two PCs, a PABX, a labgear TV, VHF distribution amp a router and 100Mbps 24 port swuch and a printer all on permanently

And it sill needs heating in winter.

All I have in et living roopm tehse days is a wall mounted TV, a 100W per channel powwer amp (+speakers) and an old netgear router used as a wifi access point.

They are all on 24x7 too.

So is my shit processing plant.

And my fridge freezers.

They are MUCH louder.

[Bob Eager]

Here I have eight PCs (one being a PABX), a TV, VHF distribution amp, router, two 24 port switches, a large old printer...

... and it still needs heating.

Not at present though - it needs cooling!

[T i m]

And space?

I could have used an old PC as my Linux / OMV file server (as I have

*many* to choose from), and another for my Dymo label maker print server and another as my DomoticX weather server ... I now have a lot of boxes a lot of heat, noise and energy consumption. ;-(

All that lot on RPi's will fit INSIDE an old PC PSU case and consume to power of less than one PC.

That said, I am looking at getting a Synology DS218j NAS with maybe a couple of 4TB WD Red drives [1], because 1) my WHS V1 is getting pretty old now (~12 years) and the OMV on the RPi I really treat as an practical experiment as there is no redundancy etc.

I could add a second 3TB USB drive but don't know if OMV has the ability to setup RAID1 or if I could do it if it did. ;-(

Cheers, T i m

[1] I recommended one to a mate and was able to configure it for him ok.

[dennis]

I would recommend them, I have two DS215j with a pair of 4TB drives in the primary backup and a pair of 6TB drives in the backup one.

I use file history to backup to the primary and the synology backup to back that one up to the secondary.

I have backups going back over a year ATM so I can recover from encryption attacks and stuff like that.

Synology NAS are very easy to setup even though they use linux. You only see the web interface for most things.

You can hack the kernel and install linux software if you want. Unless you want to do something like USB sharing I don't see much point in doing so. Even USB sharing probably isn't worth doing as you have to pay while its free on a RPi.

[T i m]

Yeah, they seem quite nice (by my criteria).

Nice. Are they physically separated OOI? One in the garage etc?

OK. I think it was your mentioning of the inbuilt Windows (10?) backup options that spurred me to play with it to my OMV NAS yesterday (and carrying on today).

For my purposes, WHS is still the easiest for desktop backups but for extra capacity, or for more secure (RAID1) I was considering the Synology NAS.

And that's the secret. ;-)

I don't 'want'. ;-)

Quite.

So I think I've sent a (W10) Disk Image backup to the OMV and now doing a file copy backup (all files selected) and will see how that works out.

Cheers, T i m

[T i m]

On 1 Jul 2019 09:20:15 GMT, Bob Eager [e-mail] wrote: <snip>

And that's another point. Whilst we can make good use of that waste heat when it's cold, we can't when it's hot so can't be considered an overall plus. It's also a sign of wasted energy in general so to be avoided, even in the winter (even if we can make use of it then etc).

Same with solar panels not providing electricity (in the UK) when we need it at night and in the winter.

Did you see that they are running a fleet of electric busses somewhere but can't draw enough energy off the grid to charge them all at night (where it would make sense on E7 etc), so charge a container full of batteries during the day and use them to supplement the charging at night?

Cheers, T i m

[T i m]

<snip>

My WHS sits behind my TV and you really can't hear it when it's running.

The mobo is passively cooled and there is just a slow speed 120mm fan in the PSU case (no PSU electronics) as it's powered from an external power 'brick'.

There is (diy) ducting inside the case to ensure the air is drawn in at the bottom, goes over the 3 x 'rubber suspended' laptop drives and then over the RAM and mobo chip heatsinks, before going UP and out through the PSU case / fan.

The only way I can tell it's on (other than accessing it from a PC) is to get a look at the power LED on the front. ;-)

I think I could generally hear mates DS218j when the drives span up from sleep but the noise level was way down compared with life outside his house.

My RPi2 OMV NAS was running all night and is currently 50cm from the Mrs head when we are in bed and she would be the first to tell me if there was any noise that was annoying her. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[T i m]

The RPi4 or the SSD's? If it's the RPi that needs cooling, why don't they provide any (passive cooling) as std?

That was the sort of thing I was asking about.

That's always my hope ... the software boys do their stuff down the line (and often do).

I'm happy to play with what's offered now ... and wait for the fixes if required. ;-)

For me it's down to what is available that needs the least 'work' to do what I want, with the most / best support. The RPi's seem to have a good following. ;-)

(I note the various supplier often sell out of their first allowance nearly instantly and suggest they have '8,000 coming in in 5 days', that also seem to go pretty quickly.

I generally buy at least one of each as they come out, 1) because they don't seem to go down in price later on and 2) I like to see how they have improved on the last version. ;-)

Cheers, T i m

[The Natural Philosopher]

Surprisingly not.

Its sitting with curtains drawn at around 20C