Home Lab NAS
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I'm in the research stage of purchasing a NAS for my Home Lab. I'm looking at the prices on 2 and 4 bay units and starting to wonder if I shouldn't just purchase a used server off of ebay and turn it into a NAS using FreeBSD or Linux.
$100-$200 for used server + $200-$300 for drives, or ~$400 for a small NAS and $200-$300 for drives?
I imagine the smaller NAS will use less energy and have a smaller footprint, but in reality I don't really care if it eats a little more juice; it will be living in my basement with my hypervisor.
Thoughts? Recommendations on other options I may not have considered?
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Something like ReadyNAS or Synology are basically silent and give you blind swap RAID.
Build your own and likely you are going to suck ten times the power, make a lot more noise and while you can get hot swap, no one offers blind swap.
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Building your own gives you a lot more flexibility to do other things with it, of course.
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@scottalanmiller said in Home Lab NAS:
Something like ReadyNAS or Synology are basically silent and give you blind swap RAID.
Build your own and likely you are going to suck ten times the power, make a lot more noise and while you can get hot swap, no one offers blind swap.
Yeah, blind swap is definitely something to take into consideration.
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I like the idea of building your own, I do, but would you actually be saving a good amount of money by doing this?
You'd have an old server, which uses far more electric, for the same end goal.
Why not buy a refurb two or four bay Synology, with some decent drives?
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@DustinB3403 said in Home Lab NAS:
I like the idea of building your own, I do, but would you actually be saving a good amount of money by doing this?
You'd have an old server, which uses far more electric, for the same end goal.
Why not buy a refurb two or four bay Synology, with some decent drives?
Recommendation on models?
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I've used the Netgear ReadyNAS from earlier on when they were sparc based. No complaints, they just work and work. I still have one in production where it does not matter if it fails. its going on at least 8 years.
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@DustinB3403 said in Home Lab NAS:
@RamblingBiped Do you want a 2 bay, or a 4 bay?
Edit: And what RAID capacity are you looking for?
I'd prefer a 4 bay, but realistically I can probably get by just fine with a 2 bay unit. I don't have a ton of data to put on it right now, I could get by with 4TB, but would like at least 8TB of storage.
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@tiagom said in Home Lab NAS:
I've used the Netgear ReadyNAS from earlier on when they were sparc based. No complaints, they just work and work. I still have one in production where it does not matter if it fails. its going on at least 8 years.
I still have a Sparc one, I think.
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I would look at the Synology DS416 or even the DS414j there are a few "like-new" units on Amazon for $230 + 9 bucks shipping.
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@scottalanmiller The one i mentioned is sparc based, its a ReadyNAS 1100. Only have had to replace a few drives over the years.
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This is something I worked on for a while,.. I had a 1U server I could use, but it only had slots for 2 drives.... something I thought was 'risky'.
I looked at getting a heavier box something that could take up to 8 drives,.. but boiled things down to getting a ReadyNAS 314, 4 bay with 2TB drives.
IT's been running fine, have a few shares on it,.. permissions and attached a 1TB external USB drive as well (already had).
Small form factor and serious lack of ambient noise makes for the win...
ETA: I credit research and speaking with @scottalanmiller and ML for insight on it.
