Posts made by markl

@carnival-boy What was the pricing like?

@dustinb3403 Has anyone figured out what the Meraki pricing is for MDM?

@scottalanmiller wow, even in that explanation is seems like RAID 10 over RAID 6... except I suppose because you can better leverage your total diskspace. Is that the primary motivation?

So to summarize:
RAID 6 = Good backup solution due to higher use of available disks in the array (although consider 10 depending on the size of the array... larger array pushes you to RAID 10)
RAID 10 = Good for production use -- high availability... faster disk failure recovery, etc...
RAID 0 = For total high performance (we leverage this in our business for specific uses)... requires duplicate array for any form of redundancy/availability...

@scottalanmiller okay, that's awesome. So curious about your thoughts on "backups"... let's say you got 15TB of data you want to do backups on. Are you building a separate RAID array for backups? How does it's use change your thinking on build specs and setup? Do you use different RAID options?

@markl said in Project: Home/SMB NAS Setup -- Need ur advice:

@scottalanmiller So again, part of my ask here was related to my other thread on how you think of reliability when building a NAS platform (at least in terms of the example given). It sounds like:

a) You focus on the quality of the underlying hardware (hence the refurbed enterprise suggestion) -- cpu, chassis, power supply, etc...
b) You seem to favor hardware raid...

You recommend Fedora for the OS (which I'd love to understand compared against Ubuntu or other distros).

So let's say I do that... the QNAP I was looking at supported 8 bays... originally I thought I'd just pay the diff to get some extra bays so that I had expansion room. I was thinking of starting with 4 x 6TB drives running RAID 10...

Does that input trigger any other thoughts?

@bj @david

hi @bj! Great to see you and @david on here.

@scottalanmiller So again, part of my ask here was related to my other thread on how you think of reliability when building a NAS platform (at least in terms of the example given). It sounds like:

a) You focus on the quality of the underlying hardware (hence the refurbed enterprise suggestion) -- cpu, chassis, power supply, etc...
b) You seem to favor hardware raid...

You recommend Fedora for the OS (which I'd love to understand compared against Ubuntu or other distros).

So let's say I do that... the QNAP I was looking at supported 8 bays... originally I thought I'd just pay the diff to get some extra bays so that I had expansion room. I was thinking of starting with 4 x 6TB drives running RAID 10...

Does that input trigger any other thoughts?

@travisdh1 I live in Utah... are you asking if xByte is local? Can they mail equipment?

Welcome @david

@scottalanmiller So let's get specific, here's my next post: My Home NAS

Okay... so I have been searching for a great home/smb NAS system.

For my home uses, here is what's driving it:

• Large family: 2 adult, 5 kids (means TONS of media -- videos/photography)
• My wife and I are both photographers (30-50mb raw image files)
• Plex Media Server (for our video library, plus family photo stuff)
• Possible corporate backup for my software company (big maybe here)

So... for home stuff, I want to be able to collect data from:

• 2 Macbook Pros (both with 1TB drives)
• 1 iMac (with a *1TB)
• Multiple iPhones and iPads (all with 128gb storage)

I want to do regular backups of these devices to the NAS, and have a central image/video repository for the family. In addition, we want a general file share... In other words, in some instances (like the video library, central fileshare for the family, or the image/video repository) this will be the primary copy of the data (we'll focus on funneling this content onto the NAS and then backing it up after. In other instances, like a timemachine backup of one of our main computers, the NAS is the backup.

My budget is fairly large for a home NAS setup...

I started by looking at standard solutions like Synology stuff:

• DS1517+ -- but then I read about all their CPU problems
• Also the DS1817+

But I sorta got turned off of Synology for some reason... their weird Hybrid RAID, CPU issues, etc... (even though I know people who love them)

Then I started looking at QNAP systems like:

• YVS-873

Then I starting thinking about FreeNAS and a DIY route... I am a former software engineer (now in management)... so I love the idea of a project, but realistically I'm somewhat limited in my time. I've been stewing over a NAS solution for my home for months reading up on what I want to do, and then came across this forum and wanted to get ur advice. Would love your take @scottalanmiller...

Awesome. I have another question, but I'll throw it into a diff thread as you've pretty much resolved my thoughts on this one so far.

@scottalanmiller said in To ZFS or not to ZFS... that is my question.:

So you choose ZFS "when you are on a platform on which it makes sense." Normally for a NAS this means that you choose FreeBSD as your platform and you wanted the features of ZFS over the features of UFS (UFS is slightly faster for traditional workloads)

Awesome reply. Seriously, I am loving this forum and appreciate the expertise.

So here's my followup question: I have hear this statement, "Redundancy for its own sake is a bad thing, only redundancy that creates reliability is good" a lot in RAID forums... so what do you feel actually generates the best reliability when discussing NASes for SMBs? How should I be thinking about it.

@scottalanmiller So the combined volume manager/file system has no advantages?

What is your filesystem of choice for NAS?

Thanks @scottalanmiller! So is this your site? From all your posting you appear to own the place! It's awesome.

So, I am contemplating a new NAS system, and I am debating what type of file system I would use for it. As I read and read about NAS storage, and specifically RAID setups, I recognize that RAID != backups... I have read about some of the issues for long-term storage on NAS systems, including issues like bitrot, etc. So you've got to do your own backups...

Then I read about ZFS. It seems to allow you to setup RAID so that it could be used as a backup for critical data. That's because it is both a volume manager and file system and has actual knowledge of the drives. Apparently, you get SAN like reliability/redundancy. BUT I understand it is insanely slow...

So I guess I'm wondering what are the use cases for ZFS? Does ZFS provide everything it promises? End-to-end date integrity? Zero bitrot? Is this the ideal solution for storing high-value data that you want to protect? But not the solution for serving of media, etc?

Curious what @scottalanmiller has to say... I hear so much about the SAM-SD, but most implementations don't use ZFS (I assume for speed issues).