Building a new NAS (1 Viewer)

zeroaccess

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Any NAS users?

I have a Synology Diskstation that's been going strong for 11 years. There is a 1 TB WD Black and a 2 TB WD Green in there.

I use it as a media server from the 1 TB drive, which backs up to the 2 TB drive weekly. The 2 TB drive also takes the weekly backup from my PC.

I'm amazed at the longevity, but I'm wanting to increase the speed and capacity, so I'm thinking about buying/building a new one.

I want the media server to run from solid state disks, so I'm thinking of doing either 4x1TB or 2x2TB SSD's, backing up to an 8 TB HDD. These won't be high-end SSD's as no matter what I buy, I'll be saturating the ethernet link.

Why not just buy a 4 TB SSD, you say? Because they get pricey.

It would be convenient if I could pool the SSD's together to make them one accessible drive like I have now. I'm looking for recommendations on the best way to do that; different types of RAID, etc.
 
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Gasman

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Yes, I have two.
Mine are Dlink DNS323 units. My first has 2 * 500GB in RAID 1 configuration. My second has 2 * 2TB RAID 1 configuration.
The first runs Twonky Media server for my Omnifi media servers and is backup for my PCS.
The first then gets backed up to the second weekly.
I also have a 250GB drive hanging off the first unit for Downloads

Mine have been running a good few years as well, and I just leave them do their thing.

If I have to go back to fix/change anything, I have to swot up on Linux each time. :)
 

zeroaccess

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Sounds like we have a similar scheme, only I haven't implemented RAID in mine. Looks like you have drive redundancy at each step, so in effect double redundancy. I'm considering backing up the backup to an online platform like iDrive, but that's for another post.

I found this article which has given me some things to think about with regard to drive pools and RAID.

I'm also considering doing away with the NAS by connecting the new drives to my PC, and physically disconnecting the backup disk except for its weekly run. There would be a few advantages to that route, making the PC the media server and saving money.
 

The_Doc_Man

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One important advantage is that you have, say, a USB 3.0 interface for the multi-TB HDD, you ABSOLUTELY protect it from hackers when it is not connected. And to do backups, you can disconnect the network, reboot your system (to get a clean O/S), run an A/V scan (perhaps in protected mode), and do the backup, then rearrange the connections and reboot. With USB 3.0 you get more speed than for a USB 2.0 I/F, which is good.

OK, what I described was tedious, but there is absolutely no way for anyone to bit-locker your backup, no way for them to scramble it at all. Recovery might still be a pain in the toches, but it is about as safe as it could ever get.
 

zeroaccess

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The proposed direct solution would use SATA.

The thinking behind that is: I already have a CPU, motherboard, fans, etc. Why buy another device?

The NAS is small and uses very little power. That is its advantage. However looking at things now I see a performance bottleneck and duplication of hardware. If my PC is already on 24/7, is configured to expose itself to the network as the media server, can do more with drive arrays, and the backup could be directly connected, the advantage of the NAS drops to 0. Or am I wrong?
 

The_Doc_Man

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Using direct NAS 24/7 makes sense if you bought a really BIG storage array and made room for several systems to use it. At the Navy Enterprise Data Center in New Orleans, we had a system that exceeded several hundred terabytes of storage distributed to approximately 1500-1600 servers. There, we had economies of scale AND the system we used had backup software that could run even if the application servers were down. However, as you get to smaller and smaller NAS capacity, the "economies of scale" diminsh.

I cannot say that the advantage drops to 0. Only you can say that because only you can see your business needs and priorities. BUT I can agree that it is possible that your advantages become relatively small. Small enough to no longer be worth too much effort. I will add that it sounds like you are doing the right kind of analysis, at least, to be able to decide the answer to your question of advantage. It is always a matter of cost/benefit analysis, whether in small or large businesses.
 

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