Recommend me a NAS

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IncrHulk

IncrHulk

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  • #1
    I'm looking at my power bill, and I may retire my Dell R720xd. I'm looking at options that include:

    • some form of Synology rack mount
    • a SFF PC and a used NetApp DS4246
    • low power 1u server with NetApp DS4246 (or similar JBOD rack)
    • keep the R720xd.
    Currently, the 720 runs a few VMs, including Home Assistant and a TrueNas VM for the NAS functionality. I've got about 56Tb or so of raw storage. It's overkill for my day-to-day these days. I'm considering moving to ProxMox for my home lab work, so a cluster of, say Lenovo SFF could replace the compute needs.

    I want to keep the ability to keep file transfer speeds to/from the NAS in the 5-10Gbps wire speeds I've got now, but as most of my computers on the network support a max of 2.5Gbps currently, that's not a must. More than one system rarely pushes that many bits to and from storage simultaneously.
     
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    continuum

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  • #4
    Given you can get disks pretty affordably per TB up to what, 18TB now? (and a bit less affordably up to 22TB or I think even a little more, although I don't think SMR-based 26TB disks are widely available outside of specific datacenter customers out of this posting)...

    ... depending on your needs/desires, 6x 18TB disks with two as effective parity gets you more space than you have now, 5x would be just a tad less...

    edit: derp, looking at the NetApp DS4246, you still wait to keep the same disks, just change the chassis?
     
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  • #5
    continuum said:
    Given you can get disks pretty affordably per TB up to what, 18TB now? (and a bit less affordably up to 22TB or I think even a little more, although I don't think SMR-based 26TB disks are widely available outside of specific datacenter customers out of this posting)...

    ... depending on your needs/desires, 6x 18TB disks with two as effective parity gets you more space than you have now, 5x would be just a tad less...

    edit: derp, looking at the NetApp DS4246, you still wait to keep the same disks, just change the chassis?
    Click to expand...
    I could keep the same disks, but one throws SMART errors randomly so maybe what I’d do is build a new box, copy everything across and decommission the R720. IDK if the NetApp is any less power hungry.
     
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  • #6
    Obviously only my angle here: I personally consider two disks for redundancy to be essential given how large modern disk arrays are, so that means you'd need at least 5 drives (using 18TB disks) to end up with a 54TB usable capacity, or four disks to get a 36TB usable capacity.

    This is all off very quick searching so maybe I am missing some deals to be had, but 4 bays is okay, an RS1619xs+starts about $1955... Next size jump is 12 bays for the RS3618xs for about $2600, although I don't think that includes the cost of the 10GbE NIC.

    Looks like some actual power consumption here, RS1619xs+, RS3618xs, both measured.
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  • #7
    Hmmm, I see a lot of reporting that the NetApp shelf runs about 140-200w depending on drives installed, and is loud. I wonder how loud, compared to the R720xd. Most of the noise is from the typical small PSU fans. If it's as loud as the R720Xd is at start up, and is burning about the same amount of power, I'm not much better off replacing the R720xd with a disk shelf.

    I agree; I aim to have at least two disks as parity/redundancy. I wonder what other cheap disk shelves there are out and about these days. I do like the idea of using the NetApp and 4-5 18TB drives as a starting point, that leaves plenty of growth space for either more spinning rust, or some SSD based storage as well.
     
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  • #9
    NetApp's specs for the DS4246 with 12 drives is 200 - 250 watts depending on drives. If you've got SAS drives I'd think you would be in that 200-250W range, since you're not using lower power/lower performance desktop SATA drives. I'm guessing you're using 6TB drives. With a smaller number of large drives (14TB or 18TB or larger, mirrored for performance) you wouldn't need the disk shelf. But if budget is a concern, you'd have to balance the power savings against the cost of buying new disks.

    The R720 though, that sucker is ripe for replacement. They use the E5 v1 and v2 CPUs (Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge) which are 10-12 years old, aren't terribly power efficient, and don't perform well; their performance got tanked by the mitigations for Spectre / Meltdown. I'd bet that a modern desktop i5 would outperform it at a fraction of the power. The biggest caveat would be if you needed ECC memory. It is possible to use AMD desktop CPUs with ECC, though not always officially supported.
     
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  • #10
    I dunno, you're working at a different level than I am. I'm intrigued by how much compute you really need too.

    I'm happy with Proxmox on a Proliant Mini with 2x4Tb drives with ZFS. But then that only acts as a local NAS- I do most in a Hetzner box.

    I suspect you want rack equipment, but I think you could get pretty far with fewer bigger disks directly attached to a low-power server.
     
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  • #11
    Alfrik said:
    Hmm, Dell SC200s,
    Click to expand...
    I have an SC200, and changed the fans to Noctuas. You lose speed control because Compellent used some non-standard fan pin header (you'll need to splice the wires that connect to the fan header, but there are instructions at ServeTheHome), but they are SO much quieter than the stock Deltas or whatever, I don't really care. Definitely a worthwhile upgrade. Fan replacement on the Netapp could be an option too. But yeah, these disk shelves tend to suck down a lot of electricity.
     
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  • #12
    koala said:
    I dunno, you're working at a different level than I am. I'm intrigued by how much compute you really need too.

    I'm happy with Proxmox on a Proliant Mini with 2x4Tb drives with ZFS. But then that only acts as a local NAS- I do most in a Hetzner box.

    I suspect you want rack equipment, but I think you could get pretty far with fewer bigger disks directly attached to a low-power server.
    Click to expand...
    No where near as much as I used to need/want. I do want rack mounted equipment, it just keeps things cleaner looking, and most rack mounted gear will have a IPMI/lights out managment interface as well.
     
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  • #13
    Cool Modine said:
    NetApp's specs for the DS4246 with 12 drives is 200 - 250 watts depending on drives. If you've got SAS drives I'd think you would be in that 200-250W range, since you're not using lower power/lower performance desktop SATA drives. I'm guessing you're using 6TB drives. With a smaller number of large drives (14TB or 18TB or larger, mirrored for performance) you wouldn't need the disk shelf. But if budget is a concern, you'd have to balance the power savings against the cost of buying new disks.

    The R720 though, that sucker is ripe for replacement. They use the E5 v1 and v2 CPUs (Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge) which are 10-12 years old, aren't terribly power efficient, and don't perform well; their performance got tanked by the mitigations for Spectre / Meltdown. I'd bet that a modern desktop i5 would outperform it at a fraction of the power. The biggest caveat would be if you needed ECC memory. It is possible to use AMD desktop CPUs with ECC, though not always officially supported.
    Click to expand...
    Yeah, I am seriously thinking of retiring the R720. I don't need the horsepower anymore, and it consumes a lot of juice. Hell, something newer and "low end" would likely have as much compute power and drink less electrons. It's the storage I don't want to give up.
     
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  • #14
    Alfrik said:
    Yeah, I am seriously thinking of retiring the R720. I don't need the horsepower anymore, and it consumes a lot of juice. Hell, something newer and "low end" would likely have as much compute power and drink less electrons. It's the storage I don't want to give up.
    Click to expand...

    The problem would seem to be that you seem to be looking for something which does basically what the R720 chassis does, so a direct replacement doesn't necessarily get lower end. With your current goals it just means newer but the same.

    The real question is, do you actually need a direct replacement? You probably need to look closer at your actual current and near-future needs.
     
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  • #16
    That looks nice. Remember that Proxmox has some Ceph support, and it's one of the few Linux distros that can do ZFS on root, so it might be something that fits into your scenarios. I don't need a ton of performance, so some external drive bay would tempt me. (When it's time to retire my Proliant Mini... I need to reconsider the smallest/lowest power thing that can drive three disks, which is all I need.)

    Because I run public services, I prefer those running on a DC. So I have a box with 128gb on Hetzner, and right now it has so much spare capacity that I should really do all my labbing there (I think I could run full OpenStack for testing. I've already done some testing with nested Proxmox). But otherwise, m720q-style devices would be very tempting.
     
    IncrHulk

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  • #17
    I am circling back to this. Turns out I convinced work to buy me, and my staff 3x M90Qs each for Proxmox cluster training/labbing. So I'm slowly building those out to my spec. I'm waiting on 10Gbs SFP+ cards to arrive. Which means I'm back to looking at the NAS side of things. I think I'm going to build one out, instead of going for a Synology, or the like.

    This means I can throw Proxmox onto it and virtualize TrueNas Scale and have it managed via the cluster. That being said, I don't need huge amounts of compute. Something like 64GB of RAM, a couple of PCIe 8x slots for 10Gb NICs and aHBA, and a decent case. I don't even really need it to be a rack mount, but I'd not complain if it were.

    What's a good CPU/board combo these days? I've not built anything in years and I feel woefully out of touch. I want to aim for AMD, and something around the 65w TDP. Looking at a DF Node 3 or a Jonsbo N4 NAS case. Bonus if the MB has 10gb NICs built in.
     
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  • #18
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  • #19
    steelghost said:
    Have a look at the ASRock Rack range: https://www.asrockrack.com/general/products.asp#Server

    Eg https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=B650D4U-2T/BCM#Specifications - mATX, 2x onboard 10Gbit interfaces,

    I know you're after AMD but you could also consider the ASRock and Supermicro ranges of Intel server boards for comparison's sake.

    Edit: links
    Click to expand...
    Thanks, looking at those again. A little more than I wanted to spend and more horsepower than I really needed for a NAS, but I could throw it into my Proxmox cluster for spare computing if I wanted.
     
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  • #20
    steelghost said:
    Have a look at the ASRock Rack range: https://www.asrockrack.com/general/products.asp#Server

    Eg https://www.asrockrack.com/general/productdetail.asp?Model=B650D4U-2T/BCM#Specifications - mATX, 2x onboard 10Gbit interfaces,

    I know you're after AMD but you could also consider the ASRock and Supermicro ranges of Intel server boards for comparison's sake.

    Edit: links
    Click to expand...
    Something like this?

    CPU: AMD Ryzen 5 7600 6-Core, 12-Thread Unlocked Desktop Processor US$$199.00
    CPU Cooler:     Noctua NH-U12S SE-AM4, Premium CPU Cooler for AMD AM4 (Brown) US$74.95
    Motherboard:     AsRock Rack B650D4U-2L2T/BCM Micro-ATX Server Motherboard US$290
    RAM:     64GB (2X32GB) DDR5 4800MHZ PC5-38400 1.1V 288-PIN 2Rx8 Registered ECC RDIMM Server Memory MR38400-324 US$242.99
    GPU:     N/A
    Case: Fractal Design Node 804 - Black - Cube Compact Computer Case - mATX $124.99
    PSU:     Corsair SF Series, SF750, 750 Watt, SFX, 80+ Platinum Certified, Fully Modular Power Supply (CP-9020186-NA) US$169.99
    Storage (Data):     4x Seagate IronWolf Pro, 20 TB, Enterprise NAS Internal HDD –CMR 3.5 Inch, SATA 6 Gb/s, 7,200 RPM, 256 MB Cache for RAID US$1591.92
    Storage (O/S):     2x Patriot P300 M.2 PCIe Gen 3 x4 128GB Low-Power Consumption SSD US$36.00
    Storage (O/S):     GLOTRENDS PA20 Dual M.2 NVMe to PCIe 3.0 X4 Adapter with PCIe Bifurcation Function US$98.00
    O/S:     TrueNAS Scale US$0

    Total: ~US$3000     (All prices from Amazon US, 17 April 2024, YMMV)

    I did a NAS build with this case. Its a beast. Its not real quiet with lots of drives either.

    I'm not completely sure that PCIe 3.0 adapter card & the Patriot SSDs will work with TrueNAS. I've never tried it in a NAS.

    Storage is finicky, There are 4x SATA ports on the mobo. The box can hold 10x 3.5" drives. An additional card would be needed for more SATA drives. That would need the PCIe 5.0 x16 slot.

    The OP mentioned an "HBA", that would likely need the PCIe 5 x16 slot? That's not included.

    Do folks mess around with DIY parts lists at Ars any longer?
     
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