Mini NAS setup

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newby_investor

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So I've been looking to set up a small, unobtrusive NAS at home to do backups and stuff like that. I used to have something like this running on a Raspberry Pi which worked well, but having several boxes with the Pi, USB hub and external hard drive was just a mess and with a little one coming soon I want something a bit more compact that I can lock away properly.

I toyed with the idea of re-purposing an old laptop but I haven't found one with reasonable price which really meets my requirements.

The killer feature that I'm looking for is something which can accommodate two hard drives so that I can mirror them to give a bit of extra crash protection. I'd preferably like to be able to do that without moving up to something as big (and noisy) as e.g. a mini-Proliant server.

Does anyone have experience with this kind of thing? Know of something specific that I could look at?
 
http://www.thecus.com/

Would one of these suite your needs?

I am using a Windows Based NAS as it works as a server for me but one of the 2 or 4 bay units may suffice for you.
(You can also run a PLEX server off it, if you are into movie streaming for the hous)
 
Microserver + Unraid.

Boom, done.

*****

I see you want to avoid it specifically but I don't see why. It's not noisy firstly and secondly it's not very big.

Unless "mini" is referring to something else?

If you strictly want a mirror setup with no intention to make it future proof and upgrade able then just buy an off the shelf 2-drive system and be done with it.
 
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SauRoNZA said:
Microserver + Unraid.

Boom, done.

*****

I see you want to avoid it specifically but I don't see why. It's not noisy firstly and secondly it's not very big.

Unless "mini" is referring to something else?

If you strictly want a mirror setup with no intention to make it future proof and upgrade able then just buy an off the shelf 2-drive system and be done with it.
Click to expand...

I was initially looking at something like an Intel NUC, I like the form factor, but those are pretty expensive for what I want it to do. I run one of those 4-bay HP mini servers at the office and while it's not very loud, it's loud enough that I'd notice it in my tiny living room at home. Something completely fanless would be good.

I also tend to prefer to roll my own software, I'm a bit of an open-source fanatic. The WD MyCloud thing is interesting, but I'm not sure what OS it's running? LaCie and Synology do similar kinds of things but then it's not a general purpose server that you can do custom things with later if you want to, it's NAS-only if I understand correctly.
 
newby_investor said:
I was initially looking at something like an Intel NUC, I like the form factor, but those are pretty expensive for what I want it to do. I run one of those 4-bay HP mini servers at the office and while it's not very loud, it's loud enough that I'd notice it in my tiny living room at home. Something completely fanless would be good.

I also tend to prefer to roll my own software, I'm a bit of an open-source fanatic. The WD MyCloud thing is interesting, but I'm not sure what OS it's running? LaCie and Synology do similar kinds of things but then it's not a general purpose server that you can do custom things with later if you want to, it's NAS-only if I understand correctly.
Click to expand...
The WD will probably suit you. Colleague at work just got one and it's fairly small and can be configured in the raid you want. As for the micro server, yes the back fan is a bit noisy. I'm running 2008 server on mine for who knows when... solid machine. Even hosted gaming servers.
 
newby_investor said:
I was initially looking at something like an Intel NUC, I like the form factor, but those are pretty expensive for what I want it to do. I run one of those 4-bay HP mini servers at the office and while it's not very loud, it's loud enough that I'd notice it in my tiny living room at home. Something completely fanless would be good.

I also tend to prefer to roll my own software, I'm a bit of an open-source fanatic. The WD MyCloud thing is interesting, but I'm not sure what OS it's running? LaCie and Synology do similar kinds of things but then it's not a general purpose server that you can do custom things with later if you want to, it's NAS-only if I understand correctly.
Click to expand...

Then you would love UnRAID since it’s still a mostly open Linux platform which you can do with as you please.

Unraid lets you run Vm’s and Dockers and anything you fancy really while also providing you the option of adding drives as you go instead of setting the array up from the word go like most others.

I ran my Microserver in the lounge for years and never took note of it. The only time it got to being noisy was putting it in a close cupboard.

Also going fabless will make the hard drives factors needlessly complicated as would doing a NUC.
 
SauRoNZA said:
Then you would love UnRAID since it’s still a mostly open Linux platform which you can do with as you please.

Unraid lets you run Vm’s and Dockers and anything you fancy really while also providing you the option of adding drives as you go instead of setting the array up from the word go like most others.

I ran my Microserver in the lounge for years and never took note of it. The only time it got to being noisy was putting it in a close cupboard.

Also going fabless will make the hard drives factors needlessly complicated as would doing a NUC.
Click to expand...
Maybe a microserver is the right thing then, I'll have to just bite the bullet...

It just seems overkill though, it could house 4x10TB drives but I'd only need 2x500GB or maybe 1TB. If there was something NUC-form-factor with space for 2x2.5" drives that would be perfect, I could just stick it in a drawer and forget about it. Oh well, was worth asking...

I've heard of UnRaid, the details elude me now but I remember a friend of mine evangelising about it. I was a fairly staunch ZFS user at the time and I couldn't see the point of UnRaid, I have since switched over to btrfs for my Linux boxes and it's served me quite well.
 
That’s the wonder of Unraid though, you can happily start with only those two drives and have a solid setup but then happily expand it going forward.

Ran only 2x1TB in mine for over a year.

The beauty is they use XFS on each drive so that if a single drive fails (and you don’t have parity drive setup for instance) you can access all the data in another machine easily.

Think they support ReiserFS optionally but I steer clear of the non-standard setups.

It’s just a very well packaged solution after trying all the free options out and settling on this for very little money.
 
In my experience the best plug in and forget units are from Synology. I have two RackStation units at home, one handling Time Machine backups from two Macbooks and surveillance with the other serving as file/VM storage.

Had a Diskstation unit for years before and never had any issues.
 
IOPS said:
In my experience the best plug in and forget units are from Synology. I have two RackStation units at home, one handling Time Machine backups from two Macbooks and surveillance with the other serving as file/VM storage.

Had a Diskstation unit for years before and never had any issues.
Click to expand...

+1 for synology, my cheapy 1bay NAS is going on strong for over 5 years now. I do have it backup to an external 'just in case'

Its getting a bit long in the tooth now, and hoping to replace it with something that has a gigabat lan connection. As a backup server & media streamer it works great.
 
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