OS for Home Server / NAS

[Duan]

I am considering my options. I have an HP Microserver gen8 with 16Gb ram and 4x4Tb hdds and one 250Gb ssd

Currently it is running Windows and I am using Storage spaces (working very well for me) to share content.

I also run Untangle on VMWare on this machine.

I feel windowze is taking up too many resources and well to be honest I just don't like it. (But I love the concept of storage spaces)

What I would like is something that:
* works very much like Storage spaces
* can run docker and kvm virtualization
* runs well on my HP MS gen8
* is free or very cheap
* low on maintenance effort
* does not take a month to configure, 2 to 4 hours is acceptable.

So far the best I have been able to find is unRaid. But it fails the "free" test.

Other interesting option are:
OpenMediaVault (no KVM built in)
Xpenogy (also no KVM)

What are you guys using?

 

[SauRoNZA]

UnRAID.

Depends on your definition of cheap, but it's absolutely worth the once off cost.

Does all you want otherwise and it runs perfectly on my N36L so should be awesome on the Gen8.

I pretty much guarantee that if you ran it for the 30 day trial you'll happily pay for it at the end.

So just try it.

Also because of the way it works if you don't want to buy it you can easily pull the data off the single drives for whatever else you want to install instead.

The fact that it also runs off USB means you free up an entire slot on the Microserver.

 

[Duan]

UnRAID.

Depends on your definition of cheap, but it's absolutely worth the once off cost.

Does all you want otherwise and it runs perfectly on my N36L so should be awesome on the Gen8.

I pretty much guarantee that if you ran it for the 30 day trial you'll happily pay for it at the end.

So just try it.

Also because of the way it works if you don't want to buy it you can easily pull the data off the single drives for whatever else you want to install instead.

The fact that it also runs off USB means you free up an entire slot on the Microserver.

Thanks I have to agree it sounds very enticing. I was just wondering if there are any alternatives which are maybe not as obvious.

While I am comfortable with Linux CLI, I dont have all the time to custom build something. I was also quite impressed with Xpenology's polished UI, but the missing KVM is crucial to me.

 

[SauRoNZA]

You don't ever need to touch the CLI with Unraid. But of course you can of you want.

I simply couldn't find any other option (expect Win10 + Storage Spaces) that allowed me to start with 1 drive and add more later without rebuilding.

 

[Duan]

Yeah same here

 

[Neo_X]

+100 for unraid. They really pushed the envelope with virtualization and support in the last 12 to 18 months. as a data store device (upgradable with different size hard drives as the years go on, i have had a very very stable RAID for the last 7 plus years)

Community and support is also some of the best. Only challenge you will have is to move from storage space to unraid - but if its an NTFS partition, even that is readable directly on unraid.

and may i point you in the direction of Dockers - awesome little buggers those - and very stable as well.

 

[Duan]

So I found Xpenology and its hybrid raid seems to work very well.

It is actually a version of the Synology NAS os that has been made to work on generic hardware.

I am testing it using ESXi and rdm

So far so good. It has better performance than unraid by about 10 Mbps for the same tasks.

Looking good so far.

 

[Duan]

http://xpenology.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=2&sid=b32d1659052b7228a5b9bc6b479dc934

 

[Duan]

Been testing xpenology for a while now and I cant find any downsides.

 

[MagicDude4Eva]

Been testing xpenology for a while now and I cant find any downsides.

What hardware do you run it on? Do you get full digger docker support with it and how does it perform?

I am running a DS1010+ and upgrading to a newer version will cost at least 14k without drives.

 

[DsBalsak]

Also running xpenology on an hp microserver with 4gig ram, and previously had it on an hp dl360 previously in esxi.

Must say it is one of the best nas software out there, and yes u can install docker on xpenology

 

[Duan]

Running on an HP Microserver Gen 8 with 16gb ram.

Docker works great! Linuxserver.io has some nice images.

Also means I can run other VMs with ESXI

I run the HDDS 4x4TB in direct passthrough so that I can do a baremetal version if I want to.

My main datastore for ESXI is an SSD which I have in the ODD bay of my MS8

 

[MagicDude4Eva]

Running on an HP Microserver Gen 8 with 16gb ram.

Quick question: The HPM can run 4 HDD or are there options to have more drive bays? With my Synology I am already sitting at 20TB (5x4TB) and I am trying to weigh up the economics of 2 micro-servers (if they can only carry 4 drives) vs 1 Synology 8-bay.

The Synology has been rock-solid since 2008 and even when I had a volume crash (the neighbour's kid pulled out all 5 drives and since I had not marked their sequence I had to play frigging hard-drive Jenga to get the volume up) it was fairly easy to recover and repair.

Will need to read up on xpenology but by the sounds of it, it bootstraps a standard DSM image (including drivers etc) - not quite sure what the legal aspects around this is though?

With regards to raid: Does this then support SHR or Raid5/Raid10 and is this software raid or hardware? (Sorry for all the questions, I will read up over the weekend, but just wanted to get a rough idea prior to it).

 

[shadow_man]

Quick question: The HPM can run 4 HDD or are there options to have more drive bays?

The old N40L could take more drives if you used the optical drive bay.

http://www.icydock.com/icy_tip/ICY_DOCK_ToughArmor_HP_ProLiant_N40L_Ultra_Micro_Server_icytip.html

I've personally run 5x 3.5" + 1x 2.5" in this config.

I'm not sure if the newer models would fit this dock or not though as I don't have any.

Hope this helps somewhat.

 

[kayvee]

Another unraid vote here.

Running 6 3.5" ones in my N36L.

 

[Duan]

Quick question: The HPM can run 4 HDD or are there options to have more drive bays? With my Synology I am already sitting at 20TB (5x4TB) and I am trying to weigh up the economics of 2 micro-servers (if they can only carry 4 drives) vs 1 Synology 8-bay.

The Synology has been rock-solid since 2008 and even when I had a volume crash (the neighbour's kid pulled out all 5 drives and since I had not marked their sequence I had to play frigging hard-drive Jenga to get the volume up) it was fairly easy to recover and repair.

Will need to read up on xpenology but by the sounds of it, it bootstraps a standard DSM image (including drivers etc) - not quite sure what the legal aspects around this is though?

With regards to raid: Does this then support SHR or Raid5/Raid10 and is this software raid or hardware? (Sorry for all the questions, I will read up over the weekend, but just wanted to get a rough idea prior to it).

I have 5 drives in my gen8 using the optical drive bay for ssd

I believe synology is not too excited about xpenology, but xpenology is developed on the open source code as far as I know.

Shr is supported.

 

[Duan]

Quick question: The HPM can run 4 HDD or are there options to have more drive bays? With my Synology I am already sitting at 20TB (5x4TB) and I am trying to weigh up the economics of 2 micro-servers (if they can only carry 4 drives) vs 1 Synology 8-bay.

The Synology has been rock-solid since 2008 and even when I had a volume crash (the neighbour's kid pulled out all 5 drives and since I had not marked their sequence I had to play frigging hard-drive Jenga to get the volume up) it was fairly easy to recover and repair.

Will need to read up on xpenology but by the sounds of it, it bootstraps a standard DSM image (including drivers etc) - not quite sure what the legal aspects around this is though?

With regards to raid: Does this then support SHR or Raid5/Raid10 and is this software raid or hardware? (Sorry for all the questions, I will read up over the weekend, but just wanted to get a rough idea prior to it).

You do however need to manually enable SHR in Xpenology DSM 6 cause by default it is disabled for the higher end models.