NAS Advice

MosBen

I recently had my network wired and got a HTPC hooked up to the TV. I've got a desktop upstairs with a Drobo connected via USB. The Drobo isn't close to being filled, but I expect that it will be some time in the foreseeable future.

My question is where should I go from here? Streaming from the Drobo to the HTPC works fine, but I'd like to be able to turn off my energy inefficient desktop once in a while. Also, though I've still got room to work with, I should probably be considering what I'll do for storage when the Drobo is filled. My initial thought was a Drobo Share, which would allow me to connect the Drobo to the network independent of the desktop and would also allow me to add a second Drobo once I outgrow the first. Unfortunately, the reviews I've read of the Drobo Share seem pretty mixed, with most of the criticisms being related to its speed. Now, I don't care about how long it takes to move files around the network to or from the Drobo. If I'm moving gigs of stuff it can wait until before I go to bed, or I can just directly connect the Drobo to a PC to get better bandwidth. All I care about is the ability to steam media content (music, movies, pictures) around my house.

So if the Droboshare is too slow for my purposes (and here's hoping someone says it isn't), I started thinking about a NAS. The HP Mediasmart was the one I focused on, but again, there are a few mixed reviews out there, and while the more recent negative reviews cite reliability concerns, the good reviews are kind of old. So I don't know who to trust on that. The machine does seem to fit my needs. It would allow me to connect the Drobo directly to it, and it has three expansion bays to add its own storage. I didn't see any speed concerns about the Mediasmart, just mostly reliability. Still, it's pretty expensive at over $600.

Then there's always the ever-popular-on-the-internet "build it yourself" option. I'm sure it's probably cheaper, but I have concerns. 1) I haven't built a computer in several years. I'm sure I could figure it out, but I'm totally lost on what stuff I would need to build a NAS; 2) One of the things I like best about the Drobo is that is shares the data across the drives without the size restrictions of a RAID setup. The HP seems to have a similar feature, and I want to make sure that I don't lose my media to a drive crash. Clearly I'm talking about so much storage that I probably won't be able to afford to back up this data until drive sizes double and come down in price, and 3) If possible I'd like to keep my network device somewhat green. Sure, I care about the environment, but if one of the goals is to allow me to turn off my power-hungry desktop, then the replacement should be pretty efficient.

DigitalSyn

I went the build your own PC route.

You could always get a bare bone machine that all you need to do is provide the other parts (IE http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16856101092 )

The software part is a snap. I use http://freenas.org/freenas .

This is a stand alone OS built on FreeBSD that covers just about every type of connection you can think of.

( Blurb taken from their site:

FreeNAS is an embedded open source NAS (Network-Attached Storage) distribution based on FreeBSD, supporting the following protocols: CIFS (samba), FTP, NFS, TFTP, AFP, RSYNC, Unison, iSCSI (initiator and target) and UPnP.

It supports Software RAID (0,1,5), ZFS, disk encryption, S.M.A.R.T/email monitoring with a WEB configuration interface (from m0n0wall).

FreeNAS can be installed on Compact Flash/USB key, hard drive or booted from LiveCD. )

---

I use this at work, and at home, and thus far has been rock solid.

MosBen

I couldn't figure out from that New Egg link how many hard disks that case can fit. If/When I grow beyond the Drobo I'm going to want something which will approximate its capacity. Also, though I guess I could settle for a RAID setup, I'm really digging the Drobo's ability to accept drives of any size, share data across the drives, and not lose any data if a drive dies. I think the Windows NAS software does something like this (based on reading about the HP Mediasmart), but I don't know anything about FreeNAS.

DigitalSyn

MosBen wrote: »

I couldn't figure out from that New Egg link how many hard disks that case can fit. If/When I grow beyond the Drobo I'm going to want something which will approximate its capacity. Also, though I guess I could settle for a RAID setup, I'm really digging the Drobo's ability to accept drives of any size, share data across the drives, and not lose any data if a drive dies. I think the Windows NAS software does something like this (based on reading about the HP Mediasmart), but I don't know anything about FreeNAS.

This is true, the embedded systems have a lot of specific functionality, and FreeNAS does have a bit of a learning curve.

I would recommend getting one of the premade NAS systems with (IE http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822122022 )

There are lots of options out there. The only thing I can tell you to stay away from is IDE based NAS's and 100BaseT. You want 1000baseT (gigabit). There are vendors out there still putting out 100 based ones.

useless4

Drobo Share is painful slow.
Also wait til you have to rebuild your array.

When stepping up to the big boys of data "slow" does not equal "overnight" it equals something like 72 hours later in most cases.

A good standard ESATA will move about 3gb / minute (so think one movie per minute) and your drobo is going to be slower then that.

Advice:
Your Drobo has the potential to break. Meaning, you are locked into getting another Drobo if you want your data back thanks to the spiffy drobo-unqiue file system.

Most common failure on the drobo is a bay failing. Meaning it will run in degraded mode however you have no ability to bring it back up to full redundancy until the unit itself is replaced.

My suggestion: Build a straight up RAID 5 and back up everything to it once a month or so (depending on how often you add new things) and keep it offline. That way you would have to have a total of 2 drives on each device fail before you start loosing things irreplaceably .

For example my current set up is:
Media Server has internal RAID 0 6TB Array (2tb x 3) that has my media.

That backs up via an ESATA RAID 5 enclosure which has 8TB useable (2tb x 5)

Then the server drive that houses the OS backs up to an Apple time machine.

That same server has an external 1.5tb drive that backs up my main workstation thru time machine on os x server,. The "scratch" raid 3tb (1tb x 3 RAID 0) on the workstation also backs up to the 8TB raid from above - though not through time machine, it's a manual process at this point.

To be offline and loose stuff I would have to loose alot of drives.
Most likely the worse case sceneario is I loose the time capsule due to substandard cooling, but that would only be an os backup to my server.

The RAID enclosure I use is:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Sans%20Digital/TR8XB/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=shoppingengine&utm_campaign=googlebase

Since it's a touch on the loud side (my office is almost dead silent since i write and record music in it, the machines are mac pros so they are zero noise for the most part) I only have it online on weekends when I back up new media on my server.

MosBen

To me, I guess my main concern with speed is whether I can stream HD video files to devices on my network without any noticeable lag or drop in quality. Right now the Drobo is doing a fine job of that, but I'd really like to connect it to the network in some way other than through my power-hungry desktop. So, is the Droboshare slow in the way I mean it, or in the "it takes too long to move files on and off it" way. I don't really care so much about how long it takes to move files around. I don't really have much need to move files around all that much, and when I do I don't mind setting the transfer going and then wandering off to do something else for a while. It's only when I'm watching a movie or something that speed really matters to me, and that's why I switched from a wireless to a wired network.

As for the proprietary nature of the Drobo, well, it's a bit annoying, I guess, but ultimately not that big of a deal to me. Unless there's something about the Drobo in particular that kills drives faster than they should, I'm not that worried. Right now I've got four 1.5 TB drives in it. By the time a drive dies I figure the 2.5+ TB drives will be cheaper, so I can just upgrade. Also, eventually I'll pick up a 2+ TB external drive to act as a backup for my most important media on the cheap and then just store it in the attic or something. I don't really need 100% security. We are, after all, really only talking about movies and TV shows.

Thanks for the advice, though. I still wish I could get some more input on the HP Mediasmart server. It seems pretty close to what I want/need, but I'm a bit scared off by the reliability reports I've read.

useless4

Sorry, I didn't clarify what I was trying to say...
It's not the drives that die. It's the individual drive bay ports in the drobo that fail...

So the drives are still good - you can take them out and put them in another drobo (all at once) and they will work... but you need another Drobo to read them. I don't think it's possible to do normal data recovery on a drobo drive array without their enclosure.

Pretty much everyone I know has had a drive bay in a drobo fail so far.
Supposedly the company is good about repairing them but you are out of business until the new one gets here.