to NAS or not to NAS

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AFisher

Member
Jun 2, 2017
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I'm currently running a FreeNAS system (specs below) with about 40TB usable space, I'm looking to shutdown my lab and reduce my foot print, I have been out of the market for a while and not real sure what the offerings are these days.
I'm looking for a NAS that can handle around 30 to 40 TB active storage, run a windows VM and a Linux VM, with raid 6 or ZFS 6 no more than 8 drives. Ideally SSD/NVMe support as well

I know that Synology and Q-NAP used to be good players in this realm, are they still? is there any other quality builders

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My Current FreeNas
CPU = E5-2620 0 @ 2.00GHz
Memory = 128GB
Drive Count = 20 (4TB Ultrastar)
NIC = 2 10/100/1000 Intel, 2 10GB Fiber SFP+
 

BoredSysadmin

Not affiliated with Maxell
Mar 2, 2019
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I've recently gone thru a very similar exercise and settled on QNAP. The part was timing (TrueNAS Scale wasn't released yet) and the part wanted to use Qnap's QVR-Pro Security NVR. My current Qnap TVS-872XT with upgraded hardware has no problem running everything I need, several VMs and a dozen of containers, Raid6 storage, 6x HD cameras NVR, antivirus, and more.
 
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AFisher

Member
Jun 2, 2017
51
15
8
I've recently gone thru a very similar exercise and settled on QNAP. The part was timing (TrueNAS Scale wasn't released yet) and the part wanted to use Qnap's QVR-Pro Security NVR. My current Qnap TVS-872XT with upgraded hardware has no problem running everything I need, several VMs and a dozen of containers, Raid6 storage, 6x HD cameras NVR, antivirus, and more.
Thanks, I read through the links and there is some solid information there... how are your drives holding up? in retrospect would you do anything differently?
 

BoredSysadmin

Not affiliated with Maxell
Mar 2, 2019
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Zero issues so far with Toshiba drives or Micron SSDs. I did remove the 10g NIC as it has no built-in fan and was getting rather worryingly hot.
I was glad I had it since my old Freenas with 18x 2TB drive deterioration was rapidly accelerating toward the end. Would I do anything differently? I got really no-brand SSD heatsinks from Amazon. In retrospect, I should've gone with better/more expensive heatsinks instead. SSDs temp is around 55-58C - not too bad, but wish would be a bit lower.

What one gets with an off-the-shelf NAS are some features, not available in DIY builds, like enclosure management, optimized airflow, lower noise and power usage. You get updates, not just for OS and apps, but then necessary for bios, network interfaces, etc.

I only wish that my NAS m2 slots had more PCIe channels assigned to them, but going with an even higher model just for that seemed silly. 2GB/s should be fast enough for my needs.
 
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ddaenen1

Member
Jul 7, 2020
34
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I did something similar last year. Main reason was that i found out my Supermicro X8SIL-F X3430 with HBA and a Dell MD1000 carrying 15 SAS 2TB disks was consuming way too much power on a daily basis for home use. Especially the MD1000 with redundant PSU's which was incredibily loud because it had enough coolings fans to make it fly away was quite power hungry. Also, i really didn't know why i needed 30Tb of storage space when i barely had 7% storage usage.

In the end, i did stick with TrueNAS but went for a newer Supermicro X9SCM-F with E3-1230, 32Gb ECC, 2 x 100gb SSD's and 4 of the 2TB SAS Disks and again a HBA in a 2U enclosure with SAS backplane. Now, the noise is gone and the setup consumes only a fraction of the previous.
 

BoredSysadmin

Not affiliated with Maxell
Mar 2, 2019
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I can report that replacing 3x Sandy bridge desktops (old DIY vSAN cluster), Brocade ICX6610-24p POE switch, DIY NAS PC plus Xyratec dual PSUs 12x3.5 SAS shelf - with total 18x 2TB drives, with a QNAP TVS-872XT with 2x800GB m2. ssd, and 8x 14TB SATA drives, cut my electric bill by approx 212 KWh per month. I've also moved Pi-hole from a VM to running my old Khadas vim 1 pro board.