Separate compute and storage: let the NAS focus on just file serving, and have a separate compute box (TMM/uSFF, old desktop, rack server, what have you) run the heavy containers. NFS or iSCSI.
been there, done that. Boring and not efficient. Two boxes using 10w each is less efficient than one using 15w and doing the job of two (numbers are to illustrate the point). Everyone and their uncle are consolidating compute and storage from hyper-converged to DPU and CXL memory cards. Keeping storage and compute separate - while it's indeed easy to manage and reliable- is inefficient and old. How do you suppose the cloud provides work? Do you think they have large EMC/Netapp arrays in their data centers?Separate compute and storage: let the NAS focus on just file serving, and have a separate compute box (TMM/uSFF, old desktop, rack server, what have you) run the heavy containers. NFS or iSCSI.
I agree. I’m pretty excited for TrueNAS Scale, as I’m trying to stop myself from making major changes to my home setup until I can do proper planning to consolidate as much stuff as possible on the fewest amount of machines. Until I figure things out I probably will have a go at consolidating physical machines onto a single beefy ESXi or Proxmox server. I actually had made the decision to continue with ESXi rather than switch to Proxmox, but with the impending sale of ESXi I’m not so sure anymore. ESXi currently has more relevant translatable skills though.been there, done that. Boring and not efficient. Two boxes using 10w each is less efficient than one using 15w and doing the job of two (numbers are to illustrate the point). Everyone and their uncle are consolidating compute and storage from hyper-converged to DPU and CXL memory cards. Keeping storage and compute separate - while it's indeed easy to manage and reliable- is inefficient and old. How do you suppose the cloud provides work? Do you think they have large EMC/Netapp arrays in their data centers?
OP probably isn’t using a lower end Synology at all. In our thread derailment (I’m to blame as well), we overlooked the OP’s actual stated requirements.Yes, I agree for the general case. Even my tiny homelab is HCI, mostly 2011-0 and 2011-3; all nodes have at least some local storage.
But OP is coming from a single Syno struggling to run a few dockers; the expressed use-case is primarily media storage and Plex. I am not advising OP to implement a SAN. A power-efficient all-in-one box could be done with a desktop Skylake or newer board, or a more expensive C246 or newer server board, and a CPU with QSV. Or cheaply and efficiently using a separate QSV TMM. And of course if they have the GPU already and don't mind the power/cooling, NVENC is fine, too; plenty of ways to do it.
Even for the big providers, despite management / provisioning being consolidated for simplicity, some SKUs are more appropriate for filers, some for transactional DBs, some for GPGPU, etc. Yes, purely diskless nodes are becoming rare, but specialisation of roles will always have value.
OP mentioned photo storage, and I assume interest in btrfs and ZFS is due to journaling/bit rot prevention. I agree that two drive units like the one linked above should do the trick with simple mirroring for drive resiliency. I disagree on raid 5/6 for 4 drive units, you really shouldn't use raid-5 with modern larger drives due to the chance of failure, and 6 is unnecessarily complicated for such a small system. My 5c is to go with raid 10. It would be a much faster system with the same protection. ZFS is probably not the best fit here, but even if btrfs is still a fairly young file system and not very mature, I assume there is a reason why Synology decided to use in production.OP probably isn’t using a lower end Synology at all. In our thread derailment (I’m to blame as well), we overlooked the OP’s actual stated requirements.
Going back to the original requirements, for a simple NAS, without need for more than 5-6 drives, ZFS hardly makes sense. RAID-6 may not even make sense as well since there will be too few drives to make the capacity penalty worth it. For this I would go with a lower end x86 dual bay NAS with mirroring, or a 4-6 bay NAS with RAID-5/6 if capacity growth is desired. Personally I stay away from expansion units as they are expensive, and it usually makes more sense to buy a second NAS instead for a little more.
I'm tired hah. You're absolutely right on 4 drive NAS should go with RAID-10 rather than RAID-5 if high capacity drives are used due to increased chance of failure of another drive during rebuildOP mentioned photo storage, and I assume interest in btrfs and ZFS is due to journaling/bit rot prevention. I agree that two drive units like the one linked above should do the trick with simple mirroring for drive resiliency. I disagree on raid 5/6 for 4 drive units, you really shouldn't use raid-5 with modern larger drives due to the chance of failure, and 6 is unnecessarily complicated for such a small system. My 5c is to go with raid 10. It would be a much faster system with the same protection. ZFS is probably not the best fit here, but even if btrfs is still a fairly young file system and not very mature, I assume there is a reason why Synology decided to use in production.
care to elaborate?you really shouldn't use raid-5 with modern larger drives due to the chance of failure,
care to elaborate?
even with worse settings (compared to 'real world estimates') with the mttdl model it would take ~92 years til data loss/catastrophic failure
setup:
4 disks
22tb each
4kb sector size
1 volume
5mb/s rebuild speed
Did you read the follow-up article and one from digistor?Did you scroll down to the update part of the first article you linked?
I did and the numbers from digistor don't make sense to me. I had some of the setups (4x 3tb and 8x 6tb) for ~5 years running and rebuild them multiple times successfully. According to the numbers from digistor that should be very unlikely (48.7% for the 4x3tb and 3.48% for the 8x6tb setup)...Did you read the follow-up article and one from digistor?
You are welcome.You will be very happy with your solution for what you needed it for.To provide a little closure on my original post: I went with ODROID HC4. I'll use btrfs and maybe urbackup. [...]
Thanks for your assistance.