NAS.. a quick question

[neonthunder]

AMD or Intel for my build and could I build a AMD NAS even though my new comp is built on an intel i3?

Sorry if the question is daft, Im just confused over it all.

 

[Woomack]

No matter if it's AMD or Intel, both are good for NAS. All that matters is that cpu is fast enough and motherboard supports enough drives or RAID modes.
I had NAS made on AMD Kabini but motherboards for these processors have only basic SATA controller so I had to use RAID card what in some sitations can be too high cost. Many cheaper Intel motherboards support 4-6 drive RAID 0,1,10, JBOD. I'm not recommending RAID5 on integrated controllers or cheap pci/pcie RAID controllers.

 

[JrClocker]

Another thing to consider is if the CPU supports ECC RAM. While the probability is small that RAM can get corrupted, it is larger than 0.

A personal choice, but my NAS stays on 24/7...so I bought a QNAP unit that uses ECC RAM.

 

[deathman20]

No matter if it's AMD or Intel, both are good for NAS. All that matters is that cpu is fast enough and motherboard supports enough drives or RAID modes.
I had NAS made on AMD Kabini but motherboards for these processors have only basic SATA controller so I had to use RAID card what in some sitations can be too high cost. Many cheaper Intel motherboards support 4-6 drive RAID 0,1,10, JBOD. I'm not recommending RAID5 on integrated controllers or cheap pci/pcie RAID controllers.

Totally agree to never use RAID5 or RAID6 even on integrated controllers or cheap cards. The overhead is way to high and it can bog the system down severely.

Otherwise yeah basically any AMD or Intel processor you can use they will do the job. Its more of the OS you want to select for the NAS functions which there are plenty out there. I personally bought a NAS setup (see sig) as it was easier for me at the time to just have something that worked out of the box vs doing a lot of research and trail and error which I didn't have the time for.

 

[Blaylock]

I'm not recommending RAID5 on integrated controllers or cheap pci/pcie RAID controllers.

Totally agree to never use RAID5 or RAID6 even on integrated controllers or cheap cards.

Just for clairity, you guys have no issue with RAID5 on decent cards though?

 

[Janus67]

I still wouldn't recommend RAID5 no matter the card due to the risk involved, especially if dealing with disks larger than 1TB as the rebuild times can be quite long and could cause some huge problems if during a rebuild the thrashing takes down another drive and your storage system is caput. Or if you do regular backups (like anyone should be doing if they care about their data since RAID isn't a backup)

 

[Blaylock]

eVEN IF THE CARD HAS BATTERY BACK-UP?

(Sorry for typing in Johan45)

 

[HankB]

Another thing to consider is if the CPU supports ECC RAM. While the probability is small that RAM can get corrupted, it is larger than 0.

Can I loop this back to the original question in light of the ECC RAM issue? I agree that S/W wise there is virtually no difference between Intel and AMD. Can I confirm that H/W wise AMD is a better selection at the low end when looking for ECC RAM support? My understanding is that one needs to get into enterprise class processors and motherboards in order to utilize ECC RAM with Intel and that there are lower level (e.g. consumer grade) AMD processors that do support ECC RAM.

I'd like to upgrade my NAS to something that supports ECC RAM and won't use a lot of power. At present it runs on an Intel J1900 (4 cores, 10W TDP) which performs admirably running Linux and serving via NFS. (It runs miserably trying to run a Gitlab server...) My question is how to find a selection of motherboard/CPU combos that support ECC RAM (and Linux, if OS support is required.) I'd like to rebuild with something that is reasonably power efficient (AMD? ) and matches present processing capability.

Thanks!

NB: And I'm , er, thrifty so a prebuilt system costing hundreds of dollars is probably not going to excite me. But go ahead and suggest for the benefit of the OP and others who might be interested.

 

[ssjwizard]

Grab an old Opteron setup. They are cheap enough and would have sufficient processing power that if you want to expand its usage you will have it. I run a 2P opteron setup and I run it ragged with tasks. Even at that it doesn't pull too many watts.

 

[||Console||]

Can I loop this back to the original question in light of the ECC RAM issue? I agree that S/W wise there is virtually no difference between Intel and AMD. Can I confirm that H/W wise AMD is a better selection at the low end when looking for ECC RAM support? My understanding is that one needs to get into enterprise class processors and motherboards in order to utilize ECC RAM with Intel and that there are lower level (e.g. consumer grade) AMD processors that do support ECC RAM.

I'd like to upgrade my NAS to something that supports ECC RAM and won't use a lot of power. At present it runs on an Intel J1900 (4 cores, 10W TDP) which performs admirably running Linux and serving via NFS. (It runs miserably trying to run a Gitlab server...) My question is how to find a selection of motherboard/CPU combos that support ECC RAM (and Linux, if OS support is required.) I'd like to rebuild with something that is reasonably power efficient (AMD? ) and matches present processing capability.

Thanks!

NB: And I'm , er, thrifty so a prebuilt system costing hundreds of dollars is probably not going to excite me. But go ahead and suggest for the benefit of the OP and others who might be interested.

IMO best bang for buck is a retired server that is full of (now cheep ) ecc ddr3 .

these are some examples of what I can find around my area .

Dell Precision 490 WorkStation $200
2 X Intel Xeon Dual Core 3.0Ghz
2 Physical Dual Core Processors Intel 5160
Altogether 4 Cores

16Gb RAM DDR2 PC5300F ECC
250Gb SATA 7.2K Hard Drive
DVD ROM Drive
Gigabit Network Port 10/100/1000
Tower Machine
Fully tested off-Leased unit with 3 Months Warranty

Upgrade to 32Gb RAM for $50


Or can you guys find something better ? For around the same $ +/- 100$ cnd

Another option from same site
----------------------------------------
Dell Precision T3500 WorkStation $200
HP Z400 WorkStation $200
Intel Xeon Quad Core 2.67Ghz
Intel W3520 Processor with 4 Cores and 8 Threads

16Gb RAM DDR3 ECC
250Gb SATA 7.2K Hard Drive
DVD ROM Drive
Gigabit Network Port 10/100/1000
Tower Machine
Fully tested off-Leased unit with 6 Months Warranty

Upgrade to 16Gb RAM for $50
Upgarde to 24Gb RAM for $100

Dell Precision T5500 WorkStation $400
Intel Xeon Quad Core 2.66Ghz
Single Intel X5550 Processor with 4 Cores and 8 Threads
48Gb RAM DDR3 PC10600R ECC
1Tb SATA 7.2K Hard Drive
DVD ROM Drive
Gigabit Network Port 10/100/1000
Tower Machine
Fully tested off-Leased unit with 3 Months Warranty

 

[neonthunder]

lets add more fuel to the fire!!! haha

What about building a Raspberry Pi NAS?

 

[Janus67]

What would you connect to it? It doesn't have sata ports. USB drives across usb2.0 will be quite slow.

 

[neonthunder]

You can get a sata port on some Pi's

 

[knoober]

You can get a sata port on some Pi's

Yeah, but why? Cost? Power efficiency? Giggles? I dont see a huge reason except for bragging rights, and even then I probably wouldn't unless A) I already had some/most of the hardware B) I did not have most/any of the conventional types of hardware C) I just really wanted to use that particular platform

Let us know what you choose though!

 

[HankB]

What would you connect to it? It doesn't have sata ports. USB drives across usb2.0 will be quite slow.

I'm pretty sure the Ethernet port is via USB as well and probably on the same controller. The Pi is a good solution for some problems but disk and network bandwidth are not among it's strengths.

No Pi that I am aware of has SATA. There may be an accessory for that that uses some of the GPIO pins. That falls under the heading of "anything is possible" but does not make it a useful solution.

 

[neonthunder]

I'm pretty sure the Ethernet port is via USB as well and probably on the same controller. The Pi is a good solution for some problems but disk and network bandwidth are not among it's strengths.

No Pi that I am aware of has SATA. There may be an accessory for that that uses some of the GPIO pins. That falls under the heading of "anything is possible" but does not make it a useful solution.

The SATA use GPIO pins - found this on using a Pi to make a NAS Main idea with this is to use the usb for hd but still something interesting to look at.

Yeah, but why? Cost? Power efficiency? Giggles? I dont see a huge reason except for bragging rights, and even then I probably wouldn't unless A) I already had some/most of the hardware B) I did not have most/any of the conventional types of hardware C) I just really wanted to use that particular platform

Let us know what you choose though!

I think its more for a fun and experimenting really. But i think I'm going down the route of an AMD build or looking into an old server for the build. Once I've finished my fruitbased build thats my next project amongst other crazy ideas i have for builds lol.

 

[freakdiablo]

The SATA use GPIO pins - found this on using a Pi to make a NAS Main idea with this is to use the usb for hd but still something interesting to look at.

I'd really like to see benchmarks on that. I know there are cameras for the GPIO, so a few megs/s can be squeezed out of it, but I'm curious to see if going that route can beat the 35-40MB/s from a USB2 drive...

 

[neonthunder]

I'd really like to see benchmarks on that. I know there are cameras for the GPIO, so a few megs/s can be squeezed out of it, but I'm curious to see if going that route can beat the 35-40MB/s from a USB2 drive...

Might give it a try...

 

[Woomack]

I haven't been in this thread for a while ...

Just for clairity, you guys have no issue with RAID5 on decent cards though?

On most RAID controllers RAID5 is just slow comparing to RAID 10 or even 1. Other thing is that RAID5 requires much higher processor power for all calculations and most controllers won't run if there is no battery backup and additional cache. Next thing is that RAID5 is much harder and much slower to recover. In general I'm not recommending it for anything unless you really count every $ and need a lot of space but even then if you want 3-5 drives then you can just buy 1-3 more and set RAID 10 what sometimes can be cheaper than RAID5 module+cache on the controller ( it's usually more than 50% price of good controller ).

I wouldn't install NAS on raspberry if you want it to perform good. Pi is quite slow and it doesn't have any reasonable storage controller. You can buy fully integrated motherboard based on Intel CPU ( Celeron or something ) with built-in RAID for not much more. AMD Kabini boards are starting from about $30 but I haven't seen them with RAID controllers. PCIE x8 controller from auctions without RAID5 module costs about $30-50 + SAS to SATA cable for 4 drives is maybe $10. It's good enough for 4 drives in RAID10 or JBOD.

 

[neonthunder]

I wouldn't install NAS on raspberry if you want it to perform good. Pi is quite slow and it doesn't have any reasonable storage controller. You can buy fully integrated motherboard based on Intel CPU ( Celeron or something ) with built-in RAID for not much more. AMD Kabini boards are starting from about $30 but I haven't seen them with RAID controllers. PCIE x8 controller from auctions without RAID5 module costs about $30-50 + SAS to SATA cable for 4 drives is maybe $10. It's good enough for 4 drives in RAID10 or JBOD.

I'm gonna give the Pi ago and build a mini Nas for my old G4 macbook, just to see how it does actually perform and what it can do.

As for my main NAS i think I'm gonna build it new, Gonna look into 2nd parts when I've got a solid setup to work from etc and then can start tinkering with other stuff.

Reckon im going down the AMD route with the NAS and purpose NAS case to keep it simple - found one that matches my exisiting case for the Mackintosh Aswell.