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SiliconWizard:
I've built a NAS - entirely custom - almost 10 years ago. Runs on CentOS (6), small case, 4TB in RAID-5 (so that's 3x2TB HDDs.)
It has run fine (had to replace 1 drive a while back) ever since, but its power supply suddenly died (in a small explosion noise with nasty smell - a cap exploded.)

Since I was already thinking of replacing this NAS with something even smaller and lower power for a while, I'm thinking this is the right opportunity instead of just fixing/replacing the PSU.

What would you guys choose for storing ~3TB of data (4TB capacity is still alright with me)? The use case is: frequent reads, but relatively infrequent writes. A LOT of files of various size up to a few GB each. Reliability a factor. Cost too...
(I was thinking of actually replacing that with just SSDs - no RAID, but for 4TB total, it's still pretty expensive.)

chriva:
I'd stick to the raid solution. Running a slightly similar setup myself but with Debian and ZFS. Way cheaper and probably more reliable than the consumer crap :)

While raid is not really a "backup", it's still safer than a single drive so I'd not upgrade to ssd unless you stick to the same arrangement but with solid state drives.


Specs for the heck of it:
Running a phenom 965 with custom CnC settings (lowest state is way, way down there in terms of voltage. HT and NB are both underclocked/undervoltaged at all times), dd3l-ecc ram (Low voltage is "not supported" but you can easily make it work any way). Getting around 8-10W idle when all the drives are spun down. Don't mind if it takes a few secs to get going if I haven't accessed it in a while. :)
4 x 4tb split in 2 software partitions and a few loose drivers for temporary gunk I don't care about

SiliconWizard:
Well. Yeah. The point of this NAS was for a zero-backup solution. (Among other things, it actually served as a backup solution for other computers itself.) It has served well for this. I had one drive failure in 10 years, and nothing lost at all thanks to RAID-5. Of course, theoretically, people will tell me RAID is no substitute for backups, but if you monitor it on a regular basis, it's not that risky. It was actually backed up (partially, critical files) on other media, but pretty infrequently.

This small server was also to act as a small server for other tasks, but I can largely do without that now.

Things have evolved though, and my views on this as well. I'm thinking that provided that I duplicate my data on a regular basis, the probability of loosing it is relatively small. I have years of experience with this, and never lost anything. I now tend to favor data replication (on a regular basis) rather than a "no-fail" approach (yeah, I know, anything can fail anyway.)

As to power draw, my NAS was about 30W on idle. Not too bad, but I'd like less.

Wuerstchenhund:
For my data (approx 20TB give or take) I tend to stick with Enterprise stuff. For hardware that means servers from HP or Dell, and for the OS that means derivates of the two major Linux vendors which are Red Hat and SUSE.

For NAS applications I've been using HP MicroServers since the day of the N36L (HP's first one) back in 2011 or so. At home I currently run a number of MicroServer Gen8 with XEON E3-1260L v2 CPUs, 16GB RAM and Smart Array P222 and P420 SAS/SATA Hardware RAID controllers. The MS G8 is great, it's small but still comes with server-class hardware including its own remote management processor with HP ILO4. We use lots of them at work as workgroup storage and they have proven rock solid, as have the ones I use at home. They are also inexpensive for what they offer.

My primary NAS is a MS G8 with four HGST UltraStar 6TB SATA hard drives in RAID5 for data and a single Micron 5100 200GB SATA SSD in the optical bay for the OS (openSUSE 15.1). Both the OS and the data rest on BTRFS file systems.

However, i do have to say that I do make backups. One is online into encrypted cloud storage, the other is on tape (LTO5). Simply because as reliable as the HP hardware normally is, RAID is not a backup, and if you don't have a backup then your data isn't important, period. RAID's purpose is to maintain availability of the storage subsystem in case a drive fails, but it's not a replacement for backups.


--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on May 28, 2020, 03:57:47 pm ---What would you guys choose for storing ~3TB of data (4TB capacity is still alright with me)? The use case is: frequent reads, but relatively infrequent writes. A LOT of files of various size up to a few GB each. Reliability a factor. Cost too...
(I was thinking of actually replacing that with just SSDs - no RAID, but for 4TB total, it's still pretty expensive.)

--- End quote ---

For your use case I'd be tempted to get a MS G8 (used and pretty cheap) or one of the later ones (HPE MS G10, MS G10+, depending if you need remote management) and two Enterprise-grade 4TB SATA drives and run them in RAID1 (i.e. as mdmraid, or under openSUSE as BTRFS RAID1). With less than 4TB of data there is little use to setup a RAID5 with smaller drives today.

fordem:

--- Quote from: SiliconWizard on May 28, 2020, 06:09:08 pm ---Of course, theoretically, people will tell me RAID is no substitute for backups, but if you monitor it on a regular basis, it's not that risky.

--- End quote ---

There's no theory about it - the purpose of RAID is not to prevent data loss due to drive failure, but to reduce down time in the event of a drive failure - it allows you to schedule a maintenance window at your convenience.

A couple of decades ago the local branch of a big Canadian bank was running their banking platform on an IBM mid range system with mirrored (RAID1) disks, they experienced a failure that took out both disks in one of their mirrors - as you would expect, the data was backed up to tape, so there was no loss of data, but, for several years their management never missed an opportunity to remind me of the failure.

The other fact of RAID you need to be aware of is that with increased drive capacity comes increased rebuild times and an increase in the probability of a second drive failure caused by increased stress during the rebuild - none of the major storage manufacturers recommend RAID5 any more.

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