Hello there,

I am in search of inspiration for solving several issues I am having.

That’s my situation:

  • ageing Synology NAS (4x4tb drives) with multiple docker containers running on it.
  • old gaming rig (i7-6700, Fedora Server) which I use sparingly for game server hosting

What I want to achieve:

  • Upgrade/replacement of my NAS
  • Offsite backup
  • ~20tb of usable storage (~2-3tb of actual important stuff)

Primary use cases:

  • SMB share
  • Docker hosting (Pihole, unbound, Jellyfin, *arr etc.)

Newly added requirements:

  • Cloud storage for mobile devices of close family members on and off site

Complications:

  • Electricity cost is a scam where I live (~0.40$ per Kwh)

I have an ageing NAS whose capacity is getting to its limits storage and horsepower wise. And since I have to do work on my setup anyways, I was wondering whether you might give me some inputs on what I could/should use to achieve my goals.

  1. My NAS is getting to its teenage years and I am getting worried about its eol. Buying some old server HW is out of the question because of power usage and availability. What are my best options? Build something myself with current hardware? Buy a new NAS? What is a good way to migrate data to a new system? From a power consumption standpoint are SSD’s better than HDD’s?

  2. I have an off site which i visit regularly where I could either place backup drives or put a system in a rack. What would be a good option for an offsite backup solution?

  3. I have gotten my aunt (77) a tablet during covid so she could video call us. In recent months a smartphone has entered the ring because daily life is getting impacted when you don’t have one. Now she is all into taking pictures and videos and the storage on her phone is not enough. What are my options? I’ve experimented with Nextcloud but I am uncertain whether it is the right solution, especially from a usability perspective. (I want to avoid third party services for storage)

I will very much appreciate your input since I’m not working in the field and am getting to the edge of my own knowledge at this point.

Thank you in advance for your input.

  • TCB13@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    What are my best options? Build something myself with current hardware?

    Build something based on a MicroATX board with a CPU > i5-6500, this will probably cost around 80€ second hand with RAM. Server hardware is overkill, wastes power and older CPUs are always worse in all possible ways. Even if the board only has 4 SATA ports, a PCI to 5 SATA port card and it will be enough. Use BTRFS as your filesystem and its RAID if needed.

    You may be thinking something like “I want a faster CPU in order to have fast SMB”, don’t. Your gigabit network will saturate before your CPU or even mechanical drives and when this happen you’ll get something like 10-20% CPU usage. Just don’t waste your money.

    From a power consumption standpoint are SSD’s better than HDD’s? It depends on the hardware, either way is isn’t feasible to have around 20TB of SSD storage. Even considering you can now buy a 4TB SSD for 195€ that would be a lot of money.

    Nextcloud is garbage, yes very bad usability, more reasons and issues listed here: https://lemmy.world/comment/1571886 and https://lemmy.world/comment/346174

    Syncthing is a very good piece of software, to sincronize devices with a NAS - except if you use iOS. Currently I’m running Syncthing on my NAS and all my devices sync to it (no cross-device sync to avoid issues). Then I’ve an SMB share to allow access to the files on iOS devices and FileBrowser for a cloud-like web browser access experience. Works flawlessly uses very little RAM and its solid, private, secure and manageable open-source - not something like Nextcloud that calls home, breaks everything on upgrades, wastes ram and runs slowly to only deliver an inferior experience in all possible ways.

    Running stuff in your NAS: if you’re really into a low power solution you might want to stay away from Docker. Simply install a clean Debian system and manually get what you need instead of tons of containers and dependencies. This will allow you to run more stuff on less hardware. Linux isn’t that hard, you can do it.

    • coreknot@lemmy.mlOP
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      1 year ago

      Thank you for your answer.

      I agree with you that Server Hardware is overkill. That’s why I am asking for options here. For your suggested architecture: It is quite ancient and eol per last year and I have one of these already in use as a “more than my NAS thingy”. What I am not comfortable with is that that generation is already end of life and I don’t want to invest time and money into hardware that I would have to replace a year or two from now. I’m looking for a solution (self built or not) that will drag me through the next decade. Does BTRFS include Raid support? I don’t have much experience with it. The most I did once was recover a snapshot.

      CPU is the least of my concerns. I am currently looking at a low end current gen Intel CPU for my purpose. And yes, samba is slow and I will never saturate a somewhat recent CPU with it, but I have from time to time other things running on that machine.

      For storage: You are overestimating a bit with the prices. For 200€ I can get 4TB SSDs. So 20TB + one for raid 5 ~1200€. That would be quite doable but on the expensive side I agree. The question was whether SSDs were considerable cause of power usage, not from a price standpoint.

      As fro Syncthing… I’ll have a look at that.

      Docker is just nice and simple. I remember times when deploying software on a single server was hell on earth. Conflicting libraries etc. And yes Linux isn’t hard (been using it for like 2 decades).

      • TCB13@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        What I am not comfortable with is that that generation is already end of life

        The thing is that those are very cheap as people want faster things for Windows desktops and as we both know Samba won’t ever saturate that CPU on a 1GbE to 2.5GbE link. If you can get a last-gen low power solution like an i3 in the same price ranges go for it and ignore my previous advice. But you know an i5-6500 or i5-7400 + motherboard + RAM for 70-80€ is a good deal and enough for the use case.

        For 200€ I can get 4TB SSDs.

        Sorry, my mistake. I meant 4TB.

        Does BTRFS include Raid support?

        Yes many possible configurations and snapshots. BTRFS also tends to be way more reliable than Ext4 and others when the hardware fails, you experience sudden power losses etc. More: https://linuxhint.com/set-up-btrfs-raid/

        As fro Syncthing… I’ll have a look at that.

        Syncthing + FileBrowser is a “killer” setup for a personal cloud. I’m even amazed you’ve never heard about / used Syncthing as it is very popular in self-hosting. You can also use it to sync your main NAS with the remote backup. Very reliable and easy to setup.

        Docker is just nice and simple. I remember times when deploying software on a single server was hell on earth.

        Never had that experience… if the software is properly done and you aren’t using a weird distro things should work out well. Eventually you can use LXC/LXD or even systemd containers to isolate problematic applications without having to deal with all the Docker overhead and mess.

        • Molecular0079@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Yes many possible configurations and snapshots.

          Except RAID 5 and 6! Those are still broken on BTRFS and not recommended for use by the devs. It’s unfortunate because I just setup a DIY NAS and I had to go with ZFS because of this.

      • Molecular0079@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Does BTRFS include Raid support? I don’t have much experience with it. The most I did once was recover a snapshot.

        It does have RAID support but its RAID 5 and 6 are BROKEN! The devs themselves do not recommend using these. If you need RAID 5 and 6 and you absolutely want to use BTRFS, you’ll have to go with mdraid and then put BTRFS on top, but then you lose a lot of the BTRFS self-healing capabilities. Personally for RAID 5 and 6, I still recommend ZFS’s RAIDz. It’s quite easy to setup. I have a DIY NAS with an OS drive running BTRFS and a storage pool consisting of 4x 4TB SSDs running in RAIDz1.

    • Molecular0079@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Does FileBrowser support creating public links for sharing? I use Nextcloud as a way to deliver large amounts of photos and videos to my clients.

      My issue with Syncthing is that doing partial sync is sort of a pain in the ass. My Nextcloud currently has 290GB of data that I’d rather not completely sync to all of my devices and AFAICT with Syncthing, you still need to fiddle around with config files to do that, and even then its clunky and doesn’t work sometimes.

      Yeah I get that Nextcloud is a bit slow but it’s definitely more capable as a drop-in cloud storage replacement than other software I’ve seen.