Backup Solution and File Server

And on the topic of availability "this".. and SHR "that".. and redundancy "this".. one very important thing you should do is put your NAS on a battery backup..(of course in addition to proper backup strategy)..

Sudden power outages are probably one of the biggest reasons of data loss... so many bad things happen when power is shut off on a whim lol
 
The key word there is irreplaceable.
jlbenedict said:
I agree with this... you see so many newbie tech "gurus" over in Reddit.. and they'll be on the hype train of running Plex, Docker, and VM's.. all on the NAS.. and then return complaining of issues..

a NAS is a NAS.. "Network Attached Storage".. it's not a server.. YES.. I get it... the specs one some of these new NAS's are nice as F and probably technically can handle running some "server" type applications, as they are nothing more than x86_64 computers.. but, asking these NAS appliances to do more than what they are intended for is asking for trouble
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I don’t have any issue with Plex, that is pretty standard these days. It’s when you run lots of other software in dockers and vms and use it for routing and mail and other things.. it _can_ do these things, but chance of issues goes up substantially.
 
Keljian said:
yeah >1tb drives are used for storage.. I meant irreplaceable storage - stuff like family photos..
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I think even then you'd be surprised. I know I've got over 1TB for sure, and I don't even have that much media like others do.
 
jlbenedict said:
I agree with this... you see so many newbie tech "gurus" over in Reddit.. and they'll be on the hype train of running Plex, Docker, and VM's.. all on the NAS.. and then return complaining of issues..

a NAS is a NAS.. "Network Attached Storage".. it's not a server.. YES.. I get it... the specs one some of these new NAS's are nice as F and probably technically can handle running some "server" type applications, as they are nothing more than x86_64 computers.. but, asking these NAS appliances to do more than what they are intended for is asking for trouble
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Dead on. There is a real benefit from having distributed devices doing individual things--no single point of failure. And the complexity of running everything on one also makes it so one thing can break another, especially in today's ever changing software. I prefer dedicated machines to dedicated tasks. I even take that philosophy to the desktop level where critical tasks are only done by one machine (and its backups) and that's it. Sure makes life easier when something goes wrong. :)
 
With synology you can get an iosafe version of them as your backup target if you want some more physical resilience since they are just a synology in a ceramic container.
 
D-EJ915 said:
With synology you can get an iosafe version of them as your backup target if you want some more physical resilience since they are just a synology in a ceramic container.
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Interesting. I didn't know iosafe made nas units. Not cost effective or a guarantee against disaster compared to more backups, but an interesting device for certain use cases.
 
Keljian said:
I'd argue that the majority of home users don't have 1TB or more of data that is irreplaceable. 3-2-1 still stands, 3 copies, 2 on site, 1 offsite.

example

2 on site : Nas -> PC hard drive or USB hard drive (not ssd)
1 offsite : Hyperbackup -> Backblaze/Wasabi/Syno C2/google drive etc etc.
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Thanks. Why not external SSD?
 
SamirD said:
I think today's ssds are probably on par with hard drives that also need regularly operation to be reliable.
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I have had 20 year old drives sitting on the shelf fire up perfectly fine. The only mechanical drives I would be concerned about these days are the helium filled ones.

Once the helium leaks out, heat/friction go up a lot, and they will probably die quickly.
 
Keljian said:
I have had 20 year old drives sitting on the shelf fire up perfectly fine. The only mechanical drives I would be concerned about these days are the helium filled ones.

Once the helium leaks out, heat/friction go up a lot, and they will probably die quickly.
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Most of the drives that I've let sit are only good for a few reads or a few months and then they'll start having issues reading the data. Hard drives are also not meant to sit for long periods of time without being powered on, which seems being on 24x7 their preferred path to long life as the drives in the hard drive poh thread show.
 
SamirD said:
Most of the drives that I've let sit are only good for a few reads or a few months and then they'll start having issues reading the data. Hard drives are also not meant to sit for long periods of time without being powered on, which seems being on 24x7 their preferred path to long life as the drives in the hard drive poh thread show.
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Interesting, I have a 1.5tb WD green that I fire up once a year that seems to be in good stead overall.. maybe I'm just lucky
 
jlbenedict said:
And on the topic of availability "this".. and SHR "that".. and redundancy "this".. one very important thing you should do is put your NAS on a battery backup..(of course in addition to proper backup strategy)..

Sudden power outages are probably one of the biggest reasons of data loss... so many bad things happen when power is shut off on a whim lol
Click to expand...
Battery backup as in a UPS?
 
A UPS for a nas doesn’t need to be huge, unless the nas is huge. It needs to keep the device running for 5-8 minutes to allow the device to shut down.
 
Keljian said:
A UPS for a nas doesn’t need to be huge, unless the nas is huge. It needs to keep the device running for 5-8 minutes to allow the device to shut down.
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And more importantly needs to interface properly to the nas os...or it's just going to delay shutting off without a warning.

This being said though, I've run most of my units without a UPS and they're fine after a power outage even without a shutdown. Still a good idea to shut it down and reboot it if you did have a power outage without a chance for it to shutdown properly.
 
SamirD said:
And more importantly needs to interface properly to the nas os...or it's just going to delay shutting off without a warning.

This being said though, I've run most of my units without a UPS and they're fine after a power outage even without a shutdown. Still a good idea to shut it down and reboot it if you did have a power outage without a chance for it to shutdown properly.
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If the Nas has any form of SSD cache, there is a large risk of problems if you randomly shut down the device rather than have a graceful shutdown.
 
Keljian said:
If the Nas has any form of SSD cache, there is a large risk of problems if you randomly shut down the device rather than have a graceful shutdown.
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Good point depending on if the ssd has nv flash and/or a capacitor.
 
Keljian said:
Even if so, it’s the safe option
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True, but if it was necessary to keep the unit from failing, then the manufacturer would require it. While not optimal, I'm sure there are mechanisms for recovery from power failure, although like you said some ssd cache data could be lost.
 
Hey all, I got everything setup. I have my Nas connected through Ethernet to my cable modem. I'm trying to drag and drop folders through a folder I created on File Station (51.GB), but it hangs a bit at first and progress is crazy slow thereafter, so I cancelled the operation. Dragging and dropping a small pdf is instant. Is this to be expected?

Thanks!
 
Gamma_Ray said:
Hey all, I got everything setup. I have my Nas connected through Ethernet to my cable modem. I'm trying to drag and drop folders through a folder I created on File Station (51.GB), but it hangs a bit at first and progress is crazy slow thereafter, so I cancelled the operation. Dragging and dropping a small pdf is instant. Is this to be expected?

Thanks!
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Is everything connected wired? Should be hitting 100MB/s on larger files.
 
I get up to 115-120 peaks but mostly 105-110 with my DS920 (4x16TB SHR-2 Btrfs) connected to my AX88U router from my PC on that same router. I just use Win10 File Explorer to copy then go to Networks and my 920 shares to Paste.

Also, I noticed someone mentioning 0+1 RAID and being able to use Linux to see those drives oif the NAS died, but Synology only shows RAID 10?
 
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Keljian said:
I’ll just add one more thing: a nas can do many things, but ideally you shouldn’t make it do many things.

It is for storage and management of storage, first and foremost. Adding things like VMs and other random software is possible, but each thing you add to it means more load, more load means that it may not have as much power (when it needs it) to do the storage thing it is designed for.

That doesn’t mean you can’t add plex, or file sharing or stuff, just you shouldn’t think of it like a server(beyond a file server) or computer.
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Ehhh TrueNas scale is wayyy more flexible. I rather have AIO vs separate Nas and VM server. Just my to cents. OP does seem more suitable for prebuilt system's
 
Vengance_01 said:
Ehhh TrueNas scale is wayyy more flexible. I rather have AIO vs separate Nas and VM server. Just my to cents. OP does seem more suitable for prebuilt system's
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It's all about the hardware. If you put truenas on a box that's just nas only, it would be hard for it to do VMs. Put truenas on a rack mount server and you can go to town...
 
SamirD said:
It's all about the hardware. If you put truenas on a box that's just nas only, it would be hard for it to do VMs. Put truenas on a rack mount server and you can go to town...
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Disagree. Today's desktop hardware is more than capable of doing both. With dense core counts and with desktop mobo handling 64 to 128gb of ram offers plenty for the typical home user
 
Vengance_01 said:
Disagree. Today's desktop hardware is more than capable of doing both. With dense core counts and with desktop mobo handling 64 to 128gb of ram offers plenty for the typical home user
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Oh any real computer will definitely be able to handle more than just nas duties, but it's the smaller side of embedded cpus and nas 'devices' that have limits.
 
SamirD said:
Oh any real computer will definitely be able to handle more than just nas duties, but it's the smaller side of embedded cpus and nas 'devices' that have limits.
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This I agree with. I am purely talking about building your own custom NAS vs an off the self with very low powered CPU's
 
Vengance_01 said:
This I agree with. I am purely talking about building your own custom NAS vs an off the self with very low powered CPU's
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Yep, and this is why 'rolling your own' has significant advantages if you're going to be using VMs since you can do it all on one properly equipped box. Of course, then you get into the 'single point of failure' issue that caused NAS units (applicances) to exist in the first place.
 
Not really super relevant to most people but I found out that Quantum has a free 5TB version of their deduplication appliance which you can use with veeam, etc. Not used it myself but think I might give it a whirl, says the license allows production use too which is pretty neat. If you need lots of versioning these types of things are usually really good.

https://www.quantum.com/en/products/backup-appliances/dxi-trial/
 
D-EJ915 said:
Not really super relevant to most people but I found out that Quantum has a free 5TB version of their deduplication appliance which you can use with veeam, etc. Not used it myself but think I might give it a whirl, says the license allows production use too which is pretty neat. If you need lots of versioning these types of things are usually really good.

https://www.quantum.com/en/products/backup-appliances/dxi-trial/
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Interesting although I found the cpu requirement a bit weird, unless it's talking about cores:

DXi V5000 Community Edition System Requirements​

  • Hypervisor: VMware, KVM, or Hyper-V
  • 100 GB boot disk
  • 100 GB – 5 TB disk for storage (depending upon what capacity you want – upgradable whenever you decide)
  • Memory 4 GB
  • 2 64-bit CPUs
  • 1 network port
 
SamirD said:
Interesting although I found the cpu requirement a bit weird, unless it's talking about cores:

DXi V5000 Community Edition System Requirements​

  • Hypervisor: VMware, KVM, or Hyper-V
  • 100 GB boot disk
  • 100 GB – 5 TB disk for storage (depending upon what capacity you want – upgradable whenever you decide)
  • Memory 4 GB
  • 2 64-bit CPUs
  • 1 network port
Click to expand...
Based on memory reqs its 2 cores IE Virtual core.
 
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